Blue Girl, Red State

We have't stopped blogging, we just moved

2010-06-06T18:25:00.000-05:00

This site has moved.

We are now hosting our own domain at

They gave us a republic...

...and we intend to keep it.

Please update your bookmarks and link lists to

http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/

Stop being ridiculous!

2009-02-03T15:47:00.001-06:00

The Sheriff of Richland County, South Carolina is vowing that if his investigation determines that Michael Phelps was smoking pot, then he will bring charges against him.

Um...Isn't that the DA's call, and not his? I am neither a lawyer nor a criminal so I have no special knowledge of due process, but I was paying attention in civics class. The way I understand it, the Sheriff investigates at the DAs behest, and if sufficient evidence is collected to bring charges, then the DA has to get a warrant from a judge and/or an indictment from a grand jury.

It ain't up to Roscoe P. Coltrain.

And even if a warrant was issued, unless he can test that picture for residue and prove beyond all doubt that it was marijuana in that bong at that very moment, then any second-year law student could get the case tossed.

What is he? Envious that everyone knows Joe Arpaio's name and he wants you to know his, too? Even tho the only reason he is known at all outside Arizona is because he is a douchebag?

Fine. This douchebag has a name, too. It is Leon Lott. Spread the word. In a mocking tone.

And for fucks sake...lighten up on marijuana. It's a freakin' weed that grows wild every damned where. Not only that, it is a utilitarian weed, one that can be cultivated and every part of the plant used. Just for starters: the seeds can be pressed for oil, the leaves and buds can be smoked or tinctured and used medicinally, the fibers of the stalks can be used for paper and extremely durable fabric...and the list goes on.

Out here in the real world, where real people live their lives and stuff, we want you idiots to knock it off and stop wasting our money on wrecking the lives of people who are just doing what people have done since time immemorial...copping a buzz. If you have ever smoked a joint, you know it's no big deal. If you haven't, why don't you give it a whirl, see what all the fuss is about, and then get back to me.

In other words, get over this prohibition lunacy and make a buck off it already.

Ten million college students can't be wrong.

Rest in Peace, J.R.

2009-01-16T16:35:00.002-06:00

For the first time in my life, or at least since Kindergarten, Jimmy Ray isn’t out there somewhere.

Yesterday I got the weekly newspaper that comes out of the county seat that carries the news from our little town of under 400 - who had a birthday, who had a baby, who took a trip, who had visitors from out of town, who came home on leave - and as per usual the last paragraph was the reminder to keep the friends and families of the following people who have passed away in the last week in our thoughts and prayers, and his name was listed. My husband read the paper first and broke the news to me.

Jimmy Ray and I grew up together. It was a small town, so small we didn’t even have a football team, and there were never enough boys to choose up teams for anything. Sandlot sports were, of necessity, coed. I could throw a tight spiral, hit a baseball, saddle a horse, and swish a basketball from anywhere around the top of the key. In that little town, I was an honorary guy, at least until I started filling out.

He was the first boy to realize that was not the case at all, and I will never forget that he was my first real kiss.

It was over 30 years ago, about this time of year, after the Christmas break and before the end-of-season tournaments started. We were sitting in the back of the pep bus, headed back home after a Friday night basketball game. This was the 70s - there were no walkmans, or even boom boxes. We weren’t interested in sitting up front and sucking up to the coaches and cheerleading sponsor, so we headed for the back of the bus. Somewhere along a stretch of north Missouri two lane blacktop between Gilman City and home, after all the other people on the bus around us had fallen asleep, he put his arm around me. That was the moment I felt that tingle behind my bellybutton that I would soon recognize as signaling imminent sexual arousal for the very first time.

I inhaled sharply, and for a second, I panicked and tensed up. Then I felt him tense up, and start to move his arm. Before he pulled back, I laid my head on his shoulder and put my hand on his chest. For probably five minutes, he played with my hair, we both started to relax a little bit and I just laid there against him and enjoyed the intimate closeness of a male for the first time in my young life. I felt him lean forward and kiss the top of my head, and I turned my face toward him. It was awkward for a second, looking into one another’s eyes in a whole new way after a lifetime of being friends, compatriots and partners in crime. Then he put a hand against my cheek, leaned in, and for the first time, our lips met. It was stiff and awkward and exciting and scary and wonderful, and within two miles, we had taken to our newly discovered pastime like a couple of ducks to water.

But in the end, even though we took a side-trip into intimacy and sexual exploration, we ended up being friends and offering a stamp of approval for one another’s future dating endeavors. When we took the ASVAB the end of our junior year, I kicked the shit out of it and had all branches recruiting me. Ultimately, I decided to enlist in the Army because he couldn’t get into the Air Force or the Navy with his scores, and we wanted to go in under the Buddy System. I figured if we were together I could get him through tech school like I got him through algebra, geometry, biology and chemistry.

It wasn’t long after that, tho, that we started drifting apart. Before the oaths were taken, he discovered drugs. Not the pot we had been pretending to smoke since 9th grade, but real drugs, and they pretty much wrecked his life. He didn’t go to the military at all, and I ended up in a Colonel’s office on a university campus getting that same feeling behind my bellybutton when a scholarship offer was put in front of me for my signature.

Eventually, my husband - who dated Jimmy Ray’s older sister for over a year when they were in high school together - I keep telling you this is a really, really small town - would physically throw him out of our house when we caught him shooting up in our bathroom a few hours after he turned up unannounced on our doorstep years later. That was the last time I ever saw him, although I heard the occasional status report and always made it a point to stop and see his mother whenever we were back home, and one of those times we went to visit her, she told us how she had prayed that her kids would wise up and make us a part of her family, “But you two were obviously made for each other, so that would have eventually been a hell of a mess and it would have probably come to a head at Christmas dinner.” (When my husband and I got together, she had a heart-to-heart with both of us, individually, threatening our lives if we blew it.)

I never kissed Jimmy Ray again after we graduated from high school, but I never forgot him, either. I frequently thought about him, and regularly sent good thoughts out into the universe on his behalf, hoping against hope that he had managed to get his shit together, wishing him the best and being glad he was out there somewhere.

And now, for the first time in my life, I know definitively that he isn’t, and that fills me with an overwhelming sadness.

Colonel Steve Danner will be the next Adjutant General of the MO National Guard

2009-01-10T18:46:00.000-06:00

PrimeBuzz reported late this morning that Governor-Elect Jay Nixon has tapped Missouri National Guard Colonel Steve Danner to be Adjutant General of the Missouri National Guard.

A Colonel in the MO Guard and an attorney, Danner joined the military in 1972 as a combat engineer, and he has served with distinction in various roles ever since, including as the Command Judge Advocate with the 35th Area Support Group in Balad, Iraq from 2005 to 2007. He has been a JAG Officer since 1981.

The Adjutant General oversees the state's Army and Air National Guard Units. Danner will inherit a force that has not been spared the abuses that have been heaped on the Guard and Reserves in pursuit of Bush's folly in Iraq. The Missouri National Guard faces the same problems with force strength, retention, recruiting, equipment shortages and repeated deployments that are pervasive in Guard contingents all over the country.

In addition to those problems faced by virtually every Guard unit in the country after seven years of war, Danner will inherit a National Guard with a whole other set of problems, too. The current Adjutant General has been accused of discriminating against black and female Guardsmen. Two federal complaints have been filed, and thirteen black soldiers have publicly signed a letter to the NAACP alleging that the outgoing AG, Major General King Sidwell, and his chief of staff, Col. Glenn Hagler, have "fostered a climate of institutional discrimination" in the ranks of the Missouri National Guard and discriminated against blacks and females when it came to awarding promotions.

Don't be surprised if the wingnut chorus treats us to a couple of barbershop numbers over the appointment. They won't question his credentials or qualifications - they are impeccable and beyond reproach. But they might have a problem with his politics. He donates heavily to Democratic candidates, including Jay Nixon, to whose gubernatorial campaign Danner donated $3000 between 2006 and 2008.

Danner has a solid Democratic pedigree. He has been involved in the Missouri Democratic Party practically his whole life. He and Nixon go back to 1990 when they were freshmen Democratic state senators together. He was legal counsel to the Missouri House speaker back when Democrats held the majority, and was a top aide in the Lt. Governor's office under Mel Carnahan. His mother is Pat Danner, who held the Missouri 06 for four terms, winning an upset over an incumbent republican in 1992, and even surviving the 'republican revolution' of 1994 to win reelection as a freshman Democrat in that climate. She withdrew from the reelection race in 2000 after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and Steve stepped in to defend the seat, narrowly losing to Sam Graves, who was just elected to a fifth term.

My advice? If anyone wails about the political side of Danner with regard to this appointment just look at them and sigh and explain how the military works (wingnuts rarely actually know anything about the military that isn't conveyed in "Red Dawn") "Of course he's a politician! He's a Colonel, and Colonels who aren't politicians...are Captains. The only difference with Danner is we know up front what his politics are."

Missouri Senate Bill 40 turns 30

2009-01-10T10:53:00.002-06:00

[Crossposted from Show Me Progress]

Ronald Reagan was wrong.

Government isn’t the problem. In fact, good government can be the solution by doing things that are responsive to the needs of the citizens it exists to serve, and in so doing have a positive impact and make lives better. Missouri Senate Bill 40 is an example of what good government can do, without a lot of fanfare.

Most people, unless they have a family member with a developmental disability or they are employed in the education field, get to go through their lives without giving a first thought to SB 40, let alone a second…but for those it has served, it is a blessing.

Missouri SB 40 was passed law in 1978 and, as per tradition, became law the start of the next year, and in spite of all the good it has done, it would likely not even make it out of committee in today’s republican-controlled legislature, because it levies a tax to provide funding for residential, vocational and other programs and services that serve special needs persons and their families throughout the state.

I was in high school in one of this states poorest and most rural communities when the law was passed, and so I am old enough to remember life before PL 94-142 and SB 40. I remember a handful of families with special needs kids my age and older who never went to school a day in their lives, never developed even the most rudimentary of social skills, but instead lived their lives sequestered and hidden, seldom seen. Other babies never came home from the hospital, but were instead institutionalized at birth, and only discussed in hushed, tragic tones. I don’t fault the families - they were told that was what was best for the children, because the services to meet their needs didn’t exist at the community level.

One thing I can say with certainty. In virtually no instance were those children well served.

And it took acts of legislation to get us, as a society, to do the right thing. I am all for self-reliance, at least in my own life. But some problems require community efforts. And SB 40 is a community effort done right. May it last another thirty years.

Relief workers in Gaza take casualties

2009-01-08T23:16:00.000-06:00

A United Nations relief worker died today after Israeli troops attacked a relief convoy clearly marked and carrying the UN flag as it moved toward the Erez border crossing to pick up humanitarian aid to be distributed to the people trapped in Gaza. The convoy was moving during the agreed to three-hour lull in the fighting that has been set aside for relief efforts to be carried out, and the movement had been coordinated with and green lighted by Israeli liaison officers.

A second equally coordinated and marked medical convoy that was dispatched to retrieve the body of a UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) worker killed in an earlier attack came under small-arms fire as they attempted to retrieve the body of their fallen compatriot in Gaza City.

"This is heartbreaking... a very, very difficult decision for us to take," UNRWA Director of Operations in Gaza John Ging told a news conference at UN Headquarters in New York, speaking by video link from Gaza. "The population here are in a dreadful state and really need our help at this point but we have also a responsibility to our staff, and eager as they are, and believe me they are, we cannot fly in the face of the security situation."
While UNRWA is perfectly prepared for reasonable risks in a conflict zone, "added to those is the fact that we cannot rely on firm commitments given by the Israeli side, carefully coordinated with them, green lights given to move... specifics provided, carefully coordinated throughout, and to have the Israeli forces on the ground firing at and now hitting aid workers."
He said the movement of all staff would be suspended until UNRWA could be assured of their safety, and UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes told the same news conference: "We are seeking those assurances... We're talking very urgently about how we can make better arrangements, more reliable arrangements to avoid these incidents on the ground which we simply cannot see repeated. Otherwise we simply won't be able to do our job."
Mr. Ging said Israel was investigating the Erez incident, which came two days after Israeli shelling near an UNRWA school killed 40 people and injured more than 100. Israel said it was returning fire from the area of the school. UN officials stressed there were no Hamas or other militants inside the school.
On today's second incident, which occurred during Israel's stated daily three-hour lull in fighting, Mr. Ging said he had received no credible explanation from Israel as to how "the green light turned into three rounds" of light arms fire. Asked how he could be sure that Israel was responsible for the incidents, he said the Israelis had not so far disputed the cases.
"The headlines are that we desperately need a full and immediate ceasefire in Gaza to enable the civilian population to be protected and helped and that need is becoming more desperate by the hour," Mr. Holmes said, stressing that most of the Strip was without power, although some fuel was getting through, and 20,000 people were in UN shelters.
He added that the Israeli lull, which the UN has called totally insufficient, allowed residents to get food supplies, access medical services, get to the dead and wounded in buildings, bury the dead and dig out more bodies from the rubble. Meanwhile rocket fire into Israel continued. He cited credible Palestinian reports that the death toll had now reached 758, of whom 257 were children and 56 women, with 3,100 wounded of whom 1,080 are children and 452 women.
He referred to "absolutely horrifying" accounts that the International Red Cross had reached bombed houses in Zaitoun, finding 12 dead people and four children alive next to their dead mother on mattresses in one, and 15 wounded in another, noting that what was particularly shocking was that a nearby Israeli team must have been aware of the wounded, yet did nothing.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned the incidents and called for an immediate cease fire. In a statement issued by his spokesperson, he noted that four United Nations relief workers have been killed in the two week old conflict. Think about that. The United Nations and their relief agencies have taken casualties that rival those of Israel.

I have a plan...

2009-01-08T12:24:00.004-06:00

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. --Mark Twain

It also applies to the SoapBlox blogging platform, where I moved in August to start TheyGaveUsaRepublic.com and take this blogging thing to the next level after I got home from Netroots Nation.

A whole hell of a lot of work went into building that site, and I am quite pleased with it. It looks like, at least for now, that the format will live on, so moving everything isn't necessary - at least not yet.

But I sure did get a lot of positive response yesterday when the rss feed for this site suddenly came back to life. I gotta tell you that it made me smile getting emails that told me how much this humble little blogspot meant to so many people. I'm gobsmacked, frankly. I had no idea...Thank you all so much!

I have been thinking about this off and on since yesterday and looking at the facts at hand:

I have a kick-ass professionally done site that I am extremely proud of on a hosted domain and I want to keep it.
It is on a platform that is not exactly built on the solidest rock, if you know what I mean.
Quite a few people were happy to see the old girl come out of dry dock.

Okey dokey.

With minimal brow furrowing, where to proceed became pretty obvious.

This place is a perfect archive for my work on the two professional sites, so at the end of the day, I will crosspost my content from the two SoapBlox sites, They Gave Us A Republic and Show Me Progress to this blog. Around midnight central, your RSS feed should come alive and deliver what I produced that day, along with the occasional killer piece from the archives, to your inbox. And if SoapBlox does go away, I will not be caught flat-footed and I won't have lost my body of work.

Now...can I figure out how to get the damned comments to come back up, the salon will be fully operational.

Everything old is new again

2009-01-07T12:38:00.001-06:00

Last summer I migrated to a hosted domain on SoapBlox.

Almost immediately I regretted it.

Now SoapBlox is going away and we are back over here.

Oy.

Remembering the Anthrax Vaccine Controversy

2008-08-09T06:37:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

I remember the controvery over having to receive shots of the Anthrax vaccine--no one knew if it was causing serious health problems and members of the military were refusing to get the shots:

Military personnel, under the threat of court-martial, were refusing inoculations of an anthrax vaccine. The vaccine’s sole manufacturing plant was ordered to shut down. Researchers were turning up evidence possibly linking the vaccine to illnesses of soldiers during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

It was hardly the thank you that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins expected for his years of labor to produce a vaccine that would protect military personnel from an anthrax attack by the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein or some other adversary.

The criticism, which reached its peak in 2000 and early 2001, was clearly starting to get on Dr. Ivins’s nerves. “I think the **** is about to hit the fan ... big time,” he wrote in a July 2000 e-mail message about the inoculation program, according to a government affidavit. “It’s just a fine mess.”

This turmoil has now been cited by federal investigators as a key part of the reason they believe that Dr. Ivins sent out anthrax-laced letters in the fall of 2001 — as such an attack would, in a single stroke, have eliminated the skepticism and second guessing about the need for an anthrax vaccine.

They ran out before I was supposed to receive the shots--a series of several painful shots over an extended period of time--and I never got it. My wife received the shots, and told me she experienced a great deal of pain in her arm.

But it is true--there was turmoil. A handful of people were refusing to get it, touching off controversy. Well, not controversy. Mostly, disgust that there were people refusing to follow orders.

This was a fight the military wasn't going to lose, of course, and many were forced to get the shots (until they ran out, of course).

I don't know why they're continuing to use all of these different issues to pound Dr. Bruce Ivins, but this is essentially what was going on:

This turmoil has now been cited by federal investigators as a key part of the reason they believe that Dr. Ivins sent out anthrax-laced letters in the fall of 2001 — as such an attack would, in a single stroke, have eliminated the skepticism and second guessing about the need for an anthrax vaccine.

The investigators suggest that Dr. Ivins had been struggling with psychological problems, and was on medication and undergoing counseling after being overcome by what he described as paranoid, delusional thoughts. The trouble with the vaccine, they argue, may have been enough to set him off.

At that stage of his career, was he ready to risk everything and do something that just seems stupid--and that is, use weaponized Anthrax to prove what he was working on was vital and necessary? You have to assume he was willing to take steps that are unimaginable for someone working on a way to keep people safe from being killed by Anthrax. You have to be willing to suspend a lot of disbelief for that theory to work.

Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues reject that two-part theory, saying it is just one of many flaws in the evidence presented by the government in an unconvincing case.

There was a real threat, the former colleagues acknowledged, that the anthrax vaccine Dr. Ivins had worked on during that period, known as Anthrax Vaccine Absorbed or AVA, might be pulled from the market

Most troubling were problems at the Michigan manufacturing plant, which had been shut down in 1998 after the Food and Drug Administration uncovered serious flaws.

Dr. Ivins and other researchers, however, had been working on a more advanced alternative vaccine — considered safer and more effective — so there was no reason for such a rash act, his former colleagues say.

“There was a lot of consternation, a lot of pressure to rescue this thing,” said Jeffrey Adamovicz, one of Dr. Ivins’s fellow researchers at the time. “But if AVA failed, he had his next vaccine candidate. It was well on its way to what looked to be a very bright future.”

The vaccine controversy erupted in the late 1990s, after the Defense Department ordered the inoculation of all 2.4 million active duty and reserve troops, starting with those most likely to confront biological attacks in war zones, partly because Iraq had confirmed that it once had a large stockpile of anthrax that was destroyed after the first Persian Gulf war.

By 2000, more than 570,000 military personnel had complied with the order, and hundreds had filed an “adverse event report” after receiving the shots, citing reactions that included fatigue, dizziness and muscle pain, and more serious conditions like thyroid disorders and rhabdomyolysis, a muscle ailment.

It was scary, but there was nothing you could do about it. Once you join the military, be prepared to follow every stupid order. That's just how it is.

What the Justice Department has not produced is evidence documenting that Dr. Ivins’s frustrations motivated him to retaliate with the anthrax letters.

Gerard P. Andrews, another of Dr. Ivins’s former colleagues, said he knew that Dr. Ivins was frustrated, but that he doubted that Dr. Ivins would consider such a step.

Well, we lived with the controversy, and I've never regretted the fact that they ran out of the vaccine before I had to get it.
Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks with our new domain name, They gave us a republic...

Russian Jets Pound Targets in Georgia

2008-08-09T06:36:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

The violence in the region is escalating...

Russian jets have carried out strikes on military targets in the central Georgian town of Gori, close to the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Most of the targets seem to have been military bases, but Georgian officials said a number of civilians had been killed in residential buildings.

Russia said it had "liberated" the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

Earlier, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country was seeking "to force the Georgian side to peace".

The comments came after Russian commanders announced they were sending more troops into South Ossetia to support peacekeeping operations.

The Russian defence ministry confirmed two of its jets had been shot down over Georgia, although it did not say where.

In a live televised address, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said he would ask parliament to approve the introduction of martial law.

After days of exchanging heavy fire with the Russian-backed separatists, Georgian forces launched a surprise attack on Thursday night to regain control of the region, which has had de facto independence since a war in 1992.

Georgian troops in the city of Gori (NY Times)

A small contingent of US troops is in Georgia, and since Russian forces are attacking Georgian military installations, it is not known if they are in imminent danger:

About 130 U.S. military and civilian personnel are currently located in Georgia, where they are training Georgian troops for deployment to Iraq as part of the multinational force there. U.S. military officials in Baghdad said they had gotten no official word about statements from Tblisi that half of Georgia's 2,000-troop contingent was being called home.

It isn't something that is front and center in the reporting, since attacks on civilians are the real story here. But when you start to think about why the sides are fighting, it really does come down to energy revenues:

The BBC's Richard Galpin in Gori heard loud explosions and saw large plumes of smoke rising into the sky; soldiers and civilians were seen running through the streets.

One missile hit a military base, from which most of the soldiers appeared to have managed to escape beforehand, he says.

The Georgian military said residential buildings had also been struck, leaving a number of civilians dead. Our correspondent says injured civilians were being pulled from the buildings, which were on fire.

The Georgian foreign ministry said the Black Sea port of Poti, which is the site of a major oil shipment facility, had also been "devastated" by a Russian aerial bombardment.

Georgian troops riding to the front (NY Times)

The US and the United Nations seem ineffectual, unable to get past the Russian veto on the Security Council:

International Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman Anna Nelson said the ICRC had received reports that hospitals in the city were "overflowing" with casualties.

The BBC's James Rodgers in Moscow says diplomatic initiatives to end the fighting have so far proved fruitless.

On Friday evening, the UN Security Council failed to agree on the wording of a statement calling for a ceasefire.

Russia holds a permanent place on the Council, and has the power of veto over any official statements that it regards as unfair or inaccurate.

Permanent members Britain, the US and France, are pinpointing what they say is Russia's aggression as the key factor in the slide towards war, while Moscow insists Georgia is to blame.

In other developments:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Russia to pull its troops out of Georgia and respect its territorial integrity
Georgia's president said his country was withdrawing its contingent of 2,000 troops from Iraq to help deal with the crisis
The European security organisation, the OSCE, warned that the fighting in South Ossetia could escalate into a full-scale war
The US and the EU were reported to be sending a joint delegation to the region to seek a ceasefire and Nato said it was seriously concerned.

She needs to go to Moscow and/or the region immediately. Not some envoy, not some flunky--she's the expert on Russia, and her area of expertise has so far proven to be an area of foreign policy in which she's about as effective as everywhere else she tries her hand--and that's not very damned much.

Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks with our new domain name, They gave us a republic...

The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-08-08T23:44:00.003-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,
They gave us a republic...

Yeah, don't be scamming on Medicare: For people with osteoporosis, a painful bone disease, a simple medical device can help. Doctors use it to inject bone filler and repair tiny fractures. The procedure, called kyphoplasty, can be done in about an hour without putting the patient to sleep. But Kyphon, the company that made the device, stood to make a lot more money if patients were admitted to the hospital for expensive overnight stays...As an outpatient procedure, Medicare would pay about $1,000 for kyphoplasty. But as an inpatient procedure, Medicare paid up to $10,000 -- your tax dollars.

But will they disarm? Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered most of his militiamen to disarm but said Friday he will maintain elite fighting units to resist the Americans if a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops is not established. Also Friday, Iraqi police say at least 16 people have been killed and 20 wounded when a car bomb struck a market in the northern city of Tal Afar. A senior police official in the nearby city of Mosul says the car was parked when it exploded by the market, crowded with shoppers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information. The bombing is the latest in a series of deadly attacks by suspected insurgents seeking to chip away at recent security gains. Al-Sadr's statement - read to worshippers during Friday prayers in Baghdad's former militia stronghold of Sadr City - is in line with details revealed earlier this week and appears to be an extension of plans he announced in June aimed at asserting more control over the militia.

It used to be called "shy" before it was called "stalking" but oh well: A microbiologist claims she was stalked for decades by Bruce Ivins, the suspect in the deadly anthrax mailings of 2001 who, according to court documents, was obsessed with the sorority she joined in college. Nancy L. Haigwood and her former husband, Carl J. Scandella, also think Ivins may have wanted to get close to her when he moved in down the street from the couple in the suburbs of Washington in the early 1980s. Ivins, an Army scientist, committed suicide last week as federal authorities prepared to charge him with killing five people by sending anthrax spores in the mail. The letters were dropped in a mailbox near a Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority office in Princeton, New Jersey, and prosecutors have suggested Ivins chose that location because of its proximity to the office. Well, case closed!

Did they figure out if he actually wrote the plays, though? The theater where "The Merchant of Venice" and "Romeo and Juliet" likely debuted and where William Shakespeare himself may have trodden the boards has likely been discovered in east London, archaeologists at the Museum of London said. The possible foundations of what is known as simply, The Theatre, were unearthed by builders excavating the site - a vacant garage - for another structure. Museum archaeologists were called to the location to make sure nothing was destroyed, and had a eureka moment. "We were there, scratching our heads, looking into the trenches, thinking, 'this could be it,"' Jo Lyon, a senior museum archaeologist, said Wednesday. "So we did some more research, and then we found the angled walls. And we all went, 'Oh my gosh, this should be it.' " Other theaters of similar vintage also have angled walls, so the discovery was significant. Archaeologists also had known for a long time there was a high probability for The Theatre to be on this particular site. But there are no maps that show its location, no images to show what it might have looked like, and only a vague description of it. "It's in the right place, it's at the right angle to be a polygonal shape," Lyon said. "It's a pretty high possibility."

This probably bodes ill for republicans this fall For the first time since 1966, an incumbent congressman in Tennessee has lost a primary. Freshman republican Representative David Davis lost to the mayor of a small city in the heavily republican TN 01. Challenger Phil Roe defeated the one-term congressman by linking him to big oil. In the final days of the campaign, Roe took to the airwaves with a commercial that accused Davis of selling out to Big Oil by taking money from oil industry PACs and backing legislation favored by oil companies that would allow expanded off-shore drilling. Lets make sure we are clear on this – Tennessee republicans turned out an incumbent with oil ties while the republican minority is engaged in a hyperbolic circle jerk in a closed chamber, insisting on an emergency session to do the bidding of Big Oil. During the final weeks of the campaign, gas prices in the TN 01 hit a record high of $3.94.

Speaking of that hyperbolic circle jerk on the part of the republican minority John Boehner managed to rip himself away from the golf course to return to the floor of the closed House chamber late this morning. He spent Monday through Thursday blustering that the Congress needed to be called back for a special session to do the bidding of Exxon-Mobile…from the golf course. At least one of his tee-times was for a republican fundraiser.

Cheney will address the party faithful on the first night of the republican nominating convention. There is no love lost between Cheney and McCain - in fact, the two men can't stand one another, and association with either of the executives is toxic, so they are both speaking the first night, before McSame even arrives.

As with most addictions, there is a smoking gene Most people react to tobacco (or opiates, or alcohol) in an adverse manner the first time they experience it, but a few people feel waves of pleasure and even euphoria. The people in that group have a genetic predisposition and addiction can happen with the very first cigarette.

Nuptuals by the numbers All over Asia couples were married on 08/08/08 in hasty, individual ceremonies and mass weddings. In Chinese the word for "eight" sounds like the word for "prosperity," and in any language the number has a pleasing symmetry: two circles interlocked like a pair of wedding rings. It also looks like an infinity symbol turned upright, suggesting that the marriage will last forever.

The first gold medal of the Beijing games has been earned by Katrina Emmons of the Czech republic in the 10 meter air rifle competition. She shot a perfect 400 in qualifying and set an Olympic record in the event with 503.5 points. Lioubov Galkina of Russia won the silver. Snjezana Pejcic of Croatia took the bronze.

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Thanks, John. I really appreciate you being just another politician...

2008-08-08T14:45:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

Serves me right, I guess.

John Edwards repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice filmmaker, the former Senator admitted to ABC News today.

Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with 44-year old Rielle Hunter, but said that he did not love her.

Edwards also denied he was the father of Hunter's baby girl, Frances Quinn, although the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate said he has not taken a paternity test.

Edwards said he knew he was not the father based on timing of the baby's birth on February 27, 2008. He said his affair ended too soon for him to have been the father.

I really don't care if he had an affair--I still think Americans need to grow up about this shit. But it makes me much less inclined to defend the next person who is being smeared, I will admit.

Nothing after the jump, and nothing for Edwards after this. I'm thinking it's time to sink into obscurity, there, Senator.

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Russia "declares war" on Georgia

2008-08-08T14:09:00.001-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

Russian Jets Attack Georgia. 'They Have Declared War On Us,' Georgian Official Says

WASHINGTON, August 8 -

Russian jets bombed the Vaziani military airbase outside the Georgian capital Tbilisi on Friday, a senior Georgian security official told Reuters. "No one was wounded but some buildings have been destroyed," said Kakha Lamaia. The airbase is some 25 kilometers (15 miles) from Tbilisi. "They have declared war against us," said Lamaia.

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Russian Troops Are On the March

2008-08-08T08:56:00.007-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
UPDATE I / WS

Screenshots from video, courtesy of the BBC:

These would appear to be Russia's main battle tanks, the T-90s:

Russian self-propelled artillery guns (the 2s3 152mm?):

Russian troops in BMP armored personnel carriers:

The Associated Press is reporting that:

Russian television says Russian troops are moving into South Ossetia.

And the region is in turmoil.

Russian authorities said several of its peacekeepers died in a Georgian attack in South Ossetia, which borders Russia and has strong ties to its vast northern neighbor, and they vowed not to leave Russian citizens in the territory unprotected.

"The Georgian leadership has launched a dirty adventure," a statement from Russia's Defense Ministry said on Friday. "We will not leave our peacekeepers and Russian citizens unprotected."

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Georgia started the fighting and warned that Russia would respond to their actions.

"Heavy weapons and artillery have been sent there, and tanks have been added. Deaths and injuries have been reported, including among Russian peacekeepers," Putin said in comments carried Friday by Russia's Interfax news agency.

"It's all very sad and alarming. And, of course, there will be a response."

Earlier Friday, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said in a televised statement that Russian aircraft bombed several Georgian villages and other civilian facilities.

We will watch what happens through the day and the weekend--this could end up being the biggest story of the month, Olympics notwithstanding.

Americans shouldn't worry--Secretary of State Rice was just there last month and straightened everything out:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has arrived in Georgia amid an escalating row between Russia, Georgia and the United States.

Russia accused Georgia of bringing the South Caucasus to the brink of armed conflict - comments which both Ms Rice and Nato condemned as "unhelpful".

See? She said it was "unhelpful." And that took care of the problem.

On August 2nd, Secretary Rice appeared at the Aspen Music Festival. I'm glad she has had the opportunity to take time out of her busy schedule and attend to important things.

Here's yesterday's full mention of the issue in South Ossetia from the US State Department during its daily press briefing:

QUESTION: Gonzo, do you have anything about Ossetia?

MR. [Gonzalo R.] GALLEGOS: South Ossetia?

QUESTION: Yes.

MR. GALLEGOS: I think so.

QUESTION: President Saakashvili -- you know, there were some victims, some fighting last night. And President Saakashvili said that the – he’s – he called several world leaders asking them for their help in maintaining peace. I wanted to know if he called Secretary Rice.

MR. GALLEGOS: Well, we’re – I don’t believe – I don’t have any further information. I don’t have it that he spoke to Secretary Rice. But we’re in close contact with senior Russian and Georgian officials. We’re urging Moscow to press South Ossetia’s de facto leaders to stop firing. We’re urging Tbilisi to maintain restraint. We’re very concerned about the situation. We call for an immediate end to the violence and for direct talks between the parties.

QUESTION: Do you think the South Ossetian people started the fighting, or who do you think is responsible?

MR. GALLEGOS: We think it’s important that both sides stop firing, that they sit down and they discuss this in a peaceful manner.

As you can see, "Gonzo" is on top of it. Your State Department at work, as fighting breaks out in a region where the warning signs were fairly evident earlier this year.

Russian military heavy equipment rolling into the region:

Update/Noon Central/BG

This situation is developing fast and the United States is in danger of getting sucked into it. Over at the most excellent and essential Newshoggers, I learned that the Georgians are recalling all forces in their control, including the combat brigade that is currently serving in Iraq as part of the Coalition forces.

They are asking for rapid response assistance and could ask the U.S. to airlift the brigade back to Georgia in USAF C-17s through the Tallil Airbase. That would put the U.S. on a hostile footing with yet another oil-producing nation - and this one has military prowess and battle-hardened troops, that make up a force that hasn't been decimated in the desert.

The Duck of Minerva has more.

Priorities:

The BBC, Fox News, and CBS news - three screenshots:

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The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-08-08T00:16:00.004-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,
They gave us a republic...

Yes, hearings are definitely in order Congressman Gene Green of Houston is mad as hell over recruiters lying, bullying and threatening a high-school student that he could be charged as a deserter - because he changed his mind about enlisting in the Army before he signed the contract and took the oath of service. "That's not what our country's about," Rep. Gene Green told KHOU. "There's a problem with the system in the Army." Green has written a letter to the Pentagon and also intends to ask the House Armed Services Committee to investigate or hold hearings.

Chinese Uighurs issue terrorism threat for Olympics The Turkistan Islamic Party has warned Muslims to avoid being on trains, plains and buses with Chinese citizens during the Olympics. The videotaped warning was purportedly made by the Turkistan Islamic Party, which seeks independence for China's western Xinjiang region, according to an organization that monitors militant grouporganizations. The militants are believed to be based in Pakistan, where security experts say core members have received training from al-Qaida.

Schumer wants Obama to hit McCain harder when he gets personal in his attacks. "I would not be afraid to attack back," he said in an interview with Politico. "When they say, 'He's not one of us,' you don't say, 'Here's our plan on health care.'" (No shit.)

Florida man in custody for threatening Senator Obama A 22 year old wanna-be bail-bondsman is in custody and being held without bond (we are diggin' on the irony here) after threatening the life of the presumptive Democratic nominee. He compounded his woes by telling a Secret Service agent how he would go about it.

McCain campaign reviewing "bundled" donations from Harry Sargeant III, a prominent Florida businessman and finance chair of the Florida GOP. The review comes on the heels of the disclosure that his business partner, a Jordanian national, also may have engaged in fundraising. It is illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to US political campaigns. (We wonder if they will review the donations that probably illegally originated with Hess Oil next?)

Score one for the First Amendment AS Federal Judge in Rhode Island has struck down a law that gave police chiefs the authority to decide which candidates for public office could display their signs on public property. Judge William E. Smith ruled that the law unconstitutionally infringed on the freedom of speech by letting police chiefs decide who can post signs, but not listing criteria chiefs should use in making that decision.

Detroit's mayor is cooling his heels in jail tonight after having his bond revoked. He violated the terms of his conditional release by leaving the country for an official visit to nearby Windsor, Ontario last month without the permission of the court.

Nikki Tinker deserved to lose, and should be mocked mercilessly if she ever attempts to run for any public office ever again the rest of her life. In a crowded primary field, she launched a vile, anti-semitic personal attack against Steve Cohen, the winner of todays primary. The ad drew condemnation from Barack Obama and scorn from all quarters. (Maybe someone should remind Ms. Tinker of the prominent role Jewish Americans played in the civil rights movement the next time she derides someone for participating in a worship service in "our churches" and by the way, since when is the Lord's house anyones exclusive providence? And since I'm on a roll, I wonder if the names Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner mean anything to her hateful ass?)

Conyers again demands RNC documents in probe of Justice Department The national party had provided email accounts for members of the administration to assist them in evading the law and engaging in political activities from the White House. Remember, the GOP is, at its very core, a crime syndicate.

McCain trolls will find no bridge here We didn't see the scoop potential a month ago when we noticed the McSame campaign was giving away campaign swag for blog posts and comments, and we started quietly deleting such comments so they couldn't be confirmed. But today both Kevin and Steve posted about it, so we guess it merits mentioning. Anyway trolls, you aren't getting any points to earn a lame t-shirt by spamming our blog.

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This is a case that is not going to go away

2008-08-07T20:35:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

The family of a man who was strangled in police custody after being arrested and accused of killing a police officer is asking for an autopsy. Yes, this case is still ongoing, and is being investigated by the Maryland State Police. And, no, it's not going to go away.

The family of a Prince George's County police officer slaying suspect who died in his jail cell wants to know why it's taking so long to learn the results of his autopsy.

Ronnie White, who was accused of running over a police officer with a stolen truck, was found dead in his cell more than five weeks ago. His death is being investigated by Maryland State Police.

White may have been an unsympathetic and unsavory character, but he was supposed to have his day in court. That's how our system works.

Controversy surrounds the case:

The preliminary report from the state medical examiner's office said White died of asphyxiation and had two broken bones in his neck, indicating that he had been strangled. The investigation became a homicide investigation, but no charges or suspects have been announced.

The medical examiner's office said the final autopsy report would be released in 30 days, but that deadline has passed, and there is no indication when the official determination of the cause and manner of death will be made public.

"The problem here with taking so long with this investigation: It is a disservice to the White family, it is a disservice to the Prince George's County community, it is a disservice to our state, because there are a lot of people who deserve an answer in this particular situation," said Bobby Henry, the lawyer representing White's family.

This issue generated a lot of discussion, most of which was based on the belief that the killer always gets away unless a vigilante who is brave and knows the system is corrupt can deliver "justice." Sound like any movies or TV shows you've seen? Sadly, that's what informs the public.

Over at the old site, if you click over and read the comment threads, there seems to have been a belief that he got what he deserved, the rule of law be damned.

Why do we continue to accept the violence and not fight back? This isn't a black, white, red, or any other problem. It is a humanity problem. It is a hateful world where everyone is entitled to do anything they want without any repercussion. So we'll continue down the road of the law where it matters to you and I. We'll continue letting the criminals thumb their nose to our societal rules. You're right, let's leave our rose colored glasses on and feel good about our law. That will make everything better.

That one part of the comment crystalizes the immature mind's inability to think of the rule of law. I don't think we accept the violence. I think we realize that, but for the grace of God go I. As in, if it was you in that cell, and if you were accused of a crime, you'd certainly prefer having a chance to prove your innocent rather than be strangled until you were dead by a vigilante.

How does that honor the fallen policeman? He deserves to be honored and remembered, and his killer does need to be brought to justice. How we go about that is how we determine whether we're living in a just society.

Here's a case, right here in the news and from the same website, that illustrates what can happen and why we need to remember that our criminal justice system is flawed.

A man convicted of first-degree murder in 1990 was freed from prison this week after his attorneys uncovered new evidence disproving witness testimony, according to the firm Venable LLP and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project at American University Washington College of Law.

Aaron Michael Howard was released Tuesday night. In 1990, he was convicted in the 1988 death of Bobby Parker.

"While I was not responsible for his death, I can only imagine how much pain it caused his family," Howard said in a statement released Thursday. "I extend my deepest sympathies to them."

Had Howard been strangled in his cell in 1990, would we have ever found out the truth? It's bad enough he has spent 18 years in prison. Should he have died as well? And don't get me started on what DNA testing has unraveled. As in, quite a few "airtight" cases.

See, this case isn't really about whether the guy was guilty. It's about letting someone be a vigilante.

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Utility Shut-offs Rising

2008-08-07T12:55:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

When was the last time anyone talking about the fact that unemployment is the highest that it has been in four years? It's now at 5.7%. When was the last time you heard anyone talking about the impact of bankruptcy shutdowns for large retailers. And another one-time stimulus payout isn't the solution:

Utility shut-offs for customers behind on their energy bills are increasing around the country, reaching 50% or more in some hard-hit areas, as the effects of rising prices and a sagging economy are beginning to drag down more vulnerable consumers.

Agencies that provide financial assistance for energy costs report long waiting lists and significant jumps in first-time applicants. With the prospect of much more serious trouble this winter, when bills traditionally are higher, Congress is exploring a significant increase in federal energy assistance as part of a second economic stimulus plan scheduled for consideration next month.

Why doesn't the Congress look into fully funding those agencies? How about we try that for a change? The last stimulus check giveaway sure was good for the porn industry, wasn't it? Hopefully, they'll find a way to do something smarter with the money this time.

Many of the customers that are shut-off are, likely, people who have had their homes taken away in foreclosure:

In Michigan, which had the nation's highest unemployment rate in June -- 8.5% -- Detroit-based DTE Energy reported a 56% increase in utility shut-offs for nonpayment of bills for the first five months of this year compared with the same period a year ago.

Southern California Edison Co. reported that service was shut off to about 165,000 of its 4.8 million customer accounts from January through May this year, a 14% increase from the same period in 2007.

In Orange County, "people are coming to our office in record numbers with very high utility bills," said Kathy Kifaya, director of energy and environmental services for the Community Action Partnership of Orange County, which provides financial aid for energy costs to low-income families.

In Illinois, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas, which serve Chicago and its northern suburbs, reported a 33% increase in disconnections through July of this year, compared with the same period last year. Across the Mississippi River in Iowa, a record number of residential accounts were past due in June, said Jerry McKim, chief of the state's energy assistance program, and more would have been shut off if not for floods that prevented utility workers from reaching homes.

"It's pretty pathetic when the only thing saving someone from disconnection is being flooded out," he said.

California's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., reported that service had been shut off to 163,700 customers for nonpayment through July of this year, up 6.1% from the same period a year ago. Southern California Gas Co. said that notices of late payments were up 17% from January through May compared with the same period last year, and disconnections were up 10%.

Awful. Just awful. Fall is just around the corner, and I wonder if this is the winter when we'll hear more stories about people freezing to death or starving because they cannot make ends meet in this wonderful economy of ours.

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Thursday morning quick hits

2008-08-07T11:20:00.001-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,
They gave us a republic...

The flip-flop that pissed off his base The republican base and the loonies at the "Club for Growth" are pissed off at McCain after he initially said he would oppose all tax increases, then hinted that he might be open to raising the limit on Social Security payroll taxes. The payroll tax totals 12.4 percent - half is deducted from employee wages up to $102,000, and half paid by employers. All earnings above $102,000 are currently exempted, meaning those most able to pay...don't. Let's put this in perspective - Carly Fiorina made millions and millions of dollars running Hewlett-Packard into the ground, and only paid the Social Security earnings tax only on the first $102,000 of her income - while the employees who were most harmed by her inept and incompetent leadership of that company paid the tax on every penny they earned. A little closer to home - the people who work in Cindy McCain's beer distributorship pay on all their earnings, while Mrs. half-a-million-on-the-AmEx-card-last-month...doesn't.

Lake Chad is drying up Lake Chad used to cover an area the size of New Jersey. Now it would barely cover an area the size of Manhattan and Brooklyn. The lake is drying up, driven by climate change and population increases that has fueled increases in water usage. And the disappearing lake threatens wildlife in the area. Fish stocks are depleted, and a diverse ecosystem that thrived despite the harsh environment — including birds such as the European white stork, which stop here on their annual trans-Sahara migration — is deeply imperiled.

Without a trace of shame or irony, Bush criticized China and Myanmar on human rights in a speech in Thailand on his way to Beijing for the Olympics. In his speech, which criticized China and did not mention the Olympics, he said “America stands in firm opposition to China’s detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists.”

And China told him to STFU, mind his own business and stay out of Chinese internal affairs.

Nine dead in California helicopter crash A helicopter with a crew of two crashed while transporting eleven firefighters to a blaze in northern California. Nine perished and four were severely burned and are clinging to life in hospitals. Three have been transported to the burn unit at the UC - Davis Medical Center. Our thoughts are with them and their families.

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Fighting Terrorism in Trans Sahara Africa

2008-08-07T09:13:00.004-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
In 2004, the US Government realized that it needed to do something about the spread of terrorism in Trans-Saharan Africa:

U.S. Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander of the European Central Command, has been warning Congress and the Pentagon for months that al Qaeda-affiliated groups are active in Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger. The trade in diamonds used by terrorist groups, begun under the protection of former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor, continues despite international efforts to curb it. "The terrorist activity in this area is not going to go away," Wald warned recently. "This could affect your kids and your grandchildren in a huge way. If we don't do something about it, we are going to have a real problem on our hands."

Unfortunately, the efforts since then have mostly failed, due to a lack of cooperation between the State Department and the Department of Defense.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report that shows that the US State Department, the Department of Defense, and the USAID Agency are having key issues with regards to stopping the spread of terrorism throughout Trans-Sahara Africa. The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP)was set up to coordinate efforts to stop the spread of terrorism into the region.

First, the agencies lack a comprehensive, integrated strategy for their TSCTP activities, and the documents used in planning the activities do not prioritize proposed activities or identify milestones needed to measure progress or make improvements.

Second, disagreements about whether State should have authority over DOD personnel temporarily assigned to conduct TSCTP activities in partner countries have led to DOD's suspending some activities, for example, in Niger.

Third, fluctuation in State's and USAID's distribution of funds for TSCTP resulted in suspension of a peace-building program in Mali.

Fourth, although the agencies measure activities' outputs, such as the number of foreign military personnel trained, they do not measure their activities' outcomes in combating terrorism--for instance, any decrease in extremism in the targeted countries.

This region is familiar to anyone who understands that the spread of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the Trans-Sahara region is of great concern to our European allies.

Simply implementing programs and activities that would help these countries better fight the spread of terrorism has run into the usual challenges--State and DoD can't collaborate on anything, and this goes back to the way Don Rumsfeld operated, which, in most cases, was often in contradiction to the efforts of the State Department:

Several factors have hampered the key agencies’ ability to collaboratively implement TSCTP activities, in some cases limiting their ability to achieve or assess progress in combating terrorism and inhibiting the spread of extremist ideology.

First, no comprehensive, integrated strategy has been developed to guide the agencies’ activities, and documents used in planning program activities have not included some elements that we have identified as needed in an interagency counterterrorism program’s strategic plan.

Second, despite some collaboration at the headquarters level, disagreement between State and DOD about whether State should have authority over DOD personnel temporarily assigned to conduct TSCTP activities in the partner countries has contributed to the suspension of some of these activities.

Third, fluctuation in the distribution of obligations for TSCTP in Mali resulted in the suspension of some program activities.

Fourth, although the agencies have indicators to measure activities’ direct results, the agencies have not yet developed the capability to measure and report on overall progress toward program goals.

Take a close look at this distribution of funds:

These are relatively small amounts of assistance and aid, but of note should be the assistance given to Mauritania, which just underwent another coup that saw the President and the Prime Minister arrested. Instability in countries like Mauritania are one reason why terrorists might locate there and take advantage of the political situation.

Most of our assistance is going to Niger, in hopes of slowing the spread of terrorism there. Overall, though, it doesn't matter who gets what because the GAO has uncovered a decidedly common lack of focus on the part of the US State Department:

To enhance U.S. agencies’ ability to collaborate in strengthening country and regional counterterrorism capabilities and inhibiting the spread of extremist ideology in northwest Africa, we recommend that the Secretary of State work through the Director of Foreign Assistance, who serves concurrently as USAID Administrator, to develop a comprehensive strategy for the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership in conjunction with the Secretaries of Defense and the Treasury, the U.S. Attorney General, and the heads of any other partner agencies. The strategy should include clear goals, objectives, and milestones, including output and outcome indicators, and identify resources needed to achieve the program’s goals.

We also recommend that the Secretaries of State and Defense develop and issue joint guidance with regard to DOD personnel temporarily assigned to conduct TSCTP activities in the partner countries.

No one could reasonably expect Secretary Rice to be fired before the end of the Bush Administration, but this is one more issue that will land in the lap of the next Secretary of State, thanks to the neglect and the lack of interest in fighting the actual spread of terrorism in the world. The US military now has a command dedicated to Africa--AFRICOM--but will it focus on stopping terrorism or on keeping the flow of oil moving out of Nigeria?

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Hoover as a continuing metaphor for what's wrong with today's Republican Party

2008-08-07T08:42:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

Republicans have one subject they hate to have thrown in their face--Herbert Hoover. And, with good reason. The President who was woefully out of touch and ineffectual at the onset of the Great Depression was replaced by Franklin Roosevelt and the dominance of the Democratic Party.

Michael Cohen at TPM Cafe rounds up some great reading material:

As Todd Gitlin noted, Herbert Hoover's "tribute to rugged individualism" was a product of a specific moment in history - the calm before the storm of the Great Depression. As the famed historian Richard Hofstadter said of our 29th President, "The things Hoover believed in - efficiency, enterprise, opportunity, individualism, substantial laissez-faire, personal success, material welfare - were all in the dominant American tradition. The ideas he represented - ideas that to so many people made him seem hateful or ridiculous after 1929 - were precisely the same ideas that in the remotest past of the nineteenth century and the more immediate past of the New Era had had an almost irresistible lure for the majority of Americans."

Of course, as we all know, by 1932 Hoover was hopelessly out of touch; practically an overnight anachronism, unable and unwilling to shift course. Instead it was FDR's call for bold, persistent experimentation and his pledge of a New Deal for the American people that resonated. Nonetheless, it's worth noting that even in 1932, as the country was mired in economic depression, Roosevelt did not run for President on a liberal agenda. He even attacked Hoover for increasing government spending and not balancing the budget.

Gitlin says:

I don't think I've ever read a Hoover speech before. You know, this one, a week before he beat Al Smith, isn't half bad. Of course, a tribute to rugged individualism sounded better on October 23, 1928 than it would have on July 2, 1932, when Roosevelt gave his great "New Deal" speech. But for all its stuffiness, it hangs together. It addresses the voters as grown-ups. It makes an argument. It And--bonus!--it even embraces liberalism as "a force truly of the spirit." This liberalism, Hoover insists, "is no system of laissez faire." (French yet!)

But the difference between Hoover's speech and Roosevelt's is not just four years of crash, unemployment and social misery. It's also the difference between an uninspired speech and an inspired one. Roosevelt makes an argument, of course, but he's witty, too: Trickle-down theory "belongs to the party of Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776." He's clear about who the adversaries are: not the "Republican Party" but the "Republican leadership" (Barack Obama, are you listening?). He's sparing with metaphor but trenchant when he indulges: "During the past ten years a Nation of 120,000,000 people has been led by the Republican leaders to erect an impregnable barbed wire entanglement around its borders through the instrumentality of tariffs which has isolated us from all the other human beings in all the rest of the round world."

He addresses his listeners directly: "Go into the home of the business man. He knows what the tariff has done for him. Go into the home of the factory worker...." He's blunt about values: "My program, of which I can only touch on these points, is based upon this simple moral principle: the welfare and the soundness of a Nation depend first upon what the great mass of the people wish and need; and second, whether or not they are getting it."

And those are great words to remember. The contrast between the party of Hoover and the party of Roosevelt is apropo today--McCain is out of touch, lazy, and doesn't bother with details. Obama commands the details and the rhetoric, and seems to inspire people beyond the grasp of the media.

For all of his shortcomings, you'd think Obama would draw middling crowds. Instead, the media downplays the fact that Obama events are raucous and filled to the rafters.

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FEMA scrambles to avoid being sued for poisoning people

2008-08-07T08:41:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

Congress needs to ensure that FEMA's negligence in providing people with trailers with high levels of formaldehyde in them is not excused.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency last week asked for immunity from lawsuits over the high formaldehyde levels in the trailers it used to house Hurricane Katrina victims. FEMA says it did not build the trailers, merely bought them, so the manufacturers should be held solely responsible.

A U.S. attorney argued before a federal judge on July 23 that FEMA's response to the natural disaster is legally protected since the agency was exercising governmental discretion. Only Congress, he said, has the authority to address the agency's possible negligence. U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt of the Eastern District of Louisiana is taking the request under advisement. Attorneys for the plaintiffs expect a ruling in the next two or three weeks.

Congressional hearings have revealed that FEMA knew about the formaldehyde problem in its trailers and failed to take action for almost two years. FEMA's lawyers advised the agency not to test for toxicity in order to avoid liability -- but that advice may have left FEMA vulnerable to even greater liability. Those familiar with this gray legal area say the government agency could be held liable for several reasons.

Of course, FEMA is trying to pass the buck and direct the lawsuits towards the companies that manufactured the trailers. In some ways, yes, I can agree with proceeding against the manufacturers. But for FEMA to provide the trailers and do nothing for two years is unacceptable.

The reasons for the shoddy work are problematic for FEMA. Their employees were present--and set the specifications for--the trailers as they were being manufactured. Cheap materials and low-cost procedures were used (I have visions of half-assed trailer components being slapped together with cheap glue by people who didn't give a shit, don't you?). It's hard to escape liability when the people who manufactured the trailers were under your nose and doing what you told them to do. I think the manufacturers should have cried foul and refused to build with formaldehyde. The problem is, whistle-blowers are often driven out of business or punished for exposing government corruption. Until we reform the government whistle-blower laws and protect the rights of people who speak out, we are going to have debacles like this.

Sadly, the government's terrible response to Hurricane Katrina continues to this day. Alabama football boosters have great condos to use now, but the actual people flooded out and driven from their neighborhoods are still living in trailers manufactured with poisonous materials inside:

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, many people are still living in the FEMA-issued trailers. The trailers were never intended for long-term housing -- they were meant for short-term, emergency use only.

This has only exacerbated the effects of the building specifications set by FEMA, which fall below federal safety standards.

"The fact that people are still in those trailers," said [David] Super of the Univ. of Maryland, "is a failure on FEMA's part."

Yes it is, and that failure should not be excused away with immunity
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The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-08-06T23:45:00.001-05:00

Why is that warmongering idiot John Bolton still getting airtime? On Faux Noise today he was at it again, declaring that "diplomacy is finished" (when was it tried???) and declaring that there were two options - targeted military strikes and "regime change" - because that has worked so well in Iraq, you know. We have explained the vast differences between the two countries in the past. Anyone who thinks regime change in Iran is even possible should read this.

21% That is the percentage of those polled who approve of bu$h's handling of the economy, and his overall approval rating is 25% - which begs the question - who are these people in that 25% who will admit, without a trace of shame, to approving of this moron?

Another murder by police Tasered, handcuffed, then brutalized to death by cops who kicked and beat him after he was unconscious. I guess when torture is official national policy that pathology trickles down to the cops on the street, and brutality becomes the norm.

Keep after the lying old creep, Barack! After McCain grudgingly admitted that keeping our tires inflated and our engines tuned up really would save energy, and produce results immediately, not seven years in the future, it was Obama's turn to pounce. “In the coming days it’s going to be interesting watching this debate between John McCain and John McCain” he told an audience in Elkhart, Indiana.

Pawlenty tries a positive tack and praises Obama Potential running mate Tim Pawlenty, Governor of Minnesota, praised Barack Obama, "Say what you will about Barack Obama," he told a group of conservatives, "people gravitate when you have something positive to say." That will play well with the average American, but it will make the wingnuts froth and twitch and need seizure medication.

A PUMA ate my unity pony Hillary has accepted the fact that Barack Obama is going to be the nominee. Why can't these jackasses? And don't give me that "popular vote" line of crap, either - the "popular vote" that they cling desperately to doesn't mean a damned thing, any more than it does in the general election, and everyone with a lick of sense knows it. Grow up already.

That's GOP leadership for you While House republicans carry on their idiotic grandstanding circle-jerk in a closed chamber, minority leader John "crybaby" Boehner was back in his district and hitting the links.

Mitt isn't going to be in the number 2 slot with answers like this Asked to name one single legislative accomplishment of John McCain on the energy front, Romney answered "I'm not a historian."

This sounds like a threat Mike Gravel was caught on tape last week encouraging a crowd to harass a federal prosecutor who helped bring criminal contempt charges against a Palestinian activist, Sami Al-Arian. It's one thing to picket a public figures office, but it crosses a very bright line when you encourage people to find out where that persons children go to school.

Austin Bay is a giant colostomy bag You know you are in for 30% extra wingnutty goodness when a column starts with "Victory in war is tough to define" so you shouldn't be surprised when it goes on for 750 words performing editorial fellatio of David Petraeus.

More specious campaign donations to the McCain campaign Members of the Abdullah family maxed out and even exceeded the maximum contribution limit, and many were apparently pressured and lied to by the family patriarch. Some were surprised to learn that the contributions were not tax deductible, and another who initially denied the donation said “He’s like a worse copy than Bush,” and asserted that he certainly wasn't going to vote for him.

Happy Blogiversary One year ago today, Show Me Progress rolled out, and has been making waves in Missouri Democratic circles ever since.

GAO: Iraq rakes in billions in oil profits while the United States pays for reconstruction

2008-08-06T19:00:00.002-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

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The dramatic increase in oil prices has positioned Iraq, which sits atop the third largest oil reserve in the world, to begin to bear some of the burden of reconstruction of that war-torn country, decimated by more than two decades of war and sanctions.

In a GAO report released yesterday, the government watchdog was deliberate in avoiding assignation of who-should-pay-for-what and thus the politics of the matter. Instead, they did what they do best and stuck to facts and figures - but in so doing, the report leaves little doubt that Iraq can afford to pony over a bit more dough for its own reconstruction. Iraq took in just under $33 Billion in oil revenues in the first six months of 2008, and is on pace to rake in between $67 and $79 Billion this year, meaning Iraq could see a budget surplus of between $38.2 billion and $50.3 billion this year alone. The GAO estimates that this years oil revenues will be double the average annual oil revenues that were realized from 2005 through 2007. The GAO based their projections for the second half of the year on actual sales through the first half, and assumed an average export price from $96.88 to $125.29 per barrel and oil export volumes of 1.89 to 2.01 million barrels per day.

As oil prices settle down at around $125 per barrel, after exceeding $140 just a few weeks ago, Iraq could post a budget surplus of between $33 billion and $50 billion this year. This windfall comes in spite of the fact that Iraq has yet to approach pre-invasion oil-production levels.

Between 2005 and 2007, the government of Iraq spent approximately $67 billion on government operations and investments in the greater society. About 90% was spent on operations, and 10% was invested in structures and durable goods. A mere one percent was spent on maintaining the country. Instead the United States has been footing that bill. Buildings, infrastructure for the delivery of water and electricity, and weapons for the countries police and security forces.

Even as total expenditures grew from 2005 through 2007, the country was unable to spend all of the budgeted funds. For example - last year, 2007, Iraq spent 80% of ths $28 billion operating budget and 28% of its investment budget. GAO estimates that in 2008, Iraq will spend less than $40 billion of its nearly $50 billion budget.

At the end of 2007, the Iraqi government had financial deposits of $29.4 billion, held in the Development Fund for Iraq and other deposits made in the name of the central government in the Central Bank of Iraq and Iraq’s commercial banks. This balance is due to budget surpluses of about $29 billion between 2005 and 2007.

And then there are the American numbers.

Since FY 2003, when the U.S. appropriated approximately $48 billion for stabilization and reconstruction efforts of post-invasion Iraq. As of June 2008, about $42 billion of that amount had been obligated. Of that $42 billion, the United States has spent more than $23 billion on security and critical infrastructure, such as water, electricity and oil. Compare that expenditure with the $3.9 billion spent in these sectors by Iraq between 2005 and April of this year.

Now there are multiple reasons why the Iraqi government has been unable to invest more of its money on capital improvements, and some of those shortcomings were created by the United States and our coalition allies when civil servants were summarily fired by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and barred from public service for being members of the Bath Party (a requirement for government employment) under the Saddam Hussein regime. When the people who know how to work the levers are not allowed to touch the machine, it doesn't work.

De-bathification was a factor in several areas of shortfall, from operations to procurement and budgeting. De-bathification coupled with sectarian violence and the "brain drain" that resulted from the middle class fleeing the country made government operations in Iraq ineffectual at best. These factors converged and conspired to make it necessary for the United States to fund activities of key ministries to even get the country on a footing where it could begin to execute it's own budget priorities.

Now let me be clear that it is not my intent to debate who should be paying for the reconstruction. If I had my druthers we would be able to unring the bell, unselect George Bush, uninvade Iraq and unhang Saddam Hussein. But as none of that is possible, we have to look at the situation at hand and make realistic assessments. And reality dictates that the United States can not keep up the level of spending we have been engaged in in Iraq. Certainly not with all the problems we face at home.

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They gave us a republic...

House Republican Whines About Being Thrown Under the Bus

2008-08-06T07:03:00.001-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
Consider this latest twist a reward for the fact that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't stop FISA legislation or put impeachment back on the table.

What other explanation could there be for the decision by the White House to cut the Republicans in the House off at the knees over offshore drilling?

A House Republican leader is lambasting President Bush on his decision not to call Congress back into session to deal with the energy crisis.

In a legislative update sent to GOP members and staff on Tuesday, Republican House Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.) accused "Beijing George" Bush of throwing House Republicans "under the bone-dry bus" on his way to the Olympics in China.

I would not be surprised to see scores of House Republicans break loose and begin to abandon the White House wherever possible, just to deliver a little payback. They are clearly divorced now in spirit--whether that means they finalize it through some legal proceeding is debatable. Everyone is going to focus on their own needs and their own re-election. And while House Republicans posture and whine, it means fewer of them are traveling to their districts to campaign.

With fewer of them campaigning at home, it reminds all of us why we need to throw as many of them out as possible while always looking for better Democrats. These up-or-down votes could be critical next year:

House GOP leaders last week called on Bush to convene an emergency session ofCongress, but the White House said such a move would not make a difference because Democrats would not call for an up-or-down vote on offshore drilling legislation.

How bad is it? I don't think this Congressman is going to be the only one looking for payback:

McCotter, known for his frank and sometimes unusual political opinions, was not pleased with that decision. His memo stated, "Today, in his final term, the wildly unpopular President George W. Bush boarded Air Force One bound for the Beijing Olympics and a meeting with his chum Hu Jintao, the dapper ruler of a nuclear armed, communist dictatorship. ... Perhaps our Compassionate Conservative-in-Chief will bring our absent Democrat Congress some 'Made in (communist) China' souvenir t-shirts: 'Bush went to Beijing and all I got was this lousy five week, paid vacation.' "

You've gotta love to see a Republican throwing the word "communist" in the face of the leader of his party like a drink at a party...Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks with our new domain name, They gave us a republic...

Phill Kline Crashes

2008-08-06T06:38:00.003-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

Let's hope that this puts an end to the insanity of Phill Kline:
For the second time in two years, voters in Kansas have handed a stinging defeat to Phill Kline, an anti-abortion crusader who's reputation was made attempting to prosecute the state's abortion providers, first as state attorney general, and then, after he lost re-election to that post, as a district attorney in suburban Kansas City.

With all of the vote counted, Steve Howe trounced Kline by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent in unofficial returns to select the Republican candidate for district attorney in Johnson County, Kan., a well-off suburb of Kansas City. Howe garnered 33,260 votes to Kline’s 22,188, according to final unofficial returns.

Howe will face Democrat Rick Guinn in the Nov. 4 general election.

Abortion played a key role in the race because Kline is the first prosecutor since Roe v. Wade to file criminal charges against a Planned Parenthood clinic.

Abortion opponents from outside Kansas are thought to have spent more than $100,000 to keep Kline's candidacy alive.

At a gathering at the Sheraton Hotel with his wife and children at his side, Howe thanked his supporters and called on Republicans to come together for the November election.

I'm sure Blue Girl will have more when she awakens this morning...

--WS

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The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-08-05T23:45:00.006-05:00

Um...they do take pride in being ignorant The republicans in their current incarnation are the "Know Nothing's" of the 21st century. For four days the McCain campaign and the howler monkeys that desperately back his feeble run for the oval have been gleefully - and ignorantly - mocking Obama's suggestion that we all check our tire pressure to save a bit of energy. Even though the Energy department, auto manufacturers, NASCAR and all sorts of other experts on such matters point out that Obama's suggestion is spot on. "They're lying about what my energy plan is," said Obama. "They're making fun of a step that every expert says would reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant." Way to grasp the obvious there, Barack.

The dumbassery of David Brooks is rivaled only by his banality Someone tell that mo-ron that watching the national polls is a mugs game, since the popular vote doesn't determine the presidency. If you look at the state polls, you will find your landslide. Dumbass.

Memo to Faux Noise...there is no KFC in Fallujah. Wonder if Doocy will retract his assertion?

First he calls her a c*nt, then tries to turn her out topless at a biker rally? Yesterday in a campaign stop at the Sturgis biker rally, McCain offered up Cindy for the Miss Buffalo Chip contest. Something tells me neither of them are quite sure what that particular event entails...Click the link. Josh has all the details. Personally, she's a bit high maintenance for a wet t-shirt contest. Bedhead Barbie is more the catfight kind.

Stealing someone's identity gets more brazen every year: The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it had charged 11 people in connection with the hacking of nine major U.S. retailers and the theft and sale of more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers. It is believed to be the largest hacking and identity theft case ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice. The charges include conspiracy, computer intrusion, fraud and identity theft. Three of the defendants are U.S. citizens, while the others are from places such as Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus and China. "So far as we know, this is the single largest and most complex identity theft case ever charged in this country," said Attorney General Michael Mukasey. "It highlights the efforts of the Justice Department to fight this pernicious crime and shows that, with the cooperation of our law enforcement partners around the world, we can identify, charge and apprehend even the most sophisticated international computer hackers."

Another Sunni leader killed along with two US troops: A roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers in a predominantly Shiite area in Baghdad on Monday, the first deadly attack against American troops in the capital in nearly a month, and gunmen killed one of the senior leaders of a U.S.-allied Sunni group fighting militants south of the capital. The U.S. military said another American soldier was wounded when the blast struck a U.S. patrol at about 9:30 a.m. in eastern Baghdad. The area was the site of fierce clashes and frequent roadside bombings blamed on Shiite militiamen before a cease-fire by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The soldiers were the first to be killed in Baghdad since July 8, when a roadside bomb killed Spc. William McMillan III, a 22-year-old Army medic from Lexington, Ky., and wounded five other soldiers in the western neighborhood of Amariyah, a Sunni area. As of Monday, Aug. 4, 2008, at least 4,131 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Tragedy on K2: Limping through ice on frostbitten feet, the last survivor of the mountaineering disaster that killed 11 climbers on K2 reached base camp Tuesday as cloud and snow prevented a helicopter rescue. "Now I really realize that everyone here has died," said Marco Confortola, who was stranded on the world's second highest peak after an ice fall nearly four days ago. "I am happy to be alive," the Italian climber told the Everest-K2-CNR, an Italy-based high-altitude scientific research group, during a phone call from base camp. K2, which straddles Pakistan and China in the Karakoram range, is regarded by mountaineers as far more challenging than Mount Everest, the world's highest peak. K2's knife-edged ridges and icy slopes are steeper and prone to both avalanches and sudden and severe storms.

Iraq asks for doctors to return: The Health Ministry has appealed to Iraqi physicians who fled the country due to violence to return to their jobs because security has improved, an official said Sunday. Dr. Essam Namiq, a deputy minister of health, said more than 165 Iraqi doctors have responded and resumed their work over the past 20 days, and he expected more than 90 percent to return this year. The violence of the past five years, much of which targeted professionals, "had forced the majority of the Iraqi doctors to abandon their hospitals and clinics" Namiq told a press conference in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Yes, but could they close the gulf long enough to cause a major world oil shock? Pentagon said Tuesday that any move by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz would be "self-defeating" because its weak economy is so heavily dependent on oil revenues. "Shutting down the Strait, closing down the Persian Gulf, would be sort of a self-defeating exercise," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. "That doesn't say anything about whether we tolerate such a thing to happen." Morrell's comments came in response to a warning by the new head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that Iran could easily close the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world's oil passes. General Mohammad Ali Jafari announced Monday that Iran has successfully tested an anti-ship missile with a range of 300 kilometers (180 miles.) "And given the equipment our armed forces have, an indefinite blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would be very easy," Jafari said on state television.

Russians warned on South Ossetia: Washington Tuesday urged Moscow to avoid provocation in Georgia's separatist region of South Ossetia, after a diplomat said Russia was prepared to defend its citizens living there in case of conflict. "We don't believe that now is the time for any parties to be acting in a provocative way," said US State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos. "We believe that the violence should stop and all parties should begin a discussion so that they can move forward towards settling the situation," he added. Gallegos' statement followed a comment by Moscow's negotiator on South Ossetia, ambassador-at-large Yury Popov, that Russia would intervene in the separatist region if its citizens were in danger. "If events develop in the worst possible way, with the use of force, Russia will not be able to stand by seeing as Russian citizens live in South Ossetia," Popov was quoted as saying by Russia's Interfax news agency. South Ossetia has evacuated hundreds of women and children to Russia over the past few days after six people were killed on Friday by sniper and mortar fire from Georgian positions, the rebel province's government said. Georgia has denied readying for war and said there is no major evacuation. One reason for hope--Secretary Rice appears to not be part of these negotiations, at least, so far...

Is the era of the big commute over? It sure seems like it should be: The "end of the exurbs" trend narrative story has hit the Washington Post front page, with a very good article by Eric ("War on Drivers") Weiss. As we well know, families just aren't moving out to the fringe of the metropolitan area for cheap housing yet grueling commutes; "the days of building giant houses on former soybean fields on the outer fringes of metropolitan areas are over." Weiss not only identifies the trend but delves into the causes, and gets them right: Since the end of World War II, government policy has funded and encouraged the suburban lifestyle, subsidizing highways while starving mass transit... Federal spending is about 4 to 1 in favor of highways over transit. Today, more than 99 percent of the trips taken by U.S. residents are in cars or some other non-transit vehicle, largely as a result of decades of such unbalanced spending. I would never have guessed the number to be as high as 99 percent--that's an outrage.

Finally, from the just plain shut the fuck up and quit being a hypocrite files: John McCain on the recently recessed Congress: Earlier in the day, McCain told a biker rally, “Tell em’ to come back and get to work. When I’m president of the United States, I’m not going to let them go on vacation.” This strikes me as amusing for two reasons: the hypocrisy and the misplaced priorities. On the latter point, McCain hasn’t been “willing” to leave the campaign trail for anything, but all of a sudden, he’s ready to head back to his day job to tackle a coastal drilling bill that wouldn’t do any good anyway. Brad Johnson noted a handful of the bills McCain could have come back to the Hill to vote on, but decided he couldn’t be bothered.

– 4/26/07: Iraq War funding (passed 51-46)
– 6/7/07: Immigration reform (filibustered 34-61)
– 6/11/07: Condemning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (filibustered 53-38)
– 7/26/07: Homeland Security (passed 85-8)
– 8/3/07: Wiretapping (FISA) authorization (passed 60-28)
– 9/27/07: Children’s health insurance (passed 69-30; vetoed)
– 2/6/08: Stimulus package with support for renewable energy (filibustered by one vote)
– 4/23/08: Fair Pay Act (filibustered 56-42)
– 5/22/08: The 21st-Century GI Bill (passed 75-22)
– 6/6/08: Global warming legislation (filibustered 48-36)

McCain wouldn’t leave the campaign trail for any of these votes, but he is willing to head back for a pointless debate on a pointless drilling initiative. It helps highlight just how serious McCain is about governing — or in this case, not. As always, Steve Benen chronicles the follies.

Cruella McCain? Oh, that's just too mean...

2008-08-05T20:19:00.002-05:00

Most emphatically NOT Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

Hey! Didn't you hear? We're moving!

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The Mentality of a Young Republican

2008-08-05T14:04:00.003-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
Captain Bootyplunder is so busted...

The son of Colorado GOP Senate candidate Bob Schaffer is causing his dad a little embarrassment on the campaign trail this week.

Nineteen-year-old Justin Schaffer publicly apologized for putting up posters on his Facebook page including one declaring "Slavery Gets Shit Done."

Also among the Facebook page additions are some that mock Barack Obama, painting him as Muslim, an elitist, a homosexual, terrorist and comparing the presumptive Democratic candidate for president to the cereal-box character "Count Chocula."

The page also includes several pro-gun images. One "bumper sticker" shows an image of Jesus holding an M-16 in front of a Confederate flag, with the words "What Would Republican Jesus Do?" Another features a bevy of different kinds of guns with the words, "Celebrate Diversity" underneath.

[SNIP]

"Cap'n Bootyplunder," as one friend referred to the younger Schaffer in a wall post, is just 19, yet a number of his "bumper stickers" refer to drinking games and alcohol. His interests include "being cool, girls."

No word on whether young Mr. Shaffer has been to see a military recruiter to talk about his future, of course.

The whole thing just smacks of a harmless prank gone horribly wrong, albeit on a MySpace page that Shaffer thought was hidden from view so that only he and his like-minded posse could mock others while doing nothing to defend their country in a time of war--one they no doubt support so long as they don't have to serve in uniform.

Further bringing some unwelcome and uncomfortable tough love to Captain Bootyplunder's magical world of drinking and hate-mongering, they had to make the young fellow apologize...

Schaffer, an economics major at the University of Dayton, issued an apology to a local news station in Colorado that first reported the story:

"I do not agree with the sentiment or content of the offensive material, especially the 'bumper sticker' that references slave labor. It is clear that my actions were juvenile, disrespectful, and a mistake on my part.

"The offensive materials directly contradict the values that my parents taught me and are forbidden in my parents' home. My Facebook page is solely my responsibility, and I am saddened that my actions have reflected poorly on my sisters and parents."

His father spoke to 9NEWS on the phone after an event in Glenwood Springs Monday evening and said, "My wife and I have initiated a process of firm and severe discipline with our son."

He's nineteen years old. What's this bullshit about "discipline?" This is an adult we're talking about. And he has quite an affinity for hate.

In other words, he's got the Young Republican thing down cold. Give him a job on Capitol Hill and watch him rise to the top of the putrid heap.

[h/t to TPM Muckraker--they have some pretty sickening images up. And they go a long ways towards showing just how fucking racist these little fuckers can get when they think their private little pages can't be seen publicly.

Have a good laugh, Captain Bootyplunder. Mom and pops sure are proud, I'll bet. If your pops doesn't win this Fall, he's totally gonna harsh your buzz.Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks with our new domain name, They gave us a republic...

Tuesday's Quick Hits

2008-08-05T13:22:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

GOP bleeds registered voters Since 2005 the GOP has seen a precipitous decline in their numbers, while Democrats and Independents have seen a dramatic increase. People who watch such things speculate that the shift in registration numbers may be a portent of doom for the republican party, signaling a move away from the GOP that could affect local, state and national politics over several election cycles. (Gee - what happened in 2005 that caused people to flee the GOP? Could it have been a major American city underwater and three dollar a gallon gasoline?)

Why the hell are O'Hanlon and Pollack still getting ink??? I mean, those two idiots have been absolutely wrong about absolutely everything since the run up to the war they wanted so badly so long as they didn't have to fight it. Now these two chickenhawks - emphasis on chicken - are back in the New York Times...again, after another military-orchestrated trip to the war zone to see what the military wanted them to see. This time they are trying to explain to the hoi polloi that withdrawing combat brigades from Iraq too soon would be a "bad deal" for Americans and Iraqis. Why do these idiots still have jobs and influence?

Were detainee visits taped? Foreign intelligence and law enforcement teams have been informed that visits they made to interview their citizens held at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had been recorded by the United States. Thousands of hours of conversations involving persons from nearly three dozen countries are involved. The DoD admitted last week that there was an intelligence gathering aspect to the recordings.

Stocks rally as the price of oil declines The Dow gained 190 points as oil prices sunk to $119.55, a three-month low, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Huge cache of WW II weapons uncovered at Berlin construction site Workers excavating the site of an old saurkraut factory to build East Berlin's first mosque unearthed thousands of rounds of infantry munitions and weapons. Such discoveries remain common in Germany still, more than 60 years after the war ended. The community building the mosque apparently failed to request a site inspection for unexploded munitions before work began. It is rare that a week goes by in Germany without wartime bombs and weapons being found during construction work.

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They gave us a republic...

The US Army and Arabic Linguists

2008-08-05T12:20:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
Ten years ago, I watched soldiers who had spent a year at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) learning Arabic end up getting sent to Hawaii, Korea, and to units that did not permit them to use their Arabic language skills.

I watched skilled, trained linguists who loved their target languages get flushed through a system that didn't care about their language identifier but did care about their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). The broken system that mishandled and assigned them to units where they could not maintain or enhance their critical language skills simply shrugged.

The Army may begin paying a retention bonus of as much as $150,000 to Arabic speaking soldiers in reflection of how critical it has become for the US military to retain native language and cultural know-how in its ranks.

That, my friends, is insane. Had the Army retained just one out of every four of those linguists, there wouldn't be such a dire need right now. I would estimate that 9 out of every 10 Arabic linguists that I met got out after their first tour.

Only one other job in the Army, Special Forces, rates such a super-sized retention bonus. Now, as the military makes a fundamental shift toward rewarding the linguistic expertise it needs the most, it is expanding a program to train and retain native Arabic and other speakers from the same regions in which it is fighting.

"This is a war not only against the US, but against our way of freedom," says Sergeant Madi, a native interpreter and US citizen who asked to be identified only by his surname due to security concerns for him and his family. "We have been fighting for over 16 years against Islamic extremism. It is also my war."

This part is what angers me the most--we knew after the first Gulf War that we needed people in the military who could speak Arabic. Not the flat, formal version--the kind spoken in different countries all throughout the Middle East. We knew in 1998 that we were going to need linguists if we were going to keep Saddam Hussein contained.

After the invasion of Iraq and the insurgency that followed, the US military recognized its dearth of linguistic competence in the country it had just toppled, and it scrambled to identify Arabic and other linguists.

Yes, it is true--a good number have been persecuted out of the ranks for being gay. Many more were simply assigned in ways that cost them their language skills.

The US Army simply isn't serious about training and retaining them. It knew there was a problem a decade ago. In ten years, they could have several thousand linguists in all ranks and with various specialties and dialect experience.

Instead, we have a crisis that they are going to try and throw $150,000 a head at. That's not the answer, either. All you're going to do are keep a handful of people who need the money. The rest know they can get out--and avoid a third or fourth tour in Iraq.

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Primary Importance

2008-08-05T10:15:00.002-05:00

It is primary day, Missouri, and as per usual, I will issue my primary-day warning: If you don't get out and vote in the primary, I don't want to hear you bitch about your choices in the General.

Missouri voters can check their registration status and find out the location of their polling place at the Secretary of State's website. You can also get information about the contested races at SoS Robin Carnahan's site as well.

The statewide offices we are going to select our standard-bearers for today are as follows: Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Treasurer and Secretary of State. All state and federal candidates to the respective houses of representatives are also standing in todays primary.

The republicans have been having a regular food-fight in the gubernatorial primary as State Treasurer Sarah Steelman and U.S. Representative Kenny Hulshoff rip one another to shreds, fighting for the opportunity to lose to Jay Nixon in a landslide come November.

But the most hotly contested race is the Democratic primary for Attorney General. Those voting in the Democratic primary have three superb candidates to choose from. Jeff Harris is a state representative who worked in the consumer protection division of the Attorney General's office under Jay Nixon before seeking elected office. Margaret Donnelly is a State Representative and family lawyer who has a long track record of fighting for families in her law practice. Chris Koster is a former Cass County prosecutor who put away the worst serial killer in Missouri history. One year ago , Koster had his "Come to Harry" moment when he realized the republicans in this state are a bunch of foam-flecked lunatics who want to drag Missouri backwards, and he switched parties, abandoning the majority to join the minority party. I am uncomfortable with the amount of vitriol that has been directed at Coster. I have met him several times, and I have never caught a whiff of sulfur nor have I glimpsed any sign of horns or a tail. Any one of the three will make a fine Attorney General, and whoever emerges victorious from the hard-fought Democratic primary will be the next AG, and have my unqualified support in the general.

Now get out and vote, Missouri! It's not just your right - it is your responsibility!

~BG

If Not Ivins, Then Who?

2008-08-05T08:15:00.001-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
A stunning op-ed from the Wall Street Journal asserts that the Anthrax killer is still on the loose, and that Bruce Ivins could not have manufactured the Anthrax.

Richard Spertzel lays out a very compelling set of facts that indicate that the FBI wants to close the case and move on. The initial reaction to the revelation that Ivins was a suspect, who then killed himself with tylenol codeine, was that he may have been a patsy. I think he was a patsy in waiting. I think the FBI was waiting to see what Ivins would do so they could hang the case on him and close it. Why else would this have dragged on for so long? To make that case, let's follow what Spertzel lays out in his op-ed:

The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it. Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute.

It gets worse:

Information released by the FBI over the past seven years indicates a product of exceptional quality. The product contained essentially pure spores. The particle size was 1.5 to 3 microns in diameter. There are several methods used to produce anthrax that small. But most of them require milling the spores to a size small enough that it can be inhaled into the lower reaches of the lungs. In this case, however, the anthrax spores were not milled.

What's more, they were also tailored to make them potentially more dangerous. According to a FBI news release from November 2001, the particles were coated by a "product not seen previously to be used in this fashion before." Apparently, the spores were coated with a polyglass which tightly bound hydrophilic silica to each particle. That's what was briefed (according to one of my former weapons inspectors at the United Nations Special Commission) by the FBI to the German Foreign Ministry at the time.

The Washington Post says that the FBI has a possible reason for how Ivins carried out the milling and the processing of the Anthrax spores. My question is--how plausible is this? Does that shoot a hole in Spertzel's assessment?

...Ivins, the government's leading suspect in the 2001 anthrax killings, borrowed from a bioweapons lab that fall freeze-drying equipment that allows scientists to quickly convert wet germ cultures into dry spores, according to sources briefed on the case.

Ivins's possession of the drying device, known as a lyopholizer, could help investigators explain how he might have been able to send letters containing deadly anthrax spores to U.S. senators and news organizations.

The device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked as a scientist, employees at the base said. Instead, sources said, Ivins had to go through a formal process to check out the lyopholizer, creating a record on which authorities are now relying. He did at least one project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that would have given him reason to use the drying equipment, according to a former colleague in his lab.

The FBI's own sloppy procedures and leaks are what undermines their case. Are we to believe that Ivins was really foolish enough to request a piece of equipment that, had the FBI been capable of conducting a reasonably competent investigation, should have tipped everyone off? If the lyopholizer was the equipment used to weaponize the Anthrax, how is it that every single lyopholizer wasn't accounted for, tested, and tracked back to whoever used it within days or weeks of the 2001 attack?

This is another carefully orchestrated leak that could be used to bolster the FBI's non-case. They have been diligent at letting every little damning detail come out, all but convicting Ivins with the certainty of their investigation. But when you start to look at the facts, that certainty melts away. Could there have been a legitimate reason for Ivins to use that equipment? And could the equipment Ivins used actually do the job?

Another FBI leak indicated that each particle was given a weak electric charge, thereby causing the particles to repel each other at the molecular level. This made it easier for the spores to float in the air, and increased their retention in the lungs.

In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as "according to the Russian recipes" -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge.

The latest line of speculation asserts that the anthrax's DNA, obtained from some of the victims, initially led investigators to the laboratory where Ivins worked. But the FBI stated a few years ago that a complete DNA analysis was not helpful in identifying what laboratory might have made the product.

So, it not Ivins, then whom? Spertzel lays this out as well:

Furthermore, the anthrax in this case, the "Ames strain," is one of the most common strains in the world. Early in the investigations, the FBI said it was similar to strains found in Haiti and Sri Lanka. The strain at the institute was isolated originally from an animal in west Texas and can be found from Texas to Montana following the old cattle trails. Samples of the strain were also supplied to at least eight laboratories including three foreign laboratories. Four French government laboratories reported on studies with the Ames strain, citing the Pasteur Institute in Paris as the source of the strain they used. Organism DNA is not a very reliable way to make a case against a scientist.

The FBI has not officially released information on why it focused on Ivins, and whether he was about to be charged or arrested. And when the FBI does release this information, we should all remember that the case needs to be firmly based on solid information that would conclusively prove that a lone scientist could make such a sophisticated product.

The lone "mad scientist" motif runs through the investigation. We still can't figure out how Ivins kept any sort of clearance. Was he allowed to keep his clearance so that they could continue to investigate him? Did they let him continue to have access so they could watch him and see if he tried to duplicate what the original Anthrax killer had done? If you knew there was someone unstable in an organization who could possibly carry out a copycat attack--and then give you the perfect patsy on whom you could hang the whole affair--would you risk waiting for years to see if your patsy tripped up?

Ivins may have been demented, troubled, and unstable enough to use a biological weapon against innocent people. But was he the man who carried out the Anthrax attacks in 2001?

From what we know so far, Bruce Ivins, although potentially a brilliant scientist, was not that man. The multiple disciplines and technologies required to make the anthrax in this case do not exist at Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Inhalation studies are conducted at the institute, but they are done using liquid preparations, not powdered products.

The FBI spent between 12 and 18 months trying "to reverse engineer" (make a replica of) the anthrax in the letters sent to Messrs. Daschle and Leahy without success, according to FBI news releases. So why should federal investigators or the news media or the American public believe that a lone scientist would be able to do so?

I don't know about you, but the FBI's case is pretty much in doubt, and a possibly innocent man took the fall for one of the worst failures in the history of the US government.

Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks with our new domain name, They gave us a republic...

With Friends Like These...

2008-08-05T06:52:00.001-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...
It's not a huge deal, but it will complicate things for a more simple-minded crowd:

A secret deal between Britain and the notorious al-Mahdi militia prevented British Forces from coming to the aid of their US and Iraqi allies for nearly a week during the battle for Basra this year, The Times has learnt.

Four thousand British troops – including elements of the SAS and an entire mechanised brigade – watched from the sidelines for six days because of an “accommodation” with the Iranian-backed group, according to American and Iraqi officers who took part in the assault.

US Marines and soldiers had to be rushed in to fill the void, fighting bitter street battles and facing mortar fire, rockets and roadside bombs with their Iraqi counterparts.

There have, no doubt, been many "secret deals" between various factions in Iraq. You cannot blame the British for setting up a deal with the Mahdi Army--they had to find a way to operate in Basra. What you can point out is that the US did the exact same thing with Sunni elements. Both deals reduced violence against British and US troops. Both could be interpreted to mean that we're all just kicking the can down the road until we can all leave.

Britain's accomodation--and the revelation that part of the deal was the release of detained individuals--came about because of the siege that took place at the fortified palace in Basra.

Britain’s main base at an airport just outside the city was also under constant rocket and artillery fire.

In what turned out to be a misinterpretation of the violence as criminal-led rather than a full-blown insurgency, Britain cut a deal with the Sadrist militia to ensure the safe withdrawal of British troops from the Basra palace to the airport in return for the release of a number of militia prisoners, in what became known as the “accommodation”.

What's not clear is just what the reaction among the British and the Americans really was when it became evident that the Maliki government was going to freelance it and start a fight in Basra. It was either a debacle or a stunning victory. Troops mutinied but the Mahdi Army melted away. Did they demand that no future operations kick off like that again? Or did another secret deal ensure everything would settle down until an eventual British withdrawal?

Or did it convince the British that their imminent withdrawal was long overdue?Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks with our new domain name, They gave us a republic...

The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-08-04T23:45:00.007-05:00

It's hard to know who to feel sorry for-- Dana Milbank decided to leave his gig with Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and he did so because he didn't react well to having his reporting skills questioned. On the other hand, we've had issues with Olbermann as well. How about we call a Mulligan on this one and react with bemused detachment?

Update on Morgan Freeman: Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman, who is hospitalized in Memphis, Tenn., is expected to be OK after being injured in a car accident in Mississippi on Monday. "He has a broken arm, broken elbow and minor shoulder damage but he is in good spirits," Freeman's rep, Donna Lee, said in a statement Monday afternoon, according to People. "He is going to have surgery this afternoon or tomorrow to correct the damage. He says he'll be OK and is looking forward to a full recovery." In addition, the Associated Press reported that a business partner also said that Freeman suffered a broken arm and other injuries.

Every once in a while, you have to remind yourself that South America is actually a region that matters a great deal. And yet, why doesn't anyone ever pay attention to it? Deep in the northernmost reaches of the Amazon jungle, a land conflict between rice farmers and a handful of Indian tribes has turned so violent that the country's Supreme Court warns it could escalate into civil war. The court is expected to decide in August if the government can keep evicting rice farmers from a 4.2 million acre Indian reservation decreed by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2005. The evictions were stopped in April when rice farmers started burning bridges and blockading roads, and justices said they feared a "veritable civil war." The court's decision could help determine the future of the Amazon, whose remaining jungles provide a critical cushion against global warming. It could also redefine Brazil's policy toward its Indians at a time of frequent confrontations, as the country spends billions of dollars opening roads, building dams and promoting agribusiness across the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness. Unlike in most other Latin American countries, where indigenous people are fighting for rights in mainstream society, most of Brazil's Indians continue to live in the jungle and maintain their languages and traditions. These Indians have fought for decades to keep or regain their ancestral lands.

Uh, you need to call them fucking idiots, is what you need to do, because they are idiots for decrying what tire pressure can do to gas mileage: "As Senator McCain knows, Barack Obama has a comprehensive plan to provide real relief to Americans struggling with soaring prices and make the long-term investments we need to break our addiction to oil," the campaign writes in an email with the subject line "more from the low road."..."And while the McCain team may is busy amusing themselves, the fact is that the idea they’re attacking is supported by, among others, top McCain surrogate Joe Lieberman, conference call host Mike Rogers, Governors Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Department of Energy, and NASCAR — all of whom have urged Americans to help save energy by minding tire pressure," the Obama team continued in the email. "But hey, who ever let the facts — or supporters’ positions — get in the way of a political attack? Aboard the Low Road Express, that’s no problem at all."

Goodbye to lenses?Researchers have come up with a microscopic microscope, tiny enough to fit on a fingertip, that can be cheaply mass-produced and used to scan blood and water for pathogens. The high-resolution microscope functions without the large and expensive lenses usually associated with such imaging devices. Instead, it combines the chip technology found in digital cameras with "microfluidics," the science of channeling liquid at scales far smaller than a common droplet. "The whole thing is truly compact -- it could be put in a cell phone -- and it can use just sunlight for illumination, which makes it very appealing for third-world applications," said Changhuei Yang, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology and one of the lead developers of the device. Yang imagines a range of uses for the so-called optofluidic microscope, which measures about the size of George Washington's nose on a quarter and has the magnifying power of a top-quality optical microscope, according to the Caltech research team.

On to the jury: A jury of U.S. military officers began deliberating a verdict Monday for Osama bin Laden's driver in the first American war crimes trial since World War II. The panel of six jurors was reviewing evidence from a two-week trial at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base that has become the first full test of the Bush administration's system for prosecuting alleged terrorists. Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni held here since May 2002, faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of conspiracy and supporting terrorism. In closing arguments, prosecutors said Hamdan's service to the al Qaeda chief over five years in Afghanistan helped him execute terrorist plots including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

How about simply shutting the White House down for the rest of the year A senior White House official says staffers accompanying President Bush to China have been told to leave their BlackBerries at home, reports CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer. The mobile e-mail blackout is the latest sign of U.S. concerns over Chinese cyber-spying. Sensitive presidential communications are always encrypted, but government cyber-security experts are worried about electronic eavesdropping on the BlackBerries, which are difficult to protect from snooping. BlackBerries have been banned on other presidential foreign trips but the order underscores specific concerns about Chinese spying during the Olympics...

What childishly simplistic person thought they were going to keep their promises? Chinese officials have not lived up to key promises they made to win the right to host the Olympics, including widening press freedoms, cleaning up their capital city's polluted air and respecting human rights. The failures were evident Monday:
A thick pall of smog covered Beijing, raising concerns that endurance events such as long-distance races would have to be moved out of the city. Some still held out hope that emergency measures would clear the city's air by Friday.

Near Tiananmen Square in the heart of the city, police scuffled with protesters who said they were evicted from their homes to make way for Games-related development.

Chinese censors continued to block access to politically sensitive Web sites for thousands of foreign journalists gathered at the Olympic press center.

These failures stand in contrast to the Herculean efforts China has made to prepare for the Olympics, building world-class venues, housing and other infrastructure.

The Evan Bayh bandwagon is starting to roll. More focus on Traumatic Brain Injury, please. This is something that needs to be dealt with, not campaigned on and forgotten: As speculation over the number two slot rises, presidential candidate Barack Obama and potential v.p. contender Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana joined forces Monday, signing a letter with eight other senators that urges Defense Secretary Robert Gates to increase medical coverage and care for Iraq war veterans left with serious brain injuries.

Typical Blogger Bullshit

2008-08-04T21:46:00.003-05:00

Not Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...because this is a blogger specific rant and I am so glad we are walking away from this rickety piece of shit.

I have a great picture of a toad. Wish I could share it with you on the Secret Squirrel blog or wherever. Blogger, of course, is fucked and I can't upload it. Too bad for me.

Not gonna miss ya, blogger. We'll keep taking advantage of you, of course, but we'll be glad to see you go...oh, yes we will.

Today was my first day playing with the new site. It's fantastic. We are going to a much better place, and we have things we want to do that we can now do.

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. Blogger? See ya.

Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks with our new domain name, They gave us a republic...

--WS

This could spell the end of the grid!

2008-08-04T20:30:00.002-05:00

Crossposted from our new home blog, They gave us a republic...

The problem with solar power has always been that it only works when the sun is shining, so the time it isn't generating power, cloudy days and sunset to sunrise means that for more than half the time it doesn't work.

I have been one of those wet blankets that has been saying for ages that we have gone about as far as we can with solar and wind until storage gets better because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient.

Well, it just got better! Researchers at MIT, using plant photosynthesis as their model, have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said MIT's Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan's new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis. If I understand correctly, this method requires about the same amount of platinum as is used in a catalytic converter.

The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up, Nocera said. "That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," he said.

The sun is the most abundant energy source in the known universe. In just an hour, enough sunlight strikes the earth to provide all the energy needs for the entire planet for a year - if we could just manage to harness it.

Prior to this breakthrough, electrolyzers have been available for industrial applications, but at a prohibitive cost both financially and environmentally. Requiring a traditional source of electricity and a basic (non benign) chemical environment. Now that the workable idea has been proven, the engineering work to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems comes next, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality. "This is just the beginning," said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. "The scientific community is really going to run with this."

Nocera believes that within a decade this development could allow individual homeowners to take their homes off the "grid." It is conceivable that during the daylight hours a home can be powered by photovoltaic cells, with excess power being stored in fuel cells. When the sun isn't shining, the fuel cells kick in.

The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today's energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that "this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science."

The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources - governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, the graphic below illustrates how the system will work.

It's a good day to be a scientist!

***************

Remember to update your blogrolls and bookmarks
with our new domain name,
They gave us a republic...

Ivins Held Onto His Clearance Long After It Should Have Been Taken Away

2008-08-04T12:43:00.000-05:00

I have to admit it--I was skeptical that anyone in the media would pick up on the fact that Dr. Bruce Ivins should have had his clearance denied, suspended, or taken away from him years ago. Today, the Washington Post comes out with a powerful story that should force many into retirement, if not into having their own clearances suspended and their careers ended.

As an FBI investigation increasingly focused on him as a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, Fort Detrick scientist Bruce E. Ivins enjoyed a security clearance that allowed him to work in the facility's most dangerous laboratories, to handle deadly biological agents, and to take part in broad discussions about the Pentagon's defenses against germ warfare.

On July 10, the day he was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation, for example, Ivins spent part of the afternoon at a sensitive briefing on a new bubonic plague vaccine under development at the Army's elite biological weapons testing center, according to a former colleague who talked with him there.

Does it get any crazier than that? They knew this man was a serious threat for years--years--and they never cut off his access.

The only thing that seems to be a constant is the confusion, the incompetence, and the "cover your ass" mentality that persists throughout our government. It's not just the political appointees that are to blame. The bureaucrats and the career people failed to protect our country by tolerating and allowing Ivins to hold a clearance.

Colleagues question how Ivins could have maintained his security credentials if the FBI suspected him in the anthrax case. "Even back in the old days, there was a screening process for people who work in those laboratories," Adamovicz said.

Caree Vander Linden, a spokeswoman for USAMRIID, said government rules bar her from discussing the security clearance of a specific employee.

"There are time-honored procedures to examine security clearances on a regular basis, to verify information provided by the security-clearance holder, and traditional steps to ensure that only the appropriate level of security access is granted, largely based on the nature of the person's government job," she said in an e-mail. It would not have been "unusual" for a scientist of Ivins's standing to attend a briefing on the unclassified plague-vaccine research program, she added.

Ivins himself had questioned the effectiveness of the fort's security procedures in interviews with reporters as long as six years ago. At the time of the anthrax attacks, only senior managers at USAMRIID were routinely required to obtain top-secret-level security clearances. Most scientists of Ivins's rank would be required to undergo a background check and would be cleared to see classified documents on a need-to-know basis, according to a former senior official at the lab.

Therein lies the problem. Why was the briefing unclassified? Was it held in an unclassified lab? Meaning, could any citizen have walked into that briefing and attended? Not if it was in a sensitive laboratory on Fort Detrick, Maryland. Was this briefing determined to be "unclassified" after it was known Ivins had attended it? If so, who can answer for the fact that it took until July 10 to get Ivins some medical help?

Tom Daschle was right to question whether the FBI got its man. The real criminals are the ones who let Ivins have access to classified materials after he was known to be a threat. Depending on who you believe, someone has known for years that a man with access to materials that could kill untold numbers of Americans was a psychopath bent on revenge.

All I can say to the situation is this--cover your ass, people. If the Washington Post is smart enough to ask these questions, perhaps someone else will be asking them as well.

Morgan Freeman Seriously Injured in Car Accident

2008-08-04T11:26:00.003-05:00

You hate to see stories like this...
Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman was seriously injured in a car accident in Mississippi on Sunday night according to the Mississippi Highway Patrol.

Police report that Freeman, 71, was driving eastbound on Highway 32 near the town of Ruleville, Miss., around 11:30 p.m. when his car left the road and flipped several times.

Police say Freeman and a female passenger had to be extracted from the vehicle and the actor was flown to a hospital in Memphis, Tenn., where he was listed in serious condition. There was no word on the condition of the passenger.

Let's hope he's alright and everything turns out well.

--WS

General Sherman did not wreck the South

2008-08-04T09:22:00.003-05:00

Spend any time with actual history, as opposed to the romanticized version of it that is practiced by Civil War revisionists, and you'll see enough of this to drive you nuts. Christopher Dickey writes this in Newsweek:
Last month I set out driving through Tennessee, Georgia and the Carolinas, roughly retracing the deepest scar in the country—the blazing track of total war left by Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in 1864 and 1865. After many years away I was exploring my own blood ties (which include an ancestor named after Sherman by his slave-owning-yet-Unionist parents), but also gauging the tenor of a region that has been critical to every U.S. presidential election since 1932, and may be again...

General Sherman did not "wreck" the South, nor did his march across the South have any lasting impact on the region. This is one of the most fundamental (and ludicrous) assertions that those who have a romanticized view of the Civil War maintain.
As historians have since pointed out, the destruction of Southern crops, livestock, factories, and railroads, and other infrastructure was anything but complete; much of the damage was repaired within a few years. The really serious economic losses can be traced to two things: the emancipation of slaves, which wiped out billions of dollars in Southern wealth, and the worthlessness of Confederate scrip, bonds, and promissory notes into which many Southerners had sunk most of their savings.

When Sherman's Army left Atlanta and severed the Confederacy, it did so as an untethered Army that traveled light, passing through Georgia and the Carolinas as it moved to link up with the Army of the Potomac. It did not burn or destroy everything in its path--in fact, one standing order was that the army would not leave poor Southerners, black or white, destitute.

General Sherman's orders were rigorously enforced, except in the case of South Carolina, which bore the brunt of the Army's wrath because it was considered to cradle of the Confederacy. I don't accept the revisionist history that says Sherman burned Columbia, South Carolina--there's plenty of evidence to suggest that drunkards were responsible. His Special Field Order 120 is especially handy for refuting the notion that his Army was on a mission of terror:
IV. The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather, near the route traveled, corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables, corn-meal, or whatever is needed by the command, aiming at all times to keep in the wagons at least ten day's provisions for the command and three days' forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass, but during a halt or a camp they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and to drive in stock of their camp. To regular foraging parties must be instructed the gathering of provisions and forage at any distance from the road traveled.

V. To army corps commanders alone is entrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerrillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.

VI. As for horses, mules, wagons, &c., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit, discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly. Foraging parties may also take mules or horses to replace the jaded animals of their trains, or to serve as pack-mules for the regiments or brigades. In all foraging, of whatever kind, the parties engaged will refrain from abusive or threatening language, and may, where the officer in command thinks proper, give written certificates of the facts, but no receipts, and they will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance.

VII. Negroes who are able-bodied and can be of service to the several columns may be taken along, but each army commander will bear in mind that the question of supplies is a very important one and that his first duty is to see to them who bear arms. ...

– William T. Sherman, Military Division of the Mississippi Special Field Order 120, November 9, 1864.

The fact of the matter is, if you were a white Southerner of modest means, you had a much better time of it than any Native American. Here's a very detailed look at why this misconception lingers:
Let me give you an example of this private myth-making at work. It comes from the unpublished reminiscences of a woman, Grace Pierson Beard, who lived about eight miles from Winnsboro, South Carolina. Her postwar account, now preserved in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, consumes fifteen typescript, single-spaced pages. In it she describes how, returning to her home in February 1865, she encountered soldiers in her house, seated on benches taken from her piazza. They were roasting potatoes taken from her potato bank in a fire they had built in her fireplace. "I shall never forget that sight!" she writes dramatically--but then goes on to say that these men turned out to be members of Wheeler's Confederate cavalry, and nothing in her narrative suggests that she was in the least disturbed by their trespassing into her home.

Instead, the purpose of the men in her narrative is to convey a message about the danger she is in. Sherman's men were coming, they told her, and when she informed them of her plan to leave before their arrival, they responded that leaving would only guarantee the destruction of her house. "Sherman's orders are to burn all vacant houses and all provisions." Thus Grace decided to remain.

Next day, a group of Union soldiers arrived, killed a dog, and ate everything at her table, but left without assailing anyone. The day after a major force passed through--they ransacked her house for provisions and allegedly told her slaves not only that they were free, but also entitled to their mistress's possessions. (No one acted on this, however.) Her barn and outbuildings were burned. Some soldiers said threatening things, but another soldier deterred them with, "The first man who attempts to enter that house will have his brains blown out." Subsequently a second, self-appointed guard appeared, followed by a soldier who looked so much like her husband that her toddler son ran up to him, leaped into his arms, and called him Pa. The soldier "seemed to be much affected" by this. So was she: "I felt as if my baby was everlastingly polluted."

That was the extent of Mrs. Beard's experience with the coming of Lucifer's legions: vigorous foraging, the destruction of outbuildings, the liberation of slaves, and repeated efforts to extort possessions from her--which were never pursued to the point of assault and were, in any case, countered by soldiers who actively protected her family and herself. All this information is in her reminiscences, but the tone is one of fear and outrage, and the tone governs what an uncritical reader takes away from her reminiscences. In effect, Mrs. Beard--like thousands of other white Southerners--has constructed a mythical reading of her experience that emphasizes the harshness and injustice of that experience.

The influence of this myth can hardly be exaggerated. Even educated Southerners, far removed in time from the conflict, accepted it uncritically, indeed passionately. Eventually the murderous severity of the Union armies' attacks on civilian property became an article of faith. By the 1940s, one Southern historian could write, in a scholarly monograph, that "the invader did not limit himself to the property of people," but evidenced "considerable interest also in their persons, particularly the females, some of whom did not escape the fate worse than death"--without feeling the slightest need to document his lurid (and largely inaccurate) claim.

As for Sherman's status as a "war criminal, there's no shortage of stories like this:
Many myths surround the destruction of the plantations along the Ashley River Road. One is that Sherman burned them; however, General Sherman never brought his army to Charleston, rather he diverted towards Columbia from Savannah and never came through Charleston.

And:
The left wing of Sherman’s Army moved through Madison [Georgia] on November 17, 1864, burning the railroad depot and slave pens. The primary reason that many of the antebellum homes remain standing today is that, like few other towns in his path, Sherman was convinced to save the town by an old family friend Joshua Hill, a native son that became a U.S. Senator. Hill had befriended Sherman’s brother when they were cadets at West Point, and Sherman felt obligated to honor his request.

But why let the truth get in the way when it's easier to simply keep repeating a myth, right?

Actually, It's Called Talking Out of Your Ass

2008-08-04T06:45:00.004-05:00

The first thing that should grab you and shake you by your lapels when you read this is that Mr. Judis is quoting an "unnamed policy expert." That's like quoting the guy who says something profound before he falls off his barstool:
On the morning of the second day, one of the policy experts pulled me aside and told me that the night before over drinks, some CIA people had told him that they believed Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks. He was taken aback, and so was I, because we presumed they had access to information that might demonstrate this. I don’t who they were; I also don’t believe that the CIA itself was officially engaged in spreading rumors of this kind--most of CIA officialdom was very skeptical of the invasion--but I think it is possible that there was a network people who were promoting a theory about anthrax that helped make the case for war. They may have been unwittingly spreading mis-information that emanated from the perpetrator. Or they may have been winging it irresponsibly. It’s not clear, but I join those who believe that some kind of congressional investigation is in order.

No serious assessment of our intelligence agencies is going to happen until the Congressional leadership reshuffles after the election this Fall. Nothing is to be gained from any hearing chaired by Senator Jay Rockefeller, whose chairmanship has been a disaster. A serious assessment and change will actually begin when a new DNI, a new DIRNSA, a new head of the CIA, and most definitely a new head of the FBI can be chosen. The current bloc holding those positions are the stick in the eye of any progress that might come from having Congress yap to itself about what it thinks should be done. What's sad is that Michael Hayden could stay in place and still be marginalized and contained because his position has seen so much power erode over the last year.

The other problem with what Mr. Judis has to say is that he might have been listening to someone "talking out of their ass" and repeating something that, in early 2003, had been circulating since the Anthrax attacks:
During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

So much for the wisdom and insight of what a policy expert hears over drinks.

--WS

The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-08-03T23:45:00.005-05:00

Someone tell Rick Davis...that the salads they sell at McDonald's contain Arugula.

Win, even if you have to mock common sense That seems to be the mantra of the rethugs. Now, apparently, they are against routine car maintenance and, yes, common sense.

Please, please, please let McVanity pick Romney...because it will unleash a torrent of vitriol at the republican ticket. Before he was elected governor of Massachusetts, Romney was a star player in the private equity world where big investors routinely buy struggling companies, overhaul them — often in part through layoffs — and then sell them off for huge profits, and all that matters is the bottom line of the bloodsuckers like Romney. Last year the private equity sector was targeted by Congressional Democrats for insults and tax increases. With a Romney vice presidential nod, those charges would go national. "There's no doubt it will come up," says Mark Mellman, a key strategist for Massachusetts Democrat Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "This is an economy where people are on edge about things like downsizing and getting laid off and here's a guy who has wielded that knife."

Details ironed out for Libya to compensate victims of terrorist bombings Before adjourning for the summer break, Congress approved the details of an arrangement that allows Libya to start paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to U.S. victims of bombing attacks that Washington blames on Tripoli.

Amen to that...Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, whose office was a target of the anthrax attacks in 2001, said Sunday the suicide of the government's main suspect does not mean the case is over. Daschle said the FBI has not given him any new updates. He also raised questions about the quality of the investigation, noting that the government recently paid out almost $6 million to a former Army scientist, Steven Hatfill, who accused authorities of unfairly targeting him in the anthrax case. "From the very beginning I've had real concerns about the quality of the investigation," Daschle said in a broadcast interview. "Given the fact that they already paid somebody else $5 million for the mistakes they must have made gives you some indication of the overall caliber and quality of the investigation." Five people died and 17 others were sickened when anthrax-laced letters began showing up at congressional offices, newsrooms and post offices soon after Sept. 11, 2001. The case re-emerged in the news this past week as investigators prepared to charge a government scientist Bruce Ivins in the case. Ivins died Tuesday in what has been ruled a suicide.

Torture, Chilean style...During the darkest years of this country's military dictatorship, Mariana Callejas was an up-and-coming writer and the hostess of the era's most glamorous literary salon. Chile's leading authors trekked up to Callejas' hillside mansion every Thursday night to talk literature, have a few drinks and sometimes dance until the next morning. The salon offered a respite from the fear and violence of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's Chile, in which nearly 3,200 dissidents died or disappeared at the hands of government agents. Writer Carlos Iturra, who attended the meetings, said in an e-mail that he'd always remember those nights for "the good writers who were formed there" amid the "dances, drinks, laughs and debates." Horror lay just below the glittering surface, however, as it often did during the 1973-90 military dictatorship.

What? How are the Beijing Olympics contributing to a worldwide shortage of vitamin C? In their efforts to curb air pollution for the upcoming games, the Chinese shut down manufacturing plants in and around Beijing — including cutbacks at factories producing 80 percent of the world’s ascorbic acid, more commonly known as vitamin C. Experts say the shortage and resulting price increases will not likely spark an outbreak of scurvy, the nemesis of Old World sailors on extended voyages without fresh fruits and vegetables. But ascorbic acid is crucial to modern food and beverage production, and is an important vitamin supplement in the United States and worldwide.

It'll only end in tears you idiots...House Republicans will be back on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives again Monday to continue the unprecedented protest that began last Friday, when dozens of Republicans joined hundreds of American citizens on the House floor to protest Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) decision to send Congress home for the rest of the summer without a vote on legislation to lower gas prices and move America toward energy independence. In an urgent memo sent to GOP Members and staff Saturday (“A Call to Action on American Energy”), Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) hailed Friday’s action, which was led by Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Tom Price (R-GA), and others, and encouraged House Republicans to return to the Capitol beginning Monday morning to help keep the historic effort going. “It’s not a request we make lightly. But the American people are suffering,” Boehner and Blunt said in the memo. “The consequences of continued congressional inaction on gas prices are unacceptable. We’ve called on the Speaker to call Congress back into an emergency session this month and schedule a vote on the American Energy Act. We must continue to make a stand until the Speaker complies.” What a bunch of idiots--it's called a recess. Remember when Boehner was running things? And they worked a day and a half per week? What were you doing then about the problems we face now? Answer--even with your quaint ideas about "working," you were doing nothing for Americans, and everything for whoever had a wad of cash. Now quit complaining and take your hardly-earned little vacation.

You've Got to See it to Believe It...

2008-08-03T20:19:00.002-05:00

John McCain on August 1, 2008

This is just sad. No further comment is necessary.

Hat tip to the Jed Report...

--WS

Solzhenitsyn Dead

2008-08-03T17:41:00.000-05:00

Noted today...

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident writer and Nobel literature prize winner, has died aged 89, the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday.

He died of a stroke, the agency said, quoting literary sources in Moscow.

Solzhenitsyn served with the Red Army in World War II but became one of the most prominent dissidents of the Soviet era, enduring labor camps, cancer and persecution by Soviet officialdom.

--WS

We have had it...

2008-08-03T12:35:00.009-05:00

...and we are abandoning the blogger platform as fast as we can build a site in SoapBlox. Look for a post in the next couple of days - if not in the next few hours - with updates pointing you to a new url that we own exclusively.

Anything worth doing is worth doing right, you know, and the landslide of problems in google-world the past week has confirmed what we have been thinking for about a month. Enough already. We think this is worth doing, so half-assing it in Blogger is coming to an end. Capriciousness isn't even charming in highschool girls. It really sucks in your web platform.

Oh - gmail is effed up, too, so anyone needing to contact me in today should send email to my old Yahoo account: bluegalinaredstate@yahoo.com.

~BG

We will take advantage of the Blogger free blog thing and continue frustrating people with the Secret Squirrel blog, of course. We are going to kick ass in other formats and in other venues because that's what we've decided we need to do. Were it not for the overwhelming response we get from folks all over the place and from places we never expected it, we wouldn't be in a position to make this push. The generosity and the encouragement is always appreciated and we do this humbly and with a sense of purpose that never wavers.

--WS

Come on over kiddies! Join us at They Gave Us a Republic! It is a SoapBlox platform, like we use over at Show Me Progress and VetVoice. You will need to register to post comments, but the comment system kick Haloscans ass, and you can reply specifically to comments, or to the board at large, and once registered, users can post diaries, too. We know we have the most astute readers in the blogosphere, and several of you have proven that point by guestblogging here. Now there is no rigamarole. You have something to say, say it, and don't be surprised if it gets promoted to the front page.

So c'mon over, and get registered, and update your blogrolls and bookmarks, and let's keep rockin' the blogosphere like the fighting liberals we are!

~BG

Sunday Morning Quick Hits

2008-08-03T11:45:00.000-05:00

As shipping costs spiral, globalization feels the pinch With cheap oil a thing of the past, the world isn't so flat an more. Shipping costs are causing manufacturers to rethink the way things have been done in the last couple of decades - buying components from all over the world for final assembly and global dissemination. Case in point: Tesla motors originally intended to buy battery packs for their new electric car model in Thailand and have them shipped to Britain for assembly of the final product, then the plan was to ship the cars to the U.S. for sale. Shipping costs negated that plan and now the batteries are being made and the cars assembled in California. “It was kind of a no-brain decision for us,” said Darryl Siry, the company’s senior vice president of global sales, marketing and service. “A major reason was to avoid the transportation costs, which are terrible.”

A no-brainer bill goes to bu$h. The Hubbard Act cleared the Senate before the legislative branch adjourned last week. Named for a family from California, the bill guarantees benefits to veterans who are discharged from service under the "Sole Survivor" regulation which allows for early discharge from service when a service members siblings have perished. Jason Hubbard, a soldier from California's central valley left service early after both of his brothers were killed in the line of duty, only to be denied his GI Bill and health benefits, and was billed for repayment of a portion of his enlistment bonus. The Hubbard Act would ensure that Jason Hubbard and others in his position receive the same benefits as others who leave the military with an honorable discharge, including transitional health care, educational support and separation pay that compensates for inability to continue service.

Global Warming becomes local warming You can see it in the dead rust-red pines west of Yosemite National Park, the fading easel of wildflowers near Carson Pass south of Lake Tahoe and the parched bare banks of lakes and reservoirs. You can smell it in the acrid ash-gray smoke from a siege of early-season wildfires that has choked much of the region for weeks on end...You can hear it in the quiet murmur of small streams that once rushed noisily downhill in July; in the whoosh of cars over Tioga Pass after Thanksgiving – a time when the white-knuckle road crossing, the highest in California, was always closed by snow prior to 1975; and in the voices and observations of scientists, resource managers and mountain residents.

Even as the American dream becomes a nightmare, the working class clings to hope A nationwide poll of American workers between the ages of 18 and 64 who work at least 30 hours a week and earned no more than $27,000 last year conducted from June 18 to July 7 by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University found that they cling to the "American Dream" that things will get better for them, and definitely for their children. These people, the "working poor," comprise 1/4 of all US adults, and toil in thankless jobs that usually don't have benefits or protections like sick days, pensions or health insurance. "A lot of issues that have long confronted low-wage workers are now increasingly facing middle-income workers," who more than ever face the prospect of jarring income declines, and the lack of health care and pensions to support them, said Beth Shulman, a scholar with the Russell Sage Foundation's Future of Work Project. The challenge for Barack Obama is to tap into that wellspring of unease among the working poor and translate it into political action and demands to strengthen the social safety net that would disproportionately help low-wage workers. "I don't think we want to live in a country where people are working and doing what they are supposed to do but yet they can't get the basics," Shulman said.

There will be three debates McVain's harebrained scheme for a series of rigged town halls was shot down, and Rahm Emanuel will be the point man for the Obama campaign as the details are worked out.

Security Clearances and Homicidal Maniacs

2008-08-03T06:04:00.005-05:00

This is the most stunning thing of all about the case of Bruce Ivins. I cannot understand why this isn't the story itself--that it was known for years that this man was a demonstrable threat and that he still held a security clearance.

Here are the relevant facts:
The therapist for Bruce E. Ivins told a judge that as far back as 2000, the late microbiologist suspected in the 2001 anthrax attacks had attempted to poison people and that she was "scared to death" of him, according to an audiotape of the session that emerged Saturday.

Social worker Jean Duley testified at a hearing in Frederick on July 24 in a successful bid for a protective order from Ivins. The New York Times obtained a recording of the hearing and posted it on its Web site Saturday.

What the hell went on between the year 2000 and July 24, 2008?
Ivins was removed from his lab in Maryland by police on July 10 and temporarily hospitalized, according to court records, because it was feared that he was a danger to himself and others. But it was unclear whether he was still employed by the lab at the time of his death Tuesday.

That raises the question of whether Ivins still had his security clearance and, if so, how he kept it, given that his social worker said Ivins had been viewed as homicidal and sociopathic by his psychiatrist.

Absolutely, yes it does. THAT is the most relevant question of all--why did this man have a security clearance between 2000 and 2008 at all? Why was he allowed to work in a sensitive area?
The Army refused Saturday to say whether it had been reviewing the security clearance of the chief suspect in the anthrax attacks who had mental problems and killed himself as federal prosecutors were planning to indict him.

Ivins was removed from his lab in Maryland by police on July 10 and temporarily hospitalized, according to court records, because it was feared that he was a danger to himself and others. But it was unclear whether he was still employed by the lab at the time of his death Tuesday.

That raises the question of whether Ivins still had his security clearance and, if so, how he kept it, given that his social worker said Ivins had been viewed as homicidal and sociopathic by his psychiatrist.

There's no way--no way--this man should have continued to have any clearance or access whatsoever.

Everyone in that decision making chain needs to be sacked, en masse, immediately, and all of their work reviewed immediately. Between 2000 and 2008, Ivins would have had at least one periodic five-year review of his clearance, and whoever performed that review, investigation, and/or adjudication is now party to this debacle. Their shoddy work has endangered us all.

A serious, serious error was made in not denying this man access to classified materials and weapons. Once again, incompetent, bumbling boobs made the wrong decision to allow this man access. Once again, the real story is lost and the focus is not where it should be. The entire system is seriously broken, from top to bottom, and no one can conclude that our security clearance process is working the way that it should when people like Bruce Ivins can have access for years and years while it is absolutely clear that he should not have had access.

--WS

The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-08-02T23:45:00.002-05:00

We agree that the House republians are revolting...but we don't think concern over gas prices has anything to do with it. If they were truly concerned about prices at the pump right now, they would be pressing for the president to release some petrol from the strategic petroleum reserve, and they aren't. Instead, they postured, preened and screeched. Their antics accomplish nothing, other than to make them look like idiots.

About that charge of "political celebrity" McCain tosses around the term now like it;s a bad thing, but anyone who has been paying attention knows that he defined the oeuvre. After his 2000 loss to the preordained bu$h, he became a Hollywood darling. His memoirs were turned into a biopic, he appeared on an episode of "24" and in the movie "Wedding Crashers" and appeared on late-night shows at least 30 times. “[The ad] is a bit ironic given that McCain has been the most pop-culture savvy Republican candidate in quite some time,” said Ted Johnson, managing editor of Variety and editor of the blog Wilshire and Washington, which monitors the intersection of celebrity and politics.

I am cynical enough to believe it Agence France-Presse is reporting that Radovan Karadzic received the protection of the United States until 2000, when a a CIA phone bug caught him breaking the terms of his 'deal', Serb newspaper Blic reported Saturday, Blic quoted a US intelligence source, on condition of anonymity for their article. The Blic source said: "I'm not sure there was a written document confirming so, but I do have Holbrooke's admission of verbal guarantees given to Karadzic from the highest level of the US. During the year 2000, at the time of the (November general) elections in Bosnia, the CIA learned that Karadzic was still leading the SDS (the Serbian Democratic Party, founded by Karadzic), despite their deal that he was not to interfere in political life," the source added, cited by the newspaper. Richard Holbrooke, of course, denies the allegation.

12-year-old NYC girl survives 14 story fall The girl had taken a visiting cousin up to the roof to see the view of the Hudson when she climbed up a ladder on the side of the chimney for a better view, when she tumbled down the flue. She landed in two foot of soot and survived the fall with a broken hip and no internal injuries. The building super is relieved that he didn't know the chimney had been swept.

The Falcon 9 rocket has cleared another hurdle on the way to becoming the transportation method used to delivery of supplies to the International Space Station. Nasa hopes the Falcon 9 can help fill the mission gap that will exist while it develops the Ares/Orion successor to the shuttle. The Shuttle mission is scheduled to end in 2010, but the Ares/Orion won't be ready before 2015.

North Dakotans take pretty much everything in stride in my experience so it really doesn't come as any big surprise that they aren't setting their locks alight over a missile booster in a ditch where an Air Force transport overturned while transporting the thing from Minot AFB to a launch site. The truck and booster rocket for a Minuteman III ICBM, which is 66 feet long and weighs 75,000 pounds, were still sitting along the road Saturday, under armed guard. "The scene is still in the assessment phase," said Maj. Laurie A. Arellano, an Air Force spokeswoman. "It's still on its side in the ditch. It has to be 100 percent stable for movement. It's not a quick process — we have to make sure everything is stable first." She said the wreck would stay there for a least a few more days. (Now you understand why we put these things in the middle of nowhere, don't you?)

U.S. HIV rate much higher than previously estimated The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released information claiming that 56,000 people had become infected with the virus that causes Aids in 2006. Previously the estimate had been 40,000. The agency was quick to point out that the increase is due to improved detection methods rather than actual increases in rates of transmission of the virus.

Why is everything framed in militant language with the right wing??? It was surreal enough to hear the term "culture war" the first time, and I admit that I find the language unsettling - raising armies of believers, putting soldiers in the streets - but referring to California's Proposition 8, the referendum on gay marriage, as "the Armageddon of the culture war" is a little over the top even for Watergate burglar and definitive right-wing lunatic Chuck Colson.

Nuclear submarine leaked radiation Water with trace amounts of radiation may have been leaking for months from th reactor core of the U.S.S. Houston as it cruised the Pacific. The problem was noticed when she put into port in Hawaii for routine repairs, and the Navy informed the Japanese government of the problem because the vessel had put into port there, even though the amount of radiation leaked was "virtually undetectable."

Josh Marshall is right Everyone should stop what they are doing right this minute and go read the brilliant analysis of this campaign by John Heilemann in New York magazine. The only way for McCain to win is to take the Rovian low road. So far, he seems right at home there.

Food security, fighting terrorism key topics at South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit, but efforts to enhance cooperation among the eight member nations remain hampered by tensions between India and Pakistan, and the prime ministers of both nations met on the sidelines, grabbing headlines with talks that sought to ease a crisis in their peace process.

We have a cabinet suggestion for President Obama - We want Pat Lang for DNI, and if you know anything about the intel world and can couple that knowledge with so much as a lick of sense, you understand why.

I absolutely love the smell of roast wingnut! And the gang at Sadly, No! does it oh so well, and in succinct fashion, too. The Confederate Yankee, one of those right-wing bloggers that defines dumbassery, dipshittery and douchebaggery - all at once! - walked out on a limb, turned around, and started sawing when a whole bunch of Blogger blogs were flagged as spam and shut down. He leaped to the conclusion that it was a vast left-wing conspiracy, and fulminated at length in a screed with the ominous title Obama's Netroots Supporters Continue "Blog Burning" - ever the clever one, he even included a graphic of Nazis at a book burning! He jumped so fast that he sprained an ankle on the landing and will be on the injured reserve list for four to six seeks. (No, we are not linking that mo-ron. Ever.)

Smearing Democratic VP Selections

2008-08-02T15:12:00.003-05:00

The effort to smear John Edwards was pretty coordinated. The smear merchants who are trying to sabotage Kathleen Sebelius have to work harder to come up with something better than this:

Beyond her decision not to "speak Catholic," Sebelius has a politically thorny relationship with her bishop. In April, she vetoed legislation that would have beefed up efforts to enforce restrictions on abortion providers in Kansas. The law was aimed squarely at Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation's fiercest defenders of late-term abortions. Sebelius said she vetoed the law because it was clearly unconstitutional and would invite frivolous lawsuits, a position that was supported by the Kansas City Star and various women's organizations. Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City — Sebelius's own bishop — saw it differently: He went public with his request that the governor refrain from presenting herself for communion. In a column in his diocesan paper, the archbishop called her behavior "scandalous" before going on to say, "The spiritually lethal message, communicated by our governor, as well as many other high-profile Catholics in public life, has been in effect: 'The church's teaching on abortion is optional.'" Sebelius did not offer any public response to the archbishop's edict.

Archbishop Naumann is one of a number of conservative prelates who have decided to use the communion rail as a bludgeon in the culture war. (The most famous example came in 2004, when Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis forbade John Kerry from receiving communion within his jurisdiction; another was when Douglas Kmiec, a former Department of Justice official in the Reagan administration, was denied communion for his support of Obama this year.) Naumann has been published in the conservative Catholic journal First Things, a magazine that often mimics White House talking points more faithfully than it follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. And he has participated in the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, an annual event that's meant to bring Catholics together with (mostly Republican) political leaders. In the event that Obama selects Sebelius, we can expect Naumann to take to the airwaves, and Obama's campaign could be forced into a high-profile and unwelcome skirmish with a religious figure.

Sounds devastating! But it's not. Sounds like Sebelius is out. But she isn't.

Not only do most Americans disagree with the good bishop, so do most Catholics, depending on who asks the questions and who frames them. Not only would the American people react with indifference and confusion to something like this, there's a pretty good chance they'll see it for what it is and embrace Sebelius as a good leader. When people see what a demagogue the bishop is, they'll quickly reject what he has to say. Public policy should not be dictated by religious leaders in this country and that's exactly how Sebelius has governed. That means she passes the test of being a good leader.

And that means she's qualified. No politician who separates faith from public policy should have any kind of "problem."

--WS

Payback really is a bitch!

2008-08-02T14:45:00.001-05:00

Ha! More unintended consequences!

After the desperate decision by the idea-free McCain campaign to dive into the cesspool of racial politics and happily cavort in the filth, donations began pouring in...to Obama. Over 100,000 people donated in a single day, and over one third of them were first time donors. "I think John McCain has harmed himself in the last week, really eroding any capital he had built up in terms of what kind of politician he is," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. "But he's really helped our campaign, because so many of you have contributed in the last week. Our field offices had people pouring into them yesterday."

Maybe someone should clue the old fart in to how those of us under 60 think. See, to most of us, race doesn't matter. At all. We all went to integrated schools and most of us have friends of diverse ethnicity. A whole bunch of us have dated outside our race, and our kids certainly did. The only time we even think about race is when some stupid fucking dinosaur tries to play that shit, and then we leap to the defense of our friends. Like so many did yesterday.

And that is just my generation - our kids are really offended by crap like McCain is trying. It might play well on the dead pecker bench in Mayberry, but it doesn't get any traction with us, and like it or not, we have the numbers because they bred like bunnies for a couple of decades.

And on the upside, it is poisoning the republican well for a whole bunch of young people who are just now figuring out where they fit in on the political spectrum. So thanks for that assist, republicans. We couldn't have done it without you.

~BG

Welcome (back) to 'The Jungle'

2008-08-02T10:45:00.002-05:00

We have been following the Postville, IA raid on Agriprocessors, Inc literally since the day it happened, and have been dismayed at the way the whole sorry spectacle has played out. Especially surreal has been the draconian way the workers have been treated, contrasted with the fact that the employers are not only still free, but the business is still operating.

We are not alone in our dismay. The New York Times editorial board is equally dismayed, albeit late to the party by our standards.

The conditions at the Agriprocessors plant cry out for the cautious and deliberative application of justice.

In May, the government swoops in and arrests ... the workers, hundreds of them, for having false identity papers. The raid’s catch is so huge that the detainees are bused from little Postville to the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo. The defendants, mostly immigrants from Guatemala, are not charged with the usual administrative violations, but with “aggravated identity theft,” a serious crime.

They are offered a deal: They can admit their guilt to lesser charges, waive their rights, including the right to a hearing before an immigration judge, spend five months in prison, then be deported. Or, they can spend six months or more in jail without bail while awaiting a trial date, face a minimum two-year prison sentence and be deported anyway.

Nearly 300 people agree to the five months, after being hustled through mass hearings, with one lawyer for 17 people, each having about 30 minutes of consultation per client. The plea deal is a brutal legal vise, but the immigrants accept it as the quickest way back to their spouses and children, hundreds of whom are cowering in a Catholic church, afraid to leave and not knowing how they will survive. The workers are scattered to federal lockups around the country. Many families still do not know where they are. The plant’s owners walk freely.

This is law enforcement run amok. As Julia Preston reported in The Times, the once-silent workers of Agriprocessors now tell of a host of abusive practices, of rampant injuries and of exhausted children as young as 13 wielding knives on the killing floor. A young man said in an affidavit that he started at 16, in 17-hour shifts, six days a week. “I was very sad, and I felt like I was a slave.”

The defendants are also victims, but instead of receiving any sort of merciful treatment, they have been branded as predatory felons, the sort of people who steal identities and empty bank accounts, but nothing could be further from the truth. “Most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security number was or what purpose it served,” said Erik Camayd-Freixas, a Spanish-language interpreter for many of the workers. “This worker simply had the papers filled out for him at the plant, since he could not read or write Spanish, let alone English.”

The heavy-handed prosecution of the workers at Agriprocessors is a 180-degree pivot for the bu$h administration, which had for years insisted that immigration needed to be fixed comprehensively, or not at all.

Before Postville, the one redeeming quality of this bunch of crooks had been a compassion for exploited workers, but all pretense of mercy and proportionality have been abandoned as they have gone after the workers with zeal and fervor, exaggerating the threat of the workers to society at large, while predatory employers who prey on the weak, the poor and the desperate remain free.

In the move to make undocumented workers by definition a criminal class, the government overstates the threat posed by those workers. They do this to justify the rabid pursuit of employees, while glossing over the crimes of the treasonous employers who are engaged in economic warfare against the United States.

It is more than a fraudulent exercise. It is a national disgrace.

Saturday Morning Quick Hits

2008-08-02T09:30:00.000-05:00

Boomerang effect, anyone? A small study (less than 500 data points) suggests that the mocking ads by the McSame campaign are more likely to make him look bitter and petty, driving up his own negatives more than Obama's.

Senate OKs 2.8% COLA for recipients of VA disability and survivors benefits Disabled veterans and survivors don't get the same deal as other federal beneficiaries. While active duty and retired military personnel, federal employees and Social Security recipients get automatic COLAs, every adjustment to benefits for disabled veterans and survivors must be approved by legislative fiat and signed into law by the president. Does this strike anyone else as absurd? Isn't it high time to bring these benefits into the yearly Defense Authorization Bill, in the interest of efficiency, expediency and good old ordinary, garden variety fairness?

No more Minutemen at Malmstrom The 564th Missile Squadron at Malmstrom AFB, Mont. has been deactivated. All that remains in the fifty silos scattered about the state are a few pieces of furniture, and even that will be gone shortly. When it was decided in 2006 that the nation no longer needed 500 ICBMs on alert, the 564th, know as "the Odd Squad" was chosen for deactivation, primarily because it's missiles used a different communications system, incompatible with that used by the other eight squadrons of missiles.

Population increases, climate change, fire and invasive species remake the California landscape Bigger and more frequent fires, burning more territory, over longer fire seasons have destroyed the chaparral. Areas that used to burn every 50 to 150 years now burn much more frequently, and the native species, lacking the time to recover, have been supplanted by non-native grass species. The change in vegetation extends the fire season because many invasive plants burn virtually year-round. Toss a cigarette into a stand of coastal sage in June and in most years it won't ignite. Do the same to a bed of red brome and it will. In addition to the tinder-factor, grasses don't hold the soil or water as well as deep-rooted shrubs, leaving hillsides more prone to landslides and erosion.

Koster's Ex-wife Drops $200K on Negative Ads

2008-08-02T07:00:00.003-05:00

Would your ex go after you like this?
If Missouri state Sen. Chris Koster didn't make enough enemies when he switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party last year, now his ex-wife is weighing in against him.

Koster, in the midst of fiercely contested race for the Democratic nomination for attorney general, is bracing for $187,500 in television ads paid for by ex-wife Rebecca Bowman Nassikas.

Nassikas, who now lives in Scottsdale, Ariz., ponied up $200,000 last week to oppose his candidacy. She gave the money to a dormant political committee called Missourians for Honest Leadership.

Koster spokesman Danny Kanner said it was just another example of Koster's political rivals trying to undermine his candidacy.

"Our opponents are doing anything they can to throw trash against the wall about Chris to see if anything sticks," Kanner said. "Rebecca is a private citizen who can do whatever she wants with her money."

Ouch...

--WS

Hamas arrests Fatah leaders in Gaza

2008-08-02T06:45:00.000-05:00

A week of bizarre tit-for-tat arrests of leaders of the opposing Palestinian movements culminated with the arrest of 15 Fatah leaders, taken from their homes in Gaza, by Hamas forces on Friday.

Those arrested yesterday included three Fatah-affiliated district governors, as well as the two highest Gaza representatives of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, the officials said.

A spokesman for Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhri, declined to confirm the number or the identity of those taken into custody, but he did confirm that the arrests were a response to Fatah's seizures of "Hamas political leaders" in the West Bank.

The two Palestinian organizations have engaged in a bitter and often violent rivalry for several years, culminating in Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza one year ago. Fatah's power in Gaza was largely erased and it was left in control only of the West Bank.

Both groups have periodically carried out arrest sweeps targeting rivals in the territories they control. Several of the men arrested by Hamas on Friday had already been seized in the past and later released.

Hamas initiated the crackdown after a July 25 explosion in Gaza killed five Hamas members and a 6-year-old girl. Hamas blamed Fatah for the deaths and responded by arresting male members of the organization. Fatah denied responsibility, and launched it's own roundup of Hamas men in the West Bank in retaliation.

In all, it is estimated that both sides have seized about 200 of the other groups members, although neither side will reveal an exact number or the identities of those they are holding.

The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-08-01T23:45:00.003-05:00

Rumor has it that the Hilton's aren't the only ones pissed off. Britney may be considering legal action for the unauthorized use of her image in the McCain "Celebrity" ad.

Speaking of that stupid ad... The McCain campaign is busy scrubbing their website for all past references to McSame as a "political celebrity" but they weren't quite quick enough for the folks at Crooks and Liars, who snagged a screen shot.

Would you like to see Wesley Clark as Obama's running mate? If so, click the link and sign the petition.

Unemployment rate climbs to 5.7% as 51,000 jobs vanished last month. So far in 2008, nearly 500,000 jobs have been lost.

Since we can't have a firing squad, put them in the general population and tell everyone why they are there A fourteen year old disabled girl is dead because everyone failed her - her parents, the rest of her family, family friends, even the social service system. Everyone let her down and as a result, she died a horrible death. May they all burn in hell.

“Well,it’s about time.” That was the words of a Polk County, IA judge when four defendants, charged with trespassing for attempting to make a citizens arrest on Karl Rove during an appearance in Des Moines last Friday, made their preliminary appearances before him yesterday. A jury trial has been set for August 20.

Another bank closure Federal regulators in Florida closed First Priority Bank today. It is the eighth bank closure this year.

Charges coming against CitiBank NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has announced charges are imminent for the alleged fraudulent marketing and sale of troubled auction-rate securities to everyday investors. Cuomo's office alleges that the nation's largest bank "has repeatedly and persistently committed fraud by material misrepresentations and omissions" in the underwriting, distribution and sale of auction rate securities, touting them as safe, cash-equivalent investments.

GM reported a staggering $15.5 billion dollar second quarter loss as car sales decline, plants close and the trucks and sport utility vehicles sitting on dealers lots lose value without moving a mile.

About that bit of political theater today...Boehner should get hammered with it back in his district. Two days ago, he strongarmed 13 republicans into changing their votes on a piece of legislation that would have granted actual relief at the pump for his constituents so it wouldn't pass, because he wanted to have the opportunity to orchestrate todays stunt. That's right, Ohio - he purposefully kept relief legislation from passing so he could stage todays installment of the theater of the absurd.

Crap like this is why we haven't set foot in a Walmart in years The company is scared shitless that a President Obama, coupled with expanded majorities in both the House and the Senate will put an end to the days that they can keep a boot on the necks of their employees and keep unions out of their stores. In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized. In the past they have met the union threat by closing departments, and even whole stores.

Rep. Kucinich introduces legislation that would bar U.S. oil companies from doing business in Iraq “Iraq needs oil revenue now more than ever as they try to rebuild their country,” Kucinich said Thursday, unveiling the Oil for Iraq Liberation Act. "The invasion of Iraq was about oil, but it didn’t result in more oil or cheaper gas," Kucinich said on the House Floor. "It resulted in war profiteering by oil companies who benefited by keeping Iraqi oil off the market."

Bonus Cartoon Friday

2008-08-01T19:36:00.003-05:00

H/T Truthdig

Quote of the Day

2008-08-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post today:

The latest bit of snarling, mean-spirited nonsense to come out of the McCain camp was the accusation, leveled by campaign manager Rick Davis, that Obama had "played the race card." He did so, apparently, by being black.

No comment necessary.

~BG

Shortsighted, stupid...and cruel

2008-08-01T15:35:00.000-05:00

Some of the best people I know are Nurses and Social Workers who deliver end of life care to Hospice patients. By their good works they allow patients to be at home, in the warm embrace of their families and friends and to meet their inevitable deaths with dignity.

I've seen the inevitable end come, in hospitals, homes and residential hospice centers. The work these actual Angels of Mercy do is largely unnoticed, except for by those who benefit as a result.

And now that work is threatened, by the "compassionate conservatism" of the bu$h presidency.

Today the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) announced that reimbursement rates to Hospice programs and providers will be slashed. The cuts are to take effect October 1st, and they will hurt the most vulnerable and least able to fight back...the terminally ill. (Approximately 80% of Hospice patients are Medicare recipients.)

In issuing this rule, the CMS under the bu$h administration is taking a shot at decency itself.

"The government's reason for its decision that would effectively cut rates -- the need to save money -- simply isn't true," noted Jonathan Keyserling, executive director of the Alliance for Care at the End of Life. "Research has shown that hospice saves the Medicare system money, is highly rated by family members of hospice patients, and enables the patient to die at home in most cases," says Keyserling. "This rule defies logic, and will have a direct, negative impact on care at the bedside."

According to a study conducted by Duke University in 2007, the amount saved by delivering end of life care in Hospice settings saves Medicare an average of $2,300 per patient, for a total savings of about $2 billion a year. Last year, the number of patients that received Hospice care exceeded 1.3 million, and that number is expected to rise as the baby-boom generation ages.

Polling routinely finds that nine out of ten Americans, if faced with a terminal illness, would want to remain in their homes and receive Hospice care. More than 80% of Hospice care is delivered in the patients home, and patient satisfaction approaches 100% as has been revealed in study after study.

Historically, Congress has rejected requests to reduce the level of hospice reimbursement, realizing the harmful impact such cuts would have on care at the bedside. "And this time is no different," says Keyserling. "Congress should intervene to stop the Administration's cut to hospice care, before the rule goes into effect."

Sentiment on Capitol Hill remains tilted in favor of Hospice, and a bicameral and bipartisan group of more than 90 members of Congress has sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt in opposition to the proposed rule. "It is in our nation's fiscal and moral interest that high-quality hospice care remains an option for all who need these unique services and support," said Keyserling.

There is one thing that is certain...nothing is sacred to these people. It is almost as if they are determined, in the waning days of this administration, to attempt the most outlandish and mean-spirited things they can dream up, just because they have a little bit of power left, and although it is waning, they are determined to use it as a cudgel to hurt someone, anyone, no matter how weak, defenseless and undeserving the people hurt.

These people can't be run out of town fast enough, and cleaning up after them will take at least a decade.

Adjournment Means What to House Republicans?

2008-08-01T14:46:00.003-05:00

The only thing more pathetic than House Democrats are House Republicans. This is the kind of thing that only a shameless idiot would do. It's August. Go home. Go on vacation. At least when you people aren't in session, you're not making things worse. Better Democrats, please. And different ones in charge.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi's refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed at 11:23 a.m., and they are busy bashing Pelosi and her fellow Democrats for leaving town for the August recess.

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. But as Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz..) was speaking, the lights went back on and the microphones were turned on shortly afterward.

But C-SPAN, which has no control over the cameras in the chamber, has stopped broadcasting the House floor, meaning no one was witnessing this except the assembled Republicans, their aides, and one Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who has now left.

Yawn. Now, go back to your district and wait for your beating in the fall.

--WS

Friday morning quick hits

2008-08-01T11:00:00.001-05:00

It doesn't matter because it isn't veto-proof, Nancy Sweet Jesus, Nancy Pelosi annoys the holy fuck out of me. Over at The Gavel they have a post crowing about the House passing the Paycheck Fairness Act, claiming that the House lets American women know our work is valued. What the fuck ever. Der Shrubbenfuhrer has promised a veto and Mitch McConnell and his gang of obstructionist assholes in the Senate won't let it go anywhere anyway, so what the fuck? It's like declaring victory because you won the coin toss at the start of the game.

It isn't just AT&T that is spying on you Slowly but certainly, the intelligence gathering apparatus of the U.S. government is being turned on the citizens the agencies are supposed to protect. That is the warning coming from the ACLU after the administration updated Executive Order 12333. Sounds par for the course for these assholes, and something else to throw on the pile for Obama to roll back come January.

The doe-eyed sycophants in the press call it a "paper gap" but we just call it what it is...a total lack of ideas or plans. The McCain campaign is not producing white papers and policy proposals, instead opting for nebulous terms and vague assurances that amount to "trust me, I was a POW" and because there is a Media Mancrush™ he isn't being called on it.

Apparently, the Wall Street Journal has merged with The Onion Today they have a 1400 word(!!!) feature article querrying the deep and searching question...is Obama too fit to be president?

Tom Toles nails it...again

2008-08-01T09:22:00.004-05:00

Bridges in Minnesota Are Still Crumbling, and Pawlenty Has Done Nothing About It

2008-08-01T09:18:00.004-05:00

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty answers to one constituency--the people who give him cash. Everyone else can just go jump off a bridge.
It’s a year today since the Minneapolis bridge collapse that killed 13 people, but don’t expect Gov. Tim Pawlenty to showcase the reconstruction.

Indeed, with the Republican National Convention in St. Paul just a month away and Pawlenty reported to be high on John McCain’s running mate list, Republicans want to drive attention away from the infrastructure disaster that spotlighted the nation’s crumbling bridges and from the criticism the governor faced for what some critics said was a slow response.

The governor’s staff reports there are no plans to hold any events near the site of the bridge collapse, about 10 miles from the convention hall. And GOP convention planners have organized hundreds of buses to ease the congestion expected when some 45,000 conventioneers, guests and media commute to the hall.

I think that number of 45,000 is completely inflated--a good number of Republicans are already planning on staying away. Coupled with the infighting from the Ron Paul supporters that is sure to embarrass them, and the growing popularity of Bob Barr's candidacy, look for reduced attendance in St. Paul. Pawlenty runs public policy in the State of Minnesota like any decent Republican--fuck the people, reward the donors, and put on a smiling face in front of the cameras. This is the future of the Republican Party--find smiling people who have no shame, no remorse, no conscience and hope to God they can skate by on their good looks while everything goes to hell around them.

Don't look for anyone to point out that the crumbling infrastructure in Minnesota continues unabated by anything the Pawlenty administration has been doing. Dead Americans in the rubble never concern these people. Bridges keep crumbling, the shit gets piled higher, and one would think the Republicans would put on a better show of trying to appear concerned. Apparently not.

--WS

The Enquirer Story Crumbles

2008-08-01T07:33:00.003-05:00

So far, still no pictures from the National Enquirer reporters who claim that John Edwards was caught visiting his supposed mistress and her child. And, oh by the way, their story keeps crumbling.
The birth certificate of a child whom a tabloid newspaper claims was fathered by former Democratic senator John Edwards of North Carolina doesn't identify the child's father.

The document, obtained through a routine records request, shows that Frances Quinn Hunter was born last Feb. 27 to Rielle Hunter, a videographer who worked on Edwards' presidential campaign last year.

But the space for the name of the father is blank, although the child was born more than two months after Hunter identified Andrew Young, Edwards' campaign finance director, as the father of her then unborn child. Young claimed paternity in a statement from his lawyer that was posted on the political blog mydd.com.

It sure would have been a gotcha moment if Edwards' name had been on that document. And while it certainly doesn't exonerate him, it doesn't do anything to bolster the claims and the smears against him, either. Like we said early on when this non-story broke, show us the documents. Show us the proof. So far, nothing. No photos. No video. No documents. Just smears and bullshit, and obsessed wingnuts coming out of the woodwork to speculate about someone's sex life because their own problems dwarf anything they can deal with.

In this day and age, politicians are always going to let you down in one way or another. John Edwards has been smeared by a third rate tabloid that has been given way to much credibility and way too much exposure. Does that mean he's innocent? No, of course not. I don't care what he did or who he did it with because Edwards doesn't go around telling people how to live their lives, he goes around telling people why we need economic justice in this country. That message is still dangerous to people who prefer the status quo and would love to see him smeared, and his message diluted and withdrawn from the public discourse. Whatever happened here is between him and his wife, and it doesn't change the fact that he's right.

Hopefully, this will end the story, and we can go back to ignoring the tabloid trash.

--WS

Top scientist kills himself as Feds close in...

2008-08-01T04:51:00.005-05:00

Updating, and pushing this story down below the fold: we are following the suicide of the man that the Federal government was preparing charges against in connection to the 2001 Anthrax attacks. The case of what happened has long been shrouded in mystery and in deception. Here's an invaluable little piece of insight from Glenn Greenwald:
During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax -- tests conducted at Ft. Detrick -- revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since -- as ABC variously claimed -- bentonite "is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program" and "only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons."

ABC News' claim -- which they said came at first from "three well-placed but separate sources," followed by "four well-placed and separate sources" -- was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It's critical to note that it isn't the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.

That means that ABC News' "four well-placed and separate sources" fed them information that was completely false -- false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where -- according to Brian Ross' report on October 28, 2001 -- these tests were conducted:

And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.

Two days earlier, Ross went on ABC News' World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and, as the lead story, breathlessly reported:
The discovery of bentonite came in an urgent series of tests conducted at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and elsewhere.

Panic, confusion, and just plain old laziness and incompetence have dogged this story from the beginning. Someone was trying to spin this story and manipulate it to calm public fears. Has it now been solved? Or is this just the beginning of a new chapter?

Continuing our post, below:

Incredible...this story broke overnight and we're just now getting more details.
A top U.S. biodefense researcher apparently committed suicide just as the Justice Department was about to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailings that traumatized the nation in 2001, according to a published report.

Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who worked for the past 18 years at the government's biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland, had been told about the impending prosecution, the Los Angeles Times reported for Friday editions. The laboratory has been at the center of the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings, which killed five people in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital in Maryland. The Times, quoting an unidentified colleague, said the scientist had taken a massive dose of a prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine.

We're going to get as much of this out as possible--this is a huge development that underscores how a failed investigation can put Americans at risk. We do not know exactly how the investigation moved from Steven Hatfill to Bruce Ivins, but the fact that it has taken nearly seven years to get to this point leaves many more questions than it does answers.
Federal investigators moved away from Hatfill -- for years the only publicly identified "person of interest" -- and ultimately concluded that Ivins was the culprit after FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III changed leadership of the investigation in late 2006.

The FBI's new top investigators -- Vincent B. Lisi and Edward W. Montooth -- instructed agents to reexamine leads or potential suspects that may have received insufficient attention. Moreover, significant progress was made in analyzing genetic properties of the anthrax powder recovered from letters addressed to two senators.

The renewed efforts led the FBI back to USAMRIID, where agents first questioned scientists in December 2001, a few weeks after the fatal mailings.

By spring of this year, FBI agents were still contacting Ivins' present and former colleagues. At USAMRIID and elsewhere, scientists acquainted with Ivins were asked to sign confidentiality agreements in order to prevent leaks of new investigative details.

Ivins, employed as a civilian at Ft. Detrick, earlier had attracted the attention of Army officials because of anthrax contaminations that Ivins failed to report for five months. In sworn oral and written statements to an Army investigator, Ivins said that he had erred by keeping the episodes secret -- from December 2001 to late April 2002. He said he had swabbed and bleached more than 20 areas that he suspected were contaminated by a sloppy lab technician.

"In retrospect, although my concern for biosafety was honest and my desire to refrain from crying 'Wolf!' . . . was sincere, I should have notified my supervisor ahead of time of my worries about a possible breach in biocontainment," Ivins told the Army. "I thought that quietly and diligently cleaning the dirty desk area would both eliminate any possible [anthrax] contamination as well as prevent unintended anxiety at the institute."

The Army chose not to discipline Ivins regarding his failure to report the contamination. Officials said that penalizing Ivins might discourage other employees from voluntarily reporting accidental spills of "hot" agents.

But Ivins' recollections should have raised serious questions about his veracity and his intentions, according to some of those familiar with the investigation.

More updates when we get them.
--WS

The Nightowl Newswrap

2008-07-31T23:45:00.003-05:00

Ron Paul supporters could spell T-R-O-U-B-L-E for McCain Especially in the west, where his supporters are pledging a fight at the convention. Although their numbers are small by eastern-states standards, in the sparsely populated western states, they could tilt the electoral map. "In Nevada, there's absolutely enough to have an effect on the election," said Chuck Muth, a leading conservative activist in a state in which early polls show McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama in a statistical tie. "I think that you will see not just Libertarians who always vote for the Libertarian candidate but conservative Republicans saying we've had it, we've had enough and they're going to go ahead and vote Libertarian."

The 'elitist' shoe is on the other foot, now and it is an exquisite Ferragamo loafer - that sells for $520 a pair - and it is on McCain's foot at every campaign stop he makes.

Blackwater is now in the private intelligence gathering business, marketing their services to foreign governments as well as Fortune 500 companies. "Blackwater started a private intelligence company, a private CIA essentially, called Total Intelligence Solutions. And the man running Total Intelligence Solutions is J. Cofer Black. He's a thirty-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also was the guy who ran the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, the government-sanctioned kidnap-and-torture program. His thirty-year CIA career, his network of contacts, his knowledge that was gained through his work in the most sensitive areas of the United States government is now on the open market for hire," explained Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

Larry Craig will get his day in court on September 10. That is the date set to hear arguments in his request to withdraw his guilty plea for soliciting sex in a mens room at the Minneapolis airport. Craig pleaded guilty, but later said that was a mistake. A Hennepin County judge refused to allow Craig to withdraw his plea last year, and now a three-judge panel of the Minnesota Court of Appeals will consider the Republican's case.

Ross Douthat is officially batshit-crazy I mean really...Barack Hitler Obama???

Of course they had a "Plan B" As you well know, the McSame campaign launched a scurrilous attack on Barack Obama, accusing him of snubbing wounded troops, even thought that was not case. Now it is coming out that the campaign had an ad ready to go if he had made the visit - that was set to accuse him of using wounded troops as political props.

A return to 12 month tours Now that the game of Three Card Monte known as the Surge™ is over, the U.S. Army is returning to 12 month deployments.

5 That is the number of Americans who lost their lives in Iraq this month. It is the lowest number of casualties that the US has recorded since the war started in March 2003.

Washington Governor turned away from bar for not having photo ID Governor Christine Gregoire, her staff, and her state patrol escorts attempted to go to a bar after spending the day at a community event - but the 61-year-old governor was turned away. She wasn't carrying her wallet, and therefore had no ID, and the 23-year-old bouncer wouldn't budge. No ID, you aren't getting past him.

Savage continues to feel the heat Maybe Savage did whack the wrong hornets nest when he said autism was a fraud. Now he has been dropped from the air in LA, the second largest radio market in the country.

With a stroke of his pen... Arnold Schwartzenegger eliminated the jobs of about 22,000 temporary workers and reduced the salaries of about 200,000 state employees to the federal minimum of $6.55 per hour. The Republican Governor says he intends to reverse those moves once lawmakers reach a budget compromise, meaning the state would rehire temporary workers and give employees their entire back pay. The governor's order also imposes a strict hiring freeze and eliminates overtime but exempts workers in health and safety fields. Schwarzenegger said he understands that the action will affect families that are already struggling financially. "I want to apologize to all the state employees for having to do this," he said. The state budget is now 31 days late as legislators remain divided over how to bridge a $15.2 billion shortfall in a $101 billion general fund budget.

It's Tippy Turtle's MO to get some hammerhead in trouble, you know An Eastern Box Turtle that roams over about 50 acres of the Rock Creek Park that bisects DC was sunning herself in a pot patch when Ken Ferebee, a National Park Service researcher, has been monitoring Turtle No. 72 for seven years dropped in on her. "I was walking in the woods, following the signal with my receiver, trying to find the turtle, and I walked into an area where some large trees had fallen down," he recalled yesterday. "So there's a big hole in the tree canopy, so there's a lot of light getting down to the ground, and there's a lot of vegetation growing there. But as I'm walking, I could see a patch of bare soil that didn't look quite right. And when I got closer, I could tell it had been cleared and some plants had been planted. They looked like they'd been grown somewhere else and then actually replanted in the park. I could tell they were marijuana plants," said Ferebee, 46. "I've seen pictures of the leaves before. I've actually seen marijuana plants before, too. . . . And I was a little surprised to see them right there. They've been found in the park before, but it's been a long time. I called the police to come see, because I knew they'd be interested in that." The park police staked out the pot patch and waited. When the undercover gardener, a college student from Chevy Chase, MD returned to tend his crop, he was arrested for possession with intent to distrubute.

Montgomery McFate, Sock Puppet and Agent of Misfortune

2008-07-31T20:29:00.007-05:00

After seeing multiple "hits" on our site from people looking specifically for information on one "Montgomery McFate," I decided to log in tonight and come up with some more information on her. Turns out, others have been doing that very same thing.
This should confirm many allegations that have been circulating concerning the role of Montgomery McFate as a spy, who in part traded on her credentials as an anthropologist. It should serve, on the other hand, as a wake-up call to those anthropologists who, perhaps a little young and naive, are not quite aware of what they are dealing with when dealing with McFate, who has made a career as a spy and recently puts on sockpuppet performances as her own best friend on blogs, calling herself “Dee,” the former “Pentagon Diva” with her anonymous blog that was pulled down as soon as news of the identity of the author was circulated more widely.

All I can say to that is, wow.

Almost exactly like our "pal", the "unknown soldier," Pentagon Diva's blog is gone, baby gone. Here's what's left, and I'm getting a screen shot for posterity:

You have to acknowledge the question though--was this really her? I don't know. But if you want to talk about a thickening plot, this has everything you're looking for if it's true.

The blog in question was called, childishly enough, "I luv a man in a uniform" and others noticed it had disappeared as well.

One of the things that I have a hard time believing is that the United States Institute of Peace is going to keep her profile up much longer as well:
A cultural anthropologist by training, Montgomery McFate’s work emphasizes the importance of sociocultural knowledge in the formation of national security priorities. Before joining the Joint Advanced Warfighting Program at the Institute for Defense Analyses, she served as an American Academy for the Advancement of Science fellow at the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR). She was awarded a Distinguished Public Service Award by the Secretary of the Navy for her work at ONR. McFate also worked at RAND as a social scientist, at the law firm of Baker and McKenzie in San Francisco as a litigation associate, and as a consultant to various government agencies.

She has published in the Journal of Conflict Studies, Military Review, and Joint Forces Quarterly, and has held grants from the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and Smith-Richardson Foundation, among others. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale University.

Publications:

"Does Culture Matter? The Military Utility of Cultural Knowledge," Joint Forces Quarterly (No . 38, 2005).
"Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship," Military Review (March/April, 2005).

Would you want to be associated with someone like this? That's up to that organization to decide.

Given her activities, does that cast any doubt on the veracity of her work? Perhaps. But if I were someone at the USIP, and I knew there was a double-dealing person who masqueraded as the "Pentagon Diva" and wrote mash notes on her blog to people like David Kilcullen, well, I'd be a little fucking nervous about who she was really working for and what she was up to. One of the posts she wrote on her now-deleted blog had a picture of Kilcullen getting smooched by some women. Oh, how much poorer are we that we have lost it for an eternity.

The reason why I think this matters is that when people are spying on others, their ethical reasons for doing so should be examined. Is it to make money? Is it to keep the country safe? Is it to gain an unfair advantage?

In the case of McFate's mother-in-law, as Mother Jones expertly explained, it was the infiltration of Mary McFate Sapone into gun control organizations on behalf of the National Rifle Association that caught the attention of many people who, while not in favor of gun control per se, nor the efforts of any of the organizations on either side of the divide, were simply outraged that this kind of thing was done.

With regards to Montgomery McFate, we see her as a professional researcher and writer, as a reputed sockpuppet, as purportedly the now-defunct blogger "Pentagon Diva," and someone associated with the USIP, as well as other entities and organizations. We know she applied anthropology to the Iraq insurgency, in a controversial manner, and had a hand in some of the work done on behalf of the US Army:
The concept for the current Human terrain System was suggested by Montgomery McFate Ph.D., J.D., and Andrea Jackson as described in their article, "an Organizational Solution for DoD's Cultural Knowledge Needs," Military Review (July-august 2005): 1821. Most of the practical work to implement the concept under the title Human terrain System was done by Cpt Don Smith, U.S. Army reserve, of the Foreign Military Studies Office, between July 2005 and August 2006. Under this concept, "human terrain" can be defined as the human population and society in the operational environment (area of operations) as defined and characterized by sociocultural, anthropologic, and ethnographic data and other non-geophysical information about that human population and society. Human terrain information is open-source derived, unclassified, referenced (geospatially, relationally, and temporally) information. It includes the situational roles, goals, relationships, and rules of behavior of an operationally relevant group or individual.

You can check out McFate's work here. I don't find anything original in what she's saying--her work merely extends the understanding gained, rather too late, during the Vietnam War that basically said that if you don't fucking understand why the enemy is fighting you, you'll never get him to stop fighting you. Her work is full of obvious conclusions about how important it is to understand the enemy. In a world where the military all but flushed the lessons learned from the Vietnam War down the collective mental toilet, the regurgitation of these theories by an academic is something easy and cleanly broken from the past to grab onto. She has no taint of having been a company commander in the shit, you see. She's not a David Hackworth-type, and gristled veteran who could explain (and did, before his untimely demise) why the US Army was unable to effectively fight a counterinsurgency. Had the military institutionalized and dealt with the lessons learned from Vietnam in a proper academic way--that is, taught it, retained experts on it, and rewarded the men who were most knowledgeable about it rather than stigmatize them (as it did with Hackworth), no one would care to read anything by McFate. Human terrain mapping is common sense, and the practitioners of "understanding the enemy" should have already been doing that. McFate's arrival with these ideas in the midst of the Iraq war merely exposed the fact that quite a few pseudo-smart people weren't doing their job, you see. So she became a star. A star that has now fallen?

Given all of that, why would anyone trust this person? Who is she really working for? How could anyone claim she has any credibility at this point? Or academic standing, for that matter?

Oops!

2008-07-31T14:00:00.006-05:00

Somebody didn't think things through very well. Darn those unintended consequences, anyway!

Turns out that McCain pissed off some deep-pocketed donors with his "celebrity" ad...The Hilton family.

The father and grandfather of Paris Hilton have donated tens of thousands of dollars to both the campaign and the RNC, and her grandfather, William Barron Hilton (co-chair of the Hilton Hotel empire), is furious. As in, on a scale of one to ten, he's at eleven. Her father Rick Hilton, who has also kicked in a few thousand bucks to the McCain effort is none too happy, either.

Every time Paris Hilton is in the news, it damages the brand, and that likely steams another large donor - The Blackstone Group - which is a part-owner of the hotel chain. Blackstone's chairman, Peter G. Peterson has given over $30,000 to the McCain campaign this year.

Guess who else had his secretary put through a call to the campaign this morning?

UPDATE I: 532PM / Warren
Yes, we know there's a picture of sweet, adorable Paris in the side-bar--we're not reporting or blogging about her latest flashing incident. We're talking about the tens of thousands of dollars her family has given to Republicans over the years--decades--and we're laughing our asses off at how mad the Hilton family and their associates are at the McCain campaign. This is not twittery--its schaddenfreud!

UPDATE II: 636PM / Warren
Huckleberry Graham and Lyin' Joe Lieberman defend the Paris Hilton ad. Graham tries to make the case that the fame enjoyed by Spears, Hilton and Obama is "fame without portfolio." If that's not the most damning indictment of a man who went through five planes, set an aircraft carrier on fire, graduated near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, traded in one wife for another and helped nobody but lobbyists throughout his entire Congressional career, I don't know what is. The stupid burns like nothing else...

~BG

The Endless Nightmare Begins

2008-07-31T13:35:00.006-05:00

Ted Stevens, as is his right, pleads "not guilty."
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has pleaded not guilty to charges he lied about accepting more than a quarter of a million dollars worth of gifts from a powerful oilfield contractor.

In the midst of his re-election bid, lawyers for the Senate's longest-serving Republican maintained Stevens' innocence at his afternoon arraignment in federal court in Washington.

Stevens, wearing a cream colored suit, did not speak when U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan asked for his plea. Stevens' attorney, Brendan Sullivan, answered for him.

It is before Labor Day, so he's not guilty of committing a serious fashion faux pas.

This is like handing out presents to people who really don't deserve them. They don't raid your house and then indict you a year later if they haven't gone back and done everything possible to ensure they can fry your ass. There's nothing hasty about this--they have been methodical and exacting in this investigation, and that's what should realing all of us a massive gift--Republican culture of corruption, greed, and hubris anyone? Despite pleas that he resign, that he go away, that he take his money and go hide somewhere in Alaska, he's going to stay right here and fight like a maniac and go down screaming in flames. They dly concern Stevens. There was nothing knee-jerk about it. They just lined up the jerks and took them down in order.

--WS

Another ridiculous claim of the imperial idiot shot down by the courts

2008-07-31T13:05:00.003-05:00

Miers must testify, and Bolton must turn over the requested documents. That was the decision of U.S. District Judge John Bates (appointed by this president) earlier today. An appeal by the administration is expected.

Congressional Democrats called the ruling a ringing endorsement of the principle that nobody is above the law. They swiftly announced that the Bush officials who have defied their subpoenas, including Bush's former top adviser Karl Rove, must appear as part of a probe of whether the White House directed the firings of nine federal prosecutors. Democrats announced plans to open hearings at the height of election season.

In his ruling Judge Bates found that there is no legal basis for Bush's argument.

"Harriet Miers is not immune from compelled congressional process; she is legally required to testify pursuant to a duly issued congressional subpoena," Bates wrote. He said that both Bolten and Miers must give Congress all nonprivileged documents related to the firings.

The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration's efforts to bolster the power of the executive branch at the expense of the legislative branch. Disputes over congressional subpoenas are normally resolved through political compromise, not through the court system. Had Bush prevailed, it would have dramatically weakened congressional authority in oversight investigations.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called it "very good news for anyone who believes in the Constitution of the United States and the separation of powers, and checks and balances" and said the ruling applies as well to Rove, who like Miers and Bolten has been cited by the Judiciary Committee for contempt.

"This decision should send a clear signal to the Bush administration that it must cooperate fully with Congress and that former administration officials Harriet Miers and Karl Rove must testify before Congress," Pelosi said.

Tony Fratto, White House spokeshole, said that the decision was being reviewed and declined further comment.

The 93 page ruling was scathing in it's rejection of the arguments offered by the bu$h administration, and pointed out that the administration could not point to a single instance in case law to support their ridiculous assertions.

We are having e-ssues

2008-07-31T11:46:00.003-05:00

Haloscan. Blogger. Gmail.

Fuck it. I am doing something else before I start throwing equipment out the window. Back later when the tech wizards at Google get this stuff working right. It isn't like I don't have other stuff to do...

~BG

McCain Will Have to Go With Pity Before Too Long

2008-07-31T09:56:00.005-05:00

Isn't it time for McCain to fire the people he just put in place? The Wall Street Journal tries to pigeonhole the candidates and the respective "roles" that they are playing. The McCain Media Mancrush isn't completely over yet:
Sen. McCain appears to play up the idea that he is running behind.

"I'm the underdog in this campaign. I'm the underdog. Have no doubt about it," he told supporters at a Nevada fund-raiser on Tuesday on Lake Tahoe. "That's a place I enjoy because that invigorates me, it makes me campaign harder, it energizes our supporters and our friends."

Sen. McCain enjoys the underdog role, and arguably is at his strongest when he's behind. He ran as the underdog in the GOP primary almost until the end.

Analysts said the danger to Sen. McCain's approach, such as with his new ad, is it can be seen as whining about Sen. Obama's successes rather than promoting Sen. McCain's own. And it remains unclear if it will stoke voter concerns about Sen. Obama or reinforce his front-runner status.

As his attacks falter, and they will because there's no substance to anything he's doing, McCain is probably going to have to use pity before too long. As in, take pity on my disasterous campaign and help me finish with a respectable number of electoral votes this fall.

Hat in hand, McCain will have no coattails this Fall, and may face the worst beating of any candidate since Mondale. That's not hyperbole--that's a recognition of the fact that Americans typically don't vote for underdogs or show anyone pity or mercy. They want a President, not a charity case.

--WS

How Does a Software Problem Equate to a Travel Disaster?

2008-07-31T09:37:00.005-05:00

How vulnerable is the travel infrastructure in this country?
A software glitch that snarled air traffic and caused baggage pileups at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport stretched into Thursday, with more flight cancellations expected.

American Airlines planned to cancel at least five flights scheduled to depart from Kennedy and said others could be delayed, a day after the malfunction led to headaches and angry passengers.

Technicians had diagnosed the problem by Wednesday evening. However, the system was still being tested early Thursday and was not yet up and running again, said airline spokeswoman Andrea Huguely. She said she couldn't estimate when the system would be working again or how many passengers had been affected.

The glitch on Wednesday led to the delay of 48 flights and the cancellation of five more. Thousands of customers had to leave their luggage behind and hope it would be delivered later.

I realize this is probably a lowest bidder situation and all, but one thing I've noticed is that companies are relying on some very old software. When we recently bought a couch at a furniture chain we like, I noticed that the terminal and software used was a kind of antique, running something common for the mid-1990s. When I had a vehicle worked on, the repair shop had some very old looking proprietary software and the ever-present dot-matrix printer stitching away. Not everyone upgrades relentlessly. Maybe it's me, but I think there's a lot of junk out there still running, and in the Vista world, how much longer can someone keep operating that old stuff?

--WS

Another Sign of the Apocalypse

2008-07-31T09:33:00.003-05:00

The greatest saga and drama being played out in America today has nothing to do with politics:

Green Bay Packers president Mark Murphy traveled to Mississippi to meet with quarterback Brett Favre and his agent James “Bus” Cook on Wednesday, in an apparent attempt to talk Favre out of reporting to camp later this week.

His offer? Favre can have $20 million not to play this year, according to a report.

All of America waits with bated breath to hear the answer...

--WS

Thursday morning quick hits

2008-07-31T09:15:00.001-05:00

Pilot dies in F-15 crash One pilot was killed and another was injured when an F-15D Eagle crashed during a training exercise in Nevada. The names of the pilots have not been released, but they were both assigned to the 65th Aggressor Squadron at Nellis, AFB about 10 miles north of Las Vegas. The 65th Aggressor Squadron simulates enemy forces in air combat Red Flag training exercises regularly held by the base, officials said.

Someone please explain this to me How can it be that the entire country is being stuck up at the pump - yet oil companies are making more money than ever? Today Exxon-Mobile reported that second-quarter profits rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion. It was the highest-ever profit by an American company - which was set by Exxon last quarter. How's about we talk about this incomprehensible apostasy before we talk about raping the oceans? Whadya say?

This is interesting The mystery of a small hand-held mechanical brass device recovered a hundred years ago from a ship wreck has been solved. It is an intricate hand-held mechanical "computer" that was used to set the dates for the ancient Olympics.

Experience is a poor predictor of presidential success Presidents who have a perfect resume before assuming the job are frequently piss-poor presidents (Nixon and Bush I - just in my lifetime) usually because they have lousy judgment.

Here is a new economic indicator As the economy stagnates, women are heading to fertility clinics to donate their eggs. The average donation pays a few thousand dollars, but depending on the part of the country and the womans education level, the donations can net tens of thousands of dollars. "There's no reason to think that suddenly there's 30 percent more people who have suddenly had this inner feeling to help out people. And what's changed? It’s the economy," said one fertility specialist. Fertility centers have also a surge in repeat donors and surrogates. Warren would like to add that there's never, ever been a shortage of creepy dudes who want to donate sperm in order to make some cash. In good times or in bad times, that never changes. The only thing in America that is recession proof is the creepy dude sperm donation sector of our economy. It's always booming.

Fearmongering and the Wingnut Obsession With TV Shows

2008-07-31T07:05:00.003-05:00

Let's start the morning off with something so deranged and full of the fantastic that it reads like, well, every other doomsday scenario plot line ever conceived. Playing the part of the rugged, crusty, cynical and morally supreme scientist who warns the government--but, dammit! the government won't listen because it's full of liberals!--is Dr. William Graham.
The United States “would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country.” except that we would have 10 times as many people with ten times fewer resources, he said.

“Most of the things we depend upon would be gone, and we would literally be depending on our own assets and those we could reach by walking to them,” Graham said.

America would begin to resemble the 2002 TV series, “Jeremiah,” which depicts a world bereft of law, infrastructure, and memory.

In the TV series, an unspecified virus wipes out the entire adult population of the planet. In an EMP attack, the casualties would be caused by our almost total dependence on technology for everything from food and water, to hospital care.

Within a week or two of the attack, people would start dying, Graham says.

“People in hospitals would be dying faster than that, because they depend on power to stay alive. But then it would go to water, food, civil authority, emergency services. And we would end up with a country with many, many people not surviving the event.”

You don't say...

Asked just how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch the EMP attack it appears to be preparing, Graham gave a chilling reply.

“You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication.

“I’d have to say that 70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack,” he said.

America would be reduced to a core of around 30 million people — about the number that existed in the decades after America’s independence from Great Britain.

The modern electronic economy would shut down, and America would most likely revert to “an earlier economy based on barter,” the EMP commission’s report on Critical National Infrastructure concluded earlier this year.

Barter system? Jeremiah? The 1880s? My, goodness. The wingnut fantasy of the future world they wish to create is this--no one is allowed to rule but the wingnuts and the swimsuit models, and the swimsuit models have to barter sex with the wingnuts for the food that the wingnut slaves--you and me--have to grow for them. Now that's a TV show no one would watch.
In May 2007, then Undersecretary of State John Rood told Congress that the U.S. intelligence community estimates that Iran could develop an ICBM capable of hitting the continental United States by 2015.

But Iran could put a Scud missile on board a cargo ship and launch from the commercial sea lanes off America’s coasts well before then.

The only thing Iran is lacking for an effective EMP attack is a nuclear warhead, and no one knows with any certainty when that will occur. The latest U.S. intelligence estimate states that Iran could acquire the fissile material for a nuclear weapon as early as 2009, or as late as 2015, or possibly later.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld first detailed the “Scud-in-a-bucket” threat during a briefing in Huntsville, Ala., on Aug. 18, 2004.

Never mind the fact that, during the last test of missiles, Iran seemed more like a pretender than a player, but why rain on the fearmongering parade? Never mind the fact that America stood against a far deadlier enemy for decades and won without shredding the Constitution (President Reagan had a guy or two that tried, but half-assing your way through life never gets you anywhere).

The simple fact is this--these weapons have been around for a very long time, and people with the motive, the reason, the capability, and the inclination to use them against us have had them for as long as these weapons have been around. We are peeing down our legs in fear over nearly-dead mullahs and cash-poor aging revolutionaries who can't control much past a pretty good intelligence gathering network and a secret police apparatus that can't quite tamp down dissent throughout Iran as they would like. They are watching the world oil market run away from them and their crumbling oil producing infrastructure. Their only hope of having any hold on their own destiny is to pray that a handful of terrified American politicians will take them more seriously than the rest of the world does and turn them into the next Powerful, Menacing, Sworn Enemy of American Liberty. When Iran is posturing, the wingnuts take two conflicting positions: they paint Iran as a massive threat, but they downplay Iran's capability to withstand a sustained attack from Israel and the US. Which is it then? Are they a threat, or are they a joke?

I suspect that if someone had just laughed at the Iranians, none of this would be happening right now.

--WS