Halliburton stealing our $$$$

I read the NYTimes and the WashPost this morning but it was not until I went on the Knight-Ridder site that I saw this little gem about Halliburton:  Knight-Ridder story

"Three whistleblowers Thursday charged - and top executives strongly denied - that spending by Defense contractor Halliburton in Iraq was reckless and wasteful. They said the company's KBR unit charged the government $45 for cases of soda, submitted $100 bills for laundry, put up personnel in five-star hotels and abandoned $85,000 trucks on roadsides because of flat tires.......

Truckers Warren and David Wilson of Venus, Fla., said KBR did almost no routine maintenance on its vehicles, which at times meant trucks had to be abandoned when they broke down.
KBR transportation chief Keith Richard denied those charges, saying regular maintenance was performed every two weeks.
Ten other current and former KBR truckers who spoke with Knight Ridder sided with Wilson and Warren, however.
"I never got a truck maintenanced the whole time I was there," former driver Shane Ratliff of Ruby, S.C., told Knight Ridder in April. "

But of course, the Republican-controlled House refuses to do anything.

Slower than sludge

I wrote three posts this morning and posted them, according to blogspot "successfully".  Now, 11:30 p.m. at night, more than 12 hours later, they're still not showing up.  What gives? 

Small Shrub

Harpur's has an excellent list of all the things Commander Codpiece does not know -- from his own mouth.

Freep Family Circle

Vote in the great cookie-off:  Family Circle 2004 Election Cookie Cook-Off

Why doesn't George Bush care/call?

Last night I read an article in Yankee magazine about a boy from Deerfield, Mass. who was killed in Iraq.  The article isn't online, but here's a LINK to an interview with the author.   When Greg Belanger died, Senators Kerry and Kennedy called his parents the next week with their condolences, as did Senator Chafee of Rhode Island (where Greg lived).  But no call from George Bush.  Just a form letter, over a month later.
 
As you can imagine, the family is bitter. 
 
Kerry in a landslide.

Did everything really change, or was it all a dream?

Some days the "news" just gets to me.  This morning I was flipping through the morning shows.  There was Katie Couric, sitting on a high chair, interviewing three people about Martha Stewart.  (Am I the only person who can't look at Katie any more without thinking, "Navy Seals ROCK!")  Robin Roberts on ABC is directing a man through making and demonstrating homemade cleaners.
 
Remember after September 11th, when people were saying everything had changed forever?  When the media had a hiccup of regret over spending the summer covering Gary Condit and Chandra Levy?  That's when we got constant tickers crawling beneath the announcers on every news station.  Those tickers told us how many people were thought to be dead, the rumors of life in the pile, stories that made us feel and care.  But now our tickers are telling us about the Scott Peterson trial, and Martha Stewart's sentencing, and Kobe Bryant.  And they never tell us anything about the Americans or the Iraqis who died in Iraq today, other than counting them like the score of a sick baseball game.  What are their names?  How old were they?  How did they die?  Tell us.  Their deaths matter. 
 
Frank Rich says it is the fault of happy talk news.  I don't know why journalism has sunk this low, but it makes me sad.
 
Why hasn't one of the networks shown the video of Bush sitting in that Florida classroom for 7 minutes after learning the 2nd World Trade Center Tower had been hit?  Why don't I have that video burned into my brain, instead of poor Howard Dean shouting over the crowd in Iowa?
 
Show me the My Pet Goat video.  The country will not fall apart if we see Prances in Flightsuit as he really is.  Give him his seven minutes of fame.  Show some courage.  Show some guts.   Be journalists, not parrots.  Do your job.

War is Peace

Richard Cohen has a good editorial in the Washington Post today. Bush, Safely in Denial

Constant anxiety is safety, so says our fearless leader Prances in Flightsuit.

Boston is agog about the ridiculous "safety" precautions being taken for the Democratic Convention. They are shutting down the main drag through Boston, Route 93, in the afternoons and evenings, for 20 miles north and south of the city. So people were told to take the T. (T is our abbreviation for the public transportation agency, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, shortened to MBTA, but like all things Boston, shortened even further to "T".) But now you can't take anything larger than a purse the size of a sandwich on the T. What if your job requires you to carry something larger than that, like tools? Tough nuggies. And you can't take a bike on the T, unless it is one of those hugely expensive ones that breaks down into component parts. A regular bike that someone might really own, not allowed.

I'm not sure if this is just an over-reaction to the Tom Ridge terrorism warnings, or just the small town version of security. I've found that the further you are from New York City (where most of the death & destruction of 9/11 actually happened) the more stringent the security precautions. I've spent a lot of time in NYC since 9/11. New Yorkers understand that everyone is not a threat. At Madison Square Garden, for example, you can bring a backpack. You have to open it up for inspection, but once they get to know you the inspection is pretty cursory. & why shouldn't it be? A 47 year old lawyer? I'm a threat to America? Of course not. But in Boston, and Baltimore, and Fort Wayne Indiana, backpacks are not allowed in sporting events. (Because the 9/11 terrorists used backpacks, right? No, they used briefcases. They don't allow backpacks because that means you are a 60s liberal, the most dangerous of all Americans. You might be bringing in dangerous ideas, like free speech, dissent, tolerance, equality, right? So backpacks are banned all over America. Get it?)

War is peace, and Oceania is always at war with Eurasia.

blogspot is broken

Gee, it only took 4 days for my last post to publish. It's hard to be topical with that kind of time frame. I feel like US News & World Report.

Whee-hoooo!

John Edwards for Veep!

Re-defeat Bush

I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 today. On a whim, headed out to the suburban 16 screen theatre for the 4:30 showing.

Was surprised to find the theatre 3/4 full, for the matinee. I guess I am in Massachusetts, and it is a holiday weekend. Had to wedge myself in next to a large man wearing aftershave.

It was great to see all that I know to be true strung together for the mainstream audience. All the corporate media has been hiding from us. I tried not to annoy the poor man next to me as I answered Moore's rhetorical questions throughout the film. Managed not to say "Commander Codpiece" out loud when they showed the money shot of Bush in his ridiculous Mission Accomplished flight gear.

I did get choked up during the non-Moore narrated parts of the film -- the sounds of the planes hitting the World Trade Towers, the interview with the 9/11 widow, and the wrenching footage of the mother of the boy killed in Iraq.

There was one moment that made me gasp, during the final quarter of the film, and I will have to see it one more time because the fact has eluded me. It was another one of those Michael Moore rhetorical questions, and I was surprised and shocked by the answer.

So, if you haven't seen the film yet, stop reading now, because here's the final line:

[Commander Codpiece, leaning earnestly over the lectern]

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on....[long pause]....shame on you. Fool me....[longer pause]....you can't get fooled again."

—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

We won't get fooled again.

Job Growth Not There

Job growth last month was less than 50% of what economists expected. NYTimes, WashingtonPost.

Maybe this is why Bush isn't getting any bounce from his economic rebound????

Blogger fatigue

Now I understand why my favorite bloggers take time off occasionally.

I'll try not to do it too often.

Kerry in a Landslide

From ABC's "The Note", today, June 29, 2004:

8. Nearly every political reporter in America is having the same experience — they keep finding Republicans who say they will never vote again for President Bush (over the the war and the deficit, usually) but they have a heck of a time finding anyone who voted for Gore in 2000 who are now certain that they will vote for Bush (and Gore apparently won the popular vote).

I'm BAAAAAAAAAAACK

Just returned home from an unscheduled trip to visit a recuperating relative.

Now I am recovering from a new sports blow -- England's extra-time loss to the dreaded Frogs at Euro20004. England Suffer France Agony

It was torture to watch it all unravel so quickly at the end.

Crazy Barthez with that great save on Beckham's PK was the start.

Then England turtled for the rest of the second half -- impossible against the French who are loaded with offensive talent. And the final blow, Sven-Goren puts in EMILE HESKEY, of all substitutes, for Wayne Rooney who at 18 didn't need a rest, and certainly didn't need to be taken out for the useless Mr. Heskey. Wham-o, Heskey fouls, Zidane strikes with the perfect free kick, England panics, Steven Gerrard makes the sloppy pass back to James, James fouls Henry and and Zidane puts them away from the penalty mark. Sad.

More tomorrow.

Stanley Cup spotted in Florida

It's so wrong, the Stanley Cup now belongs to a team from a state where it is 85 degrees at the start of Game 7.

A place where all season long you could walk up to the box office & buy a ticket.

I'll get over it.

Iginla should win the Hart and the Conn Smythe

Tired from staying up late to watch the Calgary Flames gut out a 3-2 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in OT last night. New York Times, NHL.com, the Boston Globe, Calgary Sun. Jerome Iginla was immense. I wonder if he could hear me? I was sitting in front of the TV shouting "You're the Captain! This is your game! You must produce!" on his every shift. And he didn't let me down. (Maybe he heard me?) That last shift was amazing. I couldn't believe he was still on the ice. A long shift after over 70 minutes of hockey, helmet knocked off, checked again and again, Iginla kept getting up and forcing the play until he took the shot that was so hard Khabibulin gave up the rebound that Saprykin knocked in the for the winning goal. (Whew! What a sentence!)

Go Canada!

Treason

Capital Hill Blue is reporting that Prances in Flightsuit has hired a lawyer because witnesses have told the grand jury investigating the Plame case that he KNEW her name was going to be leaked. LINK

Helen Thomas is right: He's the worst President in the history of the country.

Polygraph Express

I'd pay to see Wolfowitz & Feith getting their polygraphs today. LINK

The whole Iran-sent-a-cable-using-the-code-Chalabi-gave-them story doesn't make sense to me though. Why would they burn such a valuable source of information? If Chalabi has been slipping them US secrets for years, why when he gave them the big one would they throw it away? Why would they suddenly question the value of his information now if he's been telling tales on us for years?

I wonder if this is Karl Rove's exit strategy from the neocon mess. Just a convenient way to dump Feith or Wolfowitz and say, hey, I know we had bad intelligence on this Iraq thing, but that's done with! We've sacrificed the bad guy! Now move on and vote for Shrub.

I used to be such a trusting person.

The Game is Fixed

20 of the 73 companies approved to sell those bogus drug cards by the government have been convicted of, charged with or are being investigated for defrauding the government.

Guess why those 20 still got contracts? First two guesses don't count. You're right, they gave big bucks to the Bushies. As a matter of fact, those 20 companies gave 60% of the money Bush raised from drug card companies. 60% of the over five million dollars those companies gave to Bush since 2000 came from those dirty 20 companies.

You gots to pay to play. Read all about it in this American Progress article. LINK

Torture Works!

What to make of today's Justice Department press conference detailing Jose Padilla's supposed intent to blow up apartment buildings and hotels in the United States? It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Justice is terrified of losing Padilla's appeal before the Supreme Court, especially after the Deputy Solicitor General arguing before the Supremes claimed the U.S doesn't torture prisoners -- just hours before the Abu Ghraib pictures were released? LINK

The Abu Ghraib revelations also clashed with remarks Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement made to the court during oral argument in the Padilla case.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg posed a scenario for Clement's response: "Suppose the executive says mild torture, we think, will help get this information," she said. "It's not a soldier who does something against the code of military justice, but it's an executive command. Some systems do that to get information."

"Well, our executive doesn't," Clement, the administration's second-ranking Supreme Court advocate, replied. "Where the government is on a war footing . . . you have to trust the executive to make the kind of quintessential military judgments that are involved in things like that."

In today's Padilla case press conference, Deputy Attorney General James Comey said the majority of the information in the Justice Department's case against Padilla came from interrogation of Padilla and other prisoners, and they've been dying to tell us about it:

Comey said his announcement followed an intensive government effort to declassify information gained from the interrogation of Padilla and others.

LINK

Translation: The new rules of interrogation worked with Padilla. He told us how bad he was. So you see? Torture works! Torture good! Quit complaining about that quaint old Geneva Conventions and get off our backs!

Can't wait to hear Padilla's lawyers press conference.