A Spy Speaks Out

(CBS) A CIA official who had a top role during the run-up to the Iraqi war charges the White House with ignoring intelligence that said there were no weapons of mass destruction or an active nuclear program in Iraq.

The former highest ranking CIA officer in Europe, Tyler Drumheller, also says that while the intelligence community did give the White House some bad intelligence, it also gave the White House good intelligence — which the administration chose to ignore.
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Drumheller, who retired last year, says the White House ignored crucial information from a high and credible source. The source was Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, with whom U.S. spies had made a deal.

When CIA Director George Tenet delivered this news to the president, the vice president and other high ranking officials, they were excited — but not for long.

"[The source] told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programs," says Drumheller. "The [White House] group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested. And we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.' "

They didn't want any additional data from Sabri because, says Drumheller: "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy."

- rob 6:10 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Disgusting Subhuman

Rep. Joel Dykstra: Rape is an undefineable buzzword

Now we have Rep. Joel Dykstra (R-Lincoln County) explaining what he thinks about the lack of a rape and incest exception. This appeared in the Two Rivers Times, which unfortunately does not have an online version to which I can link:

"I think 'rape and incest' is a buzzword," said Rep. Joel Dykstra about not including those conditions in the abortion bill. "It's a bit of a throwaway line and not everybody who says that really understands what that means. How are you going to define that?"

Yeah and torture is pretty ambiguous too isn't Dykstra? Just a buzzword that no one understands. You and Rummy should get together and discuss words that you don't understand as 19 year olds attach jumper cables to your testicles and sodomize you with broom sticks.

Sorry, did that sound like I was angry?

- rob 6:08 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Sometimes I fear Bush is sitting at his desk, sweating, crayon in his hand, writing out orders to the NSA: "We must make sure that the evil doers don't introduce a foreign substance into our precious bodily fluids."

John Dean: If Past Is Prologue, George Bush Is Becoming An Increasingly Dangerous President

Bush has never understood what presidential scholar Richard Neustadt discovered many years ago: In a democracy, the only real power the presidency commands is the power to persuade. Presidents have their bully pulpit, and the full attention of the news media, 24/7. In addition, they are given the benefit of the doubt when they go to the American people to ask for their support. But as effective as this power can be, it can be equally devastating when it languishes unused - or when a president pretends not to need to use it, as Bush has done.

Apparently, Bush does not realize that to lead he must continually renew his approval with the public. He is not, as he thinks, the decider. The public is the decider.
...
If he could achieve a Great Powers coalition (of Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and so on) presenting a united-front "no nukes" stance to Iran, it would be his first diplomatic coup and a political triumph.

But more likely, Bush may mount a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - hoping to rev up his popularity. (It's a risky strategy: A unilateral hit on Iran may both trigger devastating Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks in Iraq, with high death tolls, and increase international dislike of Bush for his bypass of the U.N. But as an active/negative President, Bush hardly shies away from risk.) Another rabbit-out-of-the-hat possibility: the capture of Osama bin Laden.

If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways.

- rob 5:59 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns...
Don't bother, they're here.

Bush Making Us Safe

Homeland Security grants spent on clowns and gyms

Fire departments are using Homeland Security grants to buy gym equipment, sponsor puppet and clown shows, and turn first responders into fitness trainers.
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Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff vowed to redirect grant spending based on risk of a terrorist attack, but Congress has ignored his pleas, federal officials say.

Wow you know its good when Chertoff and the Republican Congress face off to see who's most incompetent. And Congress wins.

- rob 5:48 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Do Cyborgs dream of electric sheep?
Diplomatic meetings put him to sleep - he only gets up for huntin' and war.

- rob 5:44 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Goin' NUCULAR.

For those of you who thought that the American southwestern desert was useless and should dissintegrate in a giant nuclear mushroom cloud, the world just got a whole lot better.

Plans for nuclear bomb simulation test in Nevada

Apparently there is some question as to whether this is a simulation of a nuclear bomb or an actual nuclear explosion. Either way, the test is scheduled for early June and there doesn't seem to be any question about that. This is a good forecast of things to come. Here are some links to other reporting on this issue:

Media reports on Nevada bomb test

I would write more but I have alot of work to do on my bunker.

- king michael the second 4:43 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Rove to Rescue the Weakling in the White House

As the story goes, Karl Rove is losing his "policy position." Oh, brother, the traditional media will fall for anything.

Let’s get real. With Tom Delay now disgraced, out of commission, his K-Street corruption exposed for all to see, someone has to take the top spot. Hellooooo, Karl. Now he’ll be the one to press the flesh, take the payola and try to turn around the impending disaster the Republican party is headed for in the mid-terms. Democrats, watch your back, because Bush’s brain is about to be set loose.

And that is a dangerous brain to set loose.

Let's go back to Rove's career highpoint (of trickery of course): The disgraced J.H. Hatfield's outing of the President's cocaine arrest.

In 1999, St. Martin's Press published a critical biography of Bush titled "Fortunate Son". The book quoted an unnamed "high-ranking advisor to Bush," who revealed Bush's 1972 drug bust. The source told author J.H. Hatfield, Bush "was ordered by a Texas judge to perform community service in exchange for expunging his record showing illicit drug use."

Hatfield later revealed that his source was none other than Karl Rove. That might seem ridiculous, considering Rove's lifelong loyalty to the Bushes and the fact that he now has an office adjacent to Bush's in the White House. But leaking the story to Hatfield essentially discredited the story and sent it into the annals of conspiracy theory. Soon after the book was published and just as St. Martin's was preparing a high profile launching of the book, the "Dallas Morning News" ran a story revealing that Hatfield was a felon who had served time in jail. In response, St. Martin's pulled the book.

" When the media stumbled upon a story regarding George W. Bush's 1972 cocaine possession arrest, Rove had to find a way to kill the story. He did so by destroying the messenger," says Sander Hicks, the former publisher of Soft Skull, which re-published "Fortunate Son." "They knew the stories of Dubya's cocaine and drink busts would come out, so they made certain that it would come out of the mouth of a guy they could smear," said journalist Greg Palast, who wrote the forward to the final edition of the book.

If Rove was Hatfield's source, he certainly wasn't trying to expose Bush's drug use. Instead he was trying to discredit and ultimately kill the story. And it worked. Few reporters since have dared to touch the story.

(from: National Guarding Bush: Did Karl Rove Plan Leak of Alleged Forged Documents to 60 Minutes? ).

Think about it - if the truth is going to come out and it will hurt your guy, why not have the guy who states the truth be a guy very easily discredited?

If any reporter now says "hey I've heard about Bush and an arrest for cocaine," her editor says "yeah the guy who wrote about that was a felon, and has made a career in lying." The issue isn't the facts of the story - the issue is Hatfield. And the cocaine story dies.

Rove now has his full attention directed towards the 2006 mid-term elections. Things will get weird and awful.

- rob 2:45 PM - [PermaLink] -

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A wounded Bush is a Bush at his most dangerous

Chips down, Bush prepares a Hail Mary bet

He is pockmarked by scandal, buffeted by storms of disapproval and infighting and nascent impeachment. He authorized the leak of classified security information merely to smear an Iraq war critic, he lied about WMD and lied about Saddam and lied about making the United States safer and lied about, well, just about everything, on top of launching the worst and most violent and most expensive, unwinnable war since Vietnam.

His pile of betting capital is down to a tiny lump, nothing like back when he had the table rigged and all the pit bosses worked for him and the pile was as big as a roomful of Texas cow pies. But now, fortune is frowning. In fact, fortune is white-hot furious at being so viciously molested, spit upon, raped lo these many years. The truth is coming out: Bush has now lost far, far more bets than he ever won.

What's to be done? Why, do what any grumbling, furious, confused, underqualified alcoholic gambler does: reach down deep and say, "To hell with the nation and to hell with the odds and to hell with the rest of the planet," and pull out one more desperate, crumpled war from deep in your pants, slap it on the table and hear the world moan.

But this time, try to make it serious. Do not rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Do not rule out another massive air strike, ground troops, special forces, a strategy so intense it makes Iraq look like a jog in the park. Think of yourself as creating a masterful legacy, going down in history as the guy who "saved" the world from Iran's nukes while protecting American oil interests. Yes? Can you smell the oily sanctimony in the air? Is God speaking to you again, telling you to damn the torpedoes and kill more Muslims? You are the chosen one, after all.

- rob 2:23 PM - [PermaLink] -

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George W. Bush: The worst President in history

Why is America surprised?

Flash back to November 4th 2000. - Saturday Night Live opened with a skit called:

A Glimpse Of Our Possible Future I

Announcer: And now a Message From the President of the United States: George W. Bush.

[ open on the Oval Office - beer cans on desk, socks hung on the lamp, a barbecue grill burning on his desk ]

Voice of Advisor: Mr. President, get out there!

President George W. Bush: [ from under his desk ] No! No, you can't make me! You're gonna yell at me again!

Voice of Advisor: Mr. President!

President George W. Bush: [ peeks out from under his desk ] No! I don't want to go out, it's too hard!

Voice of Advisor: You're on, Sir!

President George W. Bush: Awww.. [ jumps up and takes his seat ] Hey, America! So, how we all doing out there, huh? Yeah, not so good. I broke the Hoover Dam.. we had that war thing happen. But I mean, who ever heard of a Civil War, anyway? What is that? [ grabs a pair of binoculars, unscrews the lens, then pours alcohol from it into his mouth ] I have missed you, ol' buddy! [ pours it into his barbecue grill ] Whoo! I think we can agree, Americans, that these have been a difficult first two years of my presidency..

Voice of Advisor: You've been President for two weeks!

President George W. Bush: Really? Oh, man! I told you, this is hard! Okay, listen.. I'm just gonna get this Address thing over with. As we assess the State of the American Union today, we have reason to hope, because.. [ takes out a map which shows California and Florida as islands, Texas in Communist Mexico, and the Great Lakes on fire ] Holy crap! When did all this happen?! Wow.. the Great Lakes are on fire - even I know that's not good. [ laughs ] Okay, America, we got a lot of problems. I ain't gonna lie to you. But with the help of Vice-President Dick Cheney..

Voice of Advisor: You killed him in a hunting accident!

And of course who can forget The Onion's amazingly accurate article about Bush's first inauguration.

Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'

WASHINGTON, DCÂ?Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

For an annotated version of The Onion article - go here.

- rob 11:02 AM - [PermaLink] -

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"Camp Liberal" is what it will be called in 2009 when at the start of Bush's 3rd term they start rounding up the dissenters.

Remember to forward my mail to: Halliburton's Immigrant Detention Centers

While thousands of people were celebrating the contribution America's undocumented immigrants make to our economy, and demanding justice and recognition for workers who are denied basic rights, the government was making plans for large-scale detention centers in case of an "emergency influx" of immigrants.
...
Certainly the detention centers raise the specter of WW II Japanese internment camps.

The new facilities could be used for round-ups of Muslim Americans or other American citizens tagged as "enemy combatants.”

The use of military personnel and military contractors in the event of a Katrina-like disaster, which the Halliburton contract provides for, brings us closer to martial law, whether it is officially declared or not.

It also means record profits for Halliburton, which declared 2005 "the best in our 86-year history." David Lesar, Halliburton's chairman, president and CEO, declares on the company website, "For the full year 2005 we set a record for revenue and achieved net income of $2.4 billion with each of our six divisions posting record results."

Not bad for a company that has been repeatedly cited for inflating charges and wasting taxpayer money in Iraq.

- rob 5:32 PM - [PermaLink] -

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It seems Bob Woodward's former partner considers integrity and keeping executive power in check more important then access and invites to parties.

Carl Bernstein: Senate Hearings on Bush, Now
In this VF.com exclusive, a Watergate veteran and Vanity Fair contributor calls for bipartisan hearings investigating the Bush presidency. Should Republicans on the Hill take the high road and save themselves come November?

The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy—used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.

Most of what we have learned about the reality of this administration—and the disconcerting mind-set and decision-making process of President Bush himself—has come not from the White House or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, but from insider accounts by disaffected members of the administration after their departure, and from distinguished journalists, and, in the case of a skeletal but hugely significant body of information, from a special prosecutor. And also, of late, from an aide-de-camp to the British prime minister. Almost invariably, their accounts have revealed what the president and those serving him have deliberately concealed—torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and its apparent authorization by presidential fiat; wholesale N.S.A. domestic wiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law; brutal interrogations of prisoners shipped secretly by the C.I.A. and U.S. military to Third World gulags; the nonexistence of W.M.D. in Iraq; the role of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney's chief of staff in divulging the name of an undercover C.I.A. employee; the non-role of Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the events of 9/11; the death by friendly fire of Pat Tillman (whose mother, Mary Tillman, told journalist Robert Scheer, "The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him"); the lack of a coherent post-invasion strategy for Iraq, with all its consequent tragedy and loss and destabilizing global implications; the failure to coordinate economic policies for America's long-term financial health (including the misguided tax cuts) with funding a war that will drive the national debt above a trillion dollars; the assurance of Wolfowitz (since rewarded by Bush with the presidency of the World Bank) that Iraq's oil reserves would pay for the war within two to three years after the invasion; and Bush's like-minded confidence, expressed to Blair, that serious internecine strife in Iraq would be unlikely after the invasion.

- rob 5:29 PM - [PermaLink] -

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FBI sounds bad

FBI Rebuffed on Reporter's Files

The family of the late newspaper columnist Jack Anderson yesterday rejected a request by the FBI to turn over 50 years of files to agents who want to look for evidence in the prosecution of two pro-Israel lobbyists, as well as any classified documents Anderson had collected.

Kevin P. Anderson, son of the storied Washington-based writer, said the family is outraged at what it calls government overreaching and "a dangerous departure" from First Amendment press protections, a stance joined by academic and legal experts.
...
Kevin Anderson said FBI agents contacted the columnist's 78-year-old widow about a month after his death seeking access to his reporting materials. Agents subsequently contacted Mark Feldstein, an Anderson biographer who once worked for him and is now a George Washington University professor. Feldstein is helping to arrange the transfer of 188 cartons of material owned by the family from Brigham Young University to GWU.

Kevin Anderson, Sullivan and Feldstein said FBI agents assured them that they sought information related to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee case, adding only incidentally that if they came across classified materials they would have to seize them. But Anderson said the government agents would not specify what they were looking for, nor agree to allow anyone without a security clearance to review the files for them.

Kevin Anderson said agents were "duplicitous" about their "true objective . . . to whitewash Jack Anderson's papers and attempt to remove from history embarrassing documents."

But their actions are even worse:

Trying To Get Muckraker's Papers, Did FBI Trick Widow?

What the papers didn't report was the truly ugly extent to which the bureau has gone to achieve their goal -- such as manipulating Anderson's elderly widow to sign a document she apparently didn't understand.

I spoke with Jack Anderson's son Kevin yesterday. He's an attorney, and acts as the family's representative with the FBI. He told me that the lead agent in this case, Leslie Martell, went behind his and his siblings' backs to get his elderly mother, Olivia, to sign a form that would allow FBI agents to review and remove documents from her husband's files.
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I called Feldstein, who told me about his exchange with the FBI agent. "She said, 'Mrs. Anderson signed a consent form'" to allow the FBI to review the documents and take what they wanted, Feldstein said. Alarmed, he called the family to ask if this was the case. They were shocked, he said.

When Kevin told his mother the document would allow government agents to review and remove her deceased husband's documents, she was furious, Kevin told me. "She was more outraged than any of us," Kevin said. "She's volunteered to go to jail on this one. She feels pretty strongly about this." Olivia, who was raised among the West Virginia coal fields, turned 79 in February.

- rob 5:24 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Rolling Stone : The Worst President in History?

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.
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In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant.
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No other president -- Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War -- faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats. Top military advisers and even members of the president's own Cabinet who expressed any reservations or criticisms of his policies -- including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- suffered either dismissal, smear attacks from the president's supporters or investigations into their alleged breaches of national security. The wise men who counseled Bush's father, including James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, found their entreaties brusquely ignored by his son. When asked if he ever sought advice from the elder Bush, the president responded, "There is a higher Father that I appeal to."
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By contrast, the Bush administration -- in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called "the legitimate authority of the presidency" -- threatens to overturn the Framers' healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn't bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases -- using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes.

- rob 5:17 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Recount Rioters
Joel Kaplan was probably off frame calling his mom
telling her he'd be later for dinner

TPM Muckraker: New WH Policy Chief Was "Brooks Brothers" Rioter

The man Bush tapped to fill Karl Rove's spot as his policy wizard is none other than Joel Kaplan, who took part in the infamous "Brooks Brothers riot" of 2000. That's when a bunch of Washington GOP operatives, posing as outraged Floridians, waved fists, chanted "Stop the fraud!" and pounded windows in an effort to intimidate officials engaged in the Florida recount effort.

They are rewarding the brown shirted thugs (okay, actually just pasty faced geeks - but you get the idea).

- rob 2:50 PM - [PermaLink] -

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State Department Memo: "16 Words" Were False

Sixteen days before President Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address in which he said that the US learned from British intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Africa - an explosive claim that helped pave the way to war - the State Department told the CIA that the intelligence the uranium claims were based upon were forgeries, according to a newly declassified State Department memo.

The revelation of the warning from the closely guarded State Department memo is the first piece of hard evidence and the strongest to date that the Bush administration manipulated and ignored intelligence information in their zeal to win public support for invading Iraq.
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Moreover, the memo says that the State Department's doubts about the veracity of the uranium claims may have been expressed to the intelligence community even earlier.

Those concerns, according to the memo, are the reason that former Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to cite the uranium claims when he appeared before the United Nations in February 5, 2003 - one week after Bush's State of the Union address - to try to win support for a possible strike against Iraq.

- rob 1:07 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Bush wonders why Phys Ed teachers care about nuclear weapons.

Prominent U.S. Physicists Send Warning Letter to President Bush

Thirteen of the nation’s most prominent physicists have written a letter to President Bush, calling U.S. plans to reportedly use nuclear weapons against Iran “gravely irresponsible” and warning that such action would have “disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world.”

The physicists include five Nobel laureates, a recipient of the National Medal of Science and three past presidents of the American Physical Society, the nation’s preeminent professional society for physicists.
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The letter was initiated by Jorge Hirsch, a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, who last fall put together a petition signed by more than 1,800 physicists that repudiated new U.S. nuclear weapons policies that include preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries (http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/).

- rob 1:00 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Homeland Security is on the look out for lefty terrorists out to get your fax machine ink.

Yeah there are right wing terrorist trying to kill you but at least their heart is in the right place unlike those damn lefty vandals.

TPM Muckraker EXCLUSIVE: DHS Warns Companies Of Evil Terrorist "Flyer Distribution"

In a bulletin issued yesterday, the Homeland Security Department warns U.S. businesses of the threats they face from animal rights group and "eco-terrorists." Such radical extremist groups may use several tactics -- each devastating in its own way -- including:

- "organizing protests"
- "flyer distribution"
- "inundating computers with e-mails"
- "tying up phone lines to prevent legitimate calls"
- "sending continuous faxes in order to drain the ink supply from company fax machines"

That's right. If the ink runs out of your fax machine, that means the terrorists have won.
...
The real outrage in this is that on the very day some DHS yahoo spent time and government money producing this bulletin, a jury was convicting a white supremacist on five counts of trying to obtain a chemical weapon and stolen explosives. The man's dream: to explode a briefcase "dirty" bomb inside the U.S. Capitol.

Needless to say, I'm told DHS has yet to send out a warning on wackos like him: white supremacists, militias, anti-abortion groups or other violent far-right groups that have actually killed people.

Yeah, I pretty much quoted the whole piece, why not visit the TMP Muckraker - its a great site (we'll still be here if you ever come back).

- rob 12:13 PM - [PermaLink] -

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The reviews of the Gore movie (and you know Hollywood loves gore, but this one features no blood) are coming in.

A Campaign Gore Can't Lose

Boring Al Gore has made a movie. It is on the most boring of all subjects -- global warming. It is more than 80 minutes long, and the first two or three go by slowly enough that you can notice that Gore has gained weight and that his speech still seems oddly out of sync. But a moment later, I promise, you will be captivated, and then riveted and then scared out of your wits. Our Earth is going to hell in a handbasket.
...
An Inconvenient Truth" is a cinematic version of the lecture that Gore has given for years warning of the dangers of global warming.
...
You cannot see this film and not think of George W. Bush, the man who beat Gore in 2000. The contrast is stark. Gore -- more at ease in the lecture hall than he ever was on the stump -- summons science to tell a harrowing story and offers science as the antidote. No feat of imagination could have Bush do something similar -- even the sentences are beyond him.

But it is the thought that matters -- the application of intellect to an intellectual problem. Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma. ...
We simply cannot afford for Al Gore to lose again.

Emphasis mine.

- rob 10:44 AM - [PermaLink] -

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"sorrrrrrrry. Okay I said it, now are you still upset?"

US colonel offers Iraq an apology of sorts for devastation of Babylon

In an act of at least partial contrition, an officer in charge of the US military occupation of Babylon in 2003 and 2004 has offered to make a formal apology for the destruction his troops wrought on the ancient site.

Colonel John Coleman, former chief of staff for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, said yesterday that if the head of the Iraqi antiquities board wanted an apology, "if it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one".
...
But after entering Babylon in April 2003, coalition forces turned the site into a base camp, flattening and compressing tracts of ruins as they built a helicopter pad and fuel stations. The soldiers filled sandbags with archeological fragments and dug trenches through unexcavated areas, while tanks crushed slabs of original 2,600-year-old paving.

"All of these things have combined to do a lot of damage to what is one of the most important, sensitive archeological sites in the whole world," John Curtis, curator of the British Museum's Near East department, said last year.
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* Soldiers filled protective sandbags with sand containing ancient artefacts
* Landing helicopters caused structural damage to some of the city's ancient buildings and sandblasted fragile bricks in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar
* Landing helicopters caused structural damage to some of the city's ancient buildings and sandblasted fragile bricks in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar

- rob 10:19 AM - [PermaLink] -

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The Decider inaction

- rob 9:44 AM - [PermaLink] -

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Kids as props - Kids as tools

Think Progress: "Katrina Kids" Sing to Laura Bush: "'Congress, Bush and FEMA' Have Come to Rebuild Us"

Today at the White House Easter Egg Roll, dozens of children “from the stricken Gulf Coast region serenaded First Lady Laura Bush with a song praising the beleaguered Federal Emergency Management Agency.” To the tune of “Hey Look Me Over,” the kids from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama sang:

“Our country’s stood beside us
People have sent us aid.
Katrina could not stop us, our hopes will never fade.
Congress, Bush and FEMA
People across our land
Together have come to rebuild us and we join them hand-in-hand!”

Oh our glorius leader fought back the plaque of locusts...

Seriously - isn't using kids like this the stuff North Korea does? You know screw up and then have cute kids sing about how great you are?

I can see the kids in North Korea signing songs praising Kim Jong Il for giving them so much food that they ate two meals each day for three straight days. Glory be!

It reminds me of this:

Pakistan deletes 'pro-Bush' poem

Pakistan's government is to remove a poem from a school textbook after it emerged the first letters of each line spelt out "President George W Bush".

The anonymous poem, called The Leader, appeared in a recent English-language course book for 16 year-olds.
...
Officials cannot explain how the poem entered the curriculum. Pupils are being told to ignore it.

Here's the poem:

THE LEADER by anonymous
Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn't afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn't conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won't do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he's right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won't hear.
Growing in strength he won't be unnerved,
Ever assuring he'll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.

- rob 9:38 AM - [PermaLink] -

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"But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best."
- George W. Bush (actual quote)

from: Bush: 'I'm the decider' on Rumsfeld

- rob 1:28 PM - [PermaLink] -

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A Small-Time Crime With Hints of Big-Time Connections Lights Up the Net

The Internet is a great breeding ground for political conspiracies, and there is a new one lighting up computer monitors across the country. Bloggers are fascinated by what they see as eerie parallels between Watergate and a phone-jamming scandal in New Hampshire. It has low-level Republican operatives involved in dirty campaign tricks. It has checks from donors with murky backgrounds. It has telephone calls to the White House. What is unclear is whether it is the work of a few rogue actors, or something larger.
...
In 2002, there was a hard-fought Senate race between Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democrat, and John Sununu, the Republican. On Election Day, Democratic workers arrived at five get-out-the-vote offices to find their phone lines jammed. It turned out that the jamming was being done by an Idaho telemarketing firm that was being paid by a Virginia consulting group. The fee for the jamming, reportedly $15,600, was paid by New Hampshire Republicans.

Now, Jack Abramoff and his Indian tribe clients have joined the cast of characters, and some records of phone calls to the White House have turned up, though the significance of both of these revelations is hotly disputed. The evidence that the phone-jamming scandal goes higher than Mr. Tobin remains scant. But the watchdogs are right about this: the news media, prosecutors and the general public should demand more information about what happened.

- rob 6:28 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"Peace is our product" may be the motto of the Strategic Air Command, but for defense contractors the motto is "a piece of the action."

Big Rewards for Defense Firms
Extra Fees Paid Regardless of Performance, GAO Finds

In late February 2004, the Army announced that it was canceling plans to build a radar-evading helicopter called the Comanche, a project that was nearly three years behind schedule and more than $3.5 billion over budget. Those problems, however, didn't stop an Army panel a few weeks later from granting the Boeing Co.-Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. partnership running the program a $33.9 million "award fee" for their work on the helicopter, part of more than $200 million in such fees paid to the partnership over four years.

Award fees are meant in theory to motivate defense contractors with extra money for performance. But a recent Government Accountability Office study found that the fees are often paid regardless of whether a project is on schedule and within its budget.

One of the resounding (and obvious) lessons of the soviet era is that communism produces crappy products. If workers and designers and managers get paid no matter the result, human nature is going to pretty much guarantee a downward spiral in quality. Which brings us to today's Defense Department.

Supporting our troops and honing the skills and ability of our military demands that we do not pay or reward poor products. Think about it.

Money thrown at the defense department to spend money on contracts for poor products costs american lives - not just money. Products purchased for our soldiers can save or cost their life. And we reward our defense contractors based on who knows who?

Giving our soldiers expensive and complicated (and maybe finicky?) rifles could leave them open for being shot at while our soldiers try to get their rifle to work.

Remember this part of the real Jessica Lynch story?

Wrong Lubricant, Jammed Weapons, Dead Soldiers

Disavowing an earlier news report that had alleged Pvt. Jessica Lynch had fired multiple clips of ammunition at the attacking Iraqis before she was injured and taken prisoner, The Washington Post has now published a more detailed account. The newspaper described how she was seriously injured when the Humvee vehicle in which she was riding crashed at high speed into an overturned Army tractor-trailer. Then, the team of three Post reporters noted:

"Lynch tried to fire her weapon, but it jammed, according to military officials familiar with the Army investigation. She did not kill any Iraqis. She was neither shot nor stabbed, they said."

Why is this important today? The answer is in the form of another question. Why did the rifle jam?

As the Pentagon proceeds with its official "after action reports" and "lessons learned" effort from Operation Iraqi Freedom, troubling information has begun to emerge from numerous sources that jammed weapons were a serious problem in Iraq. Worse, it appears that this happened because many American troops were equipped with a lubricant to clean their rifles and sidearms that was ineffective in the harsh desert environment.

and now we read:

Kalashnikov says Iraq shows his gun is still best

Apr 17, 2006 - MOSCOW (Reuters) - Mikhail Kalashnikov, designer of the world's most popular assault rifle, says that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are using his invention in preference to their own weapons, proving that his gun is still the best.
...
Some U.S. troops in Iraq have reportedly taken to using AK-47s in preference to the standard-issue M-16. The Cold War-era gun, renowned for its durability and easy handling, is plentiful in Iraq.

Well it looks like at least one Soviet era product wasn't crap. Or maybe like a mid seventies Plymouth Valiant maybe its sheer crapiness is behind its ability to keep on going no matter what.

- rob 6:23 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Sorry we sold the rights to our history to showtime.

Smithsonian Deal With Showtime Restricts Access By Filmmakers

As part of a near-exclusive deal with Showtime Networks, the Smithsonian Institution is restricting filmmakers' access to its scientists and archives, prompting another outcry over the museum's attempts to make money.

Filmmakers who have relied on the vast holdings of the Smithsonian, and typically pay to use historic film or copy an artifact, have raised objections to the new policy of limited access to the public collections. Now most filmmakers will not have in-depth use of Smithsonian materials unless they are creating work for the Smithsonian/Showtime unit.

To quote what the Smithsonian is about, let's quote the secretary of the Smithsonian:

"The Smithsonian is committed to enlarging our shared understanding of the mosaic that is our national identity by providing authoritative experiences that connect us to our history and our heritage as Americans and to promoting innovation, research and discovery in science. These commitments have been central to the Smithsonian since its founding more than 155 years ago."

Enlarging our share being limited of course to those with expensive digital cable services.

- rob 5:59 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Step 1: Buy duct tape (no - not really)

U.S. Plan For Flu Pandemic Revealed

- rob 5:42 PM - [PermaLink] -

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'Hippie Chimps' Fast Disappearing in Congo

Scientists are struggling to save the fast-disappearing bonobo, the gentle "hippie chimp" known for resolving squabbles through sex rather than violence.
...
"Bonobos are an icon for peace and love, the world's 'hippie chimps,'" said Sally Coxe of the Washington-based Bonobo Conservation Initiative. "To let them die off would be a catastrophe."

The animals are known for greeting rival groups with genital handshakes and sensual body rubs. Bonobo spats are swiftly settled — often with a French kiss and a quick round of sex.
...
As few as 5,000 may now remain in Congo, down from an estimated 100,000 in 1984, said Ino Guabini, a primatologist with the World Wildlife Fund.

"There is no question that bonobos are seriously threatened," Guabini said, speaking over a shrill forest symphony of birds, animals and insects. "We need urgent measures or there is no way we can protect the species."

Often you hear in the study of chimps how they are a view into humanity.

Chimps have wars. Chimps rape. You hear that chimps are the most genetically similar animal to man out there. Actually Chimps are tied. The other animal that is just as close is the Bonobo.

Here is an animal that lives at peace among their own. Here is an animal that solves problems with sex and not violence.

But we don't see ourselves in Bonobos. We see ourselves in the chimps that Jane Goodall studies. Animals of grace, intelligence, community, and violence. That last part is too often where we see the humanity in the animal.

I read of a scientist discussing why Bonobos do not get studied as much as other chimps - and it was because of the sex. "ahh you're studying the sex chimp huh - dirty old boy." You would get teased like a sixth grader by other primatologists that you would choose to study an animal who solves aggression with sex.

Both are at the core of human nature. Sex and violence. But it is odd that as a culture we feel more comfortable with violence. See a female breast and you get a fine from the FCC, but on this week's CSI they will have a graphic depiction of an eyeball being removed from the socket of a murder victim. In fact violent sex seems more in television's comfort zone then the loving act.

I have no conclusions save two: That's weird huh? and if you feel like you can, then do what you can to help save the Bonobo.

- rob 5:39 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Look, I know it isn't fair to mock someone's appearance. And I am not sure of Mr. Raymond's health so it could be very well be the case that mocking his appearance is beyond unfair and borders on the cruel.

But that said:


Poster boy of greed
What can $400 million do for you?

Ex-Exxon CEO's Massive Pension Draws Fire

Under Mr. Raymond, the company's market value increased fourfold to $375 billion, overtaking BP as the largest oil company and General Electric as the largest American corporation. For his efforts, Raymond, who retired in December, was compensated more than $686 million from 1993 to 2005, according to an analysis done for The New York Times by Brian Foley, an independent compensation consultant. That is $144,573 for each day he spent leading Exxon's "God pod," as the executive suite at the company's headquarters in Irving, Tex., is known.

- rob 5:16 PM - [PermaLink] -

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"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



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 - 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



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- 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



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- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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