A Little More of the Quaylin Interview

God, she is stupid, stupid woman. What was McCain thinking? Which brain was he using?

Sarah Palin makes Katie Couric look Presidential.

"The logistics that we're already suggesting here....bin Laden [] such a leader of this terrorist movement....I believe that a surge in Afghanistan also will lead us to victory there, as it has proven to have done in Iraq....as our leaders are telling us in our military ...."

A babbling brook, one inch deep. Watch it here (can't get it to embed, sorry.)

HuffPo: Palin On Bin Laden: "Such A Leader Of This Terrorist Movement"

Wanda Sykes on Caribou Barbie

Transcript here.

John McCain Tries a Stunt

John McCain seems to be cracking up. Obama (still under the Democratic misapprehension that John McCain is an honorable man -- he is a LIAR, don't you get that?) called McCain Wednesday morning to discuss putting out a joint statement about the mortgage bailout, outlining their points of agreement. More of that bipartisan bullshit. (You can only be bipartisan if both sides truly intend to cooperate, and Republicans don't do cooperation. So in this environment, when Democrats and Republicans come together, they pass the Republican bill. Not helpful.)

McCain finally called him back six hours later (in the interim, doing such important things as meeting with Her Royal Highness Lady de Rothschild) and tells Obama they will put out a joint statement, and he's thinking about postponing the debate. Minutes after Obama puts the phone down, McCain runs to the television cameras. He's all Mr. Crisis Management. Mr. "The fundamentals of our economy are strong" last week is Mr. "Hair on fire" today. Suspending his campaign. Flying to Washington to Fix the economy. Asking to postpone the debate Friday night. (Huh? He can't do more than one thing at a time? Oh, I forget, he's been doing one campaign event a day for several weeks now -- usually early in the morning while he's still alert.)

Another whoops alert, McCain's campaign faxed the talking points about the campaign suspension to their entire Colorado MEDIA LIST, rather than to the campaign volunteers. Oops.

Later in the day McCain's campaign announced that they want to put off the Vice Presidential debate. A few hours ago they announced that Quaylin is also suspending her campaign. (Back to Karl Rove debate prep for poor Sarah.) Which is probably the entire purpose of the episode. Caribou Barbie ain't ready for prime time. Her interview with Katie Couric is painful to watch. She's just really stupid, answering questions in nonsensical sentence fragments, always near the topic but never really with it.

McCain was supposed to do the David Letterman show tonight, but blew off Letterman to go on Katie Couric's CBS evening news. (Told Letterman he had to fly to Washington IMMEDIATELY, then went to Katie's studio. Dave is pissed. Watch the video, below.) I suspect McCain did this so that tonight's bit of the Sarah Quaylin interview got knocked off the playlist.

Letterman mocks McCain for suspending his campaign and blowing off his show:



Caribou Barbie with Katie Couric, Part I:



McCain is desperate and flailing. Unfortunately for him, his first flail, the comically unqualified Ms. Palin, will prove his undoing. I can't wait to see her in a debate. I think I'll have to have a debate party just to yuck it up.

"In what respect, Charlie?" has become a common thing for my friends to say to each other, and laugh.

McCain can run, but he can't hide Sarah Quaylin forever.

Sarah Quaylin

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic: Sarah Quaylin
Actually, Dan Quayle is looking pretty good right now.

Ever since John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, I've gotten confused about all the reasons I'm supposed to dislike Barack Obama. The previous reasons, in rough chronological order, were his lack of experience, his empty rhetoric, his flip-flopping, and his "celebrity." But Palin has made each one of those critiques moot. The "celebrity" attack on Obama has a particularly Dada quality right now as starstruck Republicans bask in the charisma of their adorable veep. (Coldest state, hottest governor, read signs at her rallies.) With her hunky husband, touching family life and plucky personal story, she is the candidate of the People. And by People, I mean People magazine.

[]

In lieu of opening Palin to regular questioning from the press corps, of the sort the other three candidates have all undergone many times before, the McCain campaign is helpfully leaking positive appraisals of her studiousness. "Despite the worries, [Palin] struck many campaign officials as more calm and cerebral than expected," reported Newsweek. "She was quick to ask questions, and to 'engage in a back and forth' with briefers." See, the McCain campaign says she's on the ball. That settles it, right?

But, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, this admiring appraisal of the prospective veep's intellect struck a familiar chord. With a quick search, I discovered that, indeed, the same was said of Dan Quayle in 1988. Twenty years ago, The Washington Post reported, "Bush aides, who were getting their first in-depth exposure to Quayle, were impressed by his attention span, the quality of his questions and the facility with which he moved through the agenda."

Deep as a puddle.

For All My Fans From IAP Worldwide

For the dozen or so visitors today to this humble blog from IAP Worldwide in Merritt Island, Florida; this post's for you:



Slate.com: It's Not Just Walter Reed
Still more ways Bush is screwing returning vets.

The Pentagon's Defense Health Program—which includes the Tricare health-insurance plan, used by 9.1 million veterans and involving 65 inpatient clinics, 414 medical and dental clinics, and 257 veterans centers—has actually had its budget cut the past two years. In fiscal year 2006, the program's budget for medical care went up from $15.9 billion to $21.2 billion. But since then, it's gone down slightly—to $20.8 billion in FY 2007 and a proposed $20.7 billion in FY 2008.

These numbers understate the magnitude of the cuts. To keep up with inflation in the cost of goods and payroll, the Defense Department actually had to cut medical-care programs by $1.6 and $1.4 billion in FY07 and FY08, respectively.

Money is similarly tight at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA's budget for medical care has risen in the past few years—from $28.8 billion in FY 2006 to $29.3 billion in FY 2007 to a request for $34.2 billion in FY 2008—but this hasn't been enough. In each of the past four years, according to a March 1 report by the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, the VA has systematically underestimated the number of veterans applying for benefits in the coming fiscal year. The result is a shortfall of $2.8 billion in the FY08 budget, just to cover the current level of medical services.

The administration is trying to make up for some of this by raising deductibles on prescription drugs (from $8 to $15) and by imposing an annual enrollment fee (ranging from $250 to $750)—in short, by shifting costs to the veterans themselves. (Even so, these charges would make up only $450 million, or about one-sixth of the shortfall.)

Another instance of ignoring the wars: Despite a vast increase in the number of returning soldiers coming to the VA's veterans centers, the budget for these centers has remained flat. Similarly, despite a vast increase in the number of soldiers filing disability claims, the VA budget includes no money for additional claims processors. To justify the lack of money for trained processors, the VA's budgeteers assume that the number of new claims—and the backload of past claims—will drop in 2008. This is patently ridiculous: Elsewhere in the budget (see page 1-2), they state, "[W]e project that VA's patient caseload will peak in 2010" (emphasis added). In other words, they predict a rising caseload for another three years—but cut the money for the caseload this coming year.

An even grander sleight of hand comes in the section of the budget dealing with the "out-years"—FY 2009-12. The VA's budgeteers are projecting no increases in spending for medical care during that entire four-year period. They can't possibly believe this. (Again, they note elsewhere that the caseload won't peak until the middle of this period.) They are engaging in the political game of making the future appear less grim—and the president's budget more balanced, the need for tax hikes or cuts elsewhere less compelling—than is really the case.

unbossed.com: What doesn't IAP do?

It is amazing that a company that did not exist until recently has won so many contracts and in such diverse areas. A constant seems to be getting ice to hurricane Katrina damaged areas. One wonders what IAP will do for income when the damage is fixed. I did not include all of those contracts. You can find them on its newsroom archive page.

Here are a few more of its diverse contracts from recent years, all from IAP's press release page.

First, up the U.S. Geological Survey! From ice to WRAMC to the IRS to national wetlands research!

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), The Hill Blog: Walter Reed Hearing Raises Serious Questions

The questions I have about the Walter Reed issue is they contracted out a lot of the work that was being done by employees of Walter Reed even though the employees had a lower bid, knew what they were doing and the Army wanted them to continue what they were doing.

It appears as if someone in the defense department wanted to make sure that this outside contractor had the job which ended up reducing the workforce from around 350 to less than 100 earlier this year.

We’re trying to get more information, but certainly the witnesses we’ve had at our hearing acted like they knew nothing about anything. They didn’t know about the contract particularly, they didn’t know what the impact was and they didn’t know there were problems in Building 18. They assumed there weren’t any problems because nobody brought it to their attention. I just find that quite an unacceptable response.

Privatizing Walter Reed: Rich Get Richer, Veterans Get Screwed

I've never understood the premise of privatization. Why does adding a profit motive to a third party improve government services? Answer: It doesn't. It just allows private companies to pay workers less and give them poorer benefits to do the same job, then transfers the cost savings into the pockets of the owners of the private company. And some of those companies also cut the numbers of workers doing the work. Like IAP Worldwide, which has replaced 300 federal support services workers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with 50 private employees. The result? Dan Quayle, John Snow and Al Neffgen get richer. Who got poorer? The workers who now work for IAP don't make the wages of federal workers, and don't have equivalent benefits. But most horrifying, the maimed and brain-damaged soldiers at Walter Reed are suffering because our government chose to put money into the pockets of their rich friends rather than put money into caring for the veterans injured in their immoral, illegal war. Sickening.

Metrowest Daily News (Framingham, MA): Editorial: Privatizing Walter Reed

As a letter from the House committee investigating Walter Reed stated, "it would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers.

The thread of privatization and cronyism runs through this administration's disasters: from Abu Ghraib, where private contractors had a role in intelligence-gathering, to New Orleans, where a major city paid the price after political appointees replaced experienced emergency service professionals at FEMA.

Palm Beach (FL) Post editorial: Failures at Walter Reed expose VA system failure

Incredibly, despite the rising numbers of those who will need care, the White House is proposing a VA budget that is essentially flat from last year. The administration wants to cut money for prosthetic research and provide inadequate financing for the backlog of cases that only will grow. Yet on Tuesday, Mr. Bush called on Congress to "fund our war fighters." Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, whose "qualification" was running the Republican National Committee, has compounded the administration's indifference with insulting rhetoric. Asked about the 200,000-plus who have tried to get care, Mr. Nicholson says, "A lot of them come in for dental problems."

YahooNews: Deborah Burger, HuffPo: We're All at Walter Reed

It starts with brutally substandard care and abandonment of tens of thousands of veterans, not just at Walter Reed, but at VA hospitals and clinics around the country, as the Washington Post has revealed in ghastly detail.

Second, starving the VA. Since 2001, as Paul Krugman reported in the New York Times, federal allocations for veterans medical care lag behind overall healthcare spending, rather stunning when you consider we have sent 1.5 million of our young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan and over 184,000 have sought VA care after serving.

There's more. Due to funding cuts, some 263,257 veterans were denied enrollment for Veterans Administration health coverage in 2005. To cut costs, enrollment has been suspended for those deemed not having service-related injuries or illnesses. So much for the guarantee of lifetime healthcare. And, if all the other indignities were not enough, some Walter Reed patients had to buy their own meals.

The final piece of this unholy troika is privatization. As the Army Times notes, Walter Reed handed a five-year $120 million contract to a private company run by an ex-Halliburton executive. The contracting out of support services was followed by a mass exodus of support personnel.

Christian Science Monitor: How decay overtook Walter Reed
The problems at the US Army hospital show how strained military resources have become.