So now experience matters

Harriet's life has been characterized by service to others, and she will bring that same passion for service to the Supreme Court of the United States. I've given a lot of thought to the kind of people who should serve on the federal judiciary. I've come to agree with the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who wrote about the importance of having judges who are drawn from a wide diversity of professional backgrounds. Justice Rehnquist himself came to the Supreme Court without prior experience on the bench, as did more than 35 other men, including Byron White. And I'm proud to nominate an outstanding woman who brings a similar record of achievement in private practice and public service.

--aWol, October 3

Judge Alito has served with distinction on that court for 15 years and now has more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years.

-- aWol, today


Unfortunately, Scalito appears to be a dream choice for W's far-wrong base. He's the type the Democrats should definitely filibuster, but you just know that the DINO's like Biden, Lieberman and Clinton won't be willing to put up a fight.

War on terror won--ten years ago

The war on terror will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction.

-- Dick Cheney, December 2, 2002

That's from a long list of quotes Tom Tomorrow compiled documenting the primacy of the WMD argument in the misadministration's buildup to the Iraq war, regardless of what the wingnut revisionist historians try to tell us now.

The Duelfer report, released over a year ago now, confirmed that Iraq had no WMD's since 1995 or even earlier. So why don't we just celebrate VTWAT Day (Victory in the War against Terror) and bring all of the troops home?

Eli's got it

An Administration (and, I might add, a media) really interested in the truth would have launched an investigation not into Wilson, or his wife, but would have instead sent more people to Niger to try to find evidence that they felt Wilson had missed that would prove their case. They would have sent people to Italy to investigate the famous documents, and tried to prove that although they might seem to have been forgeries on their face, they were actually genuine documents. They didn't do any of that, of course, because they knew very well the documents were forgeries and that Wilson was telling the truth, and that there were not just "doubts about the underlying intelligence," in Rice's words, but that for all intents and purposes there was no underlying intelligence.

-- Eli at Left I on the News

Quote du jour

"As long as they're American citizens, they're not going to be forced to go to Arkansas." -- Renee Wizig-Barrios, lead organizer of the Metropolitan Organization, a group helping to organize hurricane victims to protect their rights. (NY Times)

2000 in the rearview mirror

Six American Soldiers Killed in Iraq.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

I think I loaned out my DVD of that documentary about Hugo Chavez and the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, and it may have been to someone who reads this blog. If it was you, please let me know ASAP and return the DVD when you get a chance. A woman teaching a course at Wayne State would like to show it to her students. Thanks.

What they said

Two of the most knowledgeable members of the reality-based community are Seymour Hersh and Scott Ritter. They got together for a chat on October 19. A partial transcript was published online on October 26, and I just found out about it today. The whole transcript is definitely worth reading, but I'll tease you with a few quotes:

Hersh: "[M]y own personal view is we have two options in Iraq. Option A, we can get all our troops out by midnight tonight, and option B, we can get them all out by tomorrow night at midnight."
...
Ritter: "I view that Iraq is a nation that's on fire. There's a horrific problem that faces not only the people of Iraq but the United States and the entire world. And the fuel that feeds that fire is the presence of American and British troops. This is widely acknowledged by the very generals that are in charge of the military action in Iraq. So the best way to put out the fire is to separate the fuel from the flame. So I'm a big proponent of bringing the troops home as soon as possible.

Today's the best day we're going to have in Iraq. Tomorrow's going to be worse, and the day after that's going to be even worse."
...
Ritter: "[T]he fact of the matter is the United States was never interested in disarming Iraq. The whole Security Council resolution that created the UN weapons inspections and called upon Iraq to disarm was focused on one thing and one thing only, and that is a vehicle for the maintenance of economic sanctions that were imposed in August 1990 linked to the liberation of Kuwait."
...
Ritter: "[D]isarmament was only useful insofar as it contained through the maintenance of sanctions and facilitated regime change. It was never about disarmament, it was never about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It started with George Herbert Walker Bush, and it was a policy continued through eight years of the Clinton presidency, and then brought us to this current disastrous course of action under the current Bush Administration."
...
Ritter: "I want to highlight that point that Clinton wasn't so good. You know, there's a lot of talk today in the Democratically controlled judiciary committee about going after the Bush Administration for crimes, for lying to Congress, and etc. And I'm all in favor of that, bring on the indictments, but don't stop at the Bush Administration. If you want to have a truly bipartisan indictment, you indict Madeleine Albright, you indict Sandy Berger, you indict every person on the Clinton Administration that committed the exact same crime that the Bush Administration has committed today. Lying during the course of your official duty: That's a felony, that's a high crime and misdemeanor. That's language in the Constitution that triggers certain events like impeachment. So let's not just simply turn this into a Bush-bashing event. This is about a failure of not only the Bush Administration but of the United States of America, and we have to look in the mirror and recognize that, well, all the Bush Administration did is take advantage of a systemic failure on the part of the United States as a whole, a failure that not only involves the executive, but it involves the legislative branch, Congress.

Congress has abrogated its responsibilities under the Constitution, and they've abrogated it for years. Then there's the media, and, yes, we can turn this into a media-bashing event. But you know what? The media only feeds the American people the poison they're willing to swallow. And we the people of the United States of America seem to want our news in no more than three-minute chunks with sound bites of thirty seconds or less, and it can't be too complicated. So what we did is allowed ourselves during the decade of the 1990s to be pre-programmed into accepting at face value without question anything that was negative about Saddam Hussein's regime, and this made selling the war on Iraq on the basis of a lie the easiest task ever faced by the Bush Administration."
...
Ritter: "Why don't we vote out of Congress everybody who voted in favor of this war?"
...
Ritter: " Ladies and gentlemen, there's not going to be an elegant solution in Iraq. There's no magic wand that can be waved to solve this problem. If we get out and we have a plan, you know, it's still going to cost 30,000 Iraqi lives. Let's understand that, there's going to be blood shed in Iraq. They're going to kill each other, and we're not going to stop it.

If we continue to stay the course, however, that 30,000 number may become 60,000 or 90,000. At the end of the day, we've created a nightmare scenario in Iraq, and the best we can do is mitigate failure. And that's what I'm talking, and, unfortunately, that's a politically unacceptable answer. People say, no, we have to win, we have to persevere, there has to be victory. There's not going to be victory."

The interview was based on Ritter's new book, Iraq Confidential : The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein. Sounds like a must-read to me!

From Steve Sack.

Harri-out

NY Times:

Harriet E. Miers withdrew her nomination for the Supreme Court this morning after her selection by President Bush led to criticism from both conservatives and liberals.

We can probably expect aWol to nominate someone sure to please the wingnuts, like Janice Rogers Brown. Then again, he is a petulant little twit, and the right just dissed his surrogate mother (if Barbara Bush were your real mother, you'd be looking for a surrogate too). So maybe he'll nominate someone who will REALLY piss them off. Here's my short list: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Anita Hill, or Dan Rather. Now THAT would be fun!

I got the idea for that graphic from this cartoon by Mark Streeter:

From John Sherffius.

From Pat Bagley.

She's Smithers!

From Drew Sheneman.

From Jeff Stahler.

From Rob Rogers.

From Bob Englehart.

Constitution Shmonstitution

Not the Iraqi blueprint for civil war; our own, which is still a fine document, but no longer functions because our government, especially the criminals in the executive branch, ignore it at every opportunity. Ted Rall explains:

Unfortunately for my friend and the United States, impeachment is a political process, not a legal one. Nixon and Clinton faced Congresses controlled by the other party. Because Bush belongs to the same party as the majorities in the House and Senate, nothing he does can get him impeached.
...
Another Constitutional breakdown, concerning the separation of powers, occurred in June 2004. More than a year after the Supreme Court decided in Rasul v. Bush that the nearly 600 Muslim men and young boys being held incommunicado at Guantánamo Bay were entitled to have their cases heard by U.S. courts, they remain in cold storage--no lawyers, no court dates. The Bush Administration simply ignored the ruling.

"[Bush's] Justice Department," Dahlia Lithwick wrote in Slate, "sees [the ruling] through the sophisticated legal prism known as the Toddler Worldview: Anything one doesn't wish to accept simply isn't true." Because the Founding Fathers never anticipated the possibility that the nation's chief executive would treat its final judgments with the respect due an out-of-state parking ticket issued to a rental car, the Supreme Court has been rendered as toothless as a gummy bear.

The more you look, the more you'll find that our Constitution has been subverted to the point of virtual irrelevance. The legislative branch has abdicated its exclusive right to declare war to the president, who was appointed by a federal court that undermined the states' constitutional right to manage and settle election disputes. Individuals' protection against unreasonable searches have been trashed, habeas corpus is a joke, and double jeopardy has become routine as those exonerated by criminal court face second trials in civil court. Our system of checks and balances has collapsed, the victim of a citizenry more interested in entertaining distraction than eternal vigilance.

Racism alive and well

Lamb and Lynx Gaede, 13-year-old twin white supremacists.

Prussian Blue, a "white power" band now recording its second album, is described as a sinister version of the Olsen Twins, the squeaky clean child actresses of the 1990s. It is attracting more and more fans among young white nationalists.

Lamb and Lynx Gaede, blonde, blue-eyed 13-year-olds from Bakersfield, California, have been entertaining all-white crowds with their music since the age of nine. Lamb plays the guitar and Lynx the violin.

Their songs have titles such as Sacrifice, a tribute to Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, that praises him as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up".

Performing for such groups as the neo-Nazi National Alliance at Holocaust-denial events and festivals entitled Folk the System, the girls execute Sieg Heil salutes while belting out lyrics such as "Strike force! White survival. Strike force! Yeah."

"We are proud of being white," Lynx told ABC News. "We want our people to stay white…we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."
...
The twins' first album featured songs called Road to Valhalla and Aryan Man, Awake. They depict a world "where freedom exists for only those with darker skin" and encourage the Aryan man to awake and "turn that fear to hate".

The twins recently came under fire for stipulating that money they donated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina should go to whites only. In a recent interview with the magazine Viceland, they were asked what was the "most important social issue facing the white race right now". They replied: "Not having enough white babies born to replace ourselves and generally not having good quality white people being born."

Smiley-face Hitler T-shirts: the sign of good quality white people everywhere.

Easier than adding actual nutrition to their food, I guess

CNN Headline: McDonald's to add nutrition info to packaging

Dang!

I had the wrong musical. If you're looking for Fitzmas presents (aka indictments), this is now the song for you:

The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There'll be sun!

Just thinkin' about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
'Til there's none!

When I'm stuck a day
That's gray,
And lonely,
I just stick out my chin
And Grin,
And Say,
Oh!

The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
So ya gotta hang on
'Til tomorrow
Come what may
Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I love ya Tomorrow!
You're always
A day
A way!

-- Martin Charnin, Annie

Hurricane Relief

Last week, I posted photos and some info from Keith, an Ann Arborite who spent 18 days recently in the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast region. Keith just sent me a more detailed account of his trip, as well as how we all can help. Here is his account in its entirety:

Hello everyone.

Recently I was in the Gulf Coast trying to help the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As some of you know I’m currently unemployed and didn’t have a good reason not to go down and do what I could. I spent 18 days working with a couple of different grassroots organizations (Veterans For Peace and Saving Our Selves (S.O.S.)). As tough as it was to make the decision to make the trip, it is even more difficult to return to the comforts of home knowing there are so many lives still devastated (and will be for years). Some of these people literally sit outside their destroyed homes all day and wait for help from FEMA or the Red Cross (this was over a month after Katrina). They do not have family (as many of us are fortunate to have) to stay with in an unaffected area. Most of their family also lives in the area as well. These people worked for local companies or a family owned business and no longer are employed. What is worse is they have no possibility of finding gainful employment as all local commerce was destroyed. Many of these people were poor and already struggling before the hurricane hit. However, there were many middle class citizens affected as well. The families that made a decent living but lived paycheck to paycheck, they too no longer have any way to not just make a living, but to feed their children. This is the middle class that has viable skills and has put them to use never needing a hand out from the government or anyone else, for that matter.

Now they have nothing. Time to start over. Time to start over in an area (assuming they make the decision to move) they are unfamiliar with and don’t have the friends and family that normally surround them. Local employers may be sympathetic to their plight but have no knowledge of them as a person (as their now defunct community once did) and with the economy the way it is, may not be hiring to begin with. This hurricane didn’t just affect those working at a fast food joint or those that have been propped up by the welfare system. This hurricane turned people’s lives, people just like you and me, upside down and they’re not going to be flipped right side up
anytime soon.

Not sure why I’m writing this email. Maybe to get some of these issues off my chest or to make sure everyone knows that the hurricanes may have come and gone and the mass media has now focused on the more sexy news of the day, but the victims still really need our help. I know every one of us has worked hard to be where we are today, I really do. I simply ask if you haven’t given to the hurricane relief effort yet (and even if you have) please do so immediately. If you were going out for dinner and drinks in the next couple of weeks… don’t. Stay home, make a grilled cheese and buy a six-pack. Take the $50 you would have dropped and give it to someone who needs it. Believe me I understand that is why we all go to work, so we can go out for dinner and drinks, take a vacation, enjoy life. If we could all skip one night out it would make a difference.

Interesting anecdote: Hollie, a 28 year old volunteer, who has been around the world (Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, etc.) caring for those less fortunate, visited a Vietnamese community in Biloxi, MS (the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed nearly through Biloxi and it was the most devastated area I witnessed, literally neighborhoods swept away). Her intent was to scout the area seeking places of worship and other areas in which the locals congregated seeking relief. Upon her search she would stop and talk with community members, listening to their accounts of how they survived the hurricane and what their future plans were. Before she left, she asked if there were any supplies they needed that she could bring back for them the following day. They were surprised and skeptical, but gave her their grocery list (bleach, mops, cleaning supplies and rice). The next day Hollie pulled up to unload the supplies they requested. Most of them stood in shock. The Red Cross had visited their community a couple of different times in the past few weeks doing exactly what Hollie had done the previous day and hadn’t been heard from again. They explained this to Hollie and went on to tell her after their meeting the previous day they never once discussed her return because if the Red Cross wasn’t coming back surely the girl in a mini-van from California wouldn’t return either, let alone with all of the supplies they had asked for. Hollie explained to me, pulling up in that mini-van, looking at all of those bewildered faces was her most gratifying experience of the trip.

Shortly to follow this email I’ll send another with a web address of photos of the trip. Some are of destruction and relief work, others are of volunteers (many of which are now friends) that came from all over the country to help. In many of the photos we were all smiles, having a drink or just goofing around. Some of the work was exhausting, both mentally and physically, and the pictures were taken while trying to unwind.

I’d invite anyone who is interested in donating or learning more to email me or give me a call. Below is the address for donations (both money and supplies). If you do not feel comfortable giving to an organization that’s not nationally recognized, I understand, but do understand this is the most effective way to give directly to those who need it and not to contribute to the bureaucracy of other major relief organizations. If there is a strong interest in donating I would also entertain the idea of again driving down to the Gulf Coast to purchase needed supplies and distributing them to those who need it. In doing so I would verify (receipts and pictures) that your hard earned money was going directly to those who needed it immediately directly from point A to B (instead of getting caught up in red tape and making sure government employees get their cut… point A to B to C to D to E to you get the idea).

Thanks for listening, feel free to forward and take care of yourselves.

Keith (kgroya AT hotmail.com)

Saving Our Selves (S.O.S)
Mobile Baptist Sunlight District Auditorium
809 Seminary St.
Pritchard, AL 36610
(251) 377-9691
www.sosafterkatrina.org/

Attorney General sacked for condoning torture

Unfortunately, not in real life. On ABC's Commander in Chief, President Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis) fired AG Melanie Blackston (Leslie Hope) last night for using torture on a terror suspect.

Discord among the "Torture Nine"

From last Friday's Washington Post, via Bob Harris:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a staunch opponent of pork barrel spending, tried to block $453 million for two Alaska bridges that had been tucked into the recent highway bill. Coburn wanted to redirect the money to the Interstate 10 bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, a major thoroughfare that was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina.

Sen. Ted Stevens, the veteran Alaska Republican, was dramatic in his response. "I don't kid people," Stevens roared. "If the Senate decides to discriminate against our state . . . I will resign from this body."

Harris calls it a two-fer; I call it win-win. Getting rid of both the "bridge to nowhere" and the senator from nowhere--that would be almost as good as indictments for everybody in the White House.

If Stevens is even less principled than Coburn, he is pioneering new territory. Both of these idiots voted against the McCain amendment prohibiting torture.

Unfortunately for all of us, most of the rest of the Senate sided with Stevens. Coburn's amendment was voted down 82 to 15. According to the Post, the idea of transferring the money from Alaska to Louisiana was even popular in Alaska:

Many residents of Alaska appear to support forfeiting the bridge money for hurricane relief. "This money, a gift from the people of Alaska, will represent more than just material aid; it will be a symbol for our beleaguered democracy," reads a typical letter to the Anchorage Daily News.

[House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska)], who made sure his state was one of the top recipients in the highway bill, was asked by an Alaska reporter what he made of the public support for redirecting the bridge money. "They can kiss my ear! That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard," he replied.

Listen to yourself, moron.

Rather than kissing Young's ear, I think the voters of Alaska should throw him out on it.

Why 2K?

Why one, for that matter?

2000 dead, and what do you get
Another day older, and deeper in debt
The killing keeps goin' and it ain't stopped yet
We were sold this war by some neocon whores...

Indictment Excitement

Could be!
Who knows?
There's something due any day;
I will know right away,
Soon as it shows.
It may come cannonballing down through the sky,
Gleam in its eye,
Bright as a rose!

Who knows?
It's only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Under a tree.
I got a feeling there's a miracle due,
Gonna come true,
Coming to me!

Could it be? Yes, it could.
Something's coming, something good,
If I can wait!
Something's coming, I don't know what it is,
But it is
Gonna be great!

With a click, with a shock,
Phone'll jingle, door'll knock,
Open the latch!
Something's coming, don't know when, but it's soon;
Catch the moon,
One-handed catch!

Around the corner,
Or whistling down the river,
Come on, deliver
To me!
Will it be? Yes, it will.
Maybe just by holding still,
It'll be there!

Come on, something, come on in, don't be shy,
Meet a guy,
Pull up a chair!
The air is humming,
And something great is coming!
Who knows?
It's only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Maybe tonight . . .

-- Stephen Sondheim, West Side Story

The latest rumor, from The Washington Note:

1. 1-5 indictments are being issued. The source feels that it will be towards the higher end.

2. The targets of indictment have already received their letters.

3. The indictments will be sealed indictments and "filed" tomorrow. [that is, today, Wednesday--ed.]

4. A press conference is being scheduled for Thursday.

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas!

From Mike Thompson.

Quotes du jour

Former Reaganite Paul Craig Roberts once again (Emphasis added):

The American people should be terrified by the warmongering ideologues that President Bush has put in charge of his government. The greatest danger that the US faces are the fools in the Bush administration.

Why is Syria being demonized? Syrian troops were part of the US coalition organized by President George Herbert Walker Bush that liberated Kuwait in 1991 from Saddam Hussein. The current head of government in Syria is a mild mannered ophthalmologist who inherited the post five years ago when his older brother was killed in a car crash.

Syria has done nothing to the US and poses no threat to the US. The Syrian government is concerned about Syria becoming unhinged by schisms like the Sunni-Shi'ite schism set loose in Iraq by the incompetent Bush administration.

Why does Condi Rice think the Bush administration has the right to decide who heads the Syrian government? According to news reports, the Bush administration has asked the Israeli and Italian governments to nominate a replacement for the current president of Syria.

A country incapable of choosing a better president than George W. Bush has no business choosing a president for any other country. In place of aggressive interference in the internal affairs of other countries, the US needs to find a competent president for itself.

Maybe we should ask the Italians who they would recommend.

Indict Already!!!!

The above headline represents the views of the management of this blog.

They just love their torture

The Bushies don't just ignore it, don't just excuse it--they push for it. From the WaPo:

The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody.

The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by "an element of the United States government" other than the Defense Department.
...
McCain, the principal sponsor of the legislation, rejected the proposed exemption at the meeting with Cheney, according to a government source who spoke without authorization and on the condition of anonymity.

Of course, McCain knows that there are always CIA spooks lurking in and around the military, so this exemption would make his amendment mean precisely nothing.

She was against perjury before she was for it

The Washington Post, of all places, responds to recent BS from Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Numbskull) by comparing her words from Sunday with comments she made about the Clinton impeachment back in 1999.

2005:

I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment . . . that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality...

1999:

I do think . . . that something needs to be said that is a clear message that our rule of law is intact and the standards for perjury and obstruction of justice are not gray. And I think it is most important that we make that statement and that it be on the record for history.

I very much worry that with the evidence that we have seen that grand juries across America are going to start asking questions about what is obstruction of justice, what is perjury. And I don't want there to be any lessening of the standard. Because our system of criminal justice depends on people telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Did Cheney Cheney himself?

From the NY Times:

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Sinking the Veep from the Deep would be SO sweet. Somehow we've got to get aWol impeached before any of these convictions are final, so he can't pardon these crooks.

From Matt Bors.

From Bruce Beattie.

From Matt Wuerker.

Rosa Parks, 1913-2005

The Detroit Free Press has a fine obituary. Even though I've lived within 40 miles of her for most of my life, and lived in Montgomery for seven years as well, I've learned things from her obit that I didn't know.

Rosa Parks and her husband had been involved in the NAACP and other civil rights organizations for years before the Montgomery bus incident in December 1955. She didn't actually sit in the "whites only" section of the bus; she sat in the first row of the black section. However, the Jim Crow rule was that blacks had to move farther back when the white section was full, which it was that day. She refused to move and was arrested.

Parks has said one of her biggest regrets is that numerous news stories reported that she refused to give up her seat because she was tired after a day of work. She was not. She was tired of the mistreatment of black people.

"I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day," she said in her autobiography. "I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old the. I was 42. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Parks worked for Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit) as a receptionist and assistant from 1965 until she retired in 1988.

I've said it before, so it can't be wrong

Karen Hughes, one of aWol's team of tough, loyal and stupid women, said last week that Saddam Hussein had poison-gassed "hundreds of thousands of his own people." It was pointed out to her that while some claim that Saddam's regime killed hundreds of thousands, only a few thousand of those appear to have been killed by poison gas. Hughes responded:

"It's something that our U.S. government has said a number of times in the past. It's information that was used very widely after his attack on the Kurds. I believe it was close to 300,000," Hughes said when questioned the first time. She added, "That's something I said every day in the course of the campaign. That's information that we talked about a great deal in America."

By saying "information" she means, of course, "lies."

Okay Karen. You're not just a one-off idiot. You're a repeat offender.

(Via WIIIAI)

From Andy Singer.

From Matt Wuerker.

Too-much-coffee Woman

Last weekend, I was channel surfing. When I caught the C-Span wave, there was Karen Hughes, former personal assistant to AWOL and now Undersecretary of State for public diplomacy, nervously looking back and forth, deflecting every question like a hockey goalie. This is one scary woman. "Intense" isn't really intense enough to describe it. Today, she was in Indonesia defending the indefensible--the invasion of Iraq:

"The consensus of the world intelligence community was that Saddam was a very dangerous threat," Hughes said days after the ousted dictator went on trial in Baghdad on charges of murder and torture in a 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail.

"After all, he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people," she told a small auditorium with around 100 students. "He had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using poison gas."

Although at least 300,000 Iraqis are said to have been killed during Saddam's decades-long rule - only about 5,000 are believed to have been gassed to death in a 1988 attack in the Kurdish north.

Hughes twice repeated the statement after being challenged by journalists. A State Department official later called The Associated Press to say she misspoke. The official, who was traveling with Hughes, spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to talk publicly to the media.

It's not surprising that somebody is this stupid--there are lots of ignorant people out there. But they most definitely should not be running things.

They still need help!

This is Keith:

I met Keith a few weeks ago. He lives about a mile from me. I was planning on going south to help Katrina victims, but I backed out. Keith didn't. He and Ann, a woman from Ohio, left Ann Arbor on September 20, and stayed in the hurricane region until October 7. They arrived just before Rita did, so they had to hide out in a shelter for a couple of days. But they did plenty of good work after that. I had lunch with Keith and his significant other yesterday, and he shared these photos and stories with me:


They spent most of their time down south in Theodore, Alabama, just south of Mobile. They met up with a group of people from all over the country.


[Snarky editor's note] Note the predominance of blue states--California, New York, Massachusetts (Florida, Ohio). [/snark]

They toured much of the devastated area making deliveries. Remember, these photos were taken over three weeks after Katrina hit (this area wasn't hit by Rita).











They also helped out at a distribution center, sort of a free store where victims could come and get what they need:


Along the way, they ran into the VFP Impeachment Tour.

Actually, Keith says the Impeachment Tour ran into them. This bus hit his car--only minor damage.

Before they left the Gulf region, they took a brief trip to New Orleans:


Keith says the need for help is still massive throughout the region. FEMA and the Red Cross are failing to support thousands of people across the region who would have nothing to eat or drink without the continued efforts of basically free-lance volunteers.

Feel-bad story of the day

Repug Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire won $853,000 in the Powerball lottery. To make things worse, he says he doesn't plan to quit his job.

Shaking my beliefs to the core

Strange quote du jour:

I haven’t heard anyone lately saying they want a war with North Korea, for example. And the president was wonderful in that regard during some very tense deliberations over North Korea. He essentially put his foot down: I do not want a war on the Korean peninsula. And that was very helpful.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson, formerly Chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a speech Wednesday (via Billmon).

W actually STOPPED a war? Why against that particular member of the axis of evil? The one that seems to actually have nukes? Okay, that's one reason. But another? Perhaps it's because this luney (sic intended) is still calling the shots:

The sleazebag billionaire pervert megalomaniac in the back right is the Rev. Sun-Yung Moon, who is heavily invested in South and North Korea, as well as the Bush family. I learned more about this whacko than I really wanted to know by reading Robert Parry's excellent book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. Why should you care about Rev. Moon? Because he basically OWNS your government.

Still--aWol preventing a war? Pretty amazing stuff, if true.

From Steve Sack.

Bringing the Hammer down

(CNN) -- Rep. Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader who faces conspiracy and money laundering charges, turned himself in Thursday in Houston, one day after an arrest warrant was issued for him.

DeLay walked into the bonding department of the Harris County Sheriff's Office shortly after noon and was fingerprinted, photographed and released after posting $10,000 bond, sheriff's spokeswoman Lisa Martinez said.

I hope they run those fingerprints through some of the cold cases. This slimeball probably knocked over a liquor store back in his bug-killing days.

Take the test again, Harriet...

The Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers suffered another setback on Wednesday when the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked her to resubmit parts of her judicial questionnaire, saying various members had found her responses "inadequate," "insufficient" and "insulting."

-- NY Times

Fortunately, Billmon has obtained a copy of her original questionnaire (or is it the modified one?--have to ask Scotty tomorrow).

Just go.

From R.J. Matson.

Immigration

A particularly ugly side of "globalization" and "free trade" is the immigration issue. Official government policy is to stop the flow of "illegal" immigrants:

• "We’ve got to stop people from coming here in the first place." -- George W. Bush, 10/18/05
• “We need more brute enforcement,” Chertoff declared. He pledged that the administration’s policy would be one of “return every single illegal entrant—no exceptions.”

However, actual policy is just to make it difficult to get here, and scary enough that undocumented workers won't complain about low wages, long hours, or brutal conditions. As the WSWS points out, there is a split in aWol's base over the issue. The social conservatives (aka xenophobes, religious right, etc.) don't want "those people" here. But the big-money corporate conservatives do want them here, as long as they work hard for very low wages and stay scared. With the Bushies, it is money that really talks. So while globalization, represented by NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO, makes survival in Mexico and Central America increasingly difficult, the government will continue to make crossing the border difficult and dangerous--but certainly not impossible. This just means that those who do get in will have proven themselves to be strong and resilient--and that they'll be petrified at the prospect of getting caught.

This is an administration that BS's constantly about "freedom" and "democracy." But when it comes to a huge, important part of the country's labor force, they want to make sure that the workers have neither freedom nor democracy. They just want to make sure that there are always enough of them here so that nobody in America can get a decent wage for manual labor. Cheap labor conservatives.

Alliterate alot?

CNN headline: Wobbly Wilma weakens.

Your tax dollars at work

From Josh Marshall, a selection from yesterday's press GAGgle with Scottie McClellan (which seems to have disappeared from the White House web site):

QUESTION: Thanks. Is it true that the President slapped Karl Rove upside the head a couple of years ago over the CIA leak?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Are you referring to, what, a New York Daily News report? Two things: One, we're not commenting on an ongoing investigation; two, and I would challenge the overall accuracy of that news account.

QUESTION: That's a comment.

QUESTION: Which part of it?

QUESTION: Yes, that is.

QUESTION: Which facts --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, I'm just saying -- no, I'm just trying to help you all.

QUESTION: So what facts are you challenging?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Again, I'm not going to comment on an ongoing investigation.

QUESTION: You can't say you're challenging the facts and then not say which ones you're challenging.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, I can. I just did. (Laughter.)

Fall color tour

It was a perfect fall day today--I took the digital camera out for a walk:





Look! This guy has some funny shiny shingles on his roof!

























Alien civilization detected:


Signs of language:


Strange metal conveyances:


Back to the real world:




The path goes on:

All the News that's Fit for Profit

Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution explains corporate media:

The mainstream media does a FANTASTIC job. Day in and day out, they turn in an extraordinary performance at what they exist to do. And that is to make as much money as possible.

Of course, in terms of helping people learn about the world, they are an eternal catastrophe. But why would we ever expect any different? The mainstream media is made up of gigantic corporations. Like all corporations, they manufacture a product, which is their audience. They sell this product to their customers, which are other huge corporations.
...
I was thinking this when I read this statement by the perspicacious Digby:

This [the Judith Miller hoo-ha] is at its essence about a toxic political culture. The press has abdicated its responsibility to hold the powerful accountable.

I almost always think Digby is right about everything. But here's the thing: the press doesn't HAVE this responsibility. Gigantic corporations, by law, have one and only one responsibility, to make as much money as they possibly can. Sure, they pretend they carry the awesome burden of holding the powerful accountable, just like Wal-Mart pretends it's deeply concerned with the well-being of its employees. And in fact, some New York Times managers may even believe they are engaged in the Unending Fight For Etc., Etc. But that doesn't change the fact that if the need for huge profits ever conflicts with holding the powerful responsible—and it will, constantly—you really shouldn't wait up. Later, Digby wrote this about the talented Ms. Miller:

How on earth does someone this vapid become an "expert" on national security issues for the New York Times?

Again, a huge corporation like the New York Times pretends—even to itself—it wants someone smart, hard-hitting, etc. to cover national security issues. But in reality, it selects for vapidity.

There's more, although I've stolen most of it. I guess Judy and the Times didn't sell the war to the public--they sold the public to the warmongers.

New toy

For the past few days, I've been using the Google Reader to browse my favorite blogs and to grab news items on topics of interest. In conjunction with Google News, it has helped me find articles I wouldn't have found otherwise. I just set up a custom news page at Google News, using search phrases "peak oil," "solar energy," "water," and "Ann Arbor." I then clicked the RSS feed link on my customized news page and pasted the link into the reader. Voila! Now I get more news on my favorite topics than I can read!

Tell Congress to support the McCain Amendment

From the ACLU:

In a stunning vote, the U.S. Senate has chosen the rule of law and blocked torture and prisoner abuse by our government. Voting 90-9, the Senate backed a proposal from Senator John McCain (R-AZ) that bans the use of torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading practices.

The McCain amendment now faces an all-out attack from the Bush Administration as it heads to the House of Representatives.

You can help preserve human dignity, support the Senate’s overwhelming majority, and make sure this amendment becomes law. Take action now to stop the government from using torture and abuse.

Go here to send the message.

Tangled web

Justin Raimondo connects a lot of dots concerning "Bulldog" Fitzgerald's investigation. It's a lot more than just outing a spook. A central figure appears to be neonut Michael Ledeen, who first came to my attention four years ago with this quote, which was frequently mis-attributed to Richard Perle:

If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.

As Raimondo points out, Ledeen never lets facts get in the way--he continues to call for regime change in Iran, Syria, and more.

The invisible hand at work

From the NY Times:

"It's not just getting an earlier start on the Christmas season, it's getting to shoppers before they see their first heating bills, while the weather is still good," said Candace Corlett, a principal at WSL Strategic Retail, a consulting company in New York.

"The smartest thing a retailer can do is get consumers to buy now, because they have the cash now," she said. "Not only is there the fear of higher fuel prices later, but if we're hit with a very cold November or December, that would really scare shoppers."

Not a word in the article about how many people may freeze to death on Christmas morning clutching their toys, jewelry and gadgets.

Pat Buchanan on the war

Buchanan gives aWol too much credit, claiming that it is W's naive faith in democracy that got us into Iraq and keeps us there, rather than a combination of greed, stupidity, megalomania and pure evil, which is basically what I think Bush is all about. Nevertheless, Buchanan has some solid arguments against W's standard talking points:

Nathan Brown, a Mideast expert at the Carnegie Endowment, agrees: "The democratic process as it has worked so far [in Iraq] has certainly done nothing to undermine the insurgency."

But the most sweeping challenge to President Bush's faith-based war comes from F. Gregory Gause III in Foreign Affairs. Writes Gause: "There is no evidence that democracy reduces terror. Indeed, a democratic Middle East would probably result in Islamist governments unwilling to cooperate with Washington."
...

Not only does democracy offer no guarantee against terror, writes Gause, democracies are the most frequent targets of terror. Not one incident of terror was reported in China between 2000 and 2003, but democratic India suffered 203. Israel, the most democratic nation in the Middle East, endured scores of acts of terror from 2000 to 2005. Syria's dictatorship experienced almost none. While Saddam's Iraq was terror-free,* democratic Iraq suffers daily attacks.

Researching 25 years of suicide bombings, scholar Robert Pape found the leading cause was not a lack of democracy, but the presence of troops from democratic nations on lands terrorists believe by right belong to them.

*Pat seems to have forgotten about Iyad Allawi and his ilk of CIA-backed terrorists, who blew up theaters, buses and offices in the mid-1990's. I think he also ignores the very real aspect of state terror. Saddam's behavior in 2002-2003 in no way justified the massive, bloody, and ongoing invasion which followed, but that doesn't mean that he and his security forces weren't terrorizing some Iraqi citizens (just as "coalition" forces are terrorizing them now on a much larger scale).

I don't think that either Bush or Buchanan are committed to democracy. But at least Buchanan is honest about it, and points out the obvious fallacies in Bush's democracy BS.

Don't do it!

Defenselink caption: "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrives in Beijing Oct. 18 to meet with Chinese officials. Greeting him at the airport are Gen. Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, and U.S. Ambassador to China Clark T. Randt Jr."

Gen. Xiong apparently doesn't recognize that look on Rummy's face, or what it means:

More suicide squeezes than the St. Louis Cardinals

From Mike Thompson.

Category Five--Again

(CNN) -- Hurricane Wilma jumped from a Category 2 to a dangerous Category 5 storm in mere hours Wednesday, with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph -- and possibly the lowest recorded barometric pressure, the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday.

Gov. Jeb Bush said Floridians must be thinking, "Why us?"

God hates vote fraud, Jeb.

Peak oil on page 1 of USA Today

Here.

As global demand rises, American consumers will find themselves in a bidding war with others around the world for scarce oil supplies. That will send prices of gasoline, heating oil and all petroleum-related products soaring.

“The least-bad scenario is a hard landing, global recession worse than the 1930s,” says Kenneth Deffeyes, a Princeton University professor emeritus of geosciences. “The worst-case borrows from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: war, famine, pestilence and death.”

He's not kidding: Production of pesticides and fertilizers needed to sustain crop yields rely on large quantities of chemicals derived from petroleum. And Stanford University's Amos Nur says China and the United States could “slide into a military conflict” over oil.

Any technology can be used for evil

The CIA now has rugged solar/wind generators that can be parachuted into remote locations.

Via Polizeros.

Talking points in action

Criminalization of politics.

The second bullet?

Salon has an article on detection of tularemia in Washington on September 24, the day of the big anti-war march. The government says that nobody ended up with a case of tularemia, but Salon isn't so sure:

Mike Phelps, 45, says he attended the rally in Washington that day, traveling round trip by bus from Raleigh, N.C. On Sept. 27, he came down with a fever, sore throat and headache. Within days, he was coughing up dark phlegm. When he blew his nose, it would bleed. "It was gross," he says. "I literally vomited out cup loads of phlegm. Most of it was dark-colored. I've never had anything like this before."

Phelps' doctor said he had pneumonia and prescribed antibiotics. A few days later, Phelps read about the tularemia scare and called his doctor. His doctor told him that if it was tularemia, he would have prescribed him the same antibiotics. Phelps says he called the CDC but was transferred to an automated system. Frustrated, he hung up.

Several members of the women's peace group, Code Pink, also from North Carolina, who attended the march, say they got sick afterward. Stephanie Eriksen, a 46-year-old network engineer for AT&T, says she developed swollen glands and cold symptoms in her throat and chest. She developed a persistent cough that still lingers. "My throat has still not recovered completely," she says. Eriksen says her 14-year-old daughter marched in Washington and got sick. She was tested for strep throat. Eriksen said the results were negative.

Aimee Schmidt, a Code Pink member and student at North Carolina State, says that she developed flu-like symptoms and a raging headache that lasted three days after the march. She says her eyes hurt and her whole body ached. She never went to the doctor. "I made a choice, wise or not, to just deal with it," she says.

The government's response was Katrinish--public health officials weren't notified until six days later. What actually happened is left to conjecture--was it a terrorist act from the supposed external enemy, or maybe from an internal one (like the 2001 anthrax attacks)? Perhaps terrorists were just testing the system, seeing if the bioweapon sensors actually work.

Here's my theory, in which I don't have a lot of confidence: There wasn't any tularemia there. The reports are the actual act of terrorism, a threat to the anti-war movement that the government is ready to get as serious as necessary to keep us in line. Like the second bullet in Garry Webb's "suicide," it's a message just subtle enough for the corporate media to ignore. As Salon admits in the article, the chances of a few people out of 200,000 coming down with something nasty a few days after the march are pretty high. Since the symptoms of tularemia are apparently not terribly distinctive, easily diagnosed as flu or pneumonia, whether or not tularemia was actually released on the mall just hangs there, an unanswered question. Releasing the reports, like vague reports of possible terror attacks, just raises the fear--which is the key element of terrorism, no matter who does it. In addition, actually releasing tularemia on the Mall might have killed some pals of the Bushies--John Roberts or Dennis Hastert, for example (aWol himself was out of town, as usual). This way, they put that nagging fear into everybody's head without any real evidence available to confirm or deny it, and without any actual bodies to get rid of.

Again, I'm not placing any big bets on my theory. But the only thing we actually KNOW in this case is that the government announced that tularemia was detected in Washington on September 24. Maybe everyone in the government performed his or her job in a totally proper fashion--except for one spook who sprayed a little bit of tularemia into the bioweapon sensors.