Woods for sale. Whose are they?

If you're planning to hike the Appalachian Trail, or visit any other areas in National Forests, you better get there in a hurry. The Bush regime needs money and to get it they are going to sell our woods. They're covering the sale by suggesting it's to help the poor.

Here's the first paragraphs of the story and a link to the rest.

National forest lands could go up for sale
Protests greet Bush administration proposal to offset states' losses from logging revenue

By Tom Pelton
Sun Reporter

ROANOKE, Va. // Along a rocky path of the Appalachian Trail, Sherman Bamford pointed to a mist-shrouded mountainside in the Thomas Jefferson National Forest, where 121 acres could soon be up for public auction.

The land is on a list of about 300,000 acres of national forest the Bush administration has proposed selling to help fund the operation of rural schools and offset cuts in federal aid.

Forest Service officials said yesterday that they do not expect to sell more than about 175,000 acres in order to reach their goal of raising $800 million. But auctioning any of the land would reverse more than a century of federal policy and law barring such sales of national forests....

LINK

(Thanks to America Blog.)

You can only sell them once. After the woods are gone maybe Bush will sell some monuments and whatever else he hasn't already given away to Halliburton.

Colbert 2

Here's a link to Michael Sherer's fun to read (but not for Bushistas) Salon article on the Colbert take down of the regime.

The truthiness hurts
Stephen Colbert's brilliant performance unplugged the Bush myth machine -- and left the clueless D.C. press corps gaping.

Here's a sample:

...Then he turned to the president of the United States, who sat tight-lipped just a few feet away. "I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound -- with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world." ...

...What Colbert did was expose the whole official, patriotic, right-wing, press-bashing discourse as a sham, as more "truthiness" than truth. ...

Thanks to Atrios

Billmon's review illustrates larger problem

Here's a lengthy quote from the center of Billmon's review comparing the movie American Nightmarez to Stephen Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents dinner.

"...Like its upscale sibling, the annual Gridiron Club dinner, the White House Correspondents dinner is a ritual designed, at least implicitly, to showcase the underlying unity of our Beltway elites. It's supposed to demonstrate that no matter how ferocious their battles may appear on the surface, political opponents can still gather in the same room and break bread, with the corporate media acting as the properly neutral host. It's a relic of the good old days of centrism and bipartisan log rolling ("the end of ideology"), visible proof that in the American system, there may be enemies, but there are no mortal enemies. And so we last night we had Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame sitting at one table, Karl Rove at another, and no knives were drawn.

The light entertainment at these events is also supposed to reflect the same spirit of forced good cheer, to the point where even matters of deadly seriousness -- things that in other countries might cause governments to fall -- are treated like inside jokes, as with Shrub's looking-for-the-missing-WMDs-under-the-couch routine. Ha ha ha. We're all friends here!

The underlying message, never stated or even acknowledged, is that there are no disputes that can't be resolved within the cozy confines of our "democratic" (oligarchic) system. Friends don't send friends to jail -- or smash their presses or abolish their political parties or line them up against the wall and shoot them.

The problem is that the tissue of this particular lie has been eroding ever since the Clinton impeachment, if not before, and is now worn exceedingly thin. It's becoming harder and harder to conceal the ruthlessness of the struggle for power, or ignore the consequences of losing it...."

LINK

The first inclination of nearly all the insider/plutocrats is to stick together when the status quo is threatened. Even the insider outsiders, like elected Democrats, supposedly neutral big media members and even many celebrity left of center writers, know their cushy lives, padded with gigantic pensions, and fantastic health insurance, depend on ruling class unity and keeping the great starry eyed wad deluded and dutifully trooping off to solemnly vote in rigged elections. (Oh shucks, we lost again; we’ll just have to tighten our belts and try harder in 2008.)

The complicity of the opposition, usually masked as civility, is much of what makes fascists, once in power, so difficult to dislodge.

Prostate cancer update

The two oncologists I consulted agree. The only real option is hormone therapy for three months followed by external radiation, 45 treatments, with hormone therapy continuing for up to two years.

I need an MRI because my two hip replacements obscured the CT scan view of the lymph glands near the prostate.

For me, here’s the key dialogue:

TR: This is probably a stupid question but is this going to kill me and in how long?

Sloan/Kettering, St. Clare’s oncologist: It’s a great question. Of course we don’t know but statistically you have about an 80% chance of living five years and a 60% of living ten….

There you have it. I am taking an oral med. Casodex 50mg once a day. Will get a hormonal injection, likely in the stomach, on Tuesday that should cover me for three months. If all goes well (meaning, among other things, the prostate gland shrinks) I will begin radiation.

There are numerous side effects from the hormonal treatments, though the oncologist said the intensity varies among individuals.

I told my daughter she may not be losing a father, but may be gaining a grandmother.

As for me, I have no symptoms, feel great, did fierce workouts three days last week, and intend to spend the weekend riding the Harley and raking leaves.

Goss goose cooked?

If you’re a procrastinator, like me, and looking for a way to wile away a few minutes and you really don’t want to deal with the implications of peak oil before the weekend but would rather daydream about Republicans sizzling on the spit, check out the last couple of posts from Billmon.

Cancer

The full body bone, CT scan and chest X-ray were all clean. Tomorrow I go to the second of two oncologists to discuss treatment. I will post all details tomorrow night or Saturday, but so far it appears I have late Stage 2 or early Stage 3 Prostate Cancer. Gleason scores were 8s and 9s. A year ago this May I had a PSA of 1.9. In March it was 4.7. The cancer seems to extend immediately beyond the "capsule" (whatever that is). But for very minor, barely noticeable occasional discomfort when peeing, I have no symptoms. I feel like I am in the best health of my life. (I'm 62)

As for the national cancer, there is almost too much going on for me to keep track of. Each of the great blogs, most of those listed to the right, are following one or another of the rapidly unraveling threads. Check them all out. Who knew we would have such easy access to so much brilliance. Enjoy it while you can because this freedom too won't last forever.

No deal

Senators want to buy rights to drill for oil in the Alaska National Artic Wildlife Refuge for a $100 bribe paid to each taxpayer. LINK

Personally, I'd sell them Congress, the Executive branch and most of the Supreme Court for a lot less. For a bonus, I'd throw in most newspapers and tv networks as well, so long as we keep the artic refuge. Not that I'll ever get there but as long as it is there, I can dream about it.

Rigged elections a matter of survival

Josh Marshall wrote:

...The White House and the entire DC GOP for that matter is just sitting on too many secrets and bad acts. The bogus investigations of the pre-war intel is just one example, if one of the most resonant and glaring. Keeping control of the House and the Senate is less a matter of conventional ideological and partisan politics as it is a simple matter of survival.

They have too much to cover up. They could not survive sunlight.

LINK

With the stakes that high, key 2006 elections will certainly be rigged.

Seafood garnish

…What millions of city and suburban folks thought just disappeared down their toilets actually wound up in nets. Swede Lovgren showed up at public meetings, toting samples in what fishermen and scientists began calling “black mayonnaise jars.”

“Swede had it analyzed and it was mostly human hair and Kotex fibers. If you weren’t steaming home with the net backward to clean it out, you were powerwashing it back at the dock,” Lovgren says. …

(From Clearing the Channels a profile of Jim Lovgren, Brick, NJ, by Kirk Moore in the National Fisherman, May 2006, page 23.)

Lovgren is talking about the Mud Hole, a large section of a long groove in the bottom from the mouth of the Hudson River to the Hudson Canyon. For decades the Mud Hole has been a lucrative fishing ground. Unfortunately it also is close to dumping areas for New York City sewage, dredgings and other junk.

I fished the Mud Hole for years, first on scallop trawlers and then on draggers from Point Pleasant, NJ, from the same docks that the Lovgrens use. Much of what we caught in the Mud Hole was shipped to markets in northern New Jersey and New York City, ironically completing a recycling circle of sorts. What went down your neighbor's toilet comes back to you by way of the dinner table.

Bon appetite!

One more big mistake

Here's a column you must read. It's about our scuzzy little president on the ropes and looking to a last grandstand moment of an A Bomb on Iran.

Chips down, Bush prepares a Hail Mary bet by Mark Morford in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

Ommzm

Ommzm’s interesting diary with a post on reality manipulation is being singled out for attention at Kos. Here’s the link: Reality in Desuetude (or, Iran So Far Away)

In Ommzm’s post there is this quote from Robert Sheer, August 28, 2001, Salon that spells out nicely the mechanics of the Bush plutocracy.

There is method to the president's madness, as he spelled out in his press conference Friday, proclaiming that the prospect of government red ink is "incredibly positive news" because it will produce "a fiscal straitjacket for Congress." ...

... The plan is to bankrupt the national government so we can be reduced to life as it's lived in Texas, where the rich make out like bandits playing with public funds, as George W. did on that stadium deal, while the rest of the folks scramble. Texas politicians, including three presidents in the past 40 years, always make sure their companies are fed well at the Washington trough, even if it means going to war. Whatever the state of the federal budget, Bush is not going to be tight with the dollar when it comes to a bloated military, because big oil still needs that stick of U.S. military intervention to protect its investments abroad.

Why else do we need a military big enough to fight two wars at once except to protect U.S. investments that stretch from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf? Think of it as a Social Security program -- or more accurately, welfare -- for military contractors and energy companies, led by Halliburton, where Dick Cheney hustled his quick millions.

LINK

Nuclear realities

Juan Cole helps us understand Iran's nuclear program here: Iran can now make glowing Mickey Mouse watches.

Via firedoglake

(Speaking of nuclear, today was spent getting CT scan, whole body bone scan and chest x-ray. I will have results Monday afternoon.)

Crazies are in charge. Anything can happen.

Take a few minutes to read Billmon's latest "Mutually Assured Dementia". Best to do so in the morning when you have an entire day to regroup and get settled enough to sleep.

Cancer

Yesterday the results of the biopsy revealed an aggressive cancer. Last night I had a dream. Here it is:

I am a young deckhand wearing shorts. Tanned. No shoes. It is a busy harbor scene. No real landscape, only very calm, oily water and a dock. Numerous red tugs manuever close and far. Some are eccentric variations of the traditional silhouette and I marvel at them. The boat I am on is involved with bringing a barge to a dock with other tugs assisting. When we complete the job and get underway I am on the deck which is now spacious, high above the water, reminiscent of a cement barge deck. I stand near a cleat and take a line from a tug below us and secure it to the cleat. I am sure the deckhand below is eyeing my wife who has appeared on the deck with me and that his interest in her is why he tied up to us. But this concern passes quickly and the deckhand flips the line free of the cleat and his boat steams away from us. We get to a dock. I have my old sea bag. The same, army green one I carried year in and year out to the Felicia. I leave it on the dock and go into a tiny, very dark and dingy bar, similar to a place I frequented in Fulton Fish Market.. I do not recognize the bartender. He is a small, bald man, wearing a natty bow tie. Scattered around are fishermen who one time or another worked on Felicia. All are familiar but likely dead. I recognize the thin, lounging Curley Martin, One Eyed Magna, maybe (the original) Tiger Red. Dagfin, the long dead captain, is there. They seem to be waiting for something. I need to pee and open the door to the bathroom. It is filthy. The toilet seems to have overflowed and shit is on the floor. I do not want to go in there barefooted so I leave the bar to go to the boat and retrieve my bag. However the tide has come in. Where I left the bag is under water and the Felicia is nowhere to be seen. I think she is away somewhere for repairs, that the crew is waiting for her, and she will return shortly. I see my bag floating in the water. Strangers in a row boat fish it out and bring it to me. Water pours out but I seem to find my boots amid the clothing. I am relieved to have the bag, grateful to those that pulled it from the water. I think for a moment about how good people are. Another man I take to be a clammer shows me his shoes which have an elaborate contraption that looks a little like a thickly padded bandage attached to the sole. I take it to be something designed to help him walk better on the steel, shell and fish covered deck. No, he says, it is an arch support.

Cheney's pleasures

Here's a quote posted today by Juan Cole.

Eric Haney, a founding member of the Delta Force anti-terrorist unit, has denounced the Iraq War as an "utter debacle," and has blamed widespread US use of torture to the sadism of Dick Cheney, who he says seems to enjoy it. When people like Haney talk like this, it is probably over with.

LINK

Here's a LINK to the article/interview Cole references.

With friends like these....

Carl Levin, a Senator trusted and admired by liberal Democrats, sells us out on the domestic phone tap spying issue.

Glen Greenwald has the goods.

Below are a couple of paragraphs and a link. Greenwald first posts a transcript of a Levin interview. The quoted paragraph refers to the interview.

...The whole interview is like that. I just picked the worst of it. Carl Levin obviously believes that it is perfectly acceptable for the President to break the law just as long as it turns out that his illegal conduct is driven by good intentions. ...

...If it turns out that they were not abusing the eavesdropping power, then it is perfectly fine with Sen. Levin if the President broke the law. If the President broke the law, then the duty of the Senate is to "modify the law in order to make it legal" because, after all, the President broke the law for the "right reasons." As Daniel Webster warned: "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." ...

LINK

Great quote from Webster.

To the rats leaving the ship

The other day, on firedoglake (one of my favorite and maybe the best of blogs) blogger Pachacutec posted a lengthy and, for many, moving apology for having once supported the invasion of Iraq. (LINK) Most of the comments were sympathetic. I'm not. To Pachacutec I say go fuck yourself.

Pachacutec was simply a misguided war supporter and not necessarily a Bush supporter. But it takes an incredible dumbass to have not seen through Bush and everything Bush from the very start. Thanks to the shortsighted Pachacutec type supporters we are where we are.

Jane Smiley has a more lengthy response to former Bush supporters, “Notes for Converts”, posted on The Huffington Post. Below is an excerpt from Smiley’s note #4. In case you’re tempted to go over the top with forgiveness to former Bush supporters, go read the rest of Smiley.

4. President Bush is your creation. When the US Supreme Court humiliated itself in 2000 by handing the presidency to Bush even though two of the justices (Scalia and Thomas) had open conflicts of interest, you did not object. When the Bush administration adopted an "Anything but Clinton" policy that resulted in ignoring and dismissing all warnings of possible terrorist attacks on US soil, you went along with and made excuses for Bush. When the Bush administration allowed the corrupt Enron corporation to swindle California ratepayers and taxpayers in a last ditch effort to balance their books in 2001, you laughed at the Californians and ignored the links between Enron and the administration. When it was evident that the evidence for the war in Iraq was cooked and that State Department experts on the Middle East were not behind the war and so it was going to be run as an exercise in incompetence, you continued to attack those who were against the war in vicious terms and to defend policies that simply could not work.

LINK

U.S. is gone

In case you needed some expert legal opinion on the extent of the coup, here are a couple of paragraphs from "Administration tells Congress (again) - We won't abide by your "laws"" posted on Glen Greenwald’s blog Unclaimed Territory.

...There are numerous noteworthy items, but the most significant, by far, is that the DoJ made clear to Congress that even if Congress passes some sort of newly amended FISA of the type which Sen. DeWine introduced, and even if the President "agrees" to it and signs it into law, the President still has the power to violate that law if he wants to. Put another way, the Administration is telling the Congress -- again -- that they can go and pass all the laws they want which purport to liberalize or restrict the President's powers, and it does not matter, because the President has and intends to preserve the power to do whatever he wants regardless of what those laws provide. ...

....Put another way, the Administration has seized the power of Congress to make the laws, they have seized the power of the judiciary to interpret the laws, and they execute them as well. They have consolidated within themselves all of the powers of the government, particularly with regard to national security. This situation is, of course, exactly what Madison warned about in Federalist 47; it really is the very opposite of everything our Government is intended to be:....

LINK

(via Eschaton)

You might want to make Unclaimed Territory a regular stop.

Time for plan B?

When I stopped for a fancy coffee, on the way home from scheduling a biopsy, I asked the woman at the window “how’s business?”

“Slow,” she said. “I think it’s the price of gas cutting into spending money. They say we’ll be paying $4 a gallon by summer.”

She may be right or wrong for the short term, but long term, the reality is that these higher gas prices are just the beginning. Peak oil is coming, soon. With an idiot at the helm, with a crew of psycho fascists running things, we (all of us but the ultra rich and their retinues of personal MDs and ass wipers) are in serious trouble. I hope you’re not expecting Cheney to lend a hand when you’re out of oil, gas, heat, water, and food.

Here’s a book available on line that states the problems and proposes solutions. The site comes with a handy table of contents: Plan B 2.0:
Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

Clusterfuck

Just when I thought all the noise about peak oil had gone away and I was settled back into a complacent snooze, here it comes again, from Wolcott and from Firedoglake.

There are so many reasons that Bush's name should be dragged through the dust of his post-presidency for the harm and disgrace his administration has inflicted, and so impeachable offenses for which he would prosecuted today if we had a Congress worthy of the Founders. His malign indifference to Peak Oil and global warming may be the greatest of his crimes, because it will lead to the misery and deaths of untold millions of people, animals, and natural resources.

LINK

Peak oil is around the corner and no matter how many pillows we hide our heads under it's coming and it is bringing with it disaster for all of us down here in the wad. Be comforted, however, the ruling plutocrats and their corporate colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike, will weather this shit storm in fortified but luxurious comfort.

Neutered and eagerly acquiescent tail waggers

Here's a link to some wise words from Digby about our ineffective Democratic "leaders", posted on the Huffington Post. LINK

And if you're looking for a bright spotin the darkened skies, you might find it in this post from Firedoglake

People have come to believe in the past five years that Karl Rove is all-powerful (he’s not), that Diebold can steal every election (they can’t), that it is just not worth fighting because defeat is inevitable. That is a very dangerous mindset amongst people upon whom you are counting for those 16 points.

LINK

I'm not quite so optimistic and have for the Democratic Senators that special loathing reserved for traitors and cowards.

Vacation tips

I copied the below list, the whole thing, from Daniel Kalder's The Lost Cosmonaut website.. The Lost Cosmonaut is also the name of his book which I ordered from Amazon.

From THE SHYMKENT DECLARATIONS

(Excerpts from the resolutions passed at the first international congress of Anti- Tourists
at the Shymkent Hotel, Shymkent, Kazakhstan, October 1999)

As the world has become smaller so its wonders have diminished. There is nothing
amazing about the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, or the Pyramids of Egypt. They
are as banal and familiar as the face of a Cornflakes Packet.

Consequently the true unknown frontiers lie elsewhere.

The duty of the traveller therefore is to open up new zones of experience. In our over
explored world these must of necessity be wastelands, black holes, and grim urban
blackspots: all the places which, ordinarily, people choose to avoid.

The only true voyagers, therefore, are anti- tourists. Following this logic we declare that:

The anti-tourist does not visit places that are in any way desirable.

The anti-tourist eschews comfort.

The anti-tourist embraces hunger and hallucinations and shit hotels.

The anti-tourist seeks locked doors and demolished buildings.

The anti-tourist scorns the bluster and bravado of the daredevil, who attempts to

penetrate danger zones such as Afghanistan. The only thing that lies behind this is

vanity and a desire to brag.

The anti-tourist travels at the wrong time of year.

The anti-tourist prefers dead things to living ones.

The anti-tourist is humble and seeks invisibility.

The anti-tourist is interested only in hidden histories, in delightful obscurities, in bad art.

The anti-tourist believes beauty is in the street.

The anti-tourist holds that whatever travel does, it rarely broadens the mind.

The anti-tourist values disorientation over enlightenment.

The anti-tourist loves truth, but he is also partial to lies. Especially his own.

LINK

I found this on 3 Quarks Daily, where I find something fascinating every day. Link

Jews, you're out

I post these two paragraphs from this Jerry Falwell article "A GRACIOUS CORRECTION OF THE JERUSALEM POST" as a heads up for my Jewish friends.

Earlier today, reports began circulating across the globe that I have recently stated that Jews can go to heaven without being converted to Jesus Christ. This is categorically untrue....

...While I am a strong supporter of the State of Israel and dearly love the Jewish people and believe them to be the chosen people of God, I continue to stand on the foundational biblical principle that all people — Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims, etc. — must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in order to enter heaven. ...

LINK


via AMERICAblog.com

The voting game

My county (Monroe, Pennsylvania) has decided to lease computer voting systems to be in place for the primaries.

So, why bother voting?

Is there any reason not to assume that the machines are programmed to deliver predetermined results, subtly crafted to closely mimic local expectations and perhaps raise eyebrows, but certainly not outrage.

It’s the new American reality game. After the results are determined, we vote, go home feeling good, wondering about the turnout, the campaign successes and other delusions. We wait excitedly for the results. Marvel at how wrong the exit and pre election polls can be and then saddened by yet another defeat, we mourn, regain our resolve and commit to trying harder next time, patriotically confident that our system is the best in the world and God smiles on us.

Our beloved betters at play

“The Gridiron's Betters, Skewered With a Butter Knife” is a fun filled article in Sunday’s Washington Post, the article gives a glimpse of our plutocrats at play. These dandies of all political stripes, out of sight and earshot of those of us down here in the wad, cavort away with biting satire, yucking it up over such hilarity as rendition, torture, domestic spying and other funnies from the real world.

Tim Russert, making his first appearance as a new member, decked out in a blue dress and a shiny blond wig as one of the cable news bunnies. But there were also some true clunkers. Singing about torture, subbing "rendition" for "tradition" and borrowing the "Fiddler on the Roof" song was not funny at all. The chumminess of the politicos and the press corps can be cloying.

They’re all one big happy family folks, our beloved betters loving their tax cuts for the rich, sharing the wealth and feeling smug about the unstated understanding that anything that keeps them all at the feast, journalists, congressional reps, and Bushistas alike is a good thing. LINK

We are so screwed.

via eschaton

Fascism reasserts its grip

The despicable Patriot Act makes the word "patriot" itself an obscenity.

Four Senators (only four, Feingold, Byrd, Harkin and Jeffords) voted against it. LINK

Has there ever been a sorrier bunch of pantywaists than the current U.S. Senate? Is their anything other than the risk of losing their own privileged seats that could motivate Democratic Senators to offer meaningful resistance to the incompetent, outlaw Bush regime of torturers, butchers and thieves?

Torture is us

We are well on our way to becoming one with all the worst regimes of modern history. By becoming torturers we have crossed a terrible line into territory from which we may not be able to return. There is no way to justify government sanctioned torture. Torture is always wrong. That is a simple truth, no matter what the despicable Cheney/ Bush thugs do to confuse the issue, a moral Polaris that, if we keep a steady fix on it, will help us to surely distinguish between the good guys and those that are absolutely evil.

This Sunday there is an editorial in the New York Times about the horrendous, but now legally sanctioned kidnapping, shipping off to a Syrian cell and torture of Maher Arar, who, everyone agrees, is an innocent man. Here it is

February 26, 2006
Editorial
A Judicial Green Light for Torture

The administration's tendency to dodge accountability for lawless actions by resorting to secrecy and claims of national security is on sharp display in the case of a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, who spent months under torture because of United States action. A federal trial judge in Brooklyn has refused to stand up to the executive branch, in a decision that is both chilling and ripe for prompt overturning.

Mr. Arar, a 35-year-old software engineer whose case has been detailed in a pair of columns by Bob Herbert, was detained at Kennedy Airport in 2002 while on his way home from a family vacation. He was held in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn detention center and interrogated without proper access to legal counsel. Finally, he was shipped off to a Syrian prison. There, he was held for 10 months in an underground rat-infested dungeon and brutally tortured because officials suspected that he was a member of Al Qaeda. All this was part of a morally and legally unsupportable United States practice known as "extraordinary rendition," in which the federal government outsources interrogations to regimes known to use torture and lacking fundamental human rights protections.

The maltreatment of Mr. Arar would be reprehensible — and illegal under the United States Constitution and applicable treaties — even had the suspicions of terrorist involvement proven true. But no link to any terrorist organization or activity emerged, which is why the Syrians eventually released him. Mr. Arar then sued for damages.

The judge in the case, David Trager of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, did not dispute that United States officials had reason to know that Mr. Arar faced a likelihood of torture in Syria. But he took the rare step of blocking the lawsuit entirely, saying that the use of torture in rendition cases is a foreign policy question not appropriate for court review, and that going forward would mean disclosing state secrets.

It is hard to see why resolving Mr. Arar's case would necessitate the revelation of privileged material. Moreover, as the Supreme Court made clear in a pair of 2004 decisions rebuking the government for its policies of holding foreign terrorism suspects in an indefinite legal limbo in Guantánamo and elsewhere, even during the war on terror, the government's actions are subject to court review and must adhere to the rule of law.

With the Bush administration claiming imperial powers to detain, spy on and even torture people, and the Republican Congress stuck largely in enabling mode, the role of judges in checking executive branch excesses becomes all the more crucial. If the courts collapse when confronted with spurious government claims about the needs of national security, so will basic American liberties.

Also, the current New Yorker article “Annals of the Pentagon, THE MEMO, How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted", by Jane Mayer, portrays the despicable maneuverings of the Cheney/Rumsfeld sycophants to provide legal cover for torture. The article is on line.

Mayer attributes the quote below to Alberto J. Mora, the now outgoing general counsel of the United States Navy, a conservative with a well functioning moral compass. From a few paragraphs into the article:

...“To my mind, there’s no moral or practical distinction,” he (Mora) told me. “If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America—even those designated as ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles. It’s a transformative issue.”...

LINK

I can not grasp how it has happened that we have allowed these incompetent vicious beasts running our country to torture, to ignore law, principles, and the Constitution without meaningful challenge and resistance. Our compliance will be a shame that will outlive us all. It makes me sick.

Pennacchio 2

The Sideshow suggests getting these lists of the three main Pennsylvania Senators' positions on the issues in front of Pennsylvania voters.

Here are the lists:

Rick Santorum (Republican)
On abortion – pro-life
On stem cell research – opposed
Accepts PAC money – yes
War in Iraq – it was the right thing to do
Troops in Iraq – stay the course
National Health Care – opposed
Raising the minimum wage – supports an increase of $1.10
NAFTA/CAFTA – supports CAFTA; opposed NAFTA
Alito confirmation to Supreme Court – supports confirmation

Bob Casey, Jr. (Democrat)
On abortion – pro-life
On stem cell research – opposed
Accepts PAC money – yes, but not corporate or industry
War in Iraq – supported
Troops in Iraq – stay the course
National Health Care – opposed
Raising the minimum wage – supports
NAFTA/CAFTA – opposed both
Alito confirmation to Supreme Court – supports confirmation

Chuck Pennacchio (Democrat)
On abortion – pro-choice
On stem cell research – supports
Accepts PAC money – no
War in Iraq – opposed
Troops in Iraq – out as soon as safely possible
National Health Care – supports
Raising the minimum wage – supports living wage with different levels depending on where the worker lives
NAFTA/CAFTA – opposed both
Alito confirmation to Supreme Court – supports a filibuster

LINK

Damn little difference between Casey and Santorum.

Pennacchio

My fellow Pennsylvania voters who are disgusted with having to chose between voting for Casey (who jumped at the chance to support Alito) or not voting really need to visit The Sideshow, read the post and follow the links.

The short version: Pennacchio is a viable candidate and worth voting for, not a candidate you have to hold your nose, close your eyes, flip the lever and drive home disgusted over.

Check out The SideShow LINK

Unraveling

There is so much stuff going on that it’s impossible to keep up. I’ve been reading and not posting. However, the vote fraud Raw Story quoted from below should not get lost entirely in the VP Fudd shotguning news, the VP falsely claiming the right to declassify documents news, and much more. No wonder Cheney tries to avoid speaking.

Check out this story below and think of it as a harbinger of things to come. After the wall begins to crack, the process accelerates and it comes crashing down much more quickly than we could ever reasonably expect.

The Maryland State Board of Elections allowed Diebold Election Systems to operate its touch-screen voting machines during the state's 2002 gubernatorial election and the 2004 presidential primaries before the state agency actually certified the controversial machines, according to recently disclosed documents.

That is a violation of state law, according to Linda Schade, executive director of TrueVoteMD.org, an election integrity group….

…In November 2002, Lamone, a Democrat, allowed Diebold to operate its machines in four counties for the state gubernatorial election. That was when Ehrlich became the first Republican governor to be elected in 36 years in what had always been known as a solidly Democratic state.

That was also the year when a Republican political newcomer, a self-described "nobody," ousted a veteran Democratic state senator in what The Baltimore Sun described as "one of the most remarkable election upsets in recent Maryland political history."

After serving for several decades, Democratic House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. lost his Allegany County seat to LeRoy E. Myers. Allegany County was one of the four counties where Diebold machines were used that year.

LINK

To stay on the crest of what's happening with Cheney, go to firedoglake and look around. They are way ahead.

Minor heart attack

From firedoglake:

Dick Cheney is not the big, tough bwana hunter he pretends to be. He uses a little girl gun on canned hunts and hides behind a woman's skirts to evade responsibility for shooting an old man in the face.

I will keep saying that over and over and over again.

jane hamsher

quoted from her "Comments" in her blog.

Also, is any heart attack minor?

A billion a year on pr

It takes a lot of shoveling to cover up the Bush mess, sell the Iraq war and keep the American wad convinced they live in a Democracy.

From The Raw Story

Today Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. George Miller, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, and other senior Democrats released a new Government Accountability Office report finding that the Bush Administration spent more than $1.6 billion in public relations and media contracts in a two and a half year span.

"The government is spending over a billion dollars per year on PR and advertising," said Rep. Waxman. "Careful oversight of this spending is essential given the track record of the Bush Administration, which has used taxpayer dollars to fund covert propaganda within the United States."

LINK

Caught with the smoking gun after gunning down a Texas crony while cruising the brush with a couple of women will take a heap of cash to fix.

Hunter safety course?

The key to the story is no longer how closely Harry Whittington resembles a quail. The latest, more embellished story suggests that it was Harry's fault. He snuck up on Dick.

Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shot at a covey of quail late afternoon on Saturday.

Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and found a second covey.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong told the Associated Press in an interview.

LINK

It does the Sportsmen for Bush/Cheney proud, not to mention Cheney's NRA pals. Can we see that photo again where they present him with a rifle?

On update, a few questions:

Why did they wait nearly a day to release the story?
Was Cheney drunk?
Was he hunting the birds from a car?
Who were the other "hunters"?

Soon it may not be the Europe you remember

I don't want to risk cartooning this. But it's an interesting observation I thought I'd pass along.

...Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. The demographic trends are ominous: Given current birthrates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow....

From "Sam Harris on the Reality of Islam" on Truthdig

The article quoted from above is very much anti Islamic. Whether it consoles anyone who is offended or not, Sam Harris is anti all religions and apparently sees them as major contributors to conflict. He carries my own aversion to religious fundamentalism in any form a few steps farther.

LINK

Sharing the wealth

The Nation's Dual Political Dynasties Are Growing Closer Than Arm's Length

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 — When the Bushes and Clintons held hands before 15,000 mourners at Coretta Scott King's funeral on Tuesday, it looked like a prayerful moment in the life of the nation. But as almost anyone watching America's two leading political families knew, underneath the tranquil image was a drama of ambition, rivalry, love and alliance that could shape the 2008 presidential election. …

…It was one of the most public manifestations to date of the odd friendship and mutual need of two dynasties that, on the surface at least, have almost nothing in common. But as President Bush put it in an interview with CBS News last month, "Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton." Mr. Bush made the remark in a telling exchange with Bob Schieffer, who said, "Well, you know, if Senator Clinton becomes president."…

LINK

Bumiller is never to be trusted. But even so, this quote, from the NYT, (and the every day reports on our preening , clubby Senators) underlines the reality of our plutocracy. Those at the top who are superficially opponents are more closely allied with each other to ensure continuation of the status quo than they are with principles or with the interests of voters. The Constitution does not prescribe the system of government; it has become a collection of shape shifting slogans expeditiously fitted to any situation.

American Democracy, as we thought it was, is over. Maybe it has been for a long time and we simply did not know it. Either way we are now watching a new system of government emerge--one that has some of the characteristics of fascism, plutocracy, and a new corporatocracy. Those of us with no connections to the top tier are toast. We will be stripped of our security and squished into a timid, ever more malleable wad desperate to serve the plutocrats for whatever trickles down or dribbles out of their well stuffed pockets.

Here in Pennsylvania we are faced with both the Democratic Governor Rendell (whose wife Midge served with Alito on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals) going out of his way, on FOX, to announce support of Alito, and Casey (a member of a local dynasty himself), the likely nominee to oppose Santorum, also announcing support, both at the very time some Democrats were trying (lamely) to put together support for a filibuster. LINK

Not much to vote for here in Pennsylvania.

Cartoons

I’m sure the Sportsmen for Bush down at the corner tavern are pretty firm in their support of cartoons depicting Mohammed and our right to publicly ridicule. If I find myself agreeing with them about anything, I know it’s time for me to carefully examine my position.

Having the "right" doesn't necessarily mean we should do something. In the cartoon situation, I think we can defend the "right" to cartoon (to me even the word is funny) without endorsing the propriety of publishing cartoons that are offensive to so many. Ultimately, I don't think a stand is required. Maybe the best solution is a “let it blow over approach.” Stop running the cartoons, at least until people are no longer rioting and being killed over cartoons, without making a statement or explanation. We don’t always have to take a stand and some conflicts simply can’t be resolved.

Ukes for troops

You’re probably well ahead of me on this, but in case not, you might want to contemplate the impact a boat load of ukuleles could have on the Iraq war, especially if we expanded the program to include insurgents as well as U.S. troops. If you do think about this program, like me you might come to the conclusion that settling issues with dueling ukuleles might be a good way to go.

For those of you not already involved, here’s a LINK to the Ukes for Troops website.

I found the site (can we call it a movement?) this morning via WNTI radio’s Flaming Ukulele radio hour.

Captain George Bush and the Republican crew?

From this Reuters story: "Red Sea ferry survivors say captain fled"

...We were wearing lifejackets but they told us there was nothing wrong, told us to take them off and they took away the lifejackets. Then the boat started to sink and the captain took a boat and left," he added, speaking to Reuters Television.

"The captain was the first to leave and we were surprised to see the boat sinking," added Khaled Hassan, another survivor.

Other survivors also reported that the crew had played down the gravity of the situation and withheld lifejackets.

"There was a fire but the crew stopped the people from putting on lifejackets so that it wouldn't cause a panic," said Abdel Raouf Abdel Nabi, one of the survivors.

"There was a blaze down below. The crew said 'Don't worry, we will put it out.' When things got really bad the crew just went off in the lifeboats and left us on board," said Nader Galal Abdel Shafi, another arrival on the same rescue boat....

LINK

Even if Bush and Cheney weren't aboard, they certainly subscribe to the same approach to leadership. Lie to the people, take care of yourself first and screw everyone else.

More lies, more evidence

If you want to get the latest, breaking details on Plamegate, trumped up reasons to invade Iraq, and evidence that Cheney knew the wmd tale was a lie, here’s a LINK, and be sure to follow the links from there.

The Left Coaster via Firedoglake And don't miss Waas

What's surprising is how damn clumsy they are. If we had an honest press or an honest Attorney General, the Bush gang would be on the spit and well roasted long ago.

Crackpots

This morning I was entertained by reading Bush’s prewar scheme to justify war with Iraq: paint a plane with UN insignias and provoke the Iraqis into shooting it down. LINK. This crackpot plan could have been cooked up by a crew of roofers slugging down lunchtime beers in the Flying Dutchman saloon. No wonder Bush has support from the Sportsmen for Bush gang. They are on the same wave length, together stumbling lost in the murky woods between here and the Halfwit Hills.

What a fucking waste

Could the Democrats have found a less inspiring spokesperson than Tim Kaine?

Even Gergen, on CNN right now, describes the Democrats as spineless.

I have been a Democrat all my life. When I was young it was a kick your teeth in party of longshoremen, cops, and intellectuals. Who knows what it is now. But whatever it is it embarrasses me, makes me sick and I'm ashamed to be associated with it.

Reality based resistance

Thanks mainly to the cowardly, ineffectual Democratic Senators; the Y2K coup is now complete. The fascist Right now controls all branches of the government and can now devote all resources to maintaining power. They can accelerate the dismantling of the constitution and the movement of wealth to their friends and allies in the corporatocracy. Expect them to use U.S. military power to continue seeking control of all the world’s energy resources resulting in lots more little wars, coups and assassinations.

Here at home we can look forward to torture, arrest and murder becoming, more than ever, politics as usual.

Best we can hope for is the collapse of the Right under the weight of their own stone cold stupidity while we well meaning Liberals continue in a hallucinatory daze to nominate candidates, send money and play sincerely our parts through the election cycle of hope, disappointment and despair as if it were all real and elections were more than theatrical productions with predetermined outcomes.

If the Democratic Senators wish to change the course and redeem themselves, they should get up and walk out during this evening’s superfluous state-of-the-union address. At least then the reality of the situation would be boldly outlined and that could be the beginning of reality based resistance. But they won’t, of course. The seats are too comfortable.

Ready for the roundup

Here’s something that Patty Sheehan needs to know, especially if her camp out at the ranch is joined by Venezuela’s President Chavez.

A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any "special event of national significance" away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter.

Sen. Arlen Specter , R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sponsored the measure, which would extend the authority of the Secret Service to allow agents to arrest people who willingly or knowingly enter a restricted area at an event, even if the president or other official normally protected by the Secret Service isn't in attendance at the time.

The measure has civil libertarians protesting what they say is yet another power grab for the executive branch and one more loss for free speech.

"It's definitely problematic and chilling," said Lisa Graves, senior counsel for legislative strategy at the American Civil Liberties Union , which has written letters to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, pointing out that the provision wasn't subject to hearings or open debate.... LINK

Business as usual

My guess is that even those Democratic Senators who voted in favor of an Alito filibuster did so only because they counted the votes and knew it would fail. Taking falsely principled stands on hopeless issues is one of their often used tactics. It allows them to posture grandly before their constituents. Watch them all piously vote “NO” in the Alito confirmation vote, taking cover once again by casting a meaningless vote.

This batch of Democratic Senators love for their privileges is far greater than commitment to any principle. Along with their pals, their Republican colleagues and also the equally privileged superstar members of the media, their main goal is always to preserve the status quo where they all sit comfortably near the top of the American plutocracy.

Soon a little cluster of Democratic Senators will skip off to compete in the presidential primaries. Very likely once again one of them will win and we will get excited about their gibberish and posturing and starry eyed we will troop off to vote in another predetermined, meaningless election.

What a mess.

(UPDATE: digby has a more eloguent, more optimistic, more in depth analysis, here LINK)

How it works

A peek at how the corporatocracy works from a book review in the Guardian.

...In 1972 Perkins went to see the then dictator of Panama, General Omar Torrijos. Torrijos was a nationalist who was eager to wrest control of the Panama Canal from the US. Perkins went in to read him the riot act and came out with what sounded like an agreement. Some years later, Torrijos started talking to the Japanese about building a larger, sea-level canal for Panama that would have undermined American influence and corporate interests in the area. One night in 1981 Torrijos died when his Twin Otter aircraft crashed under mysterious circumstances. Perkins is convinced he was killed by US interests who placed a bomb on the plane. Had he lived, Perkins writes in his book, Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man, "He would have served as a role model for a generation of leaders in the Americas, Africa and Asia - something the CIA, the NSA [National Security Agency] and the EHMs [economic hit men] could not allow."

Economic hit men resort to such heavy-handed tactics, says Perkins, only when all other means of leverage have failed. The rest of the time they would employ a mixture of bribery, sex, flattery, prostitution, distortion, extortion, abduction and invasion to get their own way. "Sex was a very common tool used by economic hit men," Perkins says. "It was not uncommon for us to seduce wives of oil company executives because that was a way of gaining information and learning things about their husbands."

If the threats of the economic hit men don't persuade, the "jackals" will come in to make good on them. The jackals, says Perkins, are the CIA-sanctioned heavy mob who foment coups and revolutions, murder, abduction and assassination. And when the jackals fail, as was the case in Iraq, then the military goes in.

Economic hit men, Perkins says, work entirely separately but completely in concert with the state. Perkins never once reported to a US government agency - but he is in little doubt that the US government always knew and approved of what he was doing. His task, he says, was to ensure that US business interests came out on top, regardless of who won an election, and that the American wealthy were further enriched, regardless of who was impoverished as a result....

LINK via 3Quarks Daily

(Wellstone fans should note the use of the small plane as murder weapon.)

Anti Alito staging area

Even though it's the last minute, it is still possible to have an impact. If you want to get in the fight against Alito a good place to start is Firedoglake. Everything you need to get active is there.

Camporee

Serious challenges in the primaries might awaken some anti fascist attitudes in our somnolent Democratic Senators.

At a press conference in Venezuela, alongside President Chavez, Patty Sheehan said she might run for the Senate.

Sheehan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., said Saturday that she is strongly considering challenging Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein because the lawmaker will not support calls to immediately bring the troops home.

Sheehan, 48, said running in the Democratic primary in June would help "bring attention to all the peace candidates in the country."

Sheehan, who was visiting Venezuela for the six-day forum along with other anti-war and anti-globalization activists, told The Associated Press that she decide whether to run after talking with her three adult children in California.

Sheehan accused Feinstein of being out of touch with Californians on the war in Iraq. Feinstein's campaign manager said the senator did not support Bush and felt she had been misled by his administration.

LINK via the Raw Story

Chavez said Sheehan invited him to join her in setting up tents at Bush's ranch.

Fool me once...

Republican election theft is the most important political issue we face. Why invest time, energy and fantasy in picking candidates when the problems that allowed the election thefts in 2000 and 2004 have not been addressed? If anything, the stakes are even higher now and you can bet that impeachment wary Republicans will have their fraud machine updated, tuned up and supercharged to meet the challenges of 06. All they need do is target selected, vulnerable districts—just enough to ensure continued control of both houses.

Don’t expect much help from incumbent Democrats. Most have revealed themselves to be more interested in keeping their comfortable seats than presenting an effective challenge to Republicans. Being a minority Democratic Senator is a great job and, since they have no control, they bear no responsibility for whatever the Senate does or does not do. All they have to do is spoon out a little spunk now and then and reelection is assured. Where else are the anti Bush votes going to go?

For more on how we lost before, how examination of vote fraud is stifled, and how we’re going to lose again, here’s a link to an informative, but brief interview with Mark Crispin Miller, via The Sideshow.

Kidnap the wives

Is this the tip of another iceberg?

Documents Show Army Seized Wives As Tactic

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show. ...

...In one memo, a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer described what happened when he took part in a raid on an Iraqi suspect's house in Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, on May 9, 2004. The raid involved Task Force (TF) 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile targets.

"During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender," wrote the 14-year veteran officer.

He said he objected, but when they raided the house the team leader, a senior sergeant, seized her anyway.

"The 28-year-old woman had three young children at the house, one being as young as six months and still nursing," the intelligence officer wrote. She was held for two days and was released after he complained, he said....

LINK

via The Raw Story.

Filibuster Alito

Editorial from today's New York Times

January 26, 2006
Editorial
Senators in Need of a Spine
Judge Samuel Alito Jr., whose entire history suggests that he holds extreme views about the expansive powers of the presidency and the limited role of Congress, will almost certainly be a Supreme Court justice soon. His elevation will come courtesy of a president whose grandiose vision of his own powers threatens to undermine the nation's basic philosophy of government — and a Senate that seems eager to cooperate by rolling over and playing dead.

It is hard to imagine a moment when it would be more appropriate for senators to fight for a principle. Even a losing battle would draw the public's attention to the import of this nomination....

Last paragraph:

... A filibuster is a radical tool. It's easy to see why Democrats are frightened of it. But from our perspective, there are some things far more frightening. One of them is Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court.

LINK

Call or Fax your Senators LINK

Also Loathsome

Robert Casey and Ed Rendell, both Pennsylvania Democrats, endorsed Alito.

Casey is campaigning for the nomination to run against Santorum for the Senate and Governor Rendell is up for reelection.

With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans? Rendell, at least, could easily have dodged making an endorsement. Was he so afraid of the Right that he felt compelled to appease them?

Fuck both of these guys.

LINK via Atrios.

Casey's campaign number: 215-567-4190

Governor Rendell's number: (717) 787-2500.

If you call you might want to remind them that the Alito nomination is about more than Roe vs Wade, which is likely the issue that most concerns these cowardly Democrats.

Most loathsome

The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005

Don't cheat yourself. Read all 50 entries.

Via 3 Quarks Daily

Stop Alito

The Alito nomination is as good a place as any to draw the line and bring the Bush agenda to a halt. Though congressional Democrats can't impeach,there certainly is enough reason for them to stop cooperating with Republicans on everything and at least clog the Bush engine.

By now Bush’s negatives must have taken us to the point where congressional Democrats’ self serving interests intersect with positions of principle.

Torturers and proud of it

From CNN:

FORT CARSON, Colorado (AP) -- A military jury on Monday ordered a reprimand but no jail time for an Army interrogator convicted of killing an Iraqi general by stuffing him headfirst into a sleeping bag and sitting on his chest.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. also was ordered to forfeit $6,000 salary and was largely restricted to his barracks and workplace for 60 days....

...The defense had argued a heart condition caused Mowhoush's death, and that Welshofer's commanders had approved the interrogation technique.

Prosecutors described Welshofer as a rogue interrogator who became frustrated with Mowhoush's refusal to answer questions and escalated his techniques from simple interviews to beatings to simulating drowning, and finally, to death.

LINK

I am ashamed of what we have become and what we tolerate. All our nightmares of what would happen if Bush became president are coming true.

If we make a bigger mess, we make more money

Halliburton has been giving our troops contaminated water, according to an AP story posted on this site: Halliburton Watch

Water supplied to a U.S. base in Iraq was contaminated and the contractor in charge, Halliburton, failed to tell troops and civilians at the facility, according to internal documents from the company and interviews with former Halliburton officials.

Although the allegations came from Halliburton's own water quality experts, the company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney denied there was a contamination problem at Camp Junction City, in Ramadi.

"We exposed a base camp population (military and civilian) to a water source that was not treated," said a July 15, 2005, memo by William Granger, the official for Halliburton's KBR subsidiary who was in charge of water quality in Iraq and Kuwait.
"The level of contamination was roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River," Granger wrote in one of several documents.
The Associated Press obtained the documents from Senate Democrats who are holding a public inquiry into the allegations Monday.

LINK

In another, more detailed, article on the same Halliburton Watch website, the whistle blowers are identified and a possible Halliburton motive emerges in the final paragraph.

...Former KBR employees and water quality specialists, Ben Carter and Ken May, told HalliburtonWatch that KBR knowingly exposes troops and civilians to contaminated water from Iraq's Euphrates River. One internal KBR email provided to HalliburtonWatch says that, for "possibly a year," the level of contamination at one camp was two times the normal level for untreated water...

LINK

The final two paragraphs:

Carter and May also describe instances where a site manager urged everyone to conceal contamination information from the company's health and safety department. According to May, statements were made in an "All Hands Meeting" by then Site Manger Suzanne-Raku Williams, Warren Smith, and acting Medic Phillip Daigle suggesting that if anyone became sick, it was probably from the handles from the port-a-lets toilets and not from water contamination. In response, Ken May resigned out of disgust and frustration. In an email to superiors, he chastised KBR for what he said was "retaliatory behavior from dishonest site management" and "inaction" that "compromised" camp safety and the health of the people who work there. He expressed concern over "the lack of oversight from the outside to investigate, redirect, and periodically monitor" the water to assure a healthy workplace. "Unfortunately, because of the lack of regards for my wellbeing [and] no response or action from KBR/Halliburton I have no recourse other than to resign," he said in an email to his supervisor.

Carter and May's experience is not uncommon at KBR, where former employees have described instances of being ostracized or terminated if they dare to speak out against company negligence, mismanagement or malfeasance. Other former KBR employees have testified about being fired or urged to quit or conceal information after pointing out low-cost solutions to simple problems. But, a cynic might note, allowing small problems to grow into expensive ones through purposeful neglect actually boosts KBR's profits as there is a profit guarantee of 1% to 3% over cost for the LOGCAP III contract. As with all of KBR's "cost plus" military contracts, the more expensive the problem, the greater the fee paid to KBR from the government. So, it would seem there is actually a built-in incentive not to prevent small problems or reward whistleblower employees like Carter and May when neglect will result in a costlier problem down the road and more profits for KBR.

emphasis mine.LINK

Spying assistantships available

An alumni group is offering students up to $100 per class to supply tapes and notes exposing University of California, Los Angeles professors who allegedly express extreme left-wing political views....

LINK, AP via The Huffington Post

According to the article, the nonprofit group has so far raised $22,000 from 100 donors

Dowd today

Why Maureen Dowd is compelled to take shots at Gore, Hillary and Kerry at every opportunity is a mystery. She did it again, at all three, today. Here's a LINK, but it is available only to subscribers.

The first three paragraphs:

Looking for a Democratic Tough Guy, or Girl
By MAUREEN DOWD
The Democrats were throwing haymakers at the White House this week, but they will never succeed as long as they're perceived as the party in skirts.

Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton called the Bush administration on its apparently bottomless store of imperial sins. They made a lot of good points. They just didn't score any.

This trio, apparently jockeying for '08, are not the best messengers. They're loaded down with baggage.

Two of them, who could have stopped W. and Dick Cheney before they undid 230 years of American democracy, didn't, because they allowed themselves to be painted as girlie men. The other, a manly girl, has been so cautious and opportunistic about weighing in on everything from Schiavo to Alito and Iraq that when she finally sang out on Monday and railed against W., she sounded more soprano than basso profundo.

It was easy for the Republicans to play their usual gender games and dismiss the three Democrats as whiny, shrill and ineffectual.

Here's the note I pasted into Dowd's "contact" box:

"In spite of your efforts to the contrary, Gore did win the 2000 popular vote, a fact most Gore bashers always leave out. If the Florida votes were counted fairly, he would have won the electoral votes as well.

I really don’t understand why, when it comes to the Democratic opposition, you continue to parrot Republican talking points. Gore was the victim of an extensive smear campaign that had little to do with facts. For whatever reasons, celebrity journalists disliked him, favored Bush, and took every opportunity to portray Gore negatively. You know this well, since you were one of the players. Why now continue with the personal slander, when we all know better, instead of sticking with the eloquent message Gore delivered?

You, thanks to your dishonest portraits of the Democratic candidates, are partly responsible for the mess we are now in. Seems to me you can be counted on to put aside integrity when presented with an opportunity to be outrageous. You’d rather be interesting than fair.

I picture you squeezing your eyes shut, jamming your fingers in your ears and shrieking when something positive about Gore (and most other Democrats) comes to your attention--a sorry posture for a journalist."

Sweet dreams of impeachment

Asked by ABC News following his speech whether President Bush's domestic spying program constituted an impeachable offense, Gore said it might be and pointed to one of the three Articles of Impeachment that the House Judiciary Committee approved against President Nixon on July 27, 1974.

"That's a legal determination for the Congress to make," Gore told ABC News. "But Article II of the impeachment charges against President Nixon was warrantless wiretapping that the President said was 'necessary' for national security."

"It can be" an impeachable offense, he added

LINK via The Raw Story

Before we get too carried away with sweet fantasies of impeachment we need to remember that Congress is controlled by Republicans. They will continue to be in control unless Democrats effectively address election fraud. By now the Republican election theft machine has been refined to work even more smoothly than it did 2004 and 2000, with key 2006 congressional elections in the crosshairs.

After years of watching these neo fascists operate, why would anyone think they will risk control of both houses in a fair election? The possibility of impeachment is too great a risk for them to take and they will do anything to win. To think otherwise is delusional.

Once in power fascists are difficult to dislodge

What's it going to take?

From firedoglake:

...It is a dangerous time to be an American. We live under virtually unchallenged one party rule, and that one party is on a rampage to make torture morally acceptable. Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman invite screaming racist Michelle Malkin to lunch, and today Peter Kirsanow is paraded before the Senate by the GOP as an "expert." Both of these people applaud rounding up American citizens and putting them into concentration camps....

LINK

I agree. Today’s Right is a dangerous, extremist movement fully capable of the excesses of twentieth century fascism. The polite response to this threat by the media, The New York Times, for example, and also the Democratic Senators leaves this movement unchallenged. It baffles me. I wonder what it will take to energize an effective resistance. You would think defending and advocating torture as acceptable American policy would be enough. But of course it is not. Nor is it enough that we wage a war of aggression on falsified pretenses, keep prisoners in camps without trial or the protection of international law, have a government that flouts the law and illegally taps communications, spies on dissenters, and gets caught accepting huge bribes from special interests.

I am contemptuous of all those Democrats in privileged and influential positions who give the Right a forum, who do not challenge them bluntly and forcefully on every single issue. It strains me greatly to be minimally civil to Republican family members, Republicans I work with, and old Republican friends, all of them ordinary people, simple members of the chorus but none-the-less vital parts of this terrible engine.

Go read firedoglake and check out Nancy Pelosi:

WASHINGTON Jan 12, 2006 — House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said Republicans had created "one of the most closed, corrupt congresses in history" and urged the House ethics committee to investigate GOP lawmakers linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"It's hard for the American people to understand how corrupt it is here," the California Democrat said at a news conference.

LINK

Good stuff

Here are the opening paragraphs in a terrific post at firedoglake on Alito and the managed media coverage. If you go there and read the entire post, you very likely will want more and will end up scrolling down and down for quite a good read.

It is remarkably frustrating to blog the Alito hearings, feel the righteous indignation of people in the comments sections all over the blogosphere that the supreme court is in danger of making a major lurch to the extreme right with the potential appointment of a bigoted, sexist, entitled, slavering chickenhawk like Alito, and see it reflected nowhere in the traditional media.

Every time it feels like some momentum is being gained, CNN blows it all away with the sweep of a facile headline. Pick up a paper or turn on cable news and on cue they are parroting all the GOP's talking points -- Alito's a moderate, he'll keep an "open mind" on abortion, and oh the poor frumpy sobbing wife.

LINK

Same Old Shit

Same old Democratic Senators, gasping, awash, half rotted in the stream like dying salmon.

This paragraph from Altercation's coverage of the Alito hearings about sums it up.

The Senators, with few exceptions, used their allotted time to pontificate rather than to learn something about Alito or give him enough rope to hang himself. They spent countless minutes spouting off their views, followed by close-ended questions he could answer or refuse to answer in a sentence or two. Walter Shapiro at Salon has more on their artless questioning.

LINK

God help us if another Democratic Senator wins the presidential nomination.

The case for fighting Alito's confirmation

From Crooks and Liars:

The Democrats are a party in urgent need of a good fight. And the Alito nomination presents the perfect opportunity for Democrats to demonstrate that they are willing to wage a real battle for the things they believe in. Two core Democratic principles, at least, are at stake in these hearings, and are clearly threatened by the Alito nomination:

(1) whether we live in a country where the President has the right to declare himself to be above the law and can freely violate whatever laws he wants; and, (2) whether the privacy rights which are the bedrock of individual liberty in this country will be decimated by the Supreme Court, thereby returning us to the days where women were prohibited by the state from having abortions and where the Federal Government is able to intervene in our lives and restrict our liberties in the most personal and private spheres, from our most intimate relationships to the way we die....

LINK

via The Sideshow to Unclaimed Territory

There's much more here and it is all very good.

Rewriting personal histories

You would think a Supreme Court Justice wannabe, a super star media whore and an Oprah favored author would have the nuts to fess up and come clean with the past. Apparently not.

Alito is lying to the Senate about his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP). For the facts about his awkward attempts to cover up this membership and why it matters, go here: LINK

For Diby's assassination of Alito (and his homeboys), go here: LINK

For additional coverage of Alito and his hearings, go here: LINK, and scroll down. For a bonus, Russert, who also has trouble coming clean, is depantsed.

If you're interested in joining the fun with the James Frey ain't I something (no, you're not) Oprah book fraud, read the great Wolcott, here: LINK

To hell with pensions. Give it all to the rich.

Here’s more evidence, from the New York Times, of the class war being waged aggressively by the privileged corporate elite against people who work for a living. Slowly but surely we are being stripped of any security. The value of contributions made by wage earners and salaried workers to corporate success is scorned as the fabulously rich renege on obligations to life long employees while hauling cash home by the barge load.

The article is long, but here’s the first two paragraphs:

More Companies Ending Promises for Retirement

The death knell for the traditional company pension has been tolling for some time now. Companies in ailing industries like steel, airlines and auto parts have thrown themselves into bankruptcy and turned over their ruined pension plans to the federal government.

Now, with the recent announcements of pension freezes by some of the cream of corporate America - Verizon, Lockheed Martin, Motorola and, just last week, I.B.M. - the bell is tolling even louder. Even strong, stable companies with the means to operate a pension plan are facing longer worker lifespans, looming regulatory and accounting changes and, most important, heightened global competition. Some are deciding they either cannot, or will not, keep making the decades-long promises that a pension plan involves....

From farther into the article:

...Pension advocates said they were dismayed that rich and powerful companies like I.B.M. and Verizon would abandon traditional pensions.

"With Verizon, we're talking about a company at the top of its game," said Karen Friedman, director of policy studies for the Pension Rights Center, an advocacy group in Washington. "They have a huge profit. Their C.E.O. has given himself a huge compensation package. And then they're saying, 'In order to compete, sorry, we have to freeze the pensions.' If companies freeze the pensions, what are employees left with?"...

Link

You have to wonder when people will get pissed off enough to do something.

Who's next?

We always knew they would do this. Here’s someone telling a tale of being on the “no fly” list most likely for writing critical of Bush.

From James Moore's "Branded" on the Huffington Post. (via America Blog)

"Mam, I'd like to know how I got on the No Fly Watch List."

"I'm not really authorized to tell you that, sir," she explained after taking down my social security and Texas driver's license numbers.

"What can you tell me?"

"All I can tell you is that there is something in your background that in some way is similar to someone they are looking for."

"Well, let me get this straight then," I said. "Our government is looking for a guy who may have a mundane Anglo name, who pays tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxes, has never been arrested or even late on a credit card payment, is more uninteresting than a Tupperware party, and cries after the first two notes of the national anthem? We need to find this guy. He sounds dangerous to me."

"I'm sorry, sir, I've already told you everything I can."

"Oh, wait," I said. "One last thing: this guy they are looking for? Did he write books critical of the Bush administration, too?"

I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information. Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There were 35,000 Americans in that database last year. According to a European government that screens hundreds of thousands of American travelers every year, the list they have been given to work from has since grown to 80,000.

Fineman calls it for McCain/Lieberman

Howard Fineman thinks disgust at the Abramoff scandals could lead to a successful third party challenge. His dream ticket is headed by McCain and Lieberman. I am speechless; my brain numb at the prospect of these two despicable, self righteous nutbags heading anything.

Fineman is one of the most offensive typists covering politics. His early Newsweek coverage of Bush was teen fan magazine quality and now he’s launched another boat load of horseshit. What does Newsweek pay this guy to do? Sit around and make up childish fantasies to make the adults ooh and ahhh and pat him on his silly but naughty head?

If Sen. John McCain doesn’t win the Republican presidential nomination, I could see him leading an independent effort to “clean up” the capital as a third-party candidate. Having been seared by his own touch with this type of controversy (the Keating case in the '80s, which was as important an experience to him as Vietnam), McCain could team up with a Democrat, say, Sen. Joe Lieberman. If they could assemble a cabinet in waiting—perhaps Wes Clark for Defense, Russ Feingold for Justice, Colin Powell for anything— they could win the 2008 election going away.

Link
via The Raw Story

Burger man

Of all the seasonal homilies about "green" Christmases and "sustainable" new year pledges - an oxymoron if ever I've heard one - only one stuck in my mind: each of us could make a bigger contribution to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by becoming a vegan than by converting to an eco-friendly car.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have calculated the relative carbon intensity of a standard vegan diet in comparison to a US-style carnivorous diet, all the way through from production to processing to distribution to cooking and consumption. An average burger man (that is, not the outsize variety) emits the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes more CO2 every year than the standard vegan. By comparison, were you to trade in your conventional gas-guzzler for a state of the art Prius hybrid, your CO2 savings would amount to little more than one tonne per year.

This may come as a bit of a shock to climate change campaigners. "Stop eating meat" is unlikely to be the favourite slogan of the new Stop Climate Chaos coalition. Even "eat less meat" might not go down too well, even though Compassion in World Farming has produced an utterly compelling explanation - in their report, Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat - of why this really is the way forward.

The basic rule of thumb is that it takes 2kg of feed to produce every kilogram of chicken, 4kg for pork, and at least 7kg for beef. The more meat we eat, the more grain, soya and other feedstuffs we need. So when we hear that the total global meat demand is expected to grow from 209m tonnes in 1997 to around 327m tonnes in 2020, what we have to hold in our mind is all the extra hectares of land required, all the extra water consumed, the extra energy burned, and the extra chemicals applied to grow the requisite amount of feed to produce 327m tonnes of meat....

Link via 3 Quarks Daily

No Diebold here. Maybe.

Here in NE Pennsylvania at least one county is balking at switching over to computer voting machines. For as long I’ve lived here (20 years) we’ve used lever voting machines. I’m no expert on voting machines (I’m for paper ballots) and I don’t know if these machines are easy to rig. Though they make it tough to cast a write in, they are pretty easy to understand and there's always a volunteer hovering nearby in case you get confused.

The county supervisors balk at the expense of replacing perfectly serviceable lever machines and also cite public opposition to machines that don’t provide a paper record.

The commissioners passed a resolution last month formally accepting $630,000 in federal funds, funneled through the state, as part of the Help America Vote Act. Some estimates place total cost of replacing Monroe's 120 lever machines at $1.2 million, with the county expected to cover nearly half the total.

Voting jurisdictions throughout the U.S. are being told to replace older voting machines with new machines employing computer technology. The legislation was prompted by voting irregularities in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, including confusing punch ballots that resulted in "hanging chads" that were only partially removed by voters.

"I believe it was a knee-jerk reaction to that situation," Monroe County Commissioner Bob Nothstein says of the voting machine replacement mandate. "Our machines work fine."

Monroe County has used the same pull-lever machines for several years. The commissioners announced more than a year ago that they won't allocate any county money for buying the new machines. Monroe is the only county in the state to take such a stand.

The commissioners believe, however, that the $630,000 grant may be sufficient to replace its voting machines without the need for additional funding. One option being explored is to lease the new machines.

"We have no idea if additional money will be needed or not," said Commissioners Chairwoman Donna Asure. "Until we know what a lease option will cost us ..." Link

Asure said many residents have e-mailed the commissioners in opposition to use of new computer voting machines, particularly machines that don't provide a paper receipt acknowledging that each voter's ballot was recorded.

I’m sure Santorum longs for lots of new, Republican favoring Diebold voting machines with preprogrammed outcomes.

Why will 06 and 08 be different?

The Sideshow links to this Ghosts in the Voting Machines which gives a good account of recent news on the fraudulent elections of 00 and 04.

Kerry, apparently, tells Mark Crispin Miller that he believes the election was stolen and then later Kerry’s staffers deny he did.

If you are hoping for a long shot congressional sweep in 06 to save us from Bush/Cheney then you better hope for candidates, especially in key states, that are prepared to overcome the Rove vote fraud machine. Otherwise you can count on lots of narrow wins contrary to exit polls that continue the Republican majorities in both houses.

Mainstream media and most celebrity bloggers refuse to cover this issue because they are afraid of being ridiculed by Republicans and of losing their treasured, occasional chances to be on TV and celebrity panels. Talking about vote fraud determining the 00 and 04 elections means you will not be taken seriously by the insiders and above all entrance to the serious halls of inside is what so many apparently want above all else.

My guess is that lots of battles, large and small, have been decided by one party or another's fear of embarrassment and marginalization.

The disappearance of ice

The real story of our life times may not be that we stood idly by while our country quietly became a fascist-like state ruled by the fabulously wealthy corporate and media elites, while privileged Democrats sold their souls for a seat in the plutocracy. The real story may be that we all stood idly by while global warming became irreversible, natural ice disappeared, Katrina sized storms became the norm and it became clear that Earth would soon be uninhabitable.

It is on us, all Americans, that we tolerate the Bush regime and do not throw them into the street. We allow them to torture, wage criminal war, and abet the destruction of the habitability of the planet essentially unchallenged. It is not that we don’t know. We do. We all do.

Here’s a few paragraphs from “The Coming Meltdown” in the current New York Review of Books. The article is available in its entirety on line.

…Climate change somehow seems unable to emerge on the world stage for what it really is: the single biggest challenge facing the planet, the equal in every way to the nuclear threat that transfixed us during the past half-century and a threat we haven't even begun to deal with. The coverage of Katrina's aftermath, for instance, was scathing in depicting the Bush administration's incompetence and cronyism; but the President —and his predecessors—were spared criticism for their far bigger sin of omission, the failure to do anything at all to stanch the flood of carbon that America, above all other nations, pours into the atmosphere and that is the prime cause of the great heating now underway. Though Bush has been egregious in his ignorance about climate change, the failure to do anything about it has been bipartisan; Bill Clinton and Al Gore were grandly rhetorical about the issue, but nonetheless presided over a 13 percent increase in America's carbon emissions….

… “Scientists are by training and nature conservative and...have probably underestimated our impact. Fifty years from now—I hope I'm wrong—I think you may be living in a world where you don't go outside between one and four in the afternoon.”…

…Every time she corners a scientist —the veteran Oxford environmental researcher Norman Meyers, the great diver and marine biologist Sylvia Earle, the eminent conservationist Russell Mittermeier—she asks, "Are humans a suicidal species?" They mostly dismiss her question with some reassuring words to the effect that we can still make up our minds to do better. But in fact it's a question that in some way or another needs to be near the center of our public debates. It rose for the first time in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; for a while, many people seemed to expect an Armageddon-like nuclear exchange, and then they seemed to discount the possibility. The attacks on New York and Washington at the beginning of this millennium have raised the question of our being a suicidal species again. …

The last paragraph:

…It is hard not to approach this year's oncoming winter in an elegiac mood, with the testimony of Thompson's ice cores and the Arctic sea ice data and Ehrlich's account making the season's natural and lovely darkness seem suddenly somber. We are forced to face the fact that a century's carelessness is now melting away the world's storehouses of ice, a melting whose momentum may be nearing the irreversible. It's as if we were stripping the spectrum of a color, or eradicating one note from every octave. There are almost no words for such a change: it's no wonder that scientists have to struggle to get across the enormity of what is happening.

Link

It's now or never. For another angle on the mysterious bubble of complacency we live in, check out Roshi Bob.

On the edge

If you are terrified about finances and think you are in that position because of unique personal failures, it is very likely not your fault and you are not alone..

I saw this Harvard Magazine article, “The Middle Class on the Precipice” on 3 Quarks Daily.

Here’s the first paragraphs:

During the past generation, the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly middle class to newly poor in a few months.

Middle-class families have been threatened on every front. Rocked by rising prices for essentials as men’s wages remained flat, both Dad and Mom have entered the workforce—a strategy that has left them working harder just to try to break even. Even with two paychecks, family finances are stretched so tightly that a very small misstep can leave them in crisis. As tough as life has become for married couples, single-parent families face even more financial obstacles in trying to carve out middle-class lives on a single paycheck. And at the same time that families are facing higher costs and increased risks, the old financial rules of credit have been rewritten by powerful corporate interests that see middle-class families as the spoils of political influence.