Weather the last couple of days has been outstanding. More like the dry season than the rains. Yesterday was cloudy but dry the whole day, with some rain during the night, and cool enough that I did not have to run the fan last night. And today was sunny, bright, cloudless most of the day, and with only a very brief rain in the afternoon.
Well, the gardener arrived a bit late, but went right to work spraying weeds, and got everything sprayed early. That meant that the sun could set the spray, and I was delighted for that - this means that the weeds should be killed well and truly. I had him spray on the other side of the street, too - the weeds growing in the desagua (roadside drainage ditch) were choking the ditch and the water was overflowing during heavy rains and running across the street onto my side. Once they're done, I will probably have to get out there and dig the ditch out.
The gardener was in a very cooperative mood today. He got a number of things done that I had wanted but hadn't asked for, and even cleaned out the desagua in front of the house. The last few rains have brought some loose gravel into it, and it was getting rather choked. He had it cleaned out in a couple of minutes - and it would have taken me an hour or more in the present state of my health. I think he sees that I physically can't do much anymore, and feels sorry for me, so he is cheerfully stepping in there to do things without even being asked. I really treasure that. He's a good hearted person.
Late this afternoon, I was sitting on the porch reading the paper, when I heard some machete sounds out back. They sounded like they were on my property, so I figured I had better check it out. I discovered a peone (laborer) cutting down weeds along the fence between me and my neighbor that is building the new house. The weeds he was cutting were on the other side, so I didn't really mind, but figured I had better keep an eye on the guy. Well, a bit later, when I checked on him, he was walking through my banana patch, and there was no excuse for that, so I walked over there to confront the guy. When I arrived, he had seen me coming, and had high-tailed it over onto my neighbor's property. He had some large tangerines from my tree in his hands. He claimed that he was only on the other side of the fence. The weed cutting, he said, is in preparation for the planting of a bamboo fence. Well, Ok, but if he keeps showing up on my side, I will have to say something to my neighbor. I can't tolerate everyone coming onto my property and stealing my tangerines.
I met that neighbor at the bank today. He said that they are going to start putting the windows and doors in the new house next week, and then will get the place painted on the outside. It is getting close! He said he is going to sell it, though, as he is interested in moving back to Panama, where he is from, and where most of his family still is. He thinks it is going to be cheaper, but I don't think so, based on what I found when I was there just under two years ago - at that time, it was considerably more expensive than here. Oh well... Hate to see him go. He's been a good neighbor.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Left The States: With Tom DeLay stepping aside because of his indictment on a Texas conspiracy charge, the House Republican Caucus in the House of Representatives has dumped their first pick for Majority Leader, Rep. David Dreier apparently because it's an open secret that he is gay and lives with his chief of staff, Brad Smith, and that wouldn't look good when Hustler Magazine's planned expose hits the streets. Another thing that wouldn't look good is the fact that Smith is the second highest-paid staff member in the House, pulling down only $400 per year less than Andy Card, the Chief of Staff to Smirkey himself. Instead, they have picked Roy Blunt, a Missouri politician who comes to the job with his own well-stuffed baggage. He apparently hired and is regularly paying fees to a consultant who is under indictment in the TRMPAC scandal - the very same scandal that got DeLay in trouble. The House Republican caucus would seem to be made up of slow learners - or maybe they're just having trouble finding someone who isn't ethically challenged.
With leadership like that in Congress, hypocritically bashing gays right and left, it is hardly a surprise that organized homophobia is on the rise in the United States. The American Library Association has released its list of the ten most frequently banned books in the U.S. for the past year, and three gay-themed books made the list - that is the most in a decade. This is apparently due primarily to Internet-based email campaigns organized by Christian hate groups.
Smirkey has threatened to veto a $440 billion defense appropriation bill if it comes before him with the current limitations on the use of torture intact. The threat, in the form of a letter to the Senate, comes at a difficult time - battling to retain the right to commit acts of torture - remember Abu Ghraib - could be politically embarrassing for a president who is already so low in the polls. I can't imagine very many senators supporting the legalization of torture, but that is what Smirkey is effectively asking for.
Gallup is reporting that Smirkey's poll numbers are up. CNN is quoting Gallup as saying that they are now at an approval rating of 45%. Given the Gallup organization's well-known pro-Republican bias, I'll believe that when I see confirmation in Zogby and maybe some others. If it is true, it means that there are a lot of Americans that are slow learners.
Long before the Al Qaeda "fighters" at Guantanamo, there were the Haitians. And before them, there were the Cubans. It seems that Guantanamo has a long and venerable history in the annals of detainee abuse, and so new revelations should be hardly a shock to anyone. But now a whole new batch of habeas corpus petitions is heading in the direction of the Supreme Court, some with conflicting lower court judgments behind them, so there may finally be a resolution.
Get thee to a nunnery: It seems there is yet another moral panic sweeping the land of the used-to-be-free. This time it is college campuses. More specifically, the things that go on in dorm rooms when the lights are out. The "moral entrepreneurs" (those who start moral panics, often for ulterior political or economic motives) are warning us in the Washington Times of "sexual chaos" on campus, and Vigen Guroian, a theology professor at Loyola College in Maryland, is comparing college to a "sex carnival" in an article entitled "Dorm Brothels" in an article in Christianity Today. Well, that's hardly surprising, given all those young walking bags of raging hormones on campus, but the real question is whether this is new. Given the memories of my own college experience, on the campus of a major religious university, I think not. It is just the latest example of a phenomenon called a "moral panic," a phenomenon with a long and venerable history.
In spite of its social programs and welfare state, Finland continues to rank ahead of the United States in international competitiveness, with the other Scandinavian welfare states of Sweden, Norway and Denmark close behind. Proving that you really can take care of your people while remaining internationally competitive. The reason most often given was the sound fiscal management and astute governmental leadership in the Scandinavian countries. The World Economic Forum Competitiveness index was drawn from a survey of 11,000 business leaders worldwide.
The percentage of overdue credit card bills in the United States continues to increase, hitting an all-time high of 4.81% last quarter, up from the 4.76% of the previous quarter. This reflects a continuing trend of Americans to maintain their lifestyles in the face of declining real incomes by simply increasing their indebtedness.
A dangerous force: A nine-member commission, headed by the chief of staff to former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, has issued a report that found that the United States is no longer viewed abroad as a beacon of freedom, liberty and hope, but is increasingly regarded as a "dangerous force" that must be contained. Glad they're finally figuring out that what they're doing is screaming so loudly in the world's ears that the world can't hear any longer what they are saying - and continuing to say it just makes them look silly.
Making us look better than ever, the Bush Administration is doing a "its-mine-and-you-can't-have-it" with the root servers that provide authoritative domain name resolution for the entire Internet. The servers make it possible to use names rather than being forced to use numbers to navigate the Web. Because they are so important, the Bushies are not willing to cede control to a United Nations agency or the ICANN organization, which was set up for this purpose among other things. The reason given? "We think that's unacceptable" according to Ambassador David Goss. Yeah, he really said that. Hey, that's a really convincing argument there.
Fossil Fuels are going to become a relic, and sooner than had been thought. The World Watch Institute, a Washington D.C. think tank, has issued a report saying that the shift to renewable energy sources, long predicted, has begun and some nations have already made remarkable progress. Norway, for example, gets 45% of its energy from renewable sources already. Costs for renewables are coming down as fossil fuel prices are going up, and that means the shift has begun - dramatically, in some places. Meanwhile, Smirkey still doesn't get it and is doing nothing to encourage the trend in the U.S., which remains near the bottom of the industrialized nations in terms of the shift. And the high and rising fuel prices are driving down consumer confidence - and economic activity.
Fully 60% of female veterans of the National Guard and Reserve surveyed nationally say that they have been sexually harassed or assaulted, and 8% of the incidents involved rape or attempted rape. Only a fourth of them reported it, and most of those were strongly encouraged to drop the charges.
John "two-tone" Bolton does it again - the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. is now suggesting to the United Nations that contributions to that body should be voluntary on the asinine belief that it would increase accountability. We're not entirely sure of his reasoning, but that was his excuse. It is widely known that he would like to see the organization to which he is an ambassador be abolished.
Elian Gonzales, the little Cuban boy who was found adrift in the Florida Straights six years ago, and after a protracted legal battle, was returned to his father in Cuba, has given his first interview about the incident. He says that he had always wanted to go back to his father in Cuba, and resented his relatives attempting to keep him in Miami. His view has not changed, and he still feels that going back to his father was the right thing. He was interviewed by CBS News, with his father, but no Cuban officials, present.
Britons, who are fond of vacationing in Florida, are being warned that Floridians are armed and can shoot to kill, under a new law being pushed by Jeb Bush and the National Rifle Association, called the "shoot first" law. The ads, running in British newspapers, are being placed by the Brady Campaign to Control Gun Violence.
From the Scandals Du Jour department:
The Pentagon is engaging in reprisals against one of the two whisleblowers who exposed the Able Danger scandal, discussed previously in this space. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, 42, is being accused of numerous minor infractions to justify removal of his security clearance, all in an attempt to discredit his testimony before Congress - if he is ever allowed to testify.
The legal mess that Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist is facing is apparently getting worse: the Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that it has begun a formal inquiry into his insider trading moves that have netted him between $2 million and $6 million. He is apparently about to learn that getting a clearance from a compliant ethics committee does not absolve him of his legal obligations to not engage in insider trading. This makes the third high ranking Republican official to be formally indicted or arrested for doing business as usual.
Yet another scandal surrounding Frist has just broken out as well. Rawstory.com is reporting that Frist's father quietly settled a massive Medicare fraud lawsuit for $630 million against the Hospital Corporation of America, the family business. The eleventh-hour deal - brokered with Justice Department attorneys after a seven-year court battle - was made as Frist secured the necessary votes to assume the Senate's top post.
Meanwhile, Texas Republicans are desperately struggling to prevent Tom DeLay, the indicted Senate Majority Leader, from having to do a perp-walk back in Texas. They don't want him to be photographed being fingerprinted and photographed. The prosecuting attorney has said it is up to the court how he will be arraigned.
An activist group, with a website called velvetrevolution.us, is offering a $100,000 whistleblower reward for the arrest and conviction of certain high officials that are currently involved in scandals. That includes the person who outed Valerie Plame, the people involved in the Ohio election theft, the arrest and conviction on bribery of House speaker Dennis Hastert, as detailed in Vanity Fair.
Several senators, suspicious of the timing of the Food and Drug Administration's last chief, Dr. Lester Crawford, are seeking an inquiry into whether any ethics laws may have been violated. They are suspicious of possible conflicts of interest that may have sparked his sudden and unexplained resignation.
The embattled Kentucky governor is facing the same problem as the Ohio governor - so many people in his administration have either been indicted or implicated in his scandals that he's having trouble keeping his administration staffed. It seems that his Commerce Secretary, Jim Host, has just stepped down. He, along with Governor Fletcher, declined to appear before a grand jury regarding the hiring scandals that have rocked the state, and now Host is resigning for "personal and other" reasons. We can only wonder what those "other" reasons are.
Mr. More Virtuous Than Thou, William "Bill" Bennett of "Book of Virtues" - and gambling addiction - fame, has done it again. He has said that crime would be reduced if black babies were aborted. Well, I suspect that fraud, corruption, bribery and influence-peddling would be reduced if Republican babies could be aborted too. But I somehow don't think Mr. Virtuous is going to tell us that.
New York Times "reporter" and White House shill Judith Miller is out of jail and back in the courtroom, testifying as to who it was who leaked the CIA indentity of Valerie Plame to her. It was Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, apparently, and he got it from Karl Rove. Like that was a shock to learn. She is testifying because he gave her a release from her confidentiality pledge. I guess the fix is in and he is not too worried about going to jail. Not that he would have anyway. And I guess she is not too worried about her connections with the White House being revealed either, as was discussed previously in this space.
The ACLU's lawsuit to force the publication of the Abu Ghraib photos is proceeding apace, and a New York judge has ruled that they must be shown. The government has 20 days to appeal, and probably will do so.
Wars and rumors of wars:
The senior officials in Nicaragua's embattled government are claiming that a slow-motion coup is in progress in the form of the attempts by the opposition - which consists of almost everyone in the country, the majority of whom support the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega - to isolate and remove the U.S. installed puppet president Enrique Belanos. Angered by this, Smirkey has sent U.S. congressman Dan Burton came to Managua specifically to rattle the sword over the rebellious colony. In the Sept. 30 edition of the Nica Times print edition (page 1), he was quoted as saying, "It's up to the people of Nicaragua who they want to lead this country. But, I would say to the people of Nicaragua: I know you don't want to go back to what happened when the wars were going on in the early '80's... As far as the Sandinistas are concerned, I was in Congress in the'80's. I saw the war. I was in Honduras. I was in Managua, I was in El Salvador. I saw the blood. I saw the women and children that suffered. I saw the bodies in the fields. And I don't want to see those anymore as an American. And I don't think Nicaraguans want to ever see that again." Noam Chomsky, interviewed by the paper for the article, was quoted as saying he didn't think a new war was likely. "Economic strangulation will suffice," he said.
The much-touted "Al Qaeda Number Two in Iraq," whose death was touted by Smirkey as evidence of progress in the war, apparently wasn't that significant after all. Evan Kohlman, a veteran terrorism analyst, has told newsweek there is plenty of reason to doubt that Abu Azzam was really the number two figure in the insurgency. “If I had a nickel for every No. 2 and No. 3 they’ve arrested or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d be a millionaire,” he wrote in the Counterterrorism Blog.
The American Legion, America's largest veteran's group and one of its most conservative, has started a letter-writing campaign to try to put a positive spin on the war. Coming from soldiers serving in Iraq, the "Letters to America From The Front" campaign is to try to tell the good things that are happening in Iraq, from soldiers serving there, directly to the folks back home. Well, I for one, am not expecting to get very many letters.
It was a meeting that was meant to be a reconciliation. Instead, it turned into a display of the hostility and division that the occupation is creating in Iraq: a meeting of soldiers and officers from Saddam's army met with tribal leaders in Baghdad, and the meeting turned in to a raucous display of frustration. General after general rose to his feet to express shock and anger at how the band of thugs, thieves and criminals that passes for the Iraqi government and army is only making matters worse instead of better.
The pornography site that was allowing members of the military to upload graphic pictures of combat has been cleared by the Pentagon. An investigation by the Pentagon concluded that there was nothing going on there that merited taking action. The soldiers can continue to get their free porn access after sending in a graphic picture of their activities. Iraqi corpses on display is OK. No soldiers, please.
The Sunnis say no: apparently the Sunni minority has stated unequivocally that it will not support the draft Iraqi constitution, no matter what happens between now and the referendum. U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad met President Jalal Talabani and other Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq on Wednesday, in an attempt to work out a resolution, but the Muslim Clerics Association, a leading Sunni group says it has not heard any proposals and views the talks with suspicion.
The war will go on and on: the top U.S. general in Iraq, Army General George Casey, testifying before congress on Wednesday, says that it is unlikely that there will be any significant troop reductions in 2006, and that the war is entering a heightened period of uncertainty.
The Iraqi people are expressing their outrage at what they consider to be the light sentence that Lyndee England received in the Abu Graib torture scandal. They are saying that many Iraqis are serving longer sentences for much more minor crimes. What they don't understand is that in America, apparently torture is a minor crime.
The Coalition of the Willing is steadily becoming the Coalition of the Gone: A Japanese newspaper is saying that Japan is likely to pull out its troops next year. Prime Minister Koizume is claiming that the decision hasn't been made yet.
News of Katrina/Rita:
Gas is going up: the price of gasoline in the United States is set to rise by about 15% as the refineries in the Gulf Coast region are failing to come back on line as quickly as had been hoped, and remaining inventories begin to tighten. Price rises have not happened so far as quickly as had been feared, because Americans have been using less gasoline than in the past - gas purchases are down by about 3%
Apparently, according to an audit by FEMA's own people, Mike Brown was warned at least three weeks before Katrina that his information and data systems were woefully ill-equipped, and would likely delay supplies and assistance in an emergency, but apparently little was done. FEMA's internal Inspector General stated that the response to several previous disasters indicated that information sharing was the most critical deficiency, and had led to many problems previously and would again if not corrected. Of course, Brown did nothing about it.
Texas displays its hospitality: After being swiftly whisked away from the disaster area after Rita struck, some evacuees are shocked to find that they are being housed in the Dallas jail, after spending three truly harrowing days on the bus, during which they were repeatedly refused aid and comfort by the towns through which they passed, sometimes with weapons pointed at them. Meanwhile, the cruise ships in Mobile bay continue to lay at anchor more than half-empty, even though FEMA is paying more than $1200 per week each for the bed spaces. Better to put them in jail than in comfort. Some of the evacuees are saying they'd rather be sleeping on the street.
From the If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away department, we have received from NASA, confirmation that the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting alarmingly fast - a 20% reduction in just the last two decades alone. Most worringly, the rate of melting is increasing, too. Ice is shrinking at the rate of 8% per decade, and the Arctic Ocean will be completely free of sea ice in the summer months as early as 2060, if this continues. Already, the shore of the Arctic Ocean along the North Slope of Russia was ice free this summer for the first time ever. The Alaska Native Science Commission in Anchorage has announced that at least one village is going to have to be evacuated because the permafrost on which it is sitting has melted to the extent that the homes are threatened, record wildfire seasons, and insect damage to the forests of Alaska are all evidence of a rapidly warming climate.
The weather was in the hurricane mode yesterday, with bright sunshine and mostly cloudless skies all day, with rain happening only late last night. But this morning, it has been overcast, with sprinkles occasionally, but still no rain. The Hurricane Forecast Center in Miami indicates that a hurricane may possibly be forming, in the very earliest stages so far, southeast of Jamaica. And that simply dumps warm, dry air over us. Hence, no rain. The weather here in Arenal has been a delight.
That stands in sharp contrast to what has been happening just down the road in Puntarenas province, near the beach towns of Jaco, Manuel Antonio, and inland at Quepos and Orotina. Those areas, you may have heard, are being flooded by relentless rain that has swept away something like 37 bridges, more than 80 km. of roadway, and left more than 1500 people homeless. That weather is the result of strong winds off the west coast of South America, which have been moving over abnormally warm water off the south coast of Panama. Picking up all that moisture, they have been dumping it on southeastern Costa Rica, and along the Nicoya Peninsula as well. Floods happen every rainy season in this country, and usually a few families here or there are displaced, but not this year. The entire village of Portalon has been wiped out. Usually it is on the Caribbean side, too, in Limon Province. But not this year. This year it is what is usually one of the dryer parts of the country. Weird weather.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: House Majority Leader, the Texas Republican Tom DeLay, has been finally indicted by a Texas grand jury on state felony charges of conspiracy related to his campaign finance activities. Prediction: The jury will be locked up longer than he will. Scott McClellan, the White House press spokesman commented before cameras about DeLay's indictment that "there's a process in place, and we'll let that play out." Yeah. We're talking about Texas. I'll bet there's a process in place!
This comes as the Bush administration and the Republican Party are rapidly requiring an international reputation for sleaze. DeLay's indictment, the recent indictment of the administration's top procurement official, and the investigation of insider trading threatening to have Sen. Bill Frist doing a Martha Stuart-style perp walk, is leading overseas newspapers to comment on the corruption in the GOP and the administration.
Jeff Gannon has made a re-appearance. Who is Jeff Gannon, you ask? He is the skinhead gay male prostitute that was exposed as a shill in the White House press corps sometime back, from which he promptly disappeared. And now he has just as suddenly re-appeared. And just where you would expect to find him. He showed up, whoring for the White House as usual, at the pro-war rally last weekend, organized by the White House to counter the anti-war rally held the same day. Jeff was one of about 400 people who showed up at Smirkey's demonstration. The anti-war rally attracted at least 150,000 - but the pro-war rally got just as much attention from the "liberal biased media."
A leading Democrat in Congress, John Conyers, has accused the Park Police of mistreating the 400 arrested in the anti-war demonstration. Many were kept handcuffed in crowded buses for as much as 12 hours, and most were released only after 4:30 in the morning in a bad area of downtown Washington, after the Metro had closed and at a time when no cabs were running in the area.
The Republicans are apparently rushing to use the post Katrina/Rita emergency as cover to remove a whole host of environmental regulations on the pretext of helping the U.S. oil and gas industry to recover from the twin disasters. House committees are rushing to get the overturns into a new "energy bill" to be debated on the House floor as early as next week.
As reported previously in this space, the White House is determined to hush up the Able-Danger scandal at any and all costs. So the Congressional investigation that has been an on-again-off-again affair is now off again. The Pentagon has changed its mind for a second time and is refusing to allow members of the military who were involved it to testify before Congress, this time using even more lame excuses about "national security." Which has the Democratic members of the committee openly asking what the White House is trying to hide. Well, if they'd read this blog, they would know. It is the Bush family's close association with a heroin trafficking ring in Florida.
More details on Warrior Chang that I mentioned last time as Jeb Bush's imaginary friend. Turns out that he is George Senior's imaginary friend, too! We're finally learning some more details - there is evidence that he may actually be the imaginary ghost of Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese opponent to Chairman Mao during the Chinese Civil War at the end of World War II. It was Chiang who was a darling of the anti-Communist far right, in spite of his having been a rather nasty and brutal dictator. George Senior apparently says he is "unleashing Chang" whenever he is losing in a tennis match. But unlike Jeb, Papa Bush doesn't talk about him much. This Bush family is a strange bunch!
Desperate to burnish their image in any way they can after the FEMA disaster, the White House has approached the producers of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" to have Laura Bush appear on the show. Just what she would actually do on the show is unclear; I seriously doubt if she has ever wielded a hammer or crosscut saw in her life. But there she will be, supposedly helping while trying to not get in the way of builders working on shelters for Katrina/Rita victims. Series producers have accepted the White House's offer. What Laura won't do for Smirkey.
Consumer confidence has plummeted in the wake of Katrina: the Conference Board has said their index has dropped by a whopping 18.9 points to 86.6, from a revised reading of 105.5. That is the biggest drop in one month for fifteen years, since the last Bush was president.
The ultra-rich can't even do charity without corrupting it: we are learning tonight that there are credible allegations that the Getty Museum in Los Angeles has been buying stolen art and archaeological artifacts out of Italy. Not a new allegation, but what is new is that there is strong evidence that they knew it was hot and went ahead with the purchases anyway.
Venezuela continues to take its assets back: the Chavez government has announced that oil fields being operated by private companies will be required to be under joint-venture contracts with the Venezuelan state petroleum company by the end of the year or lose their concessions. Operators that had simply gotten a concession to pump oil without involvement of the state petroleum company are operating illegally, Chavez claims, and will be required to convert their contracts or else. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is still doing nothing to wean America off of its dependence on imported oil, but continues to antagonize Chavez. Can we say "five dollar gas" boys and girls?
The U.S. has the best medicine that only money can buy: The St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles has suspended its liver transplant program after it has come to light that a Saudi national jumped the queue to get a liver that should have gone to a much higher-priority patient. Staff members apparently falsified documents several times to cover up the arrangement.
Don't look for much to change at PBS and NPR now that Tomlinson is out. Kenneth Tomlinson, the Bush crony and former editor of Reader's Digest who made waves by trying hard to turn the Corporation For Public Broadcasting into a forum for rich Republicans, has been replaced. The board has voted to replace Tomlinson and fill the Vice Chairman position with two Republicans, Cheryl F. Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines, respectively. Both are apparently Bush cronies, and Halpern's appointment has been compared to Mike Brown's appointment to FEMA. Her principal qualification seems to be that her family has given about $900,000 to Republican causes over the last 16 years. The board now consists of six Republicans and two Democrats - a real bipartisan mix there. So don't look for much to change in the ideology department, in spite of Halpern's flowery rhetoric.
The U.S. Supreme Court, which narrowly upheld campaign spending limits the last time they came up for review, has announced that it will review several pending court cases involving them. Now that Sandra Day O'Conner is about to leave the bench, you can expect spending limits to be overturned, so in effect, your freedom of speech will be directly proportional to the size of your bank account. That should do wonders for the principle of equal protection of the law.
News from the war:
Reuters, the international news wire service, has filed a formal complaint with the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, John Warner, that the U.S. Occupation Forces in Iraq are obstructing, apparently deliberately, the reporting of the war there. The obstructions, detailed in a letter to the senator, go well beyond a legitimate security interest, and detail the fact that two Reuters cameramen are currently being detained indefinitely without being charged.
Insurgents have captured five towns along the Syrian border, making a mockery of Occupation claims to be winning the war. Fleeing from Tal Afar as the occupation bombed that town into oblivion, the militants have overtaken the towns and forced the residents to flee, on pain of death if they remain behind.
The pornographic web site reported in this space previously that had become an inadvertent forum for the posting by soldiers of the carnage in Iraq, is now being investigated by the Pentagon. Word of it has finally filtered far enough up the chain of command that the brass is looking into it, and they don't like what they see. Posting to it is a breach of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they claim, and so they are considering prosecution of soldiers who uplink casualty photographs in exchange for access to the pornography. The pictures have been coming from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The "Salvador Option" death squads in Iraq have been busy little bees: The rotting corpses of 36 murdered men have turned up in a dry riverbed just south of Baghdad. They had been tortured, bound, gagged and shot. Very reminiscent of the El Salvador death squads of two decades ago. As then, the police are often involved in these incidents. This follows the discovery of 22 bodies found in an open field near the Iranian border.
News from Katrina/Rita:
If you are a storm victim needing shelter, there's no point in going to Colorado Springs - the capital of "compassionate conservatism" - looking for shelter. The town, home of Focus On The Family's James Dobson, and known for its ultra-right wing Christian mega-churches, is often called "the most conservative town in America." So, doing what conservatives do best, It has abruptly jerked away the "welcome" mat from families looking for shelter from the storm. Evidently following closely the teachings of the Jesus they so much admire, the city council is in effect telling Katrina victims to go elsewhere. We gave to the church.
Instead of going to a shelter in Colorado Springs, go on a cruise on the taxpayer's nickel instead: FEMA's contract with Carnival Cruise Lines to provide 10,000 shelter spaces on three cruise ships for $236 million, will have taxpayers paying $1275 per week per space, more than half of which went unused. Meanwhile, the evacuees were herded, at great expense, into a variety of camps across the country that look more like concentration camps than emergency shelters.
NASA Director Mike Griffin has finally acknowledged what everyone already knows: the space shuttle and the International Space Station were incredibly costly mistakes. He says that only now is the space program getting back on track - exploration of the Moon and Mars.
Four days on from the devastation of Rita, victims are still waiting for help. The situation prompted one official to say that people are "living like cavemen" amidst the wreckage. Well, this is in Republican-controlled Texas, so don't expect a lot of news about it to filter onto your TV set. Deja vu all over again.
Well, Mike Brown went up to Capitol Hill to tell his side of the story of his disastrous tenure at the head of FEMA. And predictably, he towed to the party line with remarkable discipline - he admitted to some of the more obvious mistakes, but he claims that New Orleans mayor Nagin and Louisiana governor Blanco were so at odds with each other that nothing got done, and it wasn't all his fault. Of course, his compliance with the party line might have something to do with the fact that he has been recycled - he has landed a juicy contract "consulting" for FEMA - helping them understand how to do emergency management, of all things! No, I am not making this up!
Give me your tired, your poor: It seems that a group of Vietnamese boat people have finally made it to the United States. Twenty years on. Held up in the Phillipines for many years, the first of the 1400 refugees have finally arrived in Los Angeles, when the United States finally ran out of excuses to avoid their responsibility and take them in.
The Hypocrisy Watch department informs us that Rush Limbaugh's doctors are now under investigation - it seems the Palm Beach County (Florida) prosecutor is questioning doctors that have been "treating" Rush for his back pain, in connection with the allegation that Rush had been "shopping doctors" looking for multiple prescriptions for the pain killers to which he has acknowledged his addiction. Well, Rush, maybe we should treat you the same way that you have been advocating that other addicts be treated - by your own theory of justice, you made some bad choices, but those were your voluntary choices, so let's lock you up and show you exactly the same mercy and compassion you have advocated for other addicts over the years.
From the We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You desk comes news of a remarkable scientific discovery: Religion is a net negative force in society. I have been saying this for years, and have been laughed at, of course, but now there is hard evidence for what I have been saying all along. Societies are worse off when they have "God on their side." Published in the academic journal, "Journal Of Religion And Society," the study shows that there is a strong correlation between religious fervor and negative social indicators, and the correlation is too strong to be coincidental - there is abundant evidence in the data that it is religion that is the causative factor.
Yet another influence-peddling scandal emerging from the White House: Turns out that Jack Abramoff's lobbying firm had boasted to Tyco International that Abramoff's connections with the "highest officials in Congress," would enable them to help Tyco kill legislation that closed a loophole allowing corporations to avoid billions in taxes by moving their legal headquarters to a post office box offshore. Jack Abramoff, along with several of his associates, are under indictment for their involvement in fleecing several Indian tribes of millions for "consulting" fees. Abramoff has close connections to Karl Rove, Smirkey's chief of staff.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has gone on TV to try to defend his actions in selling his Hospital Corporation of America stock just before the price collapsed, and claimed that he was off the hook because he had gotten approval from the Republican-controlled ethics committee. Going to a Republican-controlled ethics committee for approval is kinda like two foxes and a chicken voting on what's for lunch.
The rainy season weather continues, but lightly: we had a severe thunderstorm yesterday afternoon, but no rain today to speak of, nor much yesterday morning, for that matter. Today it was bright and sunny in the early morning hours, but by noon had clouded over and it is starting to look threatening again as I write this about half-past three. We'll probably get a bit more rain and that will be fine; yesterday's rain was needed, but it won't be enough for more than a day or two. Temperatures have been just perfect - I have not been running the fan, nor have I closed up the windows. Couldn't be better.
I had a call a bit earlier from a friend who lives in San Jose. He tells me that the public employees are staging a one-day spontaneous strike to protest the fact that President Pacheco announced late last week that he intends to submit the Central American Free Trade Agreement to the legislature for ratification. The public employee unions are opposed to CAFTA, on the grounds that it will lead to the eventual sell-off of the state's crown jewels - the ICE cell telephone monopoly, RACSA's monopoly on international telecommunications, the state monopoly on insurance, the RECOPE oil-refining monopoly and a few others.
I don't normally comment on domestic Costa Rican politics in this space, but I feel compelled to make an exception today as it is affecting directly the experience of life here at the moment, which is the subject of this blog. I am told that the unions have shut down the public employee offices, including ICE, the power and telephone utility, and they have slowed down ICE's ADSL internet service to a crawl. RACSA, the international telecommunications monopoly has a monopoly on dial-up access, and so far, it seems to have been unaffected. Since I am on RACSA's dialup service, speed has not seemed to be affected for my usage.
Apparently, there are also sporadic street blockades and demonstrations in San Jose, but I do not know much about what is happening there, as I live a hundred miles away, and have seen nothing so far on the local television news. Out here in the campo (countryside) where I live, there is not much difference - Arenal is its sleepy old self. Don't know if the post office is open, but I don't have a need to go there anyway. Roll over and go back to sleep.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: "There are no good options," warns former Secretary of State Madeline Albright. The worst days in Iraq may be ahead of us. This was the warning she gave at a conference recently on the role of citizens in shaping international perceptions of America. "Instead of winning friends for America, it has poisoned our relations with many countries in the Mideast and the Muslim world."
The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, is declaring that Iraq is hurtling toward disintegration and could drag the entire region into conflict. There is no dynamic pulling the country together - all the dynamics are pulling it apart, he warned. It was the starkest warning issued by a regional Middle East leader, and stands in sharp contrast to the rhetoric coming out of the White House.
A new report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington D.C. think tank, has stated that the claim of large numbers of foreign fighters in Iraq, pushed endlessly by the White House, is a myth. It claims that about 4% - and certainly no more than 10% - of the insurgency fighters are foreign. This is a homegrown fight, it says.
Showing just how much progress is being made in human rights in Iraq, women there are now complaining that their rights are slipping away, and the influence of fundamentalist extremism is beginning to permeate the culture there, and they now have fewer rights than they did under Saddam. Our blood and treasure is buying a lot for the people of Iraq, no doubt.
Showing just what supporters they are for efforts to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in compliance with its treaty obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention, the U.S. Army has announced plans for a bulk-buy of anthrax. It is to be shipped to the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where nerve agents and biological weapons have been tested since the early Cold War.
The "extraordinary rendition" scandal just gets bigger - turns out that the U.S. Navy was involved in leasing many of the planes used by the CIA, and there were far more of them involved that has previously been understood - at least 33, including even a Boeing 737.
Duck and cover: the Pentagon has removed from its web site the draft document that stated under what conditions field commanders could request the preemptive use of nuclear weapons. When asked why, a Pentagon spokesperson said "that is not the kind of thing you want flying around on the Internet." I don't think you even want it flying around in the halls of the Pentagon, either.
Determined as they always are to undermine public education whenever they can, the neo-cons are now making it legal to apply religious tests as part of the hiring procedures for the Head Start program. One of the most successful education programs ever developed, Head Start serves nearly a million impoverished children, and gives them a proven advantage in the education process to help lift themselves out of poverty. Now it is being subverted to teach religion instead.
Speaking of teaching religion, the Dover, Pennsylvania school system is now being sued over its policies requiring the teaching of "alternatives" to evolution in high school biology classes. A show-down in the community is brewing as a result, with parents lining up on either side of the issue. At the center, of course, is Creationism-in-disguise, known as "intelligent design," which, of course, posits that if you can't figure out for yourself how evolution did it, then it clearly must have been God that did it.
There is more news about the United States' blatant hypocrisy on world trade: Brazil has sued and won in the U.S. in the World Trade Organization tribunal to halt the huge subsidies paid to American cotton farmers that distort world trade and give U.S. producers an unfair advantage. After the failure of months of attempts to negotiate the corrective measures, Brazil has asked the WTO for trade sanctions against the U.S.
Liberal-Biased Media Watch: Sean Hannity, the Fox News media shill for the Republican party, has stated publicly that he intends to give the maximum contribution allowed to the campaign of Jeanine Pirro, who is running against Sen. Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate seat she currently holds. He is urging his listeners to do likewise. We report, you decide? What kind of journalism is that?
From the If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away department, we are learning today that Tony Blair, who has famously argued with Smirkey on the one issue of global warming, has changed his mind and is now echoing Smirkey's famous head-in-the-sand position. Makes one wonder what Smirkey knows that Tony doesn't want the rest of the world to know. There's gotta be a serious quid pro quo there somewhere for Tony to take up such a nonsensical position.
There is news from the same department that we can expect longer, hotter summers in the Colorado River basin, leading to ever greater demands on water use from residents in the basin. And the warmer winter temperatures and earlier springs will mean more frequent flooding events.
News of the Katrina/Rita disasters:
Some of the details about the no-bid contracts awarded in the wake of Katrina are starting to come out, and as you would expect, the Republican greed machine is right there, vacuuming up the lion share of contracts, especially for cronies of prominent Republican politicians. No surprise as to the prominent members of the list - Halliburton, Shaw Group, Blackwater USA and other companies owned or headed by Bush cronies.
Smirkey has announced his point-person to handle the Katrina investigation. And I am sure you will be pleased to learn just how independent, non-partisan and fair-minded she is: She is none other than Ms. Francis Townsend, his very own Homeland Security adviser (FEMA is a Homeland Security agency). And with that, we know with great confidence that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth will come out. Care to invest in a bridge in Brooklyn?
From the Let Them Eat Cake desk, we are learning that in order to finance the tax cuts for the rich, the Republicans are planning to cut pension benefits for federal retirees. My advice to the FBI employees who may be reading this who are nearing retirement: You know who your friends are on Capitol Hill. Maybe it is time to start some criminal investigations of your real enemies for a change.
The ethically-challenged Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist apparently knew about systematic abuse of Iraqi detainees, and did nothing to stop it - in fact, he derailed an attempt by Sen. John McCain (himself a former POW who had been tortured in Vietnam), to investigate current allegations of detainee abuse, in spite of his Hippocratic oath as a medical doctor.
From the We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You department comes news that the same ethically-challenged Senator Frist apparently put his investments in a blind trust that was not so blind. Apparently, he was updated by the trustees at least as many as two dozen times, apparently by letter, and the trustees actively involved him in the decision to sell his Hospital Corp. of America shares before the stock sank. All blind people should be so blind.
Tom DeLay, that most ethically-challenged of all the Texas Republicans in the House, has peddled his influence to help a Bush crony get around Forest Service regulations to get a resort built in Colorado. The issue revolved around whether the Forest Service would allow a road to be built across taxpayer-owned land to facilitate access to the 288-acre facility to be built on private land by a Texas billionare at Wolf Creek Pass near Durango.
A watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has released a report on the the congressmen it considers to be the most corrupt people on Capital Hill. The bipartisan list which details the allegations, includes 13 members of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Reps. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe) of California, Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.), Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.), Rep. Marilyn N. Musgrave (R-Colo.) and Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.).
Speaking of the ethically challenged House Resources Committee chairman Richard W. Pombo, we learn he is circulating a draft of a bill that would sell 15 national parks and require the National Park Service to raise millions of dollars by selling the naming rights to visitors' centers and trails.
The weather has been closing back in, more typical of the mid-rainy season, as we expect this time of the year in this part of Costa Rica. Overcast, drizzly mornings, with a mid-day break in the rain, followed by heavy afternoon thundershowers, and rain in the evening. A typical pattern that was repeated yesterday and today.
I held off going to the grocery store till today to see if the fresh veggies would be available after the veggie truck arrives on Saturday morning. Well, there were - some broccoli, and some fresh, but small heads of lettuce, but I have plenty of both, so I didn't buy any. There was a really nice pineapple in the bin, though, and so I grabbed that, and a few tomatoes, which I was out of - and needed for tacos tonight. So all in all, I am not sure it was worth the wait. The news stand was out of papers, so I headed over to one of the hotels in town, run by a gringo fellow I know - real nice guy - to see if he had a copy of the Tico Times. He did, and I got a copy.
There were a lot of tables out front, along with a barbecue pit, several bars and a lot of tables under a tent roof. I asked what was going on, and the owner told me that today is the day that the annual trail ride around the lake comes through town. The biggest annual trail ride in Costa Rica, it involves hundreds of horses and their riders, along with support staff and the like, and goes all the way around Lake Arenal, more than a hundred-mile trip, loaded with scenery. Tonight will be big-time party night in Nuevo Arenal. There will be something like a hundred horses or so corraled on the somewhat muddy soccer pitch for the night, and churning it up all night (which I am sure will endear the riders to the soccer club), and all around the park will be trail riders, cowboys, support people, hangers-on and townsfolk partying till all hours. Not sure I was wanting to be in all that mess, I stayed long enough to visit with some friends, and headed home. Party night in Nuevo Arenal. Batten down the hatches once again.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: "Able-Danger" scandal goes prime-time: Wonder why yesterday the right-wing talk shows were all abuzz about the Able Danger scandal, and trying to blame it on a Clinton coverup - and now, all of a sudden, there is no talk of it at all on the right-wing radio? Think that someone might be protecting somebody? If there is anything to the allegations on Mad Cow Morning News, this whole scandal was and is being desperately swept under the rug because it was threatening to expose Bush family connections to a major heroin trafficking ring (apparently still operating). One of the alleged members, Wally Hilliard, has close ties to Jeb Bush and more especially Kathleen ("felon" voters list scandal) Harris. Hilliard Aviation operated a flight school at which Mohammad Atta and one of his bodyguards, Marwan Al-Shehhi, had been taking flight lessons (hence Able Danger's discovery of this). This site linked above even shows a photograph of Jeb and Kathleen taken with Hilliard, the owner of a company whose airplane which was seized by the DEA in July 2000 at the Orlando Airport executive terminal with 43 lbs. of heroin on board, apparently fresh back from its 39th weekly drug run to Venezuela. There was an article about the seizure in the Orlando Sentinel on August 2, 2000, which called it "the biggest drug seizure in Central Florida history." Somehow, Hilliard didn't get charged, and the plane was apparently returned to the company. When this thing gets big enough in the blogosphere that the "liberal biased media" can't ignore it any longer, it will destroy whatever credibility may be left in this administration. Remember, you heard it here first.
Speaking of Jeb, this one is so weird you're gonna think I am making it up, but I swear to you I am not: Just like a six-year old child (or some wigged-out African dictator), Jeb Bush, our drunkard president's brother and the governor of that great state of Florida (that has somehow sadly come to resemble a banana republic in more than just its weather), we're learning that Jeb keeps company with an imaginary friend. His name is "Warrior Chang," and Jeb says he guides his every move. I am serious - this is what he actually said in front of hundreds of lawmakers and politicians: "Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society. I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down." Wow! This Bush family is a really scary bunch!
The Pentagon, under pressure from Senate Democrats, has finally dropped its opposition to members of the armed forces testifying in the Able-Danger coverup scandal, since they have apparently already destroyed more than a terabyte and a quarter of incriminating computer files. We'll see if anything comes of the testimony that is given. Don't hold your breath.
Showing themselves to be the fiscally responsible compassionate conservatives that they really are, the Republican leadership in Congress says it is going to move forward with its tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor such as Medicare and food stamps, in spite of the fact that Katrina has created a huge need in most of those programs for short-term aid. The demand by the leadership is so arrogantly indifferent to the needs of the constituents out there that even many moderate Republicans are jumping ship and joining the Democrats in opposing the changes. But don't worry - they still have plenty of support to get them passed. In spite of the fact that it means that they will not meet Smirkey's announced target of cutting the deficit in half by the end of Smirkey's term.
According to Forbes, the 400 richest people in the United States, among them, own $1.13 trillion dollars - that's 2.5% of the entire value of the United States of America. That figure is growing rapidly, too. it is up $125 billion just last year alone - an increase of 11% in just one year. Did your net worth increase by 11% last year? I didn't think so. "Trickle-down" economics is doing exactly what it was intended to.
Not content with conducting terrorist operations in the Occupied Territories, the radical Zionists of the Jewish Defense League are starting terror operations in the U.S., and now one of its members has been sentenced in a plea-bargained trial of a plot to blow up a mosque in Los Angeles, California. Another member committed suicide while awaiting trial as part of the same plot. Is the JDL a terrorist organization? This isn't the first such conviction. Will the JDL be declared a terrorist organization? Don't count on it.
While Katrina victims are going to find it almost impossible to file bankruptcy to avoid paying mortgages on houses that are no longer habitable, big business in America gets a free ride through easy Chapter 11 filings, which they're doing almost routinely - and this has not gone unnoticed by foreign competitors. With four of the seven national airlines in the U.S. currently operating in Chapter 11, the outgoing boss of British Airways is complaining that "America, the land of the free, is turning itself into the land of the free ride."
Smirkey's little project in Iraq is hurtling that country towards disintegration, according to the Saudis, who accurately predicted the insurgency, and warned Smirkey about it before the invasion even happened. Well, they're being proven right. With the Sunnis rejecting the new constitution, many believe that a civil war is not only inevitable, but may have already started.
There are fresh revelations of abuse in Iraqi prisons being run by the Occupation. Not that it is news, but this time it is appearing in a report by Human Rights Watch, and this is doubtless going to be picked up by the press in the Middle East. Having not done enough to stop the abuse, the new revelations will provide yet another inducement to the insurgency. These neo-cons are either slow learners, or maybe even non-learners.
The U.S. government has gone on a shopping spree for military equipment specific to jungle warfare. Given Smirkey's well-known antipathy towards Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, and the fact that the U.S. needs both the oil and gasoline refining capacity that Venezuela has, and the fact that Hugo has really angered Dick Cheney and his oil buddies by keeping 30% of the price of Venezuela's oil for the Venezuelan government, instead of 16%, and the fact that Hugo is spending all that money on the poor instead of using it to subsidize the middle class and rich, and the fact that Hugo is buddying up to Fidel, and the fact that Hugo has become a hero continent-wide because of his standing up to the United States, do you suppose Smirkey is going to use these armaments in the drug war next door in Colombia as they are claiming? Ya think?
And that is not the only goal that Smirkey is not going to meet. It appears that even before Katrina, the economy was headed south, and Katrina, and now Rita, are only going to make matters worse. And the effects should be apparent full on by midterm elections next year. We may even see Democratic control of Congress again as a result. Leading economic indicators were down 0.2% even before Katrina struck.
In other economic news, it appears that jobless claims in the wake of Katrina have topped 432,000 per month and are still going up. This comes as Rita is due on the coast, likely raising the number much higher.
Jimmy Carter has come clean - five years too late. He stated for the first time, on the record, that he is "certain" that Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election. And he castigated the Supreme Court for getting involved in a purely partisan legal effort. Well, Jimmy, why didn't you say something when it mattered?
Demonstrating themselves to be the always reliable stewards of the environment, the White House has announced that if the Congress attempts to overturn the lax rules on mercury emissions from power plants that were implemented when Smirkey came into office, that Smirkey will do something he has never done before: veto the legislation. Senate Democrats and some renegade Republicans are seeking to overturn the EPA rules which egregiously favor the power industry at the expense of the public health. All wild-caught fish in 19 states are now too contaminated with power plant mercury to be safe for human consumption, and many more states are threatened. Body burdens of mercury are now alarmingly high, especially in pregnant women in most of the eastern U.S.
New Jersey Republicans are complaining that 4,755 deceased voters cast ballots in last year's elections in that state, and 4,397 people voted in more than one jurisdiction, and are demanding that the state's Secretary of State and Attorney General do something about it. Well, maybe they should look into Ohio as well. Something tells me they won't be quite so righteous in investigating that state.
The Pot has called up the Kettle and complained about its blackness once again: The U.S. is telling China it needs to adopt democratic reforms, so it can be a more responsible player on the world stage. Of course, someone needs to remind Condi that China finds this all very annoying - and they hold close to a trillion dollars in U.S. debt and can collapse the U.S. dollar and/or economy with the push of a button.
Showing once again just how much respect the U.S. Occupation forces in Iraq have for journalistic independence and the rule of law, the Arabic news channel, al Arabayia is being forced to beg for the release of one of its reporters, arrested while attending a family funeral, and being held for several weeks now without charge. He joins at least two Reuters journalists who are being similarly detained.
More evidence that the U.S. military is preparing for its new role as the nation's chief law enforcement agency: A top secret demonstration, called "Granite Shadow" is taking place in the streets of Washington, D.C. The Washington Post is calling it "yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control." Notice that they're saying it is hardly the first such operation.
First Katrina and now Rita: the hurricanes are taking a toll on support for the war in Iraq. More and more people are beginning to think that it is time that the U.S. brought its troops home and stuck to its knitting. Stephen Cimbala, a political scientist at Penn State, is saying, "It's like Osama is running the weather." Expect the support for the war to continue to decline.
Far be it from me to ever suggest that there might be a connection, but at a time when more than a thousand children have been displaced and are now missing and unaccounted for, or whose parents cannot be found as a result of the Katrina evacuations, it should be noted that the Bush administration has suddenly announced that it is withdrawing sanctions against Saudi Arabia for its involvement in the child trafficking, slavery and prostitution sanctions that country had been facing, in spite of a lack of evidence that much of anything has changed in the situation there. Could Bush family closeness with the Saudi royal family have anything to do with this? Could there be other factors at work?
A new report released by Amnesty International highlights the plight of sexual minorities in the United States, and their increasingly brutal treatment at the hands of the police. The report cites many horror stories, particularly when the victim is also a member of a racial minority. They include many stories of rape and forced fallatio. One victim, a transgendered Native American woman, a frequent victim, complained, "The police aren't here to serve; they're here to get served."
Arnie the Governator may have to face another actor in his re-election campaign in California next year. Word is that Warren Beatty is considering a run on the Democratic ticket. Arnie, once so popular that he was being discussed as a presidential candidate, is now suffering from declining popularity, and is almost to the point where the Republicans consider him an albatross around their necks, rather than an asset.
From the If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away department, we are learning that the interior of Alaska has been warming up faster than predicted, and scientists at U.A. Fairbanks have figured out why: Turns out it is the result of an increase in the bulk of dark-colored vegetation in the Alaskan interior. This is adding to several feedback loops that will accelerate global warming.
Smirkey has made a new record that has horrified even the American Enterprise Institute, of all people: He has beat Lyndon Johnson's record for the largest increase in domestic spending in a president's first term. LBJ vastly increased domestic spending - by 33.4% - to finance his Great Society programs along with the Vietnam war. Abhorrence at the increase was one of the reasons that Richard Nixon was elected to replace him. But Smirkey has now beat that record - he increased domestic spending by a whopping 35.1%, adjusted for inflation, in his first term alone - and he has done it almost entirely through borrowing. And the increases continue dramatically into Smirkey's second term. LBJ was castigated as a "tax and spend" Democrat. But will the AEI campaign against the GOP as "borrow and spend" Republicans? Don't hold your breath.
Not a small part of that increase is going to finance snooping on ordinary Americans, of course, and now we are learning that if you get arrested by a federal officer, even for a traffic offense, or if you apply for a passport, you can expect to have to give up a DNA sample that the feds will keep. And that DNA sample is going to be archived, just like fingerprints, even if you are not convicted. Not a DNA-unique number identifier, mind you, but the actual DNA sample itself - from which your potential employer or insurer could determine your genetic disease profile, or genetic predisposition to homosexuality, or any of a number of other privacy intrusions. And if you will recall, John Ashcroft stated that he intended to give private business - anyone with a "need to know," for that matter - access to federal DNA archives. Your tax dollars at work - kiss your medical privacy goodbye.
News from New Orleans and Katrina:
Our highly effective, on-top-of-his-job prez has announced that he is not going to allow his trips to get in the way of relief efforts post-Rita, as they did after Katrina (for which he took a good deal of heat). The best way he could avoid getting in the way would be to resign, of course, but, well, that is too much to hope for.
Rawstory.com has obtained a copy of the Republican Study Committee's internal document on the social program cuts they wish to implement. Containing billions in cuts for programs ranging from Amtrak to the National Endowment for the Arts, it also includes plenty of cuts in programs needed by Katrina and Rita hurricane victims. It makes for some rather interesting reading.
Charges are being leveled at the administration for using the Katrina disaster to implement its social policies, by means of carefully and surreptitiously directing aid where they want it. Katrina has become a vast social experimental laboratory, according to charges being leveled by congressional Democrats. The social experimentation is starting to become evident enough to elicit comment in the press.
Putting the lie to Karl Rove's talking point about Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco being slow on the draw on the Katrina response, the bipartisan Congressional Research Service has issued its report on the disaster, saying that Blanco and Louisiana state government did all they could and could not have done much more under the circumstances.
Turns out that the FEMA officials just below Mike Brown were also political appointees, and were just as inept as he was. One worker tells of how, when on Saturday before Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, they were warned about what needed to happen, but there didn't seem to be much of a sense of urgency about it. That's because five of the eight top officials in FEMA had no emergency management experience.
The electrical utility in New Orleans, the New Orleans Entergy Corporation, has filed for bankruptcy. It has asked for emergency "debtor in possession" financing from its parent, Entergy Corporation, to continue operating. Great. Just what New Orleans needs. An irresponsible private utility that can't handle its commitments because of lack of investment and financial resources.
There is news tonight that a new crop of web-based ripoffs are about to begin, this time for Rita relief. In the last week, more than 1,100 new domain names have been registered with Rita in their name, and Ebay has already shut down one auction based on promise to donate the proceeds to Rita relief. More than 40 actual web sites have been shut down already.
From the Liberal-Biased Media Watch desk, we see that Wall Street Journal web editor James Taranto has gone on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes show and has claimed that Smirkey's poll numbers are going back up. There is only one problem with that - they aren't, and Taranto couldn't offer any polling evidence that they are. He just simply cited unnamed "polls." Taranto, that's wishful thinking, not real journalism.
It is also coming out that from Day One, the Bush administration has had a formal, if unannounced policy of never admitting to a mistake, even if it means lying to the American people. And the New York Times not only knew it, but went along and failed to call them on either the policy or the lies. The Times' columnist David Brooks came right out and said so on the September 11 edition of NBC's Chris Matthews Show. Great reporting there, New York Times. You really set an example as the "newspaper of record."
The Scandal Du Jour department informs us that some records from the National Archives, which are critically important to an investigation resulting from lawsuits filed by certain American Indian tribes against the federal government, were found mysteriously in the trash containers on the loading dock, ready to be picked up by the trash collector. The boxes were promptly returned to the shelves and new security measures implemented to see to it that it doesn't happen again. Apparently, the Bureau of the Interior has a long history of such dirty tricks to avoid paying the tribes their due with respect to land claims and resource royalties on tribal lands. There are 500,000 tribal members in the plaintiff actions in the suits, and the Bureau of the Interior has offered to settle for $27.5 billion, and Interior is desperate to avoid the case going to the jury, for fear the award could be much higher.
From the We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You desk comes word that Senator Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, may have been involved in some insider trading of his stock in the Hospital Corporation Of America, which was founded by his father. The Tennesseean newspaper reports that he sold his stock in the company just before it took a huge dive and investors lost millions.
The Archdiocese of Philadelphia and two of its priests have been found by a grand jury to have likely been involved in yet more child molestations, but under the limitations imposed by state law, they cannot be charged. There have been "credible" allegations made against 44 other priests.
The last two days have been a delight, bright sunny mornings, and yesterday, the rains held off until late in the afternoon. But today, it has been a sunny, bright day all day, and that has meant it has been a wonderful day to enjoy the garden.
So today was an afternoon in the garden, enjoying the fruits of living in a tropical climate - heliconias and hibiscus in bloom, every variety of each that I have, and that is a dozen or more different varieties, are all at the height of their blooming right now. The gardenias are over with, and have been cut back, but several varieties of ginger are in bloom now, including a very fragrant white variety. The Costa Rican fig that was filling my garden with fragrance a month ago has gone to fruit, with its strange pencil-shaped figs splitting open and attracting butterflies and bees.
In wandering the garden, I spooked two basilik lizards. These are the famous "Jesus Christ lizards" that scamper across the surface of the pond when they are startled and trying to escape, literally running on the water. There are two kinds in Costa Rica, one a dull brown, and another a bright green, with a weird, prehistoric-looking crest on their heads, backs and tails. That is the variety I have in my garden. I have been seeing a lot of them lately, as the population of frogs has been declining - I suspect that the lizards are eating a lot of the bugs that the frogs used to eat. Last year there was practically a plague of "sapo" toads - the same species that has become a plague in northern Australia - but this year I have only seen two of them. And I don't hear their croaking in the pond at night much, either. I suspect that the fungus that is killing off amphibians around the world has arrived here. I have to confess, I don't miss them much - they secrete a toxic venom from their skin, and they are dangerous to handle for that reason, besides being as ugly as... well... an old toad.
Tomorrow, I think I am going to have my gardener start removing some of the wild heliconias that have started sprouting among the ginger plants along the pond margin. Like most heliconias, they have a spectacular flower, but they fade very quickly and remain as a rather ugly orange-brown, and spread lots of seeds which come up everywhere. So they have got to go. I would much rather have the ginger, with their delicate orchid-like flowers and their incredibly strong but delicate fragrance.
Also found that the black aphids are back in my citrus trees again, so I got out the bug bomb and sprayed the tree branches below the growth flushes, so the absorbed pesticide will circulate up into the growth flushes where the aphids are and kill the aphids. They're a constant nuisance here, and require constant effort to control in susceptible varieties of citrus.
Today, with its glorious sunshine, has been more of the weather typical of when hurricanes are brewing out in the eastern Caribbean. Sure hope not. There have been enough already.
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: It's a sad day when you have to go to the National Enquirer to get the straight scoop, but it's true: they have verified what I have been saying here for weeks - Smirkey is back on the bottle. A "family source" is quoted as saying that Laura has given Smirkey an ultimatum about it, too - "It's Jim Beam or me," she reportedly has told him. The drinking has apparently been going on for some time, well before Katrina, but has accelerated during that crisis, and Smirkey's handlers have assigned Laura the job of being a "gatekeeper." Well, Laura, rather than being an enabler, maybe you should make good on your threat and go back to your family - and force Smirkey face up to his problems and inadequacies head on, rather than trying to drown his - and the nation's - troubles in an alcoholic haze. Watch the mainstream press quietly sweep this report under the rug rather than being journalists and checking it out.
And it turns out that besides being a boozer, Smirkey appears to be a slow learner, too. He does not seem to have learned from the mistake he made in appointing one of his cronies as the director of FEMA - he's right back at it, this time appointing a totally unqualified crony as the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Julie Myers, his new appointee, is a lawyer who has no experience in managing a large bureaucracy, nor any particular experience in immigrations or customs issues. Her qualifications? She has been a true and faithful servant in a variety of jobs within the Justice, Commerce and Treasury departments. Hope she can keep the drugs and terrorists out.
It's official: The "War On Terror" must be over. The FBI has announced a new priority, and it is looking for a few good agents to fight the new war. It is a holy war - a war on porn. No, not the kind that exploits children and is marketed to pedophiles, oh, no. This time it is the kind produced by and marketed to consenting adults. Speaking on condition of anonymity (dissent is very damaging to one's career at the Bureau), one FBI agent commented, "I guess this means we've won the war on terror; we must not need any more resources for espionage." Other comments were more flippant: "Things I Don't Want On My Resume, Volume Four," and the always-popular "I already gave at home" and "honestly, most of the guys would have to recuse themselves." So to you fellas in the FBI reading this - it is apparent that Smirkey doesn't care any more about you than he does about me or the other dissidents he is having you chase. How does that make you feel about being an overworked and underpaid holy warrior in Smirkey's personal jihad?
One of the priorities of this administration is clearly environmental protection - NOT. The EPA has announced that it is going to loosen restrictions on the size of toxic chemical spills that must be reported - by an entire order of magnitude. Instead of having to report anything above 500 pounds, the new threshold will be 5,000 pounds. This means that relatively few toxic spills will be large enough to qualify for mandatory reporting. Now that is some serious protection of the environment, guys.
There's bad news for the economic theoreticians in the GOP, and this time it is coming out of the World Bank, of all places. That institution, currently headed by Bush appointee and neo-con Paul Wolfowitz, has issued a report stating that there is a direct correlation between the economic and political fate of socially marginalized groups, and economic performance of the economy of that country as a whole. That will come as a shock to the "let them eat cake" compassionate conservatives like Smirkey who've never ventured out of their limousines into the sweltering social tension of an urban ghetto, but it only stands to reason: you can't sell something to someone who has no money. Bill Clinton said yesterday that "we know what works," which is true - poverty in the U.S. declined 26% under his watch, but is up dramatically under Smirkey, and is now double what it was when Clinton entered office. Looks like "trickle-down" is working - but in the wrong direction.
There are other costs, too, to the "let them eat cake" mentality. A new report coming out this week indicates that the costs associated with alcoholism in the U.S. is growing significantly and it is because fewer alcoholics are able to seek treatment, due to a reduction in social programs. Those seeking treatment is down 23% since 1993. The cost to employers alone now stands at more than $40 billion per year. The increasing problem aggravates other costs as well, such as health care, lower productivity, etc. More people looking to our Christian conservative President George W. Bush for inspiration.
As Americans begin to become aware of the price they are paying for Republican rule, the hero, Smirkey, is becoming an albatross. And Democrats in New York just got through hanging that one around the necks of New York Republicans at a campaign appearance for Michael Bloomberg. It took the form of a man wearing a George W. Bush mask, and a sign around his neck reminding Bloomberg that he "can't run away from Bush."
A new initiative by the Christian fundamentalists is a new high-school text book, written ostensibly as a history text, but which teaches Christian doctrine, is the latest ploy to get fundamentalist Christianity into the classrooms of America. Entitled "The Bible And Its Influence," it is being produced by a Virginia group called the "Bible Literacy Project." Sure sounds like a scholarly approach to American history to me.
As discussed in this space on Tuesday, the "Carter-Baker Commision on Federal Electoral Reform" is neither about bipartisanship or about reform, but the truly scandalous dimensions of its efforts to institutionalize vote rigging are now becoming clear: Members include none other than the CEO of Diebold, whose touchpad machines are riddled with easily hackable security flaws which they know about and are doing nothing to fix, as well as Jim Dyke and Thor Hearne, both of whom were involved in the "Swift Boat Veterans" smear campaign, as well as the effort to smear anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. That the Carter Center would lend its good name to this operation shows just how much Jimmy Carter really cares about free and fair elections.
Smirkey, how can you allow this? GlaxoSmithKlein, the British drug company, has settled with the Justice Department for $150 million in penalties in a lawsuit alleging that it had overcharged the U.S. government for Zofran and Kytril, two anti-nausea drugs used in anti-cancer treatment. $26 million will go to the whistleblowers who initiated the investigation, and $10 million will go to states who were also overcharged.
The U.S. government is vigilant when it comes to impunity for foreign heads of state, however. This time it is none other than Pope Benedict XVI himself. It seems that they're asking a Texas court to give Uncle Benny immunity from a lawsuit alleging that he conspired to cover up allegations of sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian. He couldn't have done such a thing... He's the Pope!
Cindy Sheehan may be the Rosa Parks of the anti-Iraq war movement, but that didn't stop the New York Police Department from pulling the plug on her. She was speaking in Union Square when they summarily marched up and yanked the microphone out of her hand, and hauled a member of her entourage off to jail. The charge? No permit for a sound system in the park. Why was there no permit for a sound system? Because the city government of New York refused to acknowledge her application! The rally itself was legal - a permit had been issued for it, but the police, in utter disregard for the law, broke it up anyway. I am really impressed with your support for free speech and the rule of law, mayor Bloomberg!
In a rare act of courage, Senate minority leader Harry Reid has announced that he is going to vote against the nomination of John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He is citing a clear bias against civil rights, as well as Administration stonewalling on providing records that would shed light on his performance under Ronald Reagan.
Get out your checkbook and hide your teenage sons - it looks like we're about to have another splendid little war: As reported in this space on Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq has warned Syria that it should not "meddle" in Iraq. Now, Condi herself has reiterated that warning. Hello, pot? Kettle here...
News from the war: Let their bellies rumble - Halliburton, accused for a long time of serving spoiled food to the troops serving in Iraq, has done themselves one better: they're apparently providing contaminated water, too. Apparently for as long as a year, they have been providing water that is apparently twice as contaminated as water straight out of the Euphrates river. They know it and they don't care, as they are not reporting it as required and are doing little to stop it. Of course, all this is earning Halliburton bonuses for their good work. And then the Army wonders why the troops don't want to re-up. Meanwhile, Halliburton stock has doubled in price in only a year. Sausage making in Iraq is good business, apparently.
Apparently the occupation of Iraq has militarized Saudis more than other Arab groups, and it is they who made up the bulk of early insurgent foreign fighters. Contrary to claims by Smirkey's propaganda machine, they were primarily well educated, had good jobs and families, but were motivated by religious conviction that they were engaged in a holy war. They brought an average of $15,000 with them and were prized because they were self supporting. But they never made up more than about 10% of the fighting force - probably half that.
Hollywood as military trainers: Apparently some of the torture at Abu Graib was done on the basis of what some of the soldiers had seen in the movies, according to documents that have come to light as the result of ACLU lawsuits. The documents clearly show that the abuse was widespread, and the military investigation simply ignored inconvenient evidence.
The Iraqi police captured and arrested a pair of undercover Brits, who they accused of killing two Iraqi policemen. But exactly why they were operating underground and were armed to the teeth has not been explained by Britain. Meanwhile, the Iraqi police stand accused of getting ready to turn them over to insurgents, and the British troops responded by simply driving a tank into the prison and rescuing the men, to the thorough outrage of three hundred Iraqis, who pelted the military operation with rocks and molotov cocktails. There is evidence that the quickly-organized demonstration is new evidence that the insurgency is gaining strength, rather than losing it. The winning of hearts and minds in Iraq goes on.
The occupation in Afghanistan is wearing out its welcome, too. President Hamid Karzai is now saying that much of what the U.S. military is doing there is now counterproductive, and it would be better if they checked with his government before engaging in bombing campaigns, entering Afghan houses without permission, etc.
News of the flood: As we had reported here, the $50 billion aid package that was rushed through congress without the Democrats being allowed to see it, does, indeed have a lot of sausage in it. Some of the details are coming out, and of course, it contains more help for the rich than the poor. No surprise there, considering who wrote it.
Apparently Dennis Hastert, the House Speaker, was warned by letter back in January that FEMA was "raiding" disaster preparedness funds and using them for other purposes, and that a disastrous revelation of that fact was inevitable. But he didn't act on it. He must have thrown the letter away, because it didn't have a campaign contribution in it.
It's hardly surprising then, that FEMA is continuing to have trouble getting its act together - it can't seem to figure out how to deliver trailers, and it is having trouble housing the Flour Corporation staff that Smirkey's cronies have sent down there to run things for Flour's grafting of the mess. It has gotten so bad that the people involved are starting to call it "The Cat 5 Chaos."
Coverup at the Danziger Bridge? Apparently the Associated Press published several accounts of the Corps of Engineers contractors or employees or whoever they were that were fired upon by New Orleans police or gangsters or looters or whoever did the firing. The story is so muddled that it is going to be difficult to sort out. And it is clear that someone doesn't want the truth to be told. Which raises the question of who and why.
No surprise either that the Republican representative from Wisconsin that wrote the recent amendments to the bankruptcy law, is stubbornly refusing to allow hearings on its effects on Hurricane Katrina victims, and the possibility of exempting them from its effects. Representative Sensenbrenner is one of the 17 members of Congress that did not vote for the relief bill, either.
While flood evacuees are still begging for food, tons of NATO rations supplied by Britain are about to be destroyed as "unfit for human consumption." They have been sent to an FDA incinerator in Arkansas. Needless to say, the British are totally outraged.
The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care, responsible for accrediting hospitals, is now saying that the health care system in New Orleans is so damaged by the flood that the hospitals cannot be re-accredited, and the entire health care system in the city is a total loss. They were well prepared for the high winds, but not for the flooding, which was catastrophic.
Even worse, it is beginning to appear that there is a concerted effort to cover up the extent of pollution of New Orleans by the petrochemical industry in Louisiana. OMB-watch, an advocacy group, is now saying that the EPA is deliberately not testing the flood waters of New Orleans from contamination originating in the dozens of petrochemical plants in the region. Either that, or they have apparently totally lost their ability to do so.
Never missing an opportunity to undermine public education and indoctrinate children at public expense, Smirkey has announced a system of vouchers for private and religious schools to take in the thousands of children displaced by Katrina, and educate them during their time away from the disaster area. Moreover, that will be the only way that these kids will get educated - if there's no private or religious school where they happen to be, well, that's just too bad. Guess they won't go to school this year.
Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, speaking frankly and somewhat emotionally at the Fordham University School of Law on Monday, said that there is a new climate of fear in the news room these days, and that it is unlike anything he saw in his forty year career in journalism. He says that politicians "of every persuasion" have gotten remarkably skilled at pressuring conglomerates that own the network news organizations, and he calls it "the New Journalism Order." Choking back tears, he said that the Katrina coverage was a rare exception - the journalists were willing to speak truth to power. But one should not expect it to continue.
From the If We Ignore Global Warming Long Enough, Maybe It Will Go Away department, we are learning that hurricane Rita is now the second Category 5 hurricane in as many months, for the first time in history. And now it appears that yet another positive feedback loop has been identified that has been triggered by the global warming that has already occurred - European summers have gotten so hot that mid-summer, the bulk of plants there grow so slowly that they are now contributing more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than they are absorbing. And this situation is likely to be occurring in other parts of the northern hemisphere as well. Another problem is that the demand for aviation fuel is growing so fast that even if all other anthropogenic sources of CO2 were eliminated, in just a few decades, we would be right back to where we are now.
From the We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You department, we are learning that the administration's top procurement official has been indicted on charges of obstructing an investigation into Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. The man is David Safavian, a man who was responsible for overseeing about $300 billion in government spending. And now it appears that an email turned up in the investigation of him, proves that an Ohio congressman, Bob Ney, a (you guessed it) Republican, knew that a trip he took to Scotland to go golfing with a lobbyist, was illegal and he knew about it and lied about it at least twice on required disclosure forms. Would the last Ohio Republican to do a perp-walk out of the state party headquarters please turn out the lights?
There is some justice in the world - Smirkey's friends over at Worldcom that either participated in or knew about the second largest corporate fraud in world history will finally get what they have been fearing most - they're going to have to cough up the cash and pay back a good share of the money to the people they defrauded. The total comes to $6.13 billion that will have to be paid back by securities firms, auditors, Worldcom executives and more.
The State of Tennessee has issued a cease or desist order to a local Christian group for running an unlicensed mental health facility. Seems they were running a residential facility for the "curing" of homosexuals, under the cloak of a religious institution - but the supposed "reverend" running the place had no credentials in either mental health or as a reverend, and was accused of outright lying to clients, claiming that he did. Apparently it was just yet another money-making operation, exploiting self-loathing gays. Love In Action International, Incorporated was ordered to shut down its two locations by September 23 or face $500 per day fines as long as it remained open without a license.
We're back to more normal weather again. As hurricane Phillipe moves out of the eastern Caribbean, the flow of warm, moist air into Central America has resumed, and that means more weather typical of the rainy season. It has been heavily overcast all day, and last night. Yesterday afternoon was a real gully washer, the first in several days, and it was rain that was badly needed as it was getting dry. Today, it has been a slow, steady rain that is more of what is needed, and the result is a light, pleasant rain and warm temperatures.
Being pretty much stuck inside today, I have decided to spend the day on the computer, and am going to spend much of the day poking around on the net for a web page template that I like for my front (index) page. It badly needs a redesign, and I am thinking that I might make it more of a blog-type of format, using it for a blog with the "more reasons" section of this blog and returning this one to its purely non-political function, and updating this blog much less frequently, only when there is something of interest. I would continue to use the front-page RSS feed for the index page, exactly as it is now, so I would still have the same, separate RSS feeds for this site. In this way, readers interested in the political section would no longer have to wade through my comments on Costa Rica living if they don't want, those not interested in the politics would not see them appearing in this space. Your comments on these changes would, of course, be quite welcome, so please don't hesitate to say what you think...
More Reasons Why I Am Glad I Am Out Of The States: The search is on for a dead body in the wreckage of New Orleans. Not just any corpse, mind you, there are still plenty of those everywhere. They need a special corpse. In a truly astonishing display of tasteless, tactless disregard for the suffering of the families of the victims of Katrina, the Senate Republicans are looking for the bloated, reeking, flood-stained corpse of a rich person. If they can produce the corpse of someone who owned a large business, and who was killed in Katrina, they think they would have something with which they could "push back" on their tasteless (and thankfully, floundering) attempts to push through their latest tax cut for the rich - the repeal of the estate tax - on the theory that it is unfair that their heirs should have to pay it as the result of this decidedly unnatural disaster - to which, of course, Republican greed contributed. Well, they may have some looking to do. Everyone rich enough to qualify for the estate tax was rich enough to own a car and buy the gas to get out of the way of Katrina, to safety. It was the poor and penniless that were left behind to drown. So far, they haven't found the corpse of any of the fewer than 1000 people in Louisiana that are even affected by the estate tax, but their hired corpse-prodders say they're "still looking."
Jimmy Carter and Jimmy Baker The Third have gotten together and decided that America needs a national ID card system to "prevent voter fraud." What that would do to eliminate voter fraud is not at all clear, but preventing candidates' campaign officials from overseeing elections, including voter qualifications and balloting procedures (which was how Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 were both stolen), would certainly be a lot more effective. But somehow Jimmy and Jimmy aren't talking much about that one. That's because this commission is openly shilling for "voting rights groups" run by the Bush-Cheney campaign, whose intent is more to strip Americans of their human rights than secure the voters their voting rights. That may sound cynical, but it is really true.
More bad news for Smirkey that his aides are probably not going to tell him for fear of his reaction - his performance in office has been so bad that the American people are ready to put Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives. In fact, Democrats lead the polls by an astounding 13 percent, up from an even split just fourteen months ago. If the elections were held today, the Democrats would pick up 15 seats and win control of the house. But don't count your chickens - the elections are more than a year away, and three weeks is an eternity in politics. Nevertheless, even the most staunch conservative supporters of this administration and its radical elitist agenda are beginning to believe that this administration is toast. The American Spectator, that ultra-conservative rag, is openly conceding that Smirkey's agenda is dead.
Like a kid with a quarter in a candy store, NASA, who can't even get to their prize space station without Russian help, and which is staffed by a skeleton crew, has decided it wants more than it can have: it has announced a $108 billion initiative to go back to the moon. And like a kid who doesn't understand the situation of his parents, the timing of the announcement couldn't be worse, with a record deficit and a massive rebuilding effort underway. Scientifically, the project is bound to become as much a white-elephant as is the International Space Station. If the initiative included a tax cut for the rich, it would be passed next week of course, but since it will only cost them money and not make them richer, expect it to go nowhere fast.
Ha'aretz, the Israeli daily, is reporting that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon engaged in some illegal campaigning while on his diplomatic trip to the U.N. summit held in New York last week. He apparently accepted some illegal contributions to his campaign to remain at the head of his party, and therefore as prime minister. This comes on the heels of his refusal to visit Britain for fear of being arrested on war crimes charges. And of course that didn't stop Smirkey from meeting with him.
Smirkey, the natives out there in the colonies are getting restless: Think that the Aussies might bridle at being referred to as an American colony? Well, that is what they're calling themselves. The recently retired leader of the Australian opposition has publicly called Australia an "American colony" under the current government's leadership. And given John Howard's reputation as Smirkey's "other poodle," he couldn't be more right. And an Australian brigadier has stated publicly that America's treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo is losing it international support and making the international terrorism problem worse, not better, and Australia's involvement in and support for the Iraq adventure is not exactly winning friends and influencing people in the rest of the world.
Not that the Guantanamo inmates are going to be kept there forever - those who happen to have the good fortune to come from an oil rich country whose government cares about its people might actually be freed - five of the 11 Kuwaitis that are being held in Guantanamo are going to be sprung by their government. The other inmates? They'll rot in Guantanamo until their governments can find oil with which to get them sprung, too.
The Washington D.C. police are bracing for a new protest - the first in years that will actually encircle the White House. But the D.C. police are ready, even though after their rough treatment of protesters in recent protests, they are faced with a new law that severely restricts their activities in dealing with lawful protests. Thank goodness! First D.C., now the rest of the country...
You might think that Smirkey's crazies would have learned a lesson from the disaster they have created for themselves in Iraq. You might think so, but you'd be wrong. The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, is openly saying that Syria can expect to be invaded. I guess Rummy and Smirkey are just slow learners.
Providing more evidence that an 800-pound gorilla can sleep wherever it wants, Wal Mart has been sued by 116,000 current and former workers who have accused it of simply ignoring the law requiring it to allow its workers to have lunch breaks, that the company knew what they were doing was against the law, and the upper-level of management decided to simply ignore it. The plaintiffs are suing for $66 million in back wages, plus interest. That, of course is about an hour's wages to Wal Mart. But they'll fight it and they'll probably win. Again.
Flood related news: Turns out that when FEMA could not provide buses to get people out of the Superdome and Convention Center areas, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco offered school buses. But she was turned down. The reason? The buses weren't air conditioned! So people died at both locations, for lack of air conditioning in school buses. Government performing like it had been drowned in the bathtub.
Not content with drowning government in the bathtub, it seems that Smirkey's boys can get the lights turned on in New Orleans for a photo-op, but as soon as they're out of there, the lights go out. Why is that? If the electricity can be turned on for the prez, why not for the people?
The recent joy that not as many people died in the flooding as had been feared, has been tempered by the news that in the more rapidly inundated parts of the city that they are now finally starting to search, they are turning up corpses by the dozen. It is a "target rich" environment for the search teams, and the death toll will clearly be higher in these areas than had been recently expected.
Demonstrating their priorities once again, it appears that FEMA was actually able to move remarkably quickly for once - in getting emergency housing for oil workers. Shell's Sugarland Terminal compound is already sporting a brand new feature - "Sugarville" - a trailer town of nice new mobile homes, completely furnished, and complete with TVs and DVD players, all provided at FEMA expense, to house displaced oil workers. The poor? They'll have to wait. First things first.
Think that FEMA might actually be able to get help to Katrina victims to help them rebuild their lives, and it will be money well spent? Think again. A study done by the Orlando Sun Sentinel has found that of the 20 disasters they looked at between 1999 and 2004, $1.2 billion that FEMA has sent to "victims," fully 27% of the money went to people who lived in areas where there was little if any damage. The level of corruption was unbelievable, and it shows no signs of slowing down in this disaster.
If you're planning on giving up on the U.S. and becoming an expat, you should scratch Canada off your list. They're going the fascist way of the States, and are catching up fast. Seems they are now involved in "extraordinary rendition" themselves, sending detainees to other countries (Syria is known to be at least one destination) for torture, which may open Canada up to a very embarrassing U.N. human rights crimes investigation, as has happened to the U.S. I'd love to see Paul Martin try to explain that one on the National.
From the Scandal Du Jour department: Demonstrating just how much they, along with the rest of America, want to get to the bottom of the Plame scandal, House Republicans are once again blocking access to Smirkey's documents that would shed light on just who it was that spilled the beans on Plame. Of course, we already know, it was Karl Rove. But the Republicans are determined to make sure that those responsible are held to book - not!
The Abu Graib scapegoat du jour, Linndie England, has decided she doesn't much care for her scapegoat role, and has agreed with the judge who declared a mistrial, that her "confession" simply wasn't believable. So, much to her credit, she is going to fight the charges against her, which were, of course, designed to protect the higher-ups in the chain of command, specifically Don Rumsfeld, in whose office the torture policy originated.
From the We Conservatives Are More Moral Than You department, we are learning that the GOP's campaign abuses are so egregious that even their control of the Federal Election Commission can't stop that agency from suing them to prevent them from simply ignoring campaign contribution and spending laws. One of their pet "charitable" groups, the "Club for Growth," has spent $21 million in federal