This isn't about a reaction against a middle eastern company controlling America's most important ports.

This is about a foreign nation with ties to bin Laden controlling America's most important ports.

Bush blew it when he compared a British company and the UAE company as apples to apples, and said any rejection of the deal seemed to be due to anti-arab feelings.

One is a company based in Great Britain (or as Bush calls the nation: Great British) the other is a company owned by the UAE. That is apples and oranges my friends. The policy could be "no foreign government should control such strategic assets on American soil." If the British royal family wanted to own the port - say "no." Seems reasonable. But Bush has painted it with an anti-arab brush, and the world may well see it that way.

In the meantime we are being reminded of some interesting UAE facts: UAE royal family met with Bin Laden, saved him from CIA hit!

Here is the transcript from the 9-11 hearings, as requested by a commenter: http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing8/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-03-24.htm

MR. FIELDING: Yeah. Well, I would appreciate that on behalf of the Commission if you could do that because it seemed that this -- when the intelligence was so good, and that by the time the camp was dismantled days and days had passed. So I would appreciate --

MR. TENET: There's also a question, I believe, as to whether bin Ladin was inside or outside the camp --

MR. FIELDING: Of course.

MR. TENET: -- it was a complicating issue in this whole thing -- and whether he was there or not. So there's a second complicating factor here. The third complicating factor here is, you might have wiped out half the royal family in the UAE in the process, which I'm sure entered into everybody's calculation in all this.

I wonder if anyone has told Senator Hatch that the country soon to buy control of our ports has more connect to bin Laden then Saddam ever did.

Meanwhile this whole issue is yet another reminder to the American people, and the world, that the Bush administration is run by buisness interests and Bush doesn't even know what is going on.

Bush didn't know about ports deal

FEB. 22 10:34 A.M. ET President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

oh and then there is this:

Administration Failed To Conduct Legally Required Investigation Before Approving UAE Port Deal

- rob 4:05 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Sorry history has been reclassified

U.S. Reclassifies Many Documents in Secret Review

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 Â? In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

Reclassified The restoration of classified status to more than 55,000 previously declassified pages began in 1999, when the Central Intelligence Agency and five other agencies objected to what they saw as a hasty release of sensitive information after a 1995 declassification order signed by President Bill Clinton. It accelerated after the Bush administration took office and especially after the 2001 terrorist attacks, according to archives records.

My paranoid take on this is that the reason they want these documents classified is that many may reveal failures. Failures of intelligence, failures of the executive branch, and failures of the defense department.

If proof that the power of the government can sometimes be used to ill effect isclassifiedd requests for increased powers will more easily be approved. "we've only done good with the power that we have."

It is a step towards the eventual doctrine of "Presidential Infallibility," in which President for Life George Bush can do no wrong and is never at fault, and to make such as statement is treasonous and blasphemous.

- rob 3:53 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Meanwhile in one week many police officers in New Orleans may become homeless.

Fema's first response: "it's the police officers fault"

Actual reason: Fema messed up again.

Police concerned that officers on cruise ships may not have housing after cruise ship leaves

NOPD Chief Warren Riley and members of the Police Foundation and police union expressed concerns that FEMA may not be able to deliver on its commitment to house all of the first responders currently residing on cruise ships.

“FEMA said some things that haven’t come about,” said Riley. “I don’t really want to point fingers, but we’re at crunch time right now, so we need to know what they say is really going to happen.”

“Here’s what we know,” said PANO Chief David Benelli. “These two ships are leaving March 1st. Here’s what we don’t know; will all police officers and firefighters have a place to live?”

For up to date and insightful information about what is (and unfortunately not) happening in New Orleans read First Draft's excellent and timely Katrina blog entries.

- rob 3:40 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Meanwhile the slow movement towards Iraq being replaced by three states continues

Aljazeera.Net - Blast damages Iraq Shia shrine

A large explosion has heavily damaged the golden dome of one of Iraq's most famous Shia religious shrines, sending protesters pouring into the streets.

The explosion at the Golden Mosque in the northern city of Samarra was the third major attack against Shia targets in Iraq in three days.
...
The shrine contains the tombs of two revered Shia imams, both descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

Jalal Talabani, the president and an ethnic Kurd, accused the attackers of trying to derail negotiations on a national unity coalition: "We must ... work together against ... the danger of civil war," he said in a televised address to the nation.
...
A police officer, who declined to give his name, said armed men, with at least one wearing a uniform, broke inside the shrine before sunrise and seized the five policemen responsible for guarding the site.
...
A Sunni cleric was killed, police said, at one of 17 Sunni mosques in Baghdad fired on by unknown gunmen.

One mosque was damaged by fire, though most damage appeared minor, Reuters reports.

Another report by AFP, quoting a security official, says six Sunnis were killed and 27 Sunni mosques were attacked in Baghdad on Wednesday in the wake of the shrine bombing.

- rob 3:27 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Senator Orrin Hatch didn't get the memo that occasionally the press follows up on lying politicians. Hatch says "this is a shocking change of the protocol the press has had with the press since 2001."

Hatch puts spin on 'brainless' comment

The assertion was striking not so much for its audacious tone, but because it contradicted the findings of multiple intelligence reviews, including the 9-11 Commission's report and a review by the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which Hatch sits.
...
Appearing before a group of Iron County, Utah, business leaders Saturday, Hatch said: "And, more importantly, we've stopped a mass murderer in Saddam Hussein. Nobody denies that he was supporting al-Qaida," he said, according to The Spectrum newspaper in St. George. "Well, I shouldn't say nobody. Nobody with brains."
...
On Tuesday, Hatch said he may have misspoken at the event, and he was speaking of conditions in post-Hussein Iraq and the terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"Saddam clearly had a long history of supporting terrorists, but I was not talking about any formal link between Saddam and al-Qaida before the war," Hatch said in a statement. "Instead, I pointed out that the current insurgency in Iraq includes al-Qaida, under the leadership of al-Zarqawi, along with former elements of Saddam's regime."

Wow, that's some sorry spin. Senator Hatch's defense of the Iraqi war is that now, thanks to the Iraqi war al Qaida exerts a lot of influence in the area.

Well done sir.

- rob 2:58 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Wow - I really need to update Six Degress of Abramoff (though I won't)

Bush is whoring out the White House (and we thought over nights in the Lincoln bedroom was bad)

Ex-Malaysia PM: Abramoff Was Paid $1.2M

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said disgraced U.S. lobbyist Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to organize a meeting between him and President Bush in 2002, but denied the money came from the Malaysian government.

Mahathir told reporters late Monday he was aware the payment was made to Abramoff, but he didn't know who made it.
...
Mahathir said that at the time he had been persuaded by the Heritage Foundation in Washington to meet with Bush because the conservative think tank believed he could help "influence (Bush) in some way regarding U.S. policies."

The Heritage Foundation, the think tank that'd done thunked up a lot of the Bush Administration's policies, isn't about voicing their principles through policy studies, know its just about money fairly often, like much of what the GOP has become.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

as Tom Edsall reported on April 15, 2005, "Think Tank's Ideas Shifted As Malaysia Ties Grew: Business Interests Overlapped Policy." That's the polite way of saying they were on the take. Heritage used to be sharply critical of the Malaysian regime, and then turned on a dime in the summer of 2001:

Heritage's new, pro-Malaysian outlook emerged at the same time a Hong Kong consulting firm co-founded by Edwin J. Feulner, Heritage's president, began representing Malaysian business interests. The for-profit firm, called Belle Haven Consultants, retains Feulner's wife, Linda Feulner, as a "senior adviser." And Belle Haven's chief operating officer, Ken Sheffer, is the former head of Heritage's Asia office and is still on Heritage's payroll as a $75,000-a-year consultant.

Yes, the Heritage Foundation, the place where many of the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq came from. Yes, politics trumpted competence in staffing the CPA - and we and Iraq are still suffering from their failures.

Kos has a great post linking at all together in excellent detail: Heritage, Abramoff, Rove, the Malaysian PM, and Bush.

- rob 6:06 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

I probably wouldn't have many political opinions in common with these guys. But we do have at least a couple things in common:

• The understanding that Rev. Phelps is an asshole
• The understanding that a funeral of one of our soldiers who died defending our nation (that is what the soldier's role and sacrifice was for - the fact that Bush abused that role and put the soldier in harm's way for a war that wasn't about defending our nation is a different point) is no place for disrespectful protest.

So here's to the biker heroes!

Army Times - Bikers drown out funeral protesters

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Wearing leather chaps and vests covered in military patches, a band of motorcyclists rolls from one soldier’s funeral to another in hopes their respectful cheers and revving engines will drown out the insults of protesters.

The motorcycle club members calling themselves Patriot Guard Riders are trying to shield mourners from cruel jeers by adherents of a tiny fundamentalist church who picket military funerals to reflect their belief that U.S. combat deaths are a sign God is punishing the United States for harboring homosexuals. Some protesters’ signs said, “Thank God for IEDs,” the improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs, that kill many U.S. soldiers.
...
Across the nation, Patriot Guard Riders number more than 5,000. They show up at soldiers’ funerals to chant patriotic slogans and wave red, white and blue flags in hopes of overshadowing backers of a Kansas clergyman named the Rev. Fred Phelps.

- rob 5:41 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

The Age of Irony will never end

Guantanamo actors held at airport

The actors who star in movie The Road to Guantanamo were questioned by police at Luton airport under anti-terrorism legislation, it has emerged.

The men, who play British inmates at the detention camp, were returning from the Berlin Film Festival where the movie won a Silver Bear award.

One of the actors, Rizwan Ahmed, said a police officer asked him if he intended to make any more "political" films.

- rob 5:34 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

9/11 didn't change everything - cronyism still trumps all

Bush: Arab Co. Port Deal Should Proceed

"After careful review by our government, I believe the transaction ought to go forward," Bush told reporters who had traveled with him on Air Force One to Washington. "I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company.

Hmmm... maybe the standard was that Great Britain was not:

• one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
• the key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
• a country whose banking system was where money was transferred to the 9/11 hijackers
• a country that was not cooperating in efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden's bank accounts.

Data from the Think Progress post: Administration Outsources Operations Of Six U.S. Ports To The United Arab Emirates

Another Think Progress post has this: UAE Would Also Control Shipments of Military Equipment For The U.S. Army

A major part of the story, however, has been mostly overlooked. The company, Dubai Ports World, would also control the movement of military equipment on behalf of the U.S. Army through two other ports. From today’s edition of the British paper Lloyd’s List:

[P&O] has just renewed a contract with the United States Surface Deployment and Distribution Command to provide stevedoring [loading and unloading] of military equipment at the Texan ports of Beaumont and Corpus Christi through 2010.

According to the journal Army Logistician “Almost 40 percent of the Army cargo deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom flows through these two ports.”

So why is Bush threatening to use his very first veto to block any law passed to stop this deal going through?

Because cronies come first, national security second.

Dubai company set to run U.S. ports has ties to administration

WASHINGTON - The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.

One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.

Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.

The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and who was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.
The ties raised more concerns about the decision to give port control to a company owned by a nation linked to the Sept. 11 hijackers.

But Bush assures us that this sale has been carefully vetted by every federal government agency involved (they didn't bother asking the states because state's rights is just a campaign slogan no one in the administration really believes the states have or should have any power), including the Department of Defense.

In the corner Rumsfeld was heard going: "huh?"

BREAKING: Rumsfeld and Pace Not Consulted On Transfer Of Port Operations To UAE

In a press briefing today, Secretary Rumsfeld revealed that he was not consulted about the decision to transfer operations of six key U.S. ports to the United Arab Emirates, a country with troubling ties to international terrorism.

QUESTION: Are you confident that any problems with security — from what you know, are you confident that any problems with security would not be greater with a UAE company running this than an American company?

RUMSFELD: I am reluctant to make judgments based on the minimal amount of information I have because I just heard about this over the weekend.

That's reassuring I heard about this deal before Rummy did, despite the Defense Department having carefully vetted the deal.

- rob 5:28 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

To spite your face

RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use
February 15, 2006

As part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright industry associations submitted a filing that included this gem as part of their argument that space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are talking about making copies of your own CDs:

"Nor does the fact that permission to make a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."

For those who may not remember, here's what Don Verrilli said to the Supreme Court last year:

"The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."

If I understand what the RIAA is saying, "perfectly lawful" means "lawful until we change our mind."

Change is a frightening thing. Change means you will need to actually do work instead of just watch the money role in. But guess what, change generally means more business.

Movie studios sued Sony because they were sure that VCRs and the ability to tape shows would be bad for business and didn't constitute fair use, in 1984 the Supreme Court disagreed. And because of that decision movie studios made billions of dollars off of video stores. If they had won, an entire avenue of revenue would have been lost to them. But VCRs meant change and they were scared of change.

Big businesses are dinosaurs, content to just chew the leaves off the tops of the trees in front of them, and when they see the competition of scurrying little mammals they didn't know how to compete, so they became extinct or evolved into birds... or, wow this allusion sucks.... Let's just pretend this little paragraph didn't happen okay? Let's just keep it between you and me - we can keep things private on the internet, right?

Big business by its nature is incapable of moving quickly, big business by its nature can not compete on an even playing field. That is why big businesses prefer to spend money on lobbyists and lawyers instead of on R&D; they need to make the playing field uneven.

So MP3's and ripping of CDs are scary. The big companies are scared they may have to adjust. Rather than adjust they'd rather sue. In fact they'd like to remake copyright law and say that fair use is a revocable contract between the publisher and the customer. Your CD is on loan to you, playing your favorite tune is tanamount to signing a contract, and better check out the sub-clause about the bass and treble levels. Back in the days of napster a study found that napster users actually bought more CDs then before. Back in the day record publishers hated the idea of people taping songs for friends, but you know what, a friend heard the songs on the tape and said "wow that's great, let me buy that record." CDs are just shiney rounder tapes. Record companies were so frightened by internet downloads of songs that it took Steve Job's jedi mind tricks to get them to agree to the iTunes music store. Well that store is close to reaching the 1 billion songs purchased landmark.

And how do the records companies respond to the increased revenue, by declaring people can't rip their songs and put them on their iPod. Do these companies think? Let see, if people can't rip the CDs and put them on their MP3 player, they don't buy an MP3 player, and if they don't have an MP3 player online purchases plummet to pretty much nothing. So a revenue stream that was almost pure profit (no packaging or distribution costs) is ended and the consumers are left feeling attacked. Good idea guys! And hey if it doesn't work out you know the Bush administration has some key policy positions open.

This obsession with piracy is more then just self destructive it is dangerous to how copyright laws have worked for hundreds of years in America. Piracy is real, and I think it is a good idea to arrest folks that copy DVDs to sell on the streets of the city, but when you hear companies quote billions lost due to piracy they are counting each pirated item as if it would have been a sale. It wouldn't have been, by far if people had to pay for the items they stole they would not purchase the item. The billions they quote is just millions, and if you factor in purchases that actually occurred due to piracy (spurred interest in a musical group, or good old fashioned guilt) one has to wonder what the effect really is.

But media publishers would rather remove Fair Use from the law books. No potential penny must be lost not matter how many they lose in the process.

Here is why Fair Use is important (from Fair Use and Digital Rights Management)

Fair use serves a crucial role in limiting the reach of what would otherwise be an intolerably expansive grant of rights to copyright owners. Were it not for the fair use doctrine, each of the following activities would be infringing:

• whistling a tune while walking down the street (public performance)
• cutting out a New Yorker cartoon and posting it on your office door (public display)
• photocopying a newspaper article for your files (reproduction)
• quoting a line from The Simpsons in an email to a coworker (reproduction)
• reverse engineering of computer code (reproduction)
• "time-shifting" a radio or television program (reproduction)
• playing an excerpt of Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" in a copyright law course (public performance)
• quoting from a novel in a review (reproduction)

Yes, it is true though few people know it, The Library of Alexandria was burned down because there was some guy in the basement copying some texts. [no really, its true, trust me like you'd trust the President].

Will Libraries Be Locked Out by DRM?

Digital Rights Management (DRM) controls are placed on most digital books. Librarians are concerned that such DRM may make it difficult, if forecasts in digital vs. hard copy publications come to pass, for libraries to continue to provides citizens the resources they do today.
...
And anyone who's seen how troublesome, difficult, impossible (?) it is to legally use DRM-protected items today (i.e., the DRM is buggy and doesn't always work as it should), might wonder if 20-year old DRM-protected digital books would easily be readable? Or would we have books we cannot unlock that are then essentially useless?

Those who are doomed to repeat history probably didn't learn from history because the history books were all on Copy protected CDRoms that no computer in the future knew how to read.

- rob 8:05 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

In N.C., GOP Requests Church Directories

The North Carolina Republican Party asked its members this week to send their church directories to the party, drawing furious protests from local and national religious leaders.
...
Chris Mears, the state party's political director, made the request in a Feb. 15 memo titled "The pew and the ballot box" that was sent by e-mail to "Registered Republicans in North Carolina."

Mears said the "Republican National Committee has completed a study on grass-roots activity that reveals that people who regularly attend church usually vote Republican when they vote."

"In light of this study's findings, it is imperative that we register, educate and get these potential voters from the pew to the ballot box. To do this we must know who these people are," the memo continued.

Don't buy this cover story. They actually want the church directories of all the people that go to Unitarian, United Church of Christ, and other liberal churches so they can update their list of who to phone tap.

- rob 6:18 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Because being so close to the nation's capital, and being home to the NRC, NIH, Bethesda Naval Medical, and other government installations Montgomery County's Homeland Security Department has to be extra vigilant.

Policing Porn Is Not Part of Job Description

Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.
...
After the two men made their announcement, one of them challenged an Internet user's choice of viewing material and asked him to step outside, according to a witness. A librarian intervened, and the two men went into the library's work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men.

They were officers of the security division of Montgomery County's Homeland Security Department, an unarmed force that patrols about 300 county buildings -- but is not responsible for enforcing obscenity laws.

It makes you wonder what that internet user's choice of viewing material was if in the end he didn't get in trouble? The DNC website?

- rob 5:43 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Remember this?



Our government doesn't seem to remember. The one guy in America who's phone isn't tapped is probably the guy who mailed this stuff around.

But its not like the government isn't doing anything, they do have this page up on the FBI site (though it seems to not have been updated in a few years): Amerithrax Links Page

Yes, you read that right, the FBI decided the best way to catch the criminal was to glorify the whole episode with a cool hip name: Amerithrax, but that wasn't bad enough, check out their logo:



I'm surprised the Anthrax mailer didn't just turn himself in when he saw that logo.

"curses" he said, "how can I hope to evade justice when the FBI has put their best web designers on the job to catch me."

- rob 5:38 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

President's Day


"Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."

and

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."
- George Washington

- rob 5:19 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

In honor of President's day

Insult The President

- rob 5:03 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

In the NYC area this story is big.

'President's gone insane' - 9/11 dad

Peter Gadiel just doesn't get it.
How, asks Gadiel, whose son James died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, can a company owned by a terror-linked country get control of our nation's ports?

"I'm a lifelong Republican and I think the President's gone insane," said Gadiel, 58, who heads 9/11 Families for a Secure America.

Two of the 19 9/11 hijackers were citizens of Dubai, the Arab emirate whose bid to run ports in New York, New Jersey and four other cities was okayed by the White House even though investigators have found signs that money used to finance terrorism flowed through Dubai banks.
...
"This administration is putting the selling of our country on a fast track," he said. "There are a lot of loose ends that caused 9/11 to happen. I'm trying to close them."

Only 5% of the cargo containers entering U.S. ports are inspected, said Schumer, who has called for upgrades in port security for years.

I don't really see what the big deal is.

Everyone needs to understand. Everything is going to be fine, why the same folks that handled the response to Katrina okay'd the deal. So what's the worry.

Lawmakers Decry Ports Takeover

Chertoff defended the security review of Dubai Ports World of the United Arab Emirates, the company given permission to take over the port operations. Chertoff said the government typically builds in "certain conditions or requirements that the company has to agree to make sure we address the national security concerns." But Chertoff declined to discuss specifics saying that information is classified.

"We make sure there are assurances in place, in general, sufficient to satisfy us that the deal is appropriate from a national security standpoint," Chertoff said on ABC's "This Week."

Chertoff off camera then explained in greater detail, "they promised not to hire any terrorists, so we're cool."

- rob 4:58 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

On Friday Blogger ate up some of my posts but I was able to get some things posted. Now those posts are gone. Alas.

Anyway here's one of the posts from Friday:

I'm just going to link to some articles and say goodbye for a while - blogger is just a post eating machine today so no more posts from me until Monday:

Climate change: On the edge
Greenland ice cap breaking up at twice the rate it was five years ago, says scientist Bush tried to gag

George Will actually does have a breaking point when it comes to Bush, as he rightly points out - No Checks, Many Imbalances

Further proof that idiocy is what makes the world go round: Iran Renames Danish Pastries (freedom fries of the middle east)

Oh and Rumsfeld isn't sure what this whole "internet" this is really about anyway because he hasn't read his emails about it yet... he has no email: They Haven’t Got Mail.

- rob 4:47 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Sums up the issues fairly nicely, though it fails to note that it has now been reported that the pellet did not "migrate" into Whittington's heart but rather traveled directly there on a non-stop flight from Cheney's shotgun.

VP Accident Tale Filled With Discrepancies

- rob 4:27 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Imagine an industry where your product is in such demand that whenever there is even a hint of a minor disruption anywhere in the world prices for your product increase by 10% or more.

Imagine an industry where access to your raw materials is given to you for free by the government.

Imagine an industry where tax cuts are specifically geared to benefit your industry.

Imagine an industry where you don't have to bother paying government fines for environmental disasters that occur from your negligence.

Imagine that even in that kind of industry Bush was able to be a failure.

Yep - I'm talking about the oil biz.

Exxon back in court over Valdez fine
Third appeal after judge slapped $4.5 billion fine plus interest

SAN FRANCISCO - ItÂ?s been nearly 17 years since the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil along the Alaska coast in one of the countryÂ?s worst environmental disasters, and a juryÂ?s $5 billion judgment against the company is still tied up in the courts.

- rob 4:17 PM - [PermaLink] -

----

Subscribe to the TCS Feed

Having trouble with some of the poor English on this site?
Imagine what it looks like when translated by a machine:

Search TCS

Archive

Archive Index Page

What is this?

This is a "team" blog.  We are a bunch of Americans, whose rising distress in our leader's decisions brought us together to make this site.  As Bush said, he's a "uniter."  Many of us have never even met.
That's the internet for you.

This Century Sucks Store

Buy our cool stuff.
And tell everyone what you feel.  

We have a little Store you can visit.  

Our store's selection of items is constantly growing. Come see what we have.

 

We're also Amazon Associates, so if you want to buy something from Amazon, please search for it below, and we will get a few bucks from the sale.

Search Now:

Sites we often like:

Tin Foil Caps

The Free Speech Zone

The office of the independent blogger

Buzzflash

Tom The Dancing Bug

VerifiedVoting.org

Get Your War On

This Modern World

Eschaton / Atrios

Daily Kos

Contribute to America's Future

It is now more important then ever.

Donate to the Democractic Congressional Campaign Committee

Donate to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

Some More Site Mottos

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people."
- Teddy Roosevelt



"Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make fitting response."
 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt



"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions, but laws must and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
- Thomas Jefferson



"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."
- James Madison



"I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves."
- John F. Kennedy



"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

More Sites we often like:

more coming...

"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America." - Bill Clinton.