Thursday Stuff

(By the way, I also posted over here.)

Rachel Maddow interviews Lawrence O'Donnell about the "Dubya Legacy Project" (uh, yep; it's every bit as pathetic as it sounds, and O'Donnell is a bit glib about the economy at the end)...



...Tom Waits, live at Rockpalast in 1977 ("Bad Liver And A Broken Heart"; for all my friends who lost their jobs today).

NYC Whacks Plax For Gun Goof

(My attempt at a headline for the NY Post, for better or worse…)

I have to admit that I’m torn a bit over this Wall Street Journal opinion column by David Kopel, in which he argues that New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress, apprehended when his handgun discharged into his leg while he drank in a midtown Manhattan nightclub, should not receive a mandatory prison sentence of 3 ½ years for his incredible rank stupidity.

And I actually agree with that part; what good does it do to send someone to the “gray bar hotel” who would never intentionally pose a threat to anyone but himself?

However, towards the end of Kopel’s piece, he tells us…

New York City needs to regularize its carry permit system so that law-abiding people can protect themselves, especially if their circumstances (such as being a witness to a gang crime) place them at heightened risk.

In response, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC tells us in this New York Post story (with a real headline) that…

"If you want a gun permit, you should have to really show that your life is in danger, and that having a gun will protect you, will improve the chances of you surviving," the mayor said.

He added that he doesn't have a problem with people who own guns to hunt, but said it doesn't make sense for those in densely populated urban areas.

"I do think that having concealed weapons on the streets of major cities is not something that is in the interests of the citizens of those cities in this day and age, and I don't think the founding fathers really thought about that when they drafted the Constitution," Bloomberg said.

Kudos to Bloomberg for a common-sense perspective here (and I don't see any extraordinary circumstances for Burress to have the gun in the first place).

And Kopel has been an advocate against gun laws for some time; as noted here…

The various gun control proposals on today's agenda--including licensing, waiting periods (presumably while a background check is conducted), and bans on so-called Saturday night specials--are of little, if any, value as crime-fighting measures. Banning guns to reduce crime makes as much sense as banning alcohol to reduce drunk driving.

I’m sure someone from MADD would have a word or two to say about that, but as for myself, I’ll just reply with the following (from here):

Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed a law this year, that strengthens the Brady law by providing financial aid to states to improve their system of reporting severely mentally ill people to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The law was spurred by the actions of a mentally unstable Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people and then himself at Virginia Tech University in April last year.

Even the National Rifle Association, which opposed the Brady law when it was introduced, supported this year's tightening. The NRA was among gun-rights groups that said Brady checks would be useless because buyers simply would turn to unregulated sources for their guns. But the many interceptions of illegal purchasers through the years demonstrate the fallacy of this argument.

Just last month, Barry Cleveland Roberts attempted to buy a handgun at a shop in Norfolk, Va. Police arrested him soon after a background check showed he was wanted in Baltimore, where he faced a first-degree murder charge.

And from here…

A 1999 analysis of crime statistics conducted by The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence) demonstrates that allowing people to carry concealed handguns does not mean less crime. The Center found that, as a group, states that rely on permissive concealed weapons laws as a crime fighting strategy had a significantly smaller drop in crime than states which looked to other means to combat crime rather than make it easier to obtain a concealed weapons permit.

And by the way (from here)...

According to a National Post-Election Omnibus Survey, support for sensible gun laws is strong, not only among those who voted for Obama, but also among McCain voters.

The poll, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland, found that 3 in 4 (76%) voters favor reasonable gun regulations in general, with 4 in 5 (83%) who favor Brady criminal background checks for all gun sales, including 84% of McCain voters and gun owners. The results also highlight that the NRA had little sway over voters.

And on the matter of guns purchased legally elsewhere that are used to commit a crime in New York City, perhaps if this country had gun laws as strict as England’s, maybe all four Beatles would have been alive in 2000 when this opinion piece was written.

So yes, throw the book at Burress for walking around with a loaded Glock in his sweatpants, and say a prayer of thanks that the accidental wounding was only to himself. But if there was ever a case for overturning a mandatory sentencing guideline, this is it (especially since, as Jim Dwyer of the New York Times tells us here, many of those accused under the tougher gun law passed two years ago end up sentenced based on other charges).

(I just realized another unintended benefit of the Burress story; at least he won't be able to catch any touchdown passes against the Eagles on Sunday.)

Wednesday Stuff

"Worst Persons," with K.O. (nice to see hockey player Sean Avery get nailed here, and interesting theory about why he might have wanted to be suspended - what a creep; Cincinnati radio idiot Bill Cunningham loses it over a creationism museum with a dinosaur...besides him, surprise surprise...yep, I'd say also that it's inappropriate in the least to compare an alleged discount coupon scam to "Bull" Connor; and Sean Inanity blames the Obama win on "poorly informed voters" but inadvertently slams his audience in the process - tee hee)...



...Julian Cope ("World Shut Your Mouth"; yep, I have that reaction after dealing with BS from Fix Noise too).

Waging War On The Innocent

The following excerpt also comes from Dana Perino’s press conference today (in addition to the excerpt noted earlier from here)…

MS. PERINO: Helen, did you have a question?

Q Yes. Is the President going to sign the anti-cluster bomb treaty? Apparently this is --

MS. PERINO: Right, this is a treaty that was passed out of the U.N. Security Council several months ago. We said then that, no, we would not be signing on to it. And so I think that the signing is actually -- we did not participate in the passage of it, and therefore we're not going to sign it either.

Q Why not?

MS. PERINO: What I have forgotten is all the reasons why, and so I'll get it for you. (Laughter.)

Two immediate observations…one, I’m sure the person speaking to Perino is Helen Thomas, because this is actually a good question, as opposed to someone in the press corps leading Perino into an excuse to expound on a White House-approved talking point; two, I can’t imagine the cynicism and ignorance that would compel anyone to laugh concerning the topic of cluster bombs, and hopefully I never will.

This BBC News story tells us…

As he opened the signing convention in Oslo, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said the treaty would make the world safer, but had been too long in coming.

"Too many people lost their lives and their limbs; too many futures were shattered," he said.

"The tragedy of their needless suffering is matched only by our joy today in being able to prevent more human misery in the future."

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Red Cross, reminded the meeting of the deadly legacy of cluster bombs.

"The path to Oslo is also traced through the mountains and the rice paddies of south-east Asia where several hundred million sub-munitions were dropped and many tens of millions remain today," he said.

"This path runs through the lives of civilians in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam who have lived with the threat of unexploded sub-munitions for four decades."

As noted from Democracy Now here, according to the group Handicap International, 98 percent of cluster bomb victims are civilians, and 27 percent are children (the BBC story basically says that we’re working on “smarter” cluster bombs, though I have yet to hear a good explanation for why we should have cluster bombs at all; is it a coincidence that the three countries who refuse to ban them – us, China and Russia –are not likely to be victimized by them? At least we’ve agree to provide “clearance” in countries where these monstrous devices are located, which is something I guess).

Returning to the BBC story…

Jody Williams, an anti-landmine campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said the US had "essentially obeyed" all the elements of the treaty and she hoped US President-elect Barack Obama would sign it.

"Mr. Obama tells us to look for hope and change," she told Reuters news agency. "I like hope and change, but I want to see him sign it."

So do I.

Update: More from Think Progress here...

Run, Jeb, Run

This CNN story tells us that former Florida governor Jeb Bush is considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat that has opened up as a result of the decision of incumbent Repug Mel Martinez not to seek another term (they say Alex Castellanos reported this, but I think he got it from Marc Ambinder; he’s the first person I heard reporting about this).

And yes, I think this is a good thing overall.

Because this gives us a chance to take another look at Jeb’s ties to Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who had assisted the CIA in its attempts to kill Fidel Castro, but fled this country after he was charged with Medicare fraud, noted here (hmmm, “fled the country,” huh? Where’s the “Marc Rich standard” of outrage over bad “expat” behavior now?).

And I wonder what Jeb thinks now of his admittedly principled stand to protect the Everglades from oil exploration in the past? Will he join the “Drill, Baby, Drill!” chorus? And has he come around to the fact that the climate crisis is occurring because of man-made activity or not?

And let’s revisit Jeb’s role in the Terri Schiavo fiasco again, shall we, in particular, the law he signed to keep her alive against the wishes of her husband Michael, whom he investigated, even though prior investigations cleared Michael Schiavo of any wrongdoing (here).

Another thing – it might be worth noting that Jeb oversaw more executions (21) than his gubernatorial predecessors Bob Graham, Bob Martinez and Lawton Chiles, with nary a pardon to be found (curious for someone who converted to Catholicism, a faith which is opposed to the death penalty, of course – he did put an end to executions when one was botched two years ago, to be fair).

Oh, and did I mention that Jeb is a member of PNAC? And somehow I don’t think Jeb’s endorsement of Rudy 9iu11ani for President during this year’s Repug Florida primary amounted to much.

Hmm – I jut have this nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something else about Jeb…

Oh yes; boy, that was some presidential election in 2000, wasn’t it? And I’m sure you had absolutely nothing to do the purging of over 50,000 eligible voters from your state’s voting registries (yes, the act was overseen directly by Katherine Harris, as we know all too well now, but this could not have transpired without your tacit endorsement at the very least).

So I hope Jeb runs for the Senate. I think it will be fun to keep turning over all of these rocks to see what oozes out all over again (cutting to the chase, wouldn’t he have been the veep on the ticket with McCain instead of “Governor Hottie” if Jeb’s halfwit brother hadn’t totally trashed the Bush “brand” once and for all?).

Update 1: And here's more news about the Bush clan - I would say that that family's gene pool needs a lifeguard (h/t The Daily Kos).

Update 2: More from brownsox at The Daily Kos (again)...

Tuesday Stuff

To Jim Martin and all of the Georgia Democrats who worked so hard for his campaign, take solace from the fact that we all are grateful for your efforts - change will eventually come (kudos to the ever-courageous Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also).

And to the lizard-brained, single-digit-IQ supporters of Saxby Chambliss, I realize that you're too stupid to realize that it's a bad thing when a candidate for high political office claims that he doesn't know the meaning of the word "recession," stonewalls an investigation into a refinery fire in which 14 people died (here - and shoves his hand into a camera lens when he's asked about it), and makes sure the state police removes someone from a campaign event who has the apparent effrontery to exercise his God-given right to record the event for posterity.

We got to 50 seats in the Senate in 2006, and we'll do no worse than 58 this year (59 if Franken wins). That's one away from 60 (I'm helping you with the math so you don't have a hard time counting on your fingers and toes).

If you want the Repugs to remain the political party of choice for largely male, middle-aged white crackers, that's the path you choose. We'll just keep surrounding you until the point where you're irrelevant; we're just about at that point now (and here and here is good news on two more targets for 2010).

But for now, here's another look at the life form you're sending back to Washington. Take a bow (and I hope you herniate yourselves in the process).



Update 12/05/08: I thought this was interesting stuff on the runoff.

...Bruce Springsteen ("Working On A Dream").

Keeping Us Scared (W)itless

I don't know what else to say about this great post by Edger but to merely point out that this is yet another example of our corporate media trying to make us wet our pants.

"Root causes of terrorism," huh? Where the f*ck did THAT come from?

Why didn't we care about the "root causes of terrorism" over the last seven years or so after the Reichstag burned towers fell (as noted here)? Because a DEMOCRAT is now in charge?

Take the cue from "Fox Noise," people...



Update 12/3/08: In addition to the absurdity of expecting Obama to address the "root cause of terrorism" (yeah, in anticipation of corporate media caterwauling as he tries to reach out to our enemies - oh yeah, Bushco's "go it alone" strategy WORKED SO WELL, as we know)...well, what BarbinMD sez here.

Frugality To A Fault (For One, I Believe)

(By the way, I posted over here based on what I thought was a well-written Guest Opinion that appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times today by Cyril Mychalejko.)

The Murdoch Street Journal tells us here that Texas Governor Rick Perry and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (both Republican, of course) wrote a column basically telling the incoming Obama Administration and the 111th Congress that they don’t need a bailout, thank you…

…the federal government is not only burying future generations under mountains of debt. It is also taking our country in a very dangerous direction -- toward a "bailout mentality" where we look to government rather than ourselves for solutions. We're asking other governors from both sides of the political aisle to join with us in opposing further federal bailout intervention for three reasons.

And the three reasons, by the way are: 1) We’re acquiring too much debt (a concern I would echo were it not for the fact that we have to get credit moving again; I defer to Paul Krugman on stuff like this); 2) “…the bailout mentality threatens Americans' sense of personal responsibility” (yes, let’s all be moral scolds while our economy is tanking…God, I can cut the “stupid” with a knife here); and 3) “…we'd ask the federal government to stop believing it has all the answers” (yes, just remember, boys and girls, as your jobs, pensions, health insurance and your homes are disappearing like sand through a strainer, it’s not happening because this is the culmination of the scam first perpetrated by The Sainted Ronnie R – namely, that YOU TOO can be part of the “ownership society,” which, as Barack Obama correctly surmised, means that, if you aren’t rich, you’re on your own…hell no, this is happening because of BIG GOVERNMENT!!

Pardon me while I retch.

In the case of Perry, it should be noted that Texas doesn’t need federal help because, as stated here, they have benefitted from the increase in oil prices this year to the tune of $10.7 billion (let’s see the guy The Eternal Molly Ivins used to call “Goodhair” lambaste the federal government and whine about a “bailout mentality” minus all that dough). And though she didn’t author this column, it should be noted that “Governor Hottie” herself echoed similar sentiments here, which is also amusing considering that residents of Alaska benefit from about four different oil-related taxes; if anything, Alaskans should be bailing US out.

The real puzzlement to me, though, is why Mark Sanford would buy into any of this hooey. I believe the answer, though, lies in the fact that his state squandered a billion dollar budget surplus (here), while, as noted here (near the bottom)...

“...(the) real problem (with South Carolina’s budget) is not runaway spending, but a deeply flawed tax system. Among the tax policy challenges that South Carolina must address are limitations on property tax growth and property tax assessments, wasteful tax breaks for profitable corporations like Michelin, and an excessive reliance on a sales tax that fails to tax services adequately.”

And it doesn’t help when someone like Sanford is prone to publicity stunts (as noted here), but doesn’t know that, when handling a state’s finances, there are times when it doesn’t pay to be a tightwad (such as when you refuse to spend on infrastructure or even something as elemental as tourism marketing).

But hey, maybe Sanford can hit up his pals Rick and Sarah for some dough if the day ever comes when it dawns on the South Carolina guv that his state is sinking into the abyss (at least the state comptroller knows it’s time for a special budget session, as noted here).

However, when it comes to the rest of the states, I think it’s pretty safe to say that they all need help (and our incoming president, as opposed to the half wit who is about to depart, thoroughly understands that).

Update 12/22/08: Yep, Sanford's got a problem, all right (here).

Update 1/1/09: Looks like reality has finally set in for the governor of South Carolina (here).

Pardon My Boredom

Yes, I think it has been pretty thoroughly established that Obama Administration Attorney General Nominee Eric Holder screwed up in the case of the Marc Rich pardon, if for no other reason than the fact that he allowed himself to be “lobbied” by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on the matter in the closing days of the Clinton Administration, as noted by Richard Cohen of the WaPo here (h/t The Daily Kos – registration required).

However, I think the following should be noted about the Rich pardon from today’s story in the New York Times (to recap, Rich was charged with 51 counts of tax fraud and accused of owing $48 million in back taxes; he fled the country to Switzerland during his prosecution in 1983)…

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were unwilling to negotiate with Mr. Rich’s lawyers while he remained a fugitive. Mr. Holder told (Rich lawyer Jack) Quinn in one phone call in November 1999 that he believed the prosecutors’ refusal to meet with the Rich lawyer was “ridiculous,” according to notes by Mr. Quinn obtained by House government reform committee investigators as part of a three-volume report on (President) Clinton’s pardons.

And who I wonder was one of the U.S. attorneys who originally brought the case against Rich (which, Rich’s lawyers argued, should have been handled as a civil and not a criminal matter)?

Why, that would be Rudy 9iu11ani; as the New York Daily News noted here as the news of the Rich pardon broke in January 2001 (with typical understatement, of course)…

Mayor Giuliani used to keep a photocopy of a $200 million check on his office wall.

It was written by Marc Rich's former company to settle criminal charges of tax evasion and lying to government agencies.

But the check was all Giuliani got for bringing the biggest tax-evasion case in U.S. history. What, or whom he really wanted - Marc Rich - got away. When Rich was pardoned last week by President Bill Clinton, Giuliani was angry.

Sure he was, losing such a high-profile "perp" (and as Wikipedia tells us here, Rich “was required to pay a $100 million dollar fine and waive any use of the pardon as a defense against any future civil charges that were filed against him in the same case”).

So, basically, Rich was required to waive the pardon as a defense so he could be prosecuted ad infinitum over this matter. Tell me who in their right mind is going to agree to terms like that?

I agree that Rich is a bad apple; CNN reported in 2005 that he was a “middleman for several suspect Iraqi oil deals involving over 4 million barrels of oil,” as in the “oil for food” scandal.

But given the fact that he made restitution to some degree, to say nothing of the fact that his case was originally brought by an extremely politically minded prosecutor, I would say that it’s not fair to weigh this matter too heavily against Holder (who, it is generally acknowledged, is a fine candidate otherwise).

Oh, and by the way, as long as the Rich case is generating so much attention (probably because of the combination of the Holder circumstances and the fact that these are the dying days of Bushco, lending themselves to last-minute pardon coverage anyway), can our corporate media at least devote a fraction of its time to the Poppy Bush pardons, namely those involved with Iran-Contra? I care a hell of a lot more about them than I ever will about Marc Rich (particularly because Elliott Abrams, one of the five, emerged as a “player” once more under the foul reign of Poppy’s progeny).

One more thing: on the matter of Obama’s appointees, this Daily Kos link takes you to the musings of none other than The Rude Pundit, who (in his inimitable style that I dare not try to replicate) captures my sentiments perfectly.

Monday Videos

Here's more on the "friends" of Saxby Chambliss, all you Georgia folk; they all chipped in on a portrait of their hero (to help Jim Martin, click here - tomorrow is the day!)...



...more Bush scandals (God, he even screws up an interview conducted by his sister, and we sure want the "klieg lights" to go ANYWHERE else too; and for the record, he and his fellow crooks were warned in January 2006 about the mortgage meltdown - actually, The Eternal Molly Ivins had been warning that Long-Term Capital Management, as bad as it was, was only a drop in the bucket, and somehow I think she knows what we're dealing with now; and we know now for certain that this regime's torture policy has cost American lives - and kudos to K.O. for dropping this right in the lap of "Kristol Mess," among others)...



..."Worst Persons" (I knew George Will would show up eventually, and he does so here from spinning more of his delusional economic fairy tales, and Billo takes the silver AND the gold tonight; the silver because Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes hate him, though he's still scraping enough of the bottom of the barrel to get decent ratings - let's see where he is in five years or less, OK? - and the gold for proclaiming "I'm a secular guy" now, though he decried "secular" judges earlier and has made a way-too-profitable living decrying the separation of church and state - oy...if video doesn't appear, just refresh until it does; an MSNBC thing)...



...and as a reminder of World AIDS Day once more (the 20th anniversary, which I neglected to mention earlier), here's Freddie Mercury and Queen ("The Show Must Go On," kind of a double shot since some of "You're My Best Friend" played in the Chambliss clip).

Could Tweety Be "The Man"? (updates)

(And by the way, I also posted over here today – also, don’t be surprised if posting is a bit flaky as we get closer to the holidays.)

It seems that left blogostan, as it were, is all abuzz over the possibility that Chris Matthews, currently the host of “Hardball” on MSNBC, may be mounting a Senate challenge in our beloved commonwealth against Snarlin’ Arlen Specter (with Phil Singer of HuffPo noting here that Matthews has put together an exploratory committee; Singer also points out that Matthews really shouldn’t be on the air if he’s running for the Senate, which is a good point – if this becomes official, then Matthews would have to relinquish his job with the network anyway; also, I’ve seen some “buzz” over at Open Left to the effect that Matthews is trying to recruit Chris Bowers to help in some type of capacity).

I have to admit that I’m torn a bit here (again, assuming this is all legitimate, and I have a feeling that it is, if for no other reason than because of Matthews’ consummate egomania; what role, if any, Bowers would play is all conjecture, and I don’t have any “inside dope” on that).

On the one hand, if I were to think of anyone out there who embodies progressive values and could run for high office in this state, Matthews is definitely not the first person who would come to mind; as you can read from this post in April, he embodies everything that is wrong with the Beltway media culture. I think we as progressives would all have to become afflicted with a case of selective amnesia to think he would be an advocate for any cause that we hold dear.

On the other hand, Matthews is a great candidate because (thinking worst case), if he is unable to pull this off, then we wouldn’t have wasted more prime political talent in this state upon a quest that would be ultimately fruitless (as I noted here not too long ago, Specter can be beaten like any pol, but the strategy and the execution will have to be flawless, and I’m sorry, but I don’t see Matthews as someone who can pull this off – love to see him prove me wrong, though).

So we’ll see; hopefully Matthews thinks he has a shot and isn’t just “tilting at a windmill” because he got another “thrill going up (his) leg,” as he did here.

Update 1 12/02/08: Toomey '10...YEAH BABY!!

Update 2 12/02/08: I forgot about Joe Scar here, who went the "anti-Matthews" route (he was in politics first).

Update 3 12/04/08: Usually I bow and grovel in homage to the almighty kos, but I think he's flat, dead wrong here (and whoever conducted that Rasmussen poll must have done a tab of acid).

I sincerely hope Patrick Murphy doesn't even consider running against Specter unless Pat Toomey declares; I know kos is mad because Patrick is a "Blue Dog" ("Bush Dog," but not on the war), but Murphy has positioned himself to compete in the "T" of PA better than any other Dem (which, with all due respect, I STILL think isn't good enough for now).

For what it’s worth, I envision any of these scenarios (which automatically means they’ll never happen):

Specter is knocked off by Toomey in the primary, and Matthews knocks off Toomey.

Specter knocks off Toomey, but Mathews fools everybody, emerges as a seasoned, skilled campaigner, and somehow beats Specter (and then I woke up).

Specter knocks off Toomey and Matthews, with Patrick Murphy sitting it out; meanwhile, Bob Casey decides to run for PA governor in 2010, opening up his Senate seat, which Patrick Murphy runs for and wins in a special election (no word on who would get PA-08; maybe Joe Conti runs against a Dem – paging Mike Diamond – and Diamond gets it? And Specter’s seat finally opens up when he dies in office sometime in the year 2020).

(And by the way, I am not an expert in PA election law; I’m merely assuming all of this could happen.)

Remember, you heard all of this here first (and by the way, though I like her personally, Allyson Schwartz would be a disaster of a choice).

The Final "World AIDS Day" For Lame-Duck Dubya

This VOA News story tells us that..

More than a thousand people living with HIV and their allies (were) expected to gather near the White House (on November 20th) in a preemptive public demonstration for AIDS advocacy. They are staging a pretend inauguration ceremony to urge President-Elect Barack Obama to improve the way the United States fights AIDS domestically and globally.

The rally comes one day after former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle accepted Mr. Obama’s offer to become Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and implement a campaign pledge to deliver comprehensive universal health care to Americans. Associate director Michael Swigert of the group Africa Action is coordinating today’s simulated inaugural ceremony near the White House, which takes place two months before the actual swearing-in on January 20. He says that President Obama’s first 100 days in office will be crucial in setting priorities for fighting HIV/AIDS.

I would be remiss if I didn’t note here that Dubya actually did something right on this issue, namely, the fact that $48 billion has been pledged on funding for PEPFAR, which stands for The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (and as the VOA News story tells us, Joe Biden, as former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, helped with allocating the $48 billion, which is a big increase from the $30 billion committed to PEPFAR as I noted here last February).

However, since we’re talking about Bushco, of course, the following should be noted (from here)…

"The passage of (the Hyde/Lantos bill, which contained the $48 billion in funding) is a huge step forward for people with AIDS worldwide," said Paul Davis, Director of U.S. Government Affairs for Health GAP. "However, there are still US policies that stand as serious barriers to AIDS prevention and sexual and reproductive health, and we will continue to challenge these harmful policies."

The Hyde/Lantos bill overturns a previous requirement that one-third of all prevention funding must go to abstinence and fidelity programs, but it now requires a report to Congress if countries spend less than half their prevention funding on such programs. The new law also still requires aid recipients to avow their opposition to commercial sex work.

By the way, the “What Not To Wear” post from February explains why it’s ridiculous to try and impost “abstinence only” requirements in Africa; mainly, because many of the men are so barbaric that they won’t observe anything resembling monogamy.

I also wondered why Dubya even established PEPFAR at all when you realize that it was just another bureaucracy; we could have just contributed to the U.N. Global AIDS Fund, but I think part of what drove that decision was our preznit’s desire to impose the “abstinence-only” restrictions and also make sure as few generic drugs as possible were used for treatment to ensure Big Pharma’s profitability here (pretty unconscionable, but typical for this bunch).

Health GAP specifically lauded the bill's emphasis on training and retention of doctors and nurses in resource-poor countries, as a "brain drain" of health care workers has been a serious barrier to scaling up HIV/AIDS programs.

In an opinion piece in the July 30, 2008 San Francisco Chronicle, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), a co-author of the legislation, called its passage "a landmark achievement that will save millions of people from certain death and prevent millions of new HIV infections in the developing world." However, she added, "Sadly, our commitment to fighting AIDS globally has not extended to the fight against AIDS here at home."

Indeed, as this tells us…

The Center for Disease Control announced at the International AIDS Conference this year that the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States is 56,000-plus. This figure is 40 percent higher than the CDC's estimates for the previous 12 years. We live at the national epicenter of the HIV epidemic as 17 percent of all persons who are HIV-positive in the United States live in New York state.

…

This year, the governor and our state legislators have cut funding to local providers of HIV/AIDS services twice, a total of nearly 10 percent. These cuts have already led to a reduction statewide in HIV prevention education services, including at Southern Tier AIDS Program. Is this a wise choice in the state with the highest rates of HIV infections in the country?

This link to the Kaiser Family Foundation web site takes you to a full page of downloadable fact sheets on HIV/AIDS in this country and throughout the world. Also, this link takes you to the World AIDS Day page from the web site of the Centers for Disease Control.

Knowledge is power, and I don’t think that’s ever been truer than now in the fight against this scourge.

And by the way, remind me never to give Rick Warren credit for anything again (so, two million AIDS victims helped here versus a minimum of two million Iraq war refugees, to say nothing of casualties - not even a “wash”).

"Shuck N' Jive Saxby" Is At It Again

After reading this, I honestly can't figure out if Repug Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss is a moron, an arrogant egotist, or an unholy combination of both.

He tells us here that...

“There were an awful lot of African-Americans that voted for me (in the general election),” he said. “I’ve reached out to the African-American turnout, and I continue to do that.”

And how exactly does Chambliss “reach out to the African-American turnout”? Well, as noted here (h/t Think Progress), he warned his Cro-Magnon supporters prior to the general election that “the other folks are voting” (and if you figured out that that was code for Obama supporters in general and African-Americans in particular, then you win a free lawn jockey).

Yeah, I guess that counts for “reaching out” as far as Chambliss is concerned, the same way you “reach out” to an opponent before you try to flatten them with a right hook.

Oh, and just to refresh our memories, here is Chambliss in action…





And to do something about it, click here (Martin will need GOTV help if you’re able to assist on Tuesday; it’s now or never, people).

No Room For A Sinner At The Table?

It appears that some sort of deal has been worked out allowing Hillary Clinton to be nominated as Secretary of State in the incoming Obama Administration based on this Canadian Press story, contingent on husband and former president Bill Clinton “vetting” a wide array of activities related to his presidential foundation (which probably would be standard procedure for a spouse accepting a cabinet position were we not talking about the Clintons; the very mention of their name seems to send our corporate media into hysterics). And based on the LA Times blog post, it seems that Obama will also “roll out” the rest of his national security team early next week also.

To learn more about the individuals composing the Obama transition team, click here to read their names from change.gov (a figurative army of people, which is about what it will take at the very least to undo the damage wrought by Bushco).

But as I look down the list of individuals on the Obama team who could possibly end up holding cabinet positions, there is one name that is missing for reasons we all know about, and it would be this guy (I thought of him after reading a Daily Kos diarist a couple of days ago whose name escapes me at the moment)…

Yes, he’s never going to live down the Rielle Hunter thing, and yes, I turned on him also over the lies about the affair (for president, but I didn’t mean to rule out everything else). And yes, announcing him as a nominee would suddenly turn up the “klieg lights,” as it were, for a process that, except for the business with Hillary Clinton, has largely played out behind the scenes.

But does the Edwards flameout last summer mean that he’s disqualified from doing anything?

I’ve seen the names of product safety lawyer Pamela Gilbert and Dem U.S. House Rep. Jan Schakowsky floated around as possible nominees for the Consumer Product Safety Commission here; both are worthy choices, but Edwards definitely has experience with product liability issues from the cases he handled before he served in the U.S. Senate. Also, though it appears that James Lee Witt may return to FEMA for a brief period to ease the transition to his business partner Mark Merrick (I read that Friday but I can’t find the link at the moment – sorry), Edwards has worked with Ninth Ward residents to rebuild their homes and their way of life (and considering that Mike Brown’s “experience” prior to FEMA was selling Arabian horses, I can hardly see how Edwards would be worse).

Also, this tells us that Dem U.S. House Rep George Miller was approached by the Obama team to head the Department of Labor replacing “Dragon Lady” Elaine Chao; Miller would be an enormous improvement, but he chose to stay in the House. I believe Edwards would be a good fit overseeing this agency also.

And while I know what the likelihood is of John Edwards resurfacing once more in the Obama Administration (if all else fails, perhaps he could head up a poverty task force; I can think of no one else better suited for the job), I would ask that you watch this “New Rules” segment by Bill Maher, particularly at the end, to get an idea of how silly it is to exclude Edwards outright from doing anything at all (sorry the volume isn’t what it should be – may have to crank the speakers a bit).

Friday Stuff

(By the way, you guessed it; I also posted over here.)

Just remember everyone that, in Saxby Chambliss's Georgia, you're not allowed to stand around with a video camera filming a Repug rally of smears featuring Rudy 9iu11ani and generally minding your own business without being confronted by a cop and asked what you're doing ("You show me yours and I'll show you mine," huh? Real nice - and by the way, to do something about stuff like this, click here, and here's more)...



...and gee, as News Hounds points out, isn't it con-VEE-nient that the only politicians featured in this ultra-jazzed up ad for Fox Noise (full of explosions, yelling people and general turmoil and chaos) are DEMOCRATS??!! (they'll have to change it to blot out pretend liberal Alan Colmes and probably just insert another pic of Sean Inanity over it)...



...and as a tribute to screenwriter William Gibson who wrote "The Miracle Worker," here is the climactic scene from the 1962 film with Patty Duke as Helen Keller and Anne Bancroft as her teacher, Annie Sullivan (with Victor Jory and Inga Swenson as her parents and Andrew Prine as her brother)...



...also, I don't know what I can say or do about the tragedy in Mumbai, except to decry the cowardly, terrorist thugs who perpetrated such acts; aside from sending our best wishes and condolences for the families and friends of the victims, I thought embedding this might be a reminder of happier times that once were and hopefully will be again - this is "Tunak Tunak Tun" by Daler Mehndi (h/t Crooks and Liars).

Maybe A Time For Thanksgiving-Back?

(Or, short of that, trying to rein in the investor class a little more…)

Like many of you I’m sure, the issue of executive compensation has been much on my mind concerning the geniuses at the Big Three automakers who currently want Congress to approve a “bridge” loan (from TARP or elsewhere) to help them out while they do the retooling they should have done long ago to make more efficient vehicles (and I saw an ad yesterday on TV for the Cadillac Escalade and I thought, yep, it’s true; they really never will learn, will they?). The latest reminder came courtesy of this news story from Wednesday about a speech Alan Mulally of Ford gave at a meeting of the Seattle Rotary Club.

And lest anyone think that only Ford, GM and Chrysler are feeling the pinch, this story tells us the following…

"October was the worst month for U.S. auto sales in 25 years," said Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan and Renault. "Nothing is moving. The decline is not confined to the U.S. market; most of the mature auto markets, including Europe, Japan, are also down significantly, with slowdowns in the emerging markets as well."

If the Japanese carmakers are gloomy, who can just imagine how the contingent from Detroit feels. GM canceled its events but still has cars on display. It scratched plans to showcase a new Buick LaCross sedan and a new Cadillac model. Instead, it will lift the veil on those models in Detroit in January.

Chrysler has only a minimal presence at the show as well. Ford, on the other hand, is showing off a new Mustang model, as well as a restyled Fusion hybrid.

OK, so I’ll give Mulally a bit of a nod for that one.

But getting back to the issue of compensation, this story tells us that President-Elect Barack Obama has been pushing so-called “say on pay” legislation since last year, with his bill “languishing in the upper house”; somehow I’m sure that, regardless of whether or not the Dems get to 60 seats this election or not, Obama’s bill will be revisited.

As the story tells us…

(Obama’s bill) would make non-binding "advisory" shareholder votes on executive compensation packages mandatory at annual meetings.

…

"Say on pay is in and of itself but a baby step," said Charles Elson, a governance expert at the University of Delaware. "Ultimately the issue is replacing the directors who approve the bad pay."

This is where "say on pay" could get interesting because it is closely linked to another movement, known as "proxy access," which basically gives investors greater ability to nominate their own slates of directors - and perhaps include some kind of statute to reimburse shareholders' for the costs of nominating dissident directors if they are successful. (This would replace the current practice of investors withholding votes for directors, which is often more of an exercise in moral suasion than accountability.)

And this story tells us that…

French CEOs made 56% of what American CEOs did in 2005, according to the latest figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. German and British CEOs made 55%, and Italians, 53%.

In the USA, the median compensation package (half were paid more and half less) rose to $8.4 million last year for CEOs of 410 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, the Associated Press reported earlier in June. That's a rise of $280,000, or 3.5%, in a year. The 10 best-paid made more than $500 million last year, AP found.

And this story, which proposes what I think is an interesting theory about executive compensation (even though I personally don’t agree with it; namely, that it should be totally market driven throughout the world and would lower itself on average over time on its own) tells us that Japanese executive compensation is generally lower because more of their executives are trained and promoted in-house. The story also tells us that the decline of unions in this country is tied to the rise of executive compensation (and I most definitely agree with that).

What to do? Well, tell your elected representatives to support “say on pay” legislation when it’s proposed in the next session of Congress (which, after all, merely calls for disclosure by executive boards in an attempt to indirectly pressure them to do right; we can’t literally tell the boards what level of executive compensation to approve, and unless we as taxpayers are bailing these people out, I don’t think we should).

And the next time someone screams about Obama supporting “Marxism” and/or “class warfare” on this issue, remind them that he won the election by almost twice as large of a popular vote as the person he’s replacing when Dubya last ran four years ago.

And if it helps, let the naysayers take a look at this map one more time for good measure.

Wednesday Stuff

As a special pre-Thanksgiving treat, here's Just Plain Folks Sarah giving her interview in front of the turkey slaughtering processor just one more time, for the benefit for the half-dozen-or-so people on this planet who haven't seen this yet (there's a version out there with commentary by K.O., but I think the captions here are funnier)...



...and speaking of turkeys (and K.O. again), here are more Bushco scandals, including an abundance of pardons to people involved with the S&L mess in the '80s - it seems like Dubya is always ready to help out southerners busted for stuff like running moonshine or passing bad checks or mail order fraud or stuff like that, to say nothing of drug abuse; not saying they automatically don't have merit, but it just makes me wonder - Judge Richard Sanders is my hero for the day for finally saying "enough" on Mukasey, who seems to be nothing but a cracker version of Abu G. as far as I'm concerned, and Karl Rove didn't care about politics versus policy; I mean, we heard it on Fox Noise, so it must be true, right?...



...and here's "Worst Persons" (something called wsradio.com is going to feature an hourly weekly radio show about Sarah Palin - I'm guessing there won't be discussion of how to prepare and cook a Thanksgiving turkey - even though it takes you to a program on John "You Kids Get Off My Lawn!" McCain; Glenn Beck, who just joined Fix News also of course, believes that any state that chose not to vote for Obama should be able to mount an insurrection against this country - uh, as Keith notes, that was already tried about 1860 or 1861 or so; and while Andrew Ross Sorkin, business writer for the New York Times, may be an unlikely choice for "Worst" here, it's deserved when you consider that he started this lie about GM workers making $73 an hour, and believe me when I tell you that that lie has spread EVERYWHERE - P.S., if the scandals video appears again, just refresh the page - or if that doesn't work, click on the More Video link in the upper right corner and select it from MSNBC's site; sorry they're so flaky about this stuff)...



...Ryan Adams And The Cardinals ("Cobwebs," on "The Late Show" - interesting image, and good advice from Dave at the very end; I'll take him up on it in about five minutes)....



...and here's more holiday fun.

A Pre-Holiday Right Wing “Laff Riot”

So what should appear in my “In” box over the last day or so but the latest from conservative icon Richard Viguerie about the latest doings with the conservative “grass roots” movement; do they still have one (outside of the South)? Color me shocked!

And in case you were wondering about their plan for rebuilding the “movement”…well, here are some “highlights”:

Citigroup funded ACORN, and now this huge financial services company is getting more tax dollars!

Auto industry bankrupt due to CAFÉ requirements!

Obama is only making the financial meltdown worse!

Obama’s “Clinton problem” (sorry – no exclamation point…just saying “Clinton” provides all the shock value needed here).

Ross Douthat agrees with George Weigel, but elsewhere it’s Kathleen Parker vs. James Dobson (I’ll take Parker, no more than four rounds) and Morton Kondracke vs. Rush Limbaugh (I’ll bet Mort barely answers the bell before Flush belly flops on him, flattening him through the canvas).

Gee, wasn’t William F. Buckley great?

(Supposedly, Pat Toomey is in here somewhere spouting off – oh God, please please please let Toomey run again in a Repug primary against Specter for 2010!!).

“The Congressman, The Donor and The Tax Break” (hey, how on earth did some legitimate news reporting from the New York Times – and first rate, at that – get in here??!!).

So in other words, what we will be seeing from Viguerie (who, by the way, thought Sarah Palin was a great choice as McCain’s veep nominee – and she’s campaigning in Georgia for Saxby Chambliss? YEE HAH!!) is more harping, complaining, and cacophony while the grownups try to put our country back together again.

But not to worry; Viguerie and his brethren will let us know when they actually figure out what they’re all about again.

Just don’t hold your breath while they do – it’s going to take awhile, people.

Update: And there's no letup on "the stupid" in sight, based on this (h/t Atrios).

Don't Harp on TARP If Detroit's In Distress

Bushco flak Tony Fratto told us the following from this press conference on Monday…

Q Why don't we help the automakers?

MR. FRATTO: We are helping the automakers -- or at least we have a plan to help the automakers. We had a bipartisan agreement on the floor of Congress -- well, actually, it never made it to the floor because the Democratic leadership decided not to bring it to the floor. But we had a bipartisan agreement that we believe would get bipartisan support. It was for $25 billion in the loan program that would have freed up that money in a way that would support the automakers in their efforts -- to help to support them as they become viable firms, because these are important parts of our manufacturing base. We want to see the automakers succeed.

There seems to be some misconception out there that we don't want to help the automakers. We do want to help the automakers. We had a bipartisan agreement to do just that, and we believe that's where those funds should come from. And by the way, the news overnight where -- this was a relatively unexpected effort by Treasury and the Fed. If you had said two weeks ago that they were going to have to take this action for Citibank, I think that would have seemed unlikely. This is a very dynamic situation we're dealing with, and the financial system is still fragile.

But that also speaks to the need to preserve the funds in the TARP for their intended purpose. We don't need to be taking funds out of the TARP program for other purposes -- and with respect to the automakers, especially when we have a $25 billion loan program that was specifically set up for their use.

Q Well, what's the hang-up? Is it because the money is coming out of the --

MR. FRATTO: That's a question for Congress, Helen. The money is there; we tried to work on both sides of the aisle to design it in a way that the automakers could access it and to help them move forward and be viable. So I would put that question to the Democratic leadership of the Congress.

Actually, the “hang-up,” as noted in this story, is what Fratto referred to above more than anything else…

…the new rescue plan appeared stalled on Capitol Hill, opposed by the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress who don't want to dip into the Treasury Department's $700 billion financial bailout program to come up with the $25 billion in loans (for the automakers).

"Our industry ... needs a bridge to span the financial chasm that has opened up before us," General Motors Corp. CEO Rick Wagoner told the Senate Banking Committee. He blamed the industry's predicament not on failures by management but on the deepening global financial crisis.

And Robert Nardelli, CEO of Chrysler LLC, told the panel the bailout would be "the least costly alternative" when compared with damage from bankruptcy.

Yes, I’ll note yet again that it’s very hard to feel sympathy for Wagoner, Nardelli and Alan Mulally of Ford, but as Dem Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow said to Rachel Maddow last Friday, I don’t see our financial wizards who were allowed to create this mess to begin with (with no government oversight, of course) getting the same treatment as the automakers, especially since all the Big Three are asking for is $25 million from TARP as a bridge so they can do the retooling that they should have done years ago (I got into some of this earlier from here).

And as far as this business of funding for the automakers being contingent on what amounts to a loan application, that doesn’t make any sense to me either given the immediate need (why do I get the feeling that this is just a sop to try and placate conservatives who wouldn’t bat an eye if the automakers sank altogether?). Yes, have the Big Three explain what they’re going to do with the “bridge” loan and the additional $25 billion for retooling (and by the way, the funding for the financial services companies should be paid out in installments on the condition that strict accounting is performed and reporting provided concerning the existing funds as well, or else they get “cut off at the knees”). But can we get them the money first so they don’t go under while we’re still arguing the matter?

The net effect of this “loan application” provision for the automakers, as far as I’m concerned, is to create what Senate Minority Leader Mitch “Mr. Elaine Chao” McConnell called here a "bizarre and confusing" spectacle (yep, it’s pretty sad when I find myself agreeing with the leader of the “Roadblock Republicans” and last year’s “Dregs Of The Year” winner – and by the way, look for the ’08 nominees to start “rolling out” in a couple of weeks – but there you are).

Returning to the press briefing by Tony Fratto for a minute, though, I’d like to note the following (stumbling onto what I thought was an interesting point)…

Q Tony, some are concerned, particularly on the Hill, that this Citigroup bailout is smacking of AIG all over again. Some are asking for Citigroup to pull their name -- opt out of naming for the New York Mets Stadium -- $400 million and you just gave them $25 billion. I mean, people are saying that smacks of it, particularly Congressman Elijah Cummings from Maryland, would say -- do you think they should opt out of the naming rights contract?

MR. FRATTO: That's -- I'll be honest, this is the first time I heard of that. I didn't know that they were involved in that. I would presume that if there's a contract then that's a legal question as to what they can do. But I'll leave that for Citibank for now, and Treasury, and the regular -- their regulators, because you're telling me something I'm not aware of.

Hey, if we’re going to hold up funding for the automakers, then the least we can do is name some stadiums after them (why do the banks, telecoms and insurance firms always have to have the fun?).

Update 11/27/08: I just noticed that the Detroit Lions play in a stadium with the Ford logo on the roof - my bad; serves me right for making a sports comment I guess.

Tuesday Stuff

Yep, if Coulter is in the news again, then that means it's time once more for this obligatory Henry Rollins video, complete with "f" bombs (and the best part about this, if true, is that she wouldn't even be able to talk back - seriously, even though she wishes all kinds of bad things on us, I hope she heals up so we can continue to ridicule her, again, assuming this story is legit)...



...Amy Goodman of Democracy Now discusses a lot of Dubya's "midnight rules" with Matthew Madia of OMB Watch (here); I got into some of this stuff here also (and, as this story states)...

President Bill Clinton used his last weeks and months in office to strengthen a host of environmental rules and lock up federal lands with wilderness and other protective designations. Bush is taking the same window of opportunity to open swaths of wilderness land for oil and gas drilling and to loosen safeguards for air, water and wildlife.

...and oh yeah, I saw this little item in the news but didn't quite know what to say about it (besides the fact that it's pretty pathetic), but fortunately, Cenk Uygur does here...



...The Decemberists ("Days Of Elaine," on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," and Max Weinberg's band "playing us out").

Cheesed Off Over Iraq And "Three Blind Mice"

(And the person agitated would be yours truly, of course; by the way, posting will be sporadic for the rest of the week, with nothing on Thursday.)

I didn’t want to let too much more time pass without noting that the venerable “old gray lady” really committed another affront to sane discourse last Sunday when it published a bunch of editorials under the theme of “so, what the hell do we do now in Iraq?” The problem, I should add, isn’t the topic, which is a good one; the problem is the people chosen to inflict their opinions on us (and, as is usually the case when talking about the mess in Mesopotamia, nary a dissenting voice was heard).

I chose three from the list of individuals who offered their commentary, the most notorious of the lot IMHO. So let’s begin with Fred Kagan, who tells us here…

Leaving aside the debate in America about what ties global Al Qaeda has to Al Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqis overwhelmingly think that they have indeed been fighting an arm of Osama bin Laden’s organization. Every major political grouping in Iraq rejects Al Qaeda and supports the fight against its ideology. Iraqis increasingly pride themselves on being the first Arab state to reject the terrorists.

For a state that has “rejected the terrorists,” CIA director Michael Hayden offers a more realistic – and grimmer – assessment here, including this (I usually have “a bone to pick” with Hayden also, but this sounds more like the reality)…

"Today, the flow of money, weapons, and foreign fighters into Iraq is greatly diminished, and al Qaeda senior leaders no longer point to it as the central battlefield," (Hayden) said. "In fact, bleed-out from Iraq—export or diversion of terrorists and their deadly capabilities—is as much a concern now as the ongoing threat of Al Qaeda in Iraq attacks inside the country itself."

Also, according to Kagan…

This summer, leading members of Anbar Awakening, a group of Sunni leaders who have joined forces with the United States and the Shiite-led Baghdad government, circulated a memo about how they could help Afghans develop their own “awakenings” to fight Al Qaeda on their territory.

I don’t know if Kagan is telling the truth here or not (he seems to be more prone to fudging and obfuscation than outright lies, as was the case here, where he prefers the term ethnic “consolidation” to “cleansing”), but I should note that I have seen no evidence anywhere else of a “memo” circulated from Iraqi Sunnis to their fellow tribesmen in Afghanistan.

I wonder if this memo is anything like the dreaded “Mujahedeen Data Form” I posted about awhile ago here (couldn’t find evidence of that either)?

Oh, and Kagan also tells us…

Overall violence and American casualties have dropped remarkably since the surge began last year.

…

The situation remains delicate, however, as Iraq moves into provincial elections in January and parliamentary elections at the end of 2009. Although Iraqi forces increasingly bear the burden of fighting (and, increasingly, peacekeeping), they will need continuing American support.

Excuse me if I get a little tired of hearing about how successful the “surge” has been; yes, there has been a decrease in casualties, but that’s due partly to the Sunni Awakening that Kagan acknowledges, and the ethnic cleansing that he ignores. And for anyone who thinks Iraq will see peace anytime soon, unfortunately – well, take a look at this and this and get back to me on the answer, OK (not trying to sound callous, just tired of hearing about more supposed excuses of why we should stay when the Iraqis plainly want us to get the hell out of their country at long last…can’t entirely blame them).

And with that in mind, here is the next Times editorialist, and that would be Ahmed Chalabi (I’ve listed the writers in descending order of infamy, by the way, though I’ll admit that it’s a close call – also, did it occur to the Times that a headline like “Thanks, But You Can Go Now” is incredibly insulting to those in this country who have suffered the most from this horrific escapade in Iraq?).

The convicted Jordanian embezzler tells us…

The Iraq war is over.

Somehow I think those 19 bombing victims in Baghdad and those individuals in Amman, Jordan I referred to previously would disagree with that.

And…

Iraq has the strongest constitution, the fairest elections and the most democratic government in the Islamic Middle East.

And if stories like this are any indication, it sounds like the sessions in Iraq’s parliament should be pay-per-view wrestling events.

Continuing...

Iraqi freedom is a debt to America we will never forget.

This is true despite President Bush’s manifest failure to honor his word. At one time, the liberation of Iraq was to be the centerpiece of a new regional order in the Middle East founded on a new American emphasis on democracy, human rights and free enterprise. Instead, Iraq has endured occupation, the authoritarian installation of a prime minister, the strong-armed removal of an elected leader, the indiscriminate arrest, torture and killing of Iraqi civilians without recourse to law, and an utterly corrupt reconstruction program that oversaw one of the biggest financial crimes in history, which has left average Iraqis with little water, power, health care, education or even food.

And as Maureen Dowd tells us here from ‘05 (in fine form – maybe she’ll return to writing like this since the election has ended; we’ll see), Chalabi knows all about “failure to honor his word” (the message above makes good points, but again, the problem is the messenger)…

The neocons' con man (Chalabi) had been paid millions by the U.S. to tell the Bushies what they wanted to hear on Iraqi W.M.D. A year ago, the State Department and factions in the Pentagon turned on him after he began bashing America and using Saddam's secret files to discredit his enemies.

Right after the invasion, the charlatan was escorted into Iraq by U.S. troops and cultivated an axis of Americans, Iraqis and Iranians. He got a fancy house with layers of armed guards and pulled-down shades, and began helping himself to Iraqi assets. The U.S. occupation sicced the Iraqi police on his headquarters only after an Iraqi judge ordered thugs in the Chalabi posse arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, torture and theft.

Newsweek revealed that the U.S. suspected Mr. Chalabi of leaking secret information about American war plans for Iraq to the Iranians before the invasion, and of perhaps leaking "highly classified" information to Iran that could "get people killed" if abused by the Iranians. Mr. Chalabi claimed the Iranians set him up.

In August of last year, while he was at a cabin in the Iranian mountains, the Iraqis ordered him arrested on counterfeiting charges, which were later dropped for lack of evidence.

Now, showing survival skills that make Tom DeLay look like a piker, the resourceful Thief of Baghdad has popped back up as one of the four deputy prime ministers and the interim cabinet minister controlling the one valuable commodity in that wasteland: the second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. He even has a DeLay-like talent for getting relatives on the payroll: a Chalabi nephew is the new finance minister.

And the Times thinks that Chalabi has any kind of credibility at all to make pronouncements about the state of Iraq and the war effort, given these revelations from one of the paper’s own reporters (they’ve learned nothing from the Judith Miller fiasco apparently).

But not to worry, though – I’ve saved the most odious of these three for last, and that would be one Donald H. Rumsfeld, who tells us here that…

As one who is occasionally — and incorrectly — portrayed as an opponent of the surge in Iraq, I believe that while the surge has been effective in Iraq, we must also recognize the conditions that made it successful. President Bush’s bold decision to deploy additional troops to support a broader counterinsurgency strategy of securing and protecting the Iraqi people was clearly the right decision. More important, though, it was the right decision at the right time.

Well, as Noah Shactman tells us here, Rummy did support some elements of the surge, but they were not his preference, according to some memos to subordinates; he actually favored a “draw-down of U.S. bases” and to “put reconstruction efforts to work in Iraq where they’re ‘behaving’” first (can't entirely disagree with that on the merits, but it does fly in the face of what he's now telling us, of course).

But double talk is not unusual for Rummy, of course, given the following (written in ’04, from here)…

Donald Rumsfeld has morphed, over the last two years, from a man of supreme confidence to arrogance, then to almost willful blindness. With the approval of the president, he sent American troops into a place whose nature and dangers he had apparently never bothered to examine.

We now know that no one with any power in the Defense Department had a clue about what the administration was getting the coalition forces into. Mr. Rumsfeld's blithe confidence that he could run his war on the cheap has also seriously harmed the Army and the National Guard.

And I believe it bears repeating that Rumsfeld aborted an al-Qaeda raid on Pakistan in ’05, as noted here; basically countermanded the President of the United States on how Dubya wanted to be briefed on Jay Garner, the interim head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, here (I don’t know if that speaks more to Rumsfeld’s arrogance or Dubya’s incompetence); pulled two key players from Garner’s team (Warrick and O’Sullivan) because they were critical of Chalabi here (and of course, Rummy got Doug Feith to do his dirty work for him); and stated that anyone who opposed Bush “lacks courage on terror” here.

And who of us can forget this evergreen Rummy moment here, going to war “with the army you have, not the army you want”?

Oh, and did I mention that Rummy (as noted here) was shopping around for a “large cash advance” on a book deal about the war (don’t know if he got it yet)?

I’m sure that, given such a stellar journalistic moment from the Times as what I’ve noted here, we can look forward to future “theme” columns on topics such as integrity in government service by Dick Cheney, U.N. conciliation strategies by John Bolton, disaster management by Mike Brown, and Oval Office scholarship by George W. Bush.

Update: And yep, only Dubya would be dumb enough to be "pleased" with a deal that would keep our troops in Iraq for three more years under "strict Iraqi oversight."

Update 11/26/08: More of the same from "Bubble Boy" here; the payoff, though, comes in the very last paragraph...

Mr. Bush’s upbeat assessment of the two wars made hardly any reference to the problems he will leave to President-elect Barack Obama.

54 days and counting, people...

Shed No Tears For "Freedom's Crock"

Based on this, it looks like Freedom’s Watch, a premier propaganda vehicle for the Republican Party, is effectively done (consider this a triumph for informed discourse – this was inevitable given the money problems of its “sugar daddy” noted here)…

Freedom’s Watch spokesman Ed Patru “confirmed that much of the staff was on its way out,” but refused to say if the group would continue in the future…

Let’s see, Ed Patru – that name rings a bell, but I can’t remember why.

Oh, wait, I remember now; he’s the guy who said that Patrick Murphy stated in 2004 that everything was just peachy in Iraq (here), supposedly refuting Murphy’s spot-on criticism, but when Brendan attempted to reach Patru about what Patrick supposedly said, Patru (as if by magic) was nowhere to be found.

And among the other numerous lowlights for these cretins, this tells us that FW linked Iraq to 9/11 (of course) and this notes that they also paid a certain Karl Rove six figures for “advice” (yep, if I were ever a donor to these people, hypothetically speaking of course, I’d sure have something to say about that). And just for good measure, this tells us that they ran an ad attacking veterans who opposed the Iraq war on Veterans Day (nothing too low for these nematodes).

However, as Think Progress notes, the group is going out with “one last blast” in Georgia on behalf of Saxby Chambliss, set to defend his U.S. Senate seat once more against Dem challenger Jim Martin in the Dec. 2nd runoff (and if that isn’t a good reason to help out Martin – and to do so, click here – then I don’t know what is).

Monday Stuff

K.O. is back, with "Worst Persons" (Mark Halperin is a liar and a shill, Billo keeps repeating this utter lie that the Minnesota Senate election results were certified, and Holy Joe is caught dead to rights)...



...The Black Keys ("Your Touch"; don't try this at home, kids).