US, Costa Rica 0-0 tie

Went to the CONCACAF Gold Cup matches at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA last night with Coach Mom. We arrived early wearing our DaMarcus Beasley shirts & camped out in the parking lot for an hour of fanwatching. The sun was hot but it was not humid and only about 80 degrees. Thank heavens the game wasn't on Monday, when temps were in the high 90s. The salsa music was blasting and the smells of propane and grilling smoke wafted through the air. Definitely going to be a Costa-Rica dominated crowd. Ticos! Ticos! Ticos!

Our next-door car was from New Jersey. The chatty fan told us that neither Donovan nor Beasley would play (he was wrong on both counts). He was going to the World Cup qualifier v. Mexico in Columbus on September 3rd and we encouraged him to go the Soccer Hall of Fame on August 29th, when John Harkes, Tab Ramos and Marcelo Balboa will be inducted. We are going to all the Gold Cup games on the east coast except for the finals, which are on the same day as AC Milan-Chelsea at Foxboro. Our neighbor informed us that the Gold Cup game would be a much better game. Hah. Better than John Terry, Frank Lampard, Damien Duff, Hernan Crespo, Andriy Shevchenko, Cafu, Paulo Maldini, Kaka, Christian Vieri? I don't think so.

The gates opened at 6:00 p.m. Security was a joke. I walked through the line for searching people with bags. A young security officer (female) looked into my binocular case and glanced at my unzipped purse, not touching either. I could have had a gun or a knife or just about anything. Surprising given this is just days after the London bomb attacks. The stadium had blocked off the stands behind the benches so the 15,000 or so fans were concentrated on one side. We walked up the ramp with a man carrying a heavy marching band style snare drum with metal posts to stand it up. We couldn't bring an umbrella, but this somewhat inebriated fan could have a drum. He sideswiped Coach Mom as we turned the corner & apologized. We watched another drunk fan, running backwards to take a picture of her friends, trip and fall, her digital camera breaking into pieces on the concrete.

Our seats were great, 25 rows up on the 18 yard line. Foxboro also has the silly "take away their soda bottle caps" rule, but at least Gillette, a modern stadium, has cupholders attached to the seat in front of each seat. (And I still have two caps in my purse from our last trip to Giants Stadium!)

The game was a lackluster affair. Keller was a rock in goal, and the defense was OK. Hedjuk played well until he got a silly yellow card late for diving, which means he will miss the quarterfinal game on Saturday. Jimmy Conrad, making his 3rd national team appearance, played very well at the back. He looked a little shaky on his first touch, but after that he made no major errors and won some nice balls in air. Sadly, Tony Sanneh has lost a step & I will be surprised to see him on the World Cup roster. Cherundolo is also a marginal player on the world stage. I see our World Cup back line as Hedjuk, Conrad, Gooch (Oguchi Onyewu), and Bocanegra. Here's my projected World Cup starting 11:

--------------------Keller-------------------

Conrad-----Gooch-----Bocanegra---------Hedjuk

----------------------Lewis-----------------

Donovan-------------------------------Beasley

-------------------O'Brien-------------------

---------------Johnson------McBride-----------

I'd give Spector a chance to crack the back line, but Arena doesn't seem to be giving him the chance to do so. Arena will probably play Reyna over Lewis, but I think Claudio's lack of pace will make him a liability. (Coach Mom would switch Donovan and O'Brien, but otherwise she is OK with my lineup.)

The offense couldn't finish. Not only couldn't we finish, no one wanted to shoot. Too many good offensive sequences ended with a pass that should have been a shot, a dribble into the corner, or just a giveaway. Our best offensive chance happened in the 2nd minute when John O'Brien backheeled the ball to Pat Noonan who smartly crossed the ball which Dempsey slotted in. Unfortunately Noonan was offsides and the US had little more offense until Arena put in Beasley, Donovan, and Wolff for the final 20 minutes.

The Costa Rica crowd was loud and boisterous. We cheered each US effort and apparently annoyed some CR's behind us, who began shouting "Beasley sucks" and "puta" (do you speak Spanish?). However, the CR fan sitting next to Mom was a nice man & they agreed on a few blown offsides calls by the line judge. We shook hands after the game.

U.S. Draws Costa Rica 0-0, Wins Gold Cup Group

Tie with Costa Rica goes to the U.S.
The United States wins Group B based on its plus-5 goal-differential and now moves to Saturday's quarterfinals.

CONCACAF Gold Cup Notebook: Dempsey continues to impress coach


The temps quickly dropped between games, and we were happy to have brought beach towels in case of rain. Perhaps 4000 fans stayed for the second game. A group of 12 Cubans stood at the rail below us, and about 8 Canadians were over in the Sam's Army seats. I joked about Cuba needing to win or this would be their last day to defect, then read this today:

Cuban soccer player hopes to defect to U.S.

Canada won 2-1 so both teams are likely eliminated. The US will play one of the third place teams. Which team they play will be decided when the hurricane-postponed final group games are played in Miami tonight. Saturday's games are Honduras-Panama at 1:00, US - TBA at 4:00, and the Revs v. FC Dallas at 7:00. If it's 95 degrees as predicted we may only go to the last two games. Have to save our energy for the semis!

Truth to Karl: Resign Now, Traitor

Digby sez:

He Should Resign

John Conyers sez:

Karl Rove Should Resign

The Democrats say:

Democrats Call for Rove to Come Clean or Resign

Karl Rove, you are a lying traitor. And this time you got caught with your mouth open and your pants down. Leaking the identity of a CIA agent who specialized in WMD for cheap political gain disqualifies you for access to the White House.

If I had a plane I'd be skywriting "Surrender Karl" over Rove's house, except he lives in Washington & the FAA would probably have me shot down.

Cell Phones

Cellphone Numbers Overtake Land Lines

This makes me feel old.

When I was a kid, we had one black rotary phone. We were on a party line, and I remember my parents talking about the neighbor who eavesdropped. You could tell if someone else was on the phone when you picked it up, and the polite thing to do was to hang up & try again. It was a big deal when we got regular phone service. At my grandma's house, she had one of those phone numbers like "BUtterfield 8" (BU is capitalized because it stood for the numbers 2 & 8). I can't remember what it was, though. Maybe this is a bit of family history I should research before it is lost in the mists of time.

Karl Rove (Surprise!) Was Matt Cooper's Source

Matt Cooper's Source
What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter

From page 2 of the online article:

NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger... "

So Rove both (1) outed Plame AND (2) flogged the administration's lie about Saddam Hussein looking for uranium from Niger.

Let the frogmarching begin.

Journalism is Dead, White House Presser Edition

Day 6: White House Press Corps Silent on Rove

The White House just released the transcript of today’s Gaggle.

For the fourth straight time since his lawyer admitted that Rove was one of Matt Cooper’s sources, no member of the White House press corps asked a question about Rove’s role. (And there are plenty of questions to ask.)

A major figure in the White House is deeply entangled in a major scandal. Why is the White House press corps ignoring the story?

Let's give the bought-and-paid-for corporate media a shout-out from blogtopia. Below is a list of White House correspondents compiled by the Washington Post, with links to their emails. Why aren't they doing their jobs and asking about Karl Rove, the traitor?

List of White House Correspondents

Monitoring the Left

Looks like Nixon's enemies list is back:

Be On Guard for Raging Grannies

...[A] California National Guard unit [] spent last Mother's Day keeping a spy-eye on protesters at the state Capitol — Raging Grannies, CodePink and a group whose members had relatives killed in Iraq. The San Jose Mercury News quoted an e-mail exchange between Guard officers three days before the protest:

"Sir, Information you wanted on Sunday's demonstration at the Capitol."

"Thanks. Forwarding same to our Intell. folks who continue to monitor."

**********

For the sake of argument, let's accept that the Guard was just monitoring the event via news coverage. That would mean two unlikely things: that the Guard — unlike a lot of people in government, starting with Arnold Schwarzenegger — believes what it reads in the paper or sees on TV. And two, that there's real information in video of old ladies waving peace placards. Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Stan Zezotarski told the Mercury News, "Who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up? After all, we live in the age of terrorism…." I must have missed the shot of the septuagenarian wearing the "I Am Really an Al Qaeda Grandma" button.

Another Guard spokesman, Lt. Col. Doug Hart, told me it's all a mix-up and that "intel" is just a gussied-up word meaning any information "We do not spy on people. We don't collect information on people or groups." The Guard was merely keeping a "scrapbook" of news events about itself doing duty at brush fires or Rep. Bob Matsui's funeral. Schwarzenegger's office had alerted the Guard because of protesters' demands that the Guard come home from Iraq. Now, Hart said, people are confusing the Guard's clipping service with its real terrorism intelligence unit at the California Justice Department.

**********

...I'd hate to think that the Guard — already spread thin on multiple tours in Iraq — would still muster manpower for a granny-watch.

Here's why we're twitchy. Federal agencies, from the early Cold War into the 1970s, collected dossiers on thousands of blameless Americans. I have the FBI files of a really suspicious character: former LAPD cop and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

Old Folks At Home

This program is so sensible I can't believe the government is involved:

Program pays families to house seniors

Massachusetts has begun paying family members to house and care for their frail older relatives in an effort to keep them out of nursing homes and save the state money.

The program pays $1,500 a month to caregivers to make it more feasible for family members to provide round-the-clock care to a senior who needs extensive help with everyday tasks, such as eating, bathing, dressing, and using the toilet. It has enrolled 21 seniors since beginning on a trial basis in March, and will expand this fall to as many as 80 low-income seniors or disabled people, funded by $2 million in the state budget signed into law last week.

The state's goal is to provide the housing and home care that seniors want while reducing admissions to expensive nursing homes. The state expects to spend $1.6 billion for nursing home care this year.

''It's offering people a more compassionate level of care provided by people they know they're comfortable with . . . at a cost about half that of a nursing home," said Representative Barbara L'Italien, an Andover Democrat who pressed for inclusion of the money in the budget. She and other officials expect the program will be expanded to serve many more in future years. Advocates say as many as 8,000 people could be eligible, depending on the criteria ultimately set by the state.

Malpractice Facts

Study Says Malpractice Payouts Aren't Rising

A study to be released today by the Center for Justice and Democracy, a consumer advocacy group in New York, may add fuel to that debate. The study, compiled from regulatory filings by insurers to state regulators, finds that net claims for medical malpractice paid by 15 leading insurance companies have remained flat over the last five years, while net premiums have surged 120 percent.

From 2000 to 2004, the increase in premiums collected by the leading 15 medical malpractice insurance companies was 21 times the increase in the claims they paid, according to the study. (The net totals in the study are calculated after accounting for reinsurance.)

Of the 15 companies examined, 9 are mutual insurers owned by their policyholders, 3 have publicly traded stock but are part of larger conglomerates and 3 are publicly traded and focus primarily on medical malpractice. The stock prices of those three companies have each risen more than 100 percent since May 2002.

"In recent years, medical malpractice hasn't been unprofitable but it's been phenomenally profitable," said Jay Angoff, the former state insurance commissioner of Missouri and a consultant on the study.

Dont' believe the hype. Trial lawyers aren't the problem. Juries aren't the problem.

INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE THE PROBLEM.

The Times They Are A Changin'

HOF honors girl, 11, who threw perfect game

COOPERSTOWN — An 11-year-old girl who pitched a perfect Little League baseball game in May was honored Thursday afternoon at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Katie Brownell of Oakfield, a town between Buffalo and Rochester, is the only girl in her town’s Little League.

She struck out every batter she faced in a six-inning game May 14.

**********

After Katie donated her jersey, the Hall presented a forum and introduced Maria Pepe, a groundbreaking Little League player, and Lance Van Auken, a spokesman for Little League, to the audience.

Pepe said that when she 11 in 1971, she signed up to play Little League baseball in Hoboken, N.J.

"I played three games, but there was a lot of controversy" because she was a girl, she said.

She was asked to turn in her uniform and did so reluctantly. Members of the National Organization for Women heard of her situation and called her parents, she said.

Eventually, NOW worked to bring her case before New Jersey’s Division of Civil Rights, and a state court ruled in her favor in 1974, opening the door for girls to play in Little League, she said.

By then, she was too old to play, "but my father told me to think of all the girls who would come after me," she said.

Van Auken said Little League now has about 400,000 girls playing and about 2.3 million boys.

My younger sister was the first girl in my town to play Little League baseball. I think it was 1973. She was really good. There were fans (parents of other players) who heckled her!

USA 4, Cuba 1

Watched the US's opening match of the CONCACAF Gold Cup last night. Damarcus Beasley & Landon Donovan pulled the US's chestnuts out of the fire after the US let itself go down 1-0 in the 18th minute.

I talked to Mom the Coach & described the US line up (lots of new guys, and a 3-5-2 formation). Coach sez: I like Bruce Arena but sometimes I don't understand his tactics. I never understood this starting out a season or a tournament with anything less than your best team on the field. You can take your foot off the gas once you have the season or the tournament in hand, but why not play your best players at the beginning? And why would you put a defensive formation with new guys who haven't played together too much and haven't played 3 at the back too often in a 3-5-2? Bruce, Bruce.

U.S. Soccer's report: U.S. MEN DOWN CUBA 4-1 IN OPENING MATCH OF 2005 CONCACAF GOLD CUP AT QWEST FIELD IN SEATTLE

Damarcus Beasley scored once & set up two and Landon Donovan who only played the final 25 minutes scored twice. Clint Dempsey (of the Revs) started out the scoring but missed several open shots. The game was remarkable for the return of John O'Brien, who hasn't played for the national team in over two years.

Can't wait to see 'em at Foxboro next week. Please, please, Bruce, give us the "A" lineup!

She Can't Drive A Car Yet

But she can sure drive a golf ball!

At 15, Wie Is in Line to Make Men's Cut

The 15-year-old Wie fired a one-under-par 70 in the first round of the John Deere Classic and put herself in a good position to become the first woman to make a PGA Tour cut since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945, at the Tucson Open.

Do you think Michelle Wie knows who Babe Didrickson Zaharias was? Sports Illustrated named her the #2 Female Athlete of all time, and much as I love Jackie Joyner Kersee I would have put "The Babe" #1. Think if she had been around today: An Olympic gold medalist (javelin, hurdles, high jump); a softball player who hit so well they called her "Babe", after Babe Ruth; then a Hall of Famer on the LPGA.

Michelle Wie may break the Babe's golf records, but Babe's all-sport prowess will remain unchallenged.

A Steaming Pile of Crap

Iraq, London & America's Homeland Insecurity

A good analysis from Sirotablog. Connecting the dots: An illegal war based on a lie(WMD) is now supposedly the war that will keep us safe on our streets at home, taking the fight to foreign soil rather than ours. This latest lie (1) insults our troops, who are apparently decoys for the war on terror in Iraq, and (2) makes us less safe, since to pay for the based-on-lies-war we SHORTCHANGE SPENDING ON ACTUAL SECURITY WITHIN our borders.

Before reading this piece I did not realize that our brilliant Congress recently voted to gut funding for transit security, reducing it by 1/3, from $150 million to $100 million. Like, terrorists would never think of bombing subways or buses in the United States.

His concluding grafs:

And that's why today's tragic bombing frighteningly highlights just how misguided our entire national security strategy really is. First our government lied to us about why we were going to war in the first place. Then, when that dishonesty was exposed, we got fed another steaming pile of crap about how the war in Iraq was protecting us from terrorists because it was diverting terrorists' attention.

It is now painfully clear that those rationales were not designed to level with the American people – they were designed with one thing in mind: scaring us into supporting what should have been an unsupportable war, at the very time when we should have been focused on and scared about a far more serious challenge: securing the homeland after the worst terrorist attack in American history.

Judy, Judy, Judy

Why this journalist thinks that Judy Miller should go to jail

[] Judy Miller's actions in recent years -- a pattern that includes this case -- have been the very antithesis of what we think journalism is and should be all about. Ultimately, the heart and soul of real journalism is not so much protecting "sources" at any cost. It is, rather, living up to the 19th Century maxim set forth by Peter Finley Dunne, that journalists should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

That is why the ability of reporters to keep the identity of their true sources confidential is protected by shield laws in 31 states and the District of Columbia (although not in federal courts). Without such protections, the government official would not be able to report the wrongdoing of a president (remember "Deep Throat," the ultimate confidential source?), nor would the corporate executive feel free to rat out a crooked CEO. The comfortable and corrupt could not be afflicted.

But the Times' Judy Miller has not been afflicting the comfortable. She has been protecting them, advancing their objectives, and helping them to mislead a now very afflicted American public. In fact, thinking again about Watergate and Deep Throat is a good way to understand why Judy Miller should not be protected today. Because in Watergate, a reporter acting like Miller would not be meeting the FBI's Mark Felt in an underground parking garage. She would be obsessively on the phone with H.R. Haldeman or John Dean, listening to malicious gossip about Carl Bernstein or their plans to make Judge Sirica look bad.

London Transit Blasts

Blair: A Barbaric Attack (The Mirror)

London rocked by terror attacks (BBC)

Explosions reported on three buses (This is London)

6 Blasts Rock London, Killing at Least Two (The Guardian)

Explosions hit London as G8 leaders meet (Reuters UK)

Bombs strike terror in London (ITV.com UK)

Eyewitness accounts:

GerryInLondon (on dailykos)

A livejournal community has been set up to share information and follow the story.

UK Blog Aggregator

Title IX Book From Unlikely Source

Title IX's next hurdle

By a writer for the Wall Street Journal!

Here's an excerpt, read the whole article:

Despite the challenges, the benefits of Title IX have never been more apparent. Passed when many universities restricted admissions for women, the law initially was intended to end discrimination such as quotas that limited females to 10 percent or less of medical schools, law schools and other professional programs. Today, about half the law-school and medical-school students and roughly 57 percent of all college students are women.

Since the law was passed, the number of girls participating in high-school varsity sports has also increased, growing tenfold, to nearly three million, while the number of women in collegiate sports has grown more than fivefold, to about 160,000.

While the debate has focused on athletics, Title IX originally wasn't about sports at all. In a new book for young people, "Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX," Wall Street Journal editor Karen Blumenthal details how one of the nation's most controversial civil-rights laws came about and the enormous impact it has had. An adaptation:

Lesser Frogmarch

New York Times Reporter Is Jailed for Keeping Source Secret

Hard to feel great sympathy for Judith Miller. She should have been frogmarched off the premises of the New York Times once they realized how biased her reporting was leading up to the war in Iraq. Instead they published a wimpy 'ooh, we were wrong, sorry' piece without even mentioning that the majority of their 'we were wrong' articles were written by Miller. (for a dissection of the Times non-mea culpa mea culpa, read Alexander Coburn's "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little")

Will her good friend Ahmed Chalabi come to visit her in jail? Bob Novak-ula? (When I was a kid, he was "No Facts", of "Errors and No Facts", but since his old partner Rowland Evans retired he's become even more sinister.)

Now those are a couple of guys who should be in jail.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Chickenhawk Alert

Ship Young Pataki Straight to Iraq

[G]overnor [Pataki], who proudly announced last week that his son has been commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marines, also noted that Teddy Pataki hopes to defer his military service for three years until he finishes law school.

**********

At the Republican National Convention last year, Gov. Pataki praised President George W. Bush for having the courage to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. And just as Bush did in his speech Tuesday night, the governor strove mightily to link Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But with the daily war toll mounting, why wouldn't his son want to put off serving for a while?

Because George Pataki is a hypocrite. Praising the war on one hand, shielding his own family with the other. Sending poor New Yorkers in his son's place.

Hey Teddy Pataki: You signed up for the Marine Officer Training program. The Marines need you. It's time for you to perform your side of the contract.

You don't need to go law school to figure this one out.

From United States Navy and the Naval Reserve to Iraq Detainee

The New York Times got the headline on this story wrong.

From Filmmaker in Los Angeles to Iraq Detainee

LOS ANGELES, July 5 - Like a lot of aspiring filmmakers in Los Angeles, Cyrus Kar was obsessed with his project, a documentary about an ancient Persian king who championed tolerance and human rights even as he built an empire that stretched across the Near East.

But Mr. Kar, 44, a naturalized American born in Iran, followed his dream where few others might have gone. In mid-May, he traveled to Iraq with an Iranian cameraman to film archaeological sites around Babylon. After a taxi they were in was stopped in Baghdad, the two men were arrested by Iraqi security forces, who found what they suspected might be bomb parts in the vehicle.

Since then, Mr. Kar has been held in what his relatives and their lawyers describe as a frightening netherworld of American military detention in Iraq - charged with no crime but nonetheless unable to gain his freedom or even tell his family where he is being held.

He is one of four men with dual American citizenship who have been detained in Iraq beginning in April, a Defense Department official said. But none of the others - all Iraqi-Americans suspected of ties to the insurgency - nor an accused Jordanian-American terrorist operative captured in a raid last year appear to have had anything like Mr. Kar's ties to the United States.

Mr. Kar, the son of an Iranian physician, came to the United States when he was 2 and was raised partly in Utah and Washington State, where he played high school football. He attended college in California, received a master's degree in technology management from Pepperdine University, worked for years in Silicon Valley and served in the United States Navy and the Naval Reserve.

The question must be asked, would this be happening to him if he was white?

GWB: A President Totally 'Detached from Humanity'

Mom, Who Lost Son In Iraq, Talks About 'Disgusting' White House Private Meeting With Bush

So when Sheehan received an invitation to meet privately with President Bush at the White House two months after her son died, the least she could have expected was a bit of compassion or a kind word coming from the heart.

But what she encountered was an arrogant man with eyes lacking the slightest bit of compassion, a President totally "detached from humanity" and a man who didn’t even bother to remember her son’s name when they were first introduced.

Instead of a kind gesture or a warm handshake, Sheehan said she immediately got a taste of Bush arrogance when he entered the room and "in a condescending tone and with a disgusting loud Texas accent," said: "Who we’all honorin’ here today?"

"His mouth kept moving, but there was nothing in his eyes or anything else about him that showed me he really cared or had any real compassion at all. This is a human being totally disconnected from humanity and reality. His eyes were empty, hollow shells and he was acting like I should be proud to just be in his presence when it was my son who died for his illegal war! It was one of the most disgusting experiences I ever had and it took me almost a year to even talk about it," said Sheehan in a telephone conversation from Washington D.C. where she was attending a July 4th anti-war rally.

Sheehan said the June 2004 private meeting with the President went from bad to worse to a nightmare when Bush acted like he didn’t even want to know her name. She said Bush kept referring to her as ‘Ma’ or ‘Mom’ while he "put on a phony act," saying things like ‘Mom, I can’t even imagine losing a loved one, a mother or a father or a sister or a brother.’

"The whole meeting was simply bizarre and disgusting, designed to intimidate instead of providing compassion. He didn’t even know our names," said Sheehan. "Finally I got so upset I just looked him in the eye, saying ‘I think you can imagine losing someone. You have two daughters. Imagine losing them?’ After I said that he just looked at me, looked at me with no feeling or caring in his eyes at all."

George W. Bush, Flag Desecrater

From patridiotwatch:

Flag Desecration Bill, Redux

George Bush signed American Flags on July 24, 2003, a desecration according to American standards. Now he and his party want a Constitutional Amendment against desecrating flags. Hypocrites.

Click on the link: There's a picture of C+ Augustus laying pen to flag.

Dumb & dumber.

The evolution of national concern about the flag has always amused me. When I was a kid, hippies wore the American flag on the pockets of their jeans & got put in jail. In the 80s, Tommy Hilfiger outfitted the country in t-shirts & jeans with flags on the pockets & made millions. The same people who want to make flagburning a crime sit their fat a**es in American flag chairs. Burning, I believe, is still the only proper way to dispose of an American flag. George W. Bush who is salivating over a no flag-desecration bill writes on flags. Does no one see the ironies here?

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th everyone. I'm heading to the Hudson Valley of New York for my annual family picnic.

Hope to be writing the word "frogmarch" a lot when I get back.

Karl Rove, I hope you're not sleeping well tonight.

Unlikely I'll blog again before Tuesday.

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

when first we practice to deceive. {always thought this was Shakespeare, but the internets reveal it to be Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)}


Who Told Rove?

One of Digby's commenters points the finger at John Bolton:

As long as we're enjoying ourselves speculating about frog marching and the like, here's an interesting theory from super-smart commenter Sara:

Has anyone here carefully read Joe Wilson's Book?

He provides plenty of carefully crafted information -- for example see p. 443-445.

Wilson indicates that the work up on him beginning March, 2003, turned up the information on Valerie -- which was then shared with Karl Rove who then circulated it through Administration and neo-Conservative circles. He cites conservative journalists who claimed to have had the information before the Novak column.

So the question is -- in the work-up process beginning about March 2003, who had the information re: Plame?

I think it was John Bolton. At the time he was State Department Deputy Secretary with the portfolio in WMD and Nuclear Proliferation. Assuming that Valerie Plame's identity was that of a NOC (No Official Cover) the information about her would have been highly classified, compartmentalized, and only those with a need to know would know. Bolton's Job probably gave him that status. However to receive it he would have to sign off on the classification -- that is he would have to agree to retain the security the CIA had established.

At the time, Bolton had two assistants who also worked in the White House in Cheney's office, David Wurmser and John Hannah. Their names have been around as the potential leakers -- Hannah if you remember is the guy who kept putting the Yellow Cake back in Bush's speeches even though Tenet had demanded it be removed.

So -- I think we have a game of catch going on here -- or maybe some version of baseball, and the scoring is Bolton to Wurmser and Hannah, to Cheney (and/or Libby) to Rove.

I suspect getting Rove on Perjury is more or less step one in walking back the path of the ball.

Lest there be any doubt about Bolton's true calling, remember, he was king of the Florida Recount.

Stay tuned, folks, it's going to be quite the ride.

Does Derek Jeter Know About This?

Forget Fame and Fortune, Trade Talk Is Personal

Sheffield has been the heart of the Yankees for the past two seasons.

No wonder the Yankees are on life support. They've got a bad ticker.

Rove Crime: Perjury?

Via Atrios, TalkLeft has a good discussion of what Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may be trying to get with those reporter's notes:

What Does the Government Really Want from Miller and Cooper?

Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has stated in court pleadings that he already knows the identity of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper's sources regarding the senior white house official who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to Robert Novak.

Miller did some reporting for a story but never wrote an article. She has maintained she intends to go to jail rather than reveal her source -- though Fitzgerald has indicated in court filings that he already knows that official's identity.

So, why is it so necessary for them to provide the information?

As the Wapo article suggests, the investigation has moved from one involving the identity of the White House official to one involving perjury - i.e., a cover-up. The source may have been questioned in front of the grand jury and lied.

Knowing the identity of the source is not enough for a perjury conviction. There must be two witnesses to the perjurious statement. Telephone records would not be enough, because they only provide the number dialed, not the identity of the person speaking. Matthew Cooper's and Judith Miller's e-mails and notes may provide that corroboration.

Two witnesses to get Rove for perjury. Because he said this:

I don't know who the White House official is, but the higher up he is, the more likely the prosecutor would want two live witnesses, not just documents, to support a perjury charge. What do you think of this possibility, from American Prospect in 2004?

Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

President Clinton was suspended from the practice of law by the State of Arkansas for five years for perjury, and disbarred by the Supreme Court. And his perjury had nothing to do with the workings of government, or intelligence, or national security.

As Joe Wilson has been hoping, “[W]e can get Karl Rove frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs." Would there be a perp walk more sweet for Democrats?

Thou Shalt Not Kill

In Mississippi, Soaring Costs Force Deep Medicaid Cuts

HAZLEHURST, Miss., July 1 - Starting Friday, most Medicaid recipients in Mississippi will be limited to five prescription drugs at a time, with no process for appeal. The cap appears to be the most restrictive in the nation, but is just one of many measures being taken by states seeking to rein in soaring Medicaid costs.

It will hit hard for people like Erainna Johnson, 42, left legally blind by a stroke in 1997. She takes 19 medications - already more than the previous Medicaid limit of seven - relying on family members, her church and free samples from doctors to make up the difference. "Sometimes I just crack my pills in half, honestly," she said, sitting in the living room of her trailer here.

Mississippi is among many states moving aggressively to contain Medicaid costs, saying severe measures are necessary if the program is to continue. In Missouri, new cuts also took effect Friday in an effort to reduce the rolls; for example, a single mother of three in Missouri is now ineligible if she makes more than $350 a month. About a dozen states limit the number of prescriptions offered to adult patients, but almost all provide for an appeal process or allow doctors to override the limit.

**********

Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican who backed steeper cuts to Medicaid than those enacted, said the Legislature had come up with the limit on prescription drugs on its own. But, he added, "states are limited in their options as far as cost control."

Haley Barbour (former chairman of the Republican Party) is a "fervent supporter" of Mississippi's law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public buildings.

A model of the Ten Commandments on gray tablets sits in a corner of the governor's office at the Capitol.

So, did they change his copy to "Thou Shalt Not Kill Rich People"?

Where are those "culture of life" politicians now? George? Bill?

Hey, Hey, Haley Bay-Bay, How many old folks did you kill today?

Traitor: It Takes One to Know One

MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove as Source in Plame Case

Well, well, well.

The political hack who impugned the patriotism of liberals is about to be outed as the Benedict Arnold for our age.

Hang him high, I say. Make an example. Hard time. Crack cocaine kind of time. Guantanimo would be appropriate given the crime.

See how he likes Duncan Hunter's orange glazed chicken now.

WWJDD?

No, this isn't a fundamentalist post. WWJDD stands for "What Would Johnny Damon Do". I just bought a WWJDD shirt on ebay, which shows our Caveman standing in the classic Jesus pose, one hand raised palm up, the bleeding heart in his chest.

So, WWJDD? Go to the All-Star game, apparently. The gang on NESN are reporting that a late surge of votes -- probably helped by the local TV guys all going on at 6 & 11 last night encouraging Sox fans to to vote for him -- has put Johnny Damon on the American League All-Star team.

OK, I admit it, I voted my 25 times between 11:25 and 11:40 last night. The guy is having an all-star year. And the World Champion Boston Red Sox deserve as many All-Stars as possible.

This Is Terrible

Just so we don't forget, "This is terrible!" were Sandra Day O'Connor's words upon hearing that the networks had called the 2000 race for Al Gore (remember him, the guy who won by 500,000 votes or more?)

(Click on the link, above, to see pics of the five Bush voters from Bush v. Gore in clown makeup.)

So, she picked the guy who will replace her despite the fact that he didn't win the race.

That's the legacy of Sandra Day O'Connor. Like a butcher with his finger on the scale, she tilted the scale in favor of the side she favored. She was in the seat of justice, but she didn't wear the traditional blindfold.

And unbelievably, we can (and probably will) do worse.

David Sirota prophesies that

With Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation today, I have a prediction: O'Connor and Chief Justice William Rehnquist will both retire...Karl Rove will have Bush put up one crazy, wild-eyed conservative lunatic in the John Ashcroft mold, and one hard-right winger who seems "moderate" compared to the crazy...the lunatic goes down to defeat, but the hard-right winger gets through, and Bush replaces the lunatic with another hard-right winger as a "compromise."

If just O'Connor retires, it will be much the same strategy - first nominate a wild-eyed lunatic. It's a win-win for Bush - either the lunatic gets appointed, or the lunatic loses, and then Bush puts up someone a shade less crazy - but equally as conservative - as the "compromise." The media will play along with this storyline, billing the second nominee as "moderate."

The entire effort will be backed up with a huge amount of corporate money. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Big Business has already announced its intention to push hard for an ultraconservative nominee, as the Court has increasingly weighed in on corporate issues. For instance, as the newspaper notes, "now for the first time, the National Association of Manufacturers, which represents big corporations, is creating a committee of executives to screen the business rulings of prospective nominees."

All of this will put massive pressure on the Senate to ultimately confirm a right-winger. Let's hope Democrats are ready for this two-step.

Update: Head over to Hullabaloo for a more complete recitation of O'Connor's comments on the Bush-Gore election results.

O'Connor Takes Riggins Advice*

O'Connor to Retire From Supreme Court

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court and a key swing vote on issues such as abortion and the death penalty, said Friday she is retiring.

O'Connor, 75, said she expects to leave before the start of the court's next term in October, or whenever the Senate confirms her successor. There was no immediate word from the White House on who might be nominated to replace O'Connor.

Since a woman is retiring from the Supremes, and not Injustice Rehnquist, will Bush replace her with another woman? Can you say Edith Jones (subject of an earlier post)? Or will Torture Guy get the nod?

I hope Harry Reid's gambit of naming the Senators he would agree to put on the Court works.

Reid later offered four names of people he said would be good for the court: GOP Sens. Mel Martinez of Florida, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Mike Crapo of Idaho and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

It would be nice to get a justice who isn't to the right of Attila the Hun for once. I could live with Lindsey Graham. Not my first choice, but no Clarence Thomas, either.



*The infamous John Riggins, Washington Redskin Hall of Fame running back, met Sandra Day O'Connor at a party, and, having imbibed too much, greeted her thusly: "C'mon, Sandy baby, loosen up. You're too tight."

Chimpeachment

I learned this new word today, from the Rain Storm Gazette:

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Talkin' them Chimpeachment Blues

Duncan notes a Zogby poll that says 42% of Americans want impeachment if it is found that Bush misled the the nation about the reasons for going to war in Iraq.

Ahead of the curve, Veterans for Peace has drawn up Declaration of Impeachment and a petition to support it (as of this posting, it looks like the on line petition is still under construction).

Get some.

Chimpeach the Smirking Chimp. Limpeach Dick Cheney. This would make me so very, very happy.

Venus is Back!

Venus ends Sharapova's reign to reach final

One of the best women's matches I've seen in a long time. Both players playing from the baseline, but with huge aggressive strokes. Shriek! Shriek! Shriek! from both of them. Venus completely disguised her poor second serve with a high percentage of first serves. She hit so many winners that Sharapova was knocked completely off her game.

Nice to see Venus focused on her tennis. She is still a great talent. During the match, the commentators talked about her sister being killed two years ago and it made me think, how would I have reacted if one of my siblings had been killed when I was in my 20s? I'd have been devastated. So I'll stop complaining about the Williams sisters spending too much time on non-tennis-related pursuits. I just hope they do what Venus did today & come back to championship level tennis. We miss them.

Small Town NY Views Iraq

Bush evokes mixed emotions
Families of local troops approve, criticize speech

One girl's story:

Army Spc. Isaac Nieves, 20, of Unadilla was one of more than 1,740 Americans who died in Iraq. He was killed by a roadside bomb April 8, 2004.

His 15-year-old sister Kimberly said it didn’t matter what the president had to say.

"We don’t support the war," Nieves said. "We lost our brother in it."

Nieves said the Iraqis have not attacked people here in America and she couldn’t understand why the United States had to attack Iraq.

"I think the war is ridiculous, and there is no point in it," Nieves said. "A lot of families are going through a lot of pain.

"I think about Isaac every single day," Nieves said. "He made such a big difference in this town. He never got to meet his son. He died a month after his son was born."

And as for the president: "I don’t like him very much. He made me lose my brother," Nieves said. "He doesn’t know what it’s like to lose family in a war."

Brian Schweitzer In The News

From the American Prospect:

True West

a sample:

Schweitzer is emblematic of a new kind of western politician who is both progressive and entrepreneurial. He inherited a failing family farm and turned it around by planting, of all things, mint. By researching and then efficiently serving an untapped market, he became a millionaire, and was able to enter politics as a farmer and small-business man as well as a progressive Democrat. He shrewdly allied himself with sportsmen, not just as a gun owner but as one determined to protect the fishing and hunting environment. He was one of the first politicians to lead prescription-drug bus trips to Canada. Campaigning statewide, Schweitzer lost a cliff-hanger election to Senator Conrad Burns in 2000, then prevailed by 18 percent in the 2004 governor’s race. Two progressive Montana Democrats, Senate President John Tester and State Auditor John Morrison, are jockeying to take on Burns, who is probably the Senate’s most vulnerable Republican in 2006.

Conrad Burns is the Republican moron who is currently pushing that pesticides be tested on poor people & children.

Keep your eyes on Schweitzer -- he's going places.

Brazil Beats Argentina -- Preview of World Cup Final???

Brazil trounced Argentina yesterday, 4-1, in the Confederations Cup final. Argentina wasn't at full strength (no Crespo, for example) but neither was Brazil, as they played without Ronaldo, (who is now worried about his starting place on the World Cup squad), Roberto Carlos, and others. Ronaldo should be worried, as Adriano scored twice and played well for Brazil throughout the tournament.

Readabet.com, a gambling site, now puts Brazil as the putative World Cup favorites at 9 to 2, Argentina close behind at 13 to 2, both England and Germany at 8 to 1, and Italy and Holland at 12 to 1. I think putting England at 8 to 1 is a bit of a stretch, very optimistic, but probably is based on all the devoted England fans willing to put their money where their mouths are (I'm England 'til I die, and all that). Translated, this site would lose a lot of money if they had to pay out the real odds were England to win -- I would put them more like 25 to 1.

Journalism is Dead.

The writer of my favorite baseball blog, Joy of Sox, the best website covering the World Champion Boston Red Sox, also has a political blog, In Cold Blog. He picked up these stats from the new Ariana Huffington blog:

Number of news segments that mentioned these stories over seven weeks (May 1, 2005 to June 20, 2005):

ABC CBS NBC CNN FOX MSNBC

Downing Street Memo 0 0 6 30 10 10

Natalee Holloway 42 70 62 294 148 30

Michael Jackson 121 235 109 633 286 106

Sorry if my columns don't add up. Should have taken that HTML course.

Bush Gives the Same Ol' Speech

from thinkprogress:

Bush Iraq Speech: By The Numbers

References to “September 11″: 5

References to “weapons of mass destruction”: 0

References to “freedom”: 21

References to “exit strategy”: 0

References to “Saddam Hussein”: 2

References to “Osama Bin Laden”: 2

References to “a mistake”: 1 (setting a timetable for withdrawal)

References to “mission”: 11

References to “mission accomplished”: 0

All the Ideology That's Fit to Print

The New York Times executive editor, Bill Keller, has announced that the paper must get more "diverse", and hire more conservatives and write more about religion.

Can you say, "complete capitulation?" Sad, really.

Billmon breaks it down: The Red State Times

And so we're starting to get reporting like this (taken from the Times Magazine's recent kissy face look at religious conservatives):

But as I learned spending time among the cultural conservatives who are leading the anti-gay-marriage charge, they have their own reasons for doing so, which are based on their reading of the Bible, their views about both homosexuality and the institution of marriage and the political force behind the issue . . . As with abortion, conservatives see gay marriage as a culture-altering change being implemented by judicial fiat.

This is followed by a seemingly endless spew of bigotry and lies -- more than 8,000 words worth -- all dressed up in that Times Voice of the Narrator God prose style. This includes passages such as:

''Lifestyle'' is a buzzword in conservative Christian circles. It's a signal of the belief, and the policy position, that homosexuality is not an innate condition but a hedonistic way of living, one devoted to partying, drugs and wanton sex that ends, often, in illness and early death.

And:

At its essence, then, the Christian conservative thinking about gay marriage runs this way. Homosexuality is not an innate, biological condition but a disease in society. Marriage is the healthy root of society. To put the two together is thus willfully to introduce disease to that root.

And:

Once the definition of marriage is altered, in this view, you will have this group of people declaring they want to marry that group; middle-aged men will exchange vows with children or with Doberman pinschers.

**********

This is shameful reporting, especially coming from a paper that, for all its faults, aggressively and at times courageously covered the civil rights movement -- at a time when most Americans (and not just Southerners) either supported segregation or just wished the issue would go away.

It's as if the New York Times of, say, 1963, had published a long, respectful essay on the racial views of Sheriff Bull Connor and the White Citizens Council, one that relegated Martin Luther King to the second-to-the-last paragraph, but included extended passages along the lines of:

''States Rights'' is a buzzword in conservative Southern circles. It's a signal of the belief, and the policy position, that blacks are slow, stupid and lazy, and want nothing more than to collect welfare payments and rape white women.

Or:

At its essence, then, Southern conservative thinking about race relations runs this way. God intended for the races to be separate. Racial mixing results in miscegenation. Segregation is the root of the Southern way of life and to abolish it would be willfully to introduce disease to that root

.

Echidne of the Snakes: New York Times: The Wingnut Edition

In other words, the Gray Lady is on her knees (take that as you wish). The wingnuts have won. I used to hear the argument that true diversity is not racial and gender based but the acknowledgement of wingnut views (such as that minorities are lazy and women naturally unable to compete) on each and every issue. But I only heard this from wingnuts. Now the New York Times is repeating the same mantra.

There Are Court Orders, and Then There Are Court Orders We Don't Really Care About

Cops Can't Be Sued for Restraining Orders

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police cannot be sued for how they enforce restraining orders, ending a lawsuit by a Colorado woman who claimed police did not do enough to prevent her estranged husband from killing her three young daughters.

Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of the court order against her husband, the court said in a 7-2 opinion.

City governments had feared that if the court ruled the other way, it would unleash a potentially devastating flood of cases that could bankrupt municipal governments.

Gonzales contended that police did not do enough to stop her estranged husband, who took the three daughters from the front yard of her home in June 1999 in violation of a restraining order.

Hours later Simon Gonzales died in a gun fight with officers outside a police station. The bodies of the three girls, ages 10, 9 and 7, were in his truck.

Now, if the Supreme Court issued an order and the U.S. Marshals didn't enforce it, you know there would be hell to pay. But some poor non-lawyer, non-corporation, non-insurance company with a court order? Pound sand.

That's why I always counseled abused women that a restraining order is just a piece of paper. Often it just inflames the situation with the abuser. That becomes the act of defiance for which the abuser wants to punish you. You're better off squirreling away your money & sneaking off to a safe house than getting a court order from a court system that thinks abused women and children don't count. At least the people who run the domestic violence shelter will try to help you.

It was a 7-2 decision. In dissent were John Paul Stevens, the last liberal giant on the court, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only decent appointment Clinton made to the Court. (Stephen Breyer, Clinton's other appointment, voted with Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter against this poor woman's claim. Thirty years ago, instead of being described as a moderate liberal, he would have been a moderate Republican.)

Justice Sheds Ashcroft's Blue Drape

Ashcroft Gone, Justice Statues Disrobe

WASHINGTON -- With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1/2 years.

Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice's ceremonial Great Hall.

The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.

The 12-foot, 6-inch aluminum statues were installed shortly after the building opened in the 1930s.

I wonder if Gonzales has daily Bible Study with his Justice Department minions in his office before work as Ashcroft did?

Kristen Breitweiser's Smackdown of Karl Rove

06.23.2005 Kristen Breitweiser
Karl Rove's "Understanding of 9/11"

the concluding grafs:

Finally Karl, please “understand” that the reason we have not suffered a repeat attack on our homeland is because Bin Laden no longer needs to attack us. Those of us with a pure and comprehensive “understanding of 9/11” know that Bin Laden committed the 9/11 attacks so he could increase recruitment for al Qaeda and increase worldwide hatred of America. That didn't happen. Because after 9/11, the world united with Americans and al Qaeda's recruitment levels never increased.

It was only after your invasion of Iraq, that Bin Laden's goals were met. Because of your war in Iraq two things happened that helped Bin Laden and the terrorists: al Qaeda recruitment soared and the United States is now alienated from and hated by the rest of the world. In effect, what Bin Laden could not achieve by murdering my husband and 3,000 others on 9/11, you handed to him on a silver platter with your invasion of Iraq - a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

Which leads me to my final questions for you Karl: What are your motives when it comes to 9/11 and are you really sure that you understand 9/11?

Rethugs Desperate, Invoking 9/11 For Base Political Purposes Again

Rove is right: there are differences

From the DNC website:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan says that Karl Rove just meant that Democrats and Republicans had "different philosophies" when it comes to their reactions following 9/11. We agree. Our philosophies couldn't be more different when it comes to fighting international terrorism. Let's compare:

Democrats
Believe capturing the person primarily responsible for the attack should be a top priority.

Republicans
It's been four years, and Osama bin Laden is still free, even though Bush's CIA chief says he knows where he is.

Democrats
Investigate the intelligence failures that led to 9/11.

Republicans
Do everything in their power to block the 9/11 Commission from doing its work.

Democrats
Propose creating the Department of Homeland Security.

Republicans
Push tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Democrats
Believe we should have stayed the course in Afghanistan, not allowing the Taliban to resurge, the warlords to take power, and the opium trade to skyrocket.

Republicans
Ignore Afghanistan as the situation worsens.

Democrats
Believe that we should be honest with our troops about the reasons we go to war, give them everything they need to be safe, and make sure we go in with an exit plan.

Republicans
Manipulate intelligence to trump up reasons to go to war, don't give our troops the support they need, constantly mislead the public about the direction the war is going, and fail to make an exit plan. And turn Iraq into the ultimate terrorist training ground.

Glossy Ibis Added to Life List

Tuesday I went birding with my friend L at the Parker River Refuge on Plum Island in Newburyport, Mass. We saw bobolinks, snowy egrets, great egrets, catbirds, swans, a marsh hawk, dozens of fat red wing blackbirds, a common tern, and of course many gulls. Two birds puzzled us, though.

One was a brown bird with a long straight beak. Kind of like a willet but heavier and taller. Still haven't figured out what it was.

We also saw a black bird fly overhead with a distinctive curved beak. It was large -- overhead it appeared to be about two feet long -- and completely black. We looked and looked in our bird books but weren't sure until I looked in my ancient Golden Book of Birds -- a book so old the pages are all completely detached from the binding. It said "appears completely black from a distance". Bingo -- we had seen a glossy ibis.

We decided to go home. In the marsh right next to the road we spotted 5 glossy ibises! We pulled off to check them out. Up close, you could see the rich purple/maroon color of the feathers on the upper back, and how they looked black and glossy on the lower back. The breast was a dark, dark green. L mentioned that they now make binoculars with a built-in camera and I wish we had had one that day. So I am forced to post other people's pictures, which are not quite what we saw.

Here's a great close-up shot of a glossy ibis, albeit one with rare rusty coloring. Another pic, and another.

Let These Christian Hypocrites Hear Your Voice

Woman Fired From Job For Taking Time Off To Spend With Husband On Leave From Iraq

A Jessamine County woman is looking for work after being forced to make a tough decision - take two days to spend time with her husband on leave from Iraq, or lose her job.

Shirley Blankenship thought 10 years of service at McClane Cumberland, a distribution company, was enough to get her a couple of days off to be with her husband David before he returned to Iraq.

"Ever since I worked for them they said we're for family," said Blankenship. "But they wasn't for my family."

Staff sergeant David Blankenship has spent eight years of service in the National Guard, the last six months as a member of the 213th transportation unit out of Paducah.

Shirley said she wanted to take a week off at work while her husband was home. She felt since she had worked there since around the day the company opened ten years ago she could get the time off. But she was told she had used all her allotted vacation and sick time and had to work while David was in town. Blankenship also said she was on a warning for excessive absences - time she says was used over the last few years to care for her epileptic son, Austin.

Finally, Shirley said she decided that, no matter what, she would take the last two days of her husband's visit off. "I even asked to work a double shifts," she said. "You know, came in and worked on a Friday because I don't work on Fridays. Nothing seemed to (work)."

Blankenship was fired Tuesday. She said that while she's upset, she knows in her heart she made the right decision.

"I called from the airport, so my husband knew I had lost my job," said Blankenship. "So he was really upset about it. But he said we can deal with this."

LEX 18 called McClane Cumberland Wednesday to ask them about the decision. They refused to comment, saying it was a personnel matter.

Staff sergeant Blankenship is set to return from Iraq early next year.

Let's call & email these hypocrites to make them reverse this decision.

McLane Cumberland
1040 Baker Lane
Nicholasville, KY 40356
(859) 887-8200
(859) 887-8266 Fax

President of company: mary.piekarski@mclaneco.com

General email: comments@mclaneco.com

And why, do you ask, do I call them Christian hypocrites? Check out their "Beliefs and Values", from their website:

McLane Beliefs and Values
McLane Company has been through many changes since our beginning in Cameron, Texas. One aspect that has not changed, is our Beliefs and Values.

Our founder, Robert McLane, felt deeply that business should be based on Honesty, Integrity, and High Christian Principles. These Beliefs and Values are the principles that guide our relationships with:

Our Customers
Our Teammates
Our Shareholders
Over 100 years later, we continue to honor these principles in all our business relationships

Or "Our People", also from the website:

Our People
People are the cornerstone of McLane Company. We maintain a strong foundation through recruiting and development, effective communications between teammates, and human resource policies designed to meet our teammate's needs.

Additionally, as a learning organization, McLane Company provides an environment where teammate involvement in problem solving and continuous improvement is an important part of every day activities. All of these components build a McLane team with good morale, a strong work ethic, and commitment to customers.

High Christian Principles, my lapsed Catholic ass.

Can You Say Forgery? Fraud? Malfeasance?

The White House’s White-Out Problem

The Bush administration has gotten into the nasty habit of doctoring its reports whenever the facts don’t match its preconceived agenda. Here are some instances of the White House’s magic pen at work:

Cattle Grazing: “The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing relaxed grazing limits on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study…conclusions that the proposed rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less-stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.”

Hog Farming: Nationally respected Agriculture Department microbiologist Dr. Zahn discovered that hog farms were emitting drug-resistant airborne bacteria that “if breathed by humans, would make them harder to treat when ill. Zahn presented his findings at a scientific conference in 2000, but the Bush administration stopped him from publishing his data 11 times between September 2001 and April 2002, he said. When Danish researchers sought to learn more about his work, Zahn wasn’t allowed to share his techniques.”

Climate Change: “A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents…[The] official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.”

Air Quality at Ground Zero: “In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available. That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency’s news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.”

Toxicology of Mercury: “The White House and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) made changes to a report from the National Academy of Sciences on the toxicology of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin that is especially dangerous to pregnant women and young children…White House staff made editorial interventions in the report, which was commissioned by Congress to establish the science on the risks associated with mercury. The White House’s alterations downplayed the risks of mercury, replaced specific enumerations of mercury-related harms with bland, general references, and introduced additional emphasis on uncertainty.”

Effectiveness of Condoms: “The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and USAID have removed or revised fact sheets on condoms, excising information about their effectiveness in disease prevention, and promoting abstinence instead.”

Effects of Oil Drilling on the Arctic Refuge: “Interior Secretary Gale Norton substantially altered biological findings from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concerning effects of oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before she transmitted them to Congress, according to documents released October 19 by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.” In one instance, Norton’s defense was that she “simply made an error in her testimony – saying ‘outside’ when she meant to say ‘inside.’”

Abortion: “The removal from a National Cancer Institute website of a scientific analysis concluding that abortions do not increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer. That move, in November 2002, contradicted the broad medical consensus, and members of Congress protested the change. In response, the NCI updated its website to include the conclusion of a panel of experts that induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.”

HIV/AIDS: “During the latter half of 2002, the Administration began removing scientific information, relating to the spread of HIV, from government websites, including those of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Much of the information that was removed contracted [sic] claims made by the administration’s abstinence-only agenda.”

Cancer: Earlier this year, “EPA’s guidelines acknowledge[d], for the first time, that children under 2 years of age are 10 times more likely to get cancer from certain chemicals than adults who are similarly exposed. But the White House Office of Management and Budget undermined that acknowledgment by inserting language in the guidelines that make it easy for industry to block EPA from following them when assessing cancer-causing chemicals.”

Stem Cell Research: “[The] Bush administration dismissed Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a leading cell biologist, and Dr. William May, a prominent medical ethicist, from the President’s Council on Bioethics…[Blackburn] was removed from the panel soon after she objected to a Council report on stem cell research. In an essay in the April 1, 2004, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Blackburn recounted how the dissenting opinion she submitted, which she believes reflects the scientific consensus in America, was not included in the council’s reports even though she had been told the reports would represent the views of all the council’s members.”

Ground-Water: Vice President Dick Cheney’s old company Halliburton “pioneered” an oil-drilling technique that “can contaminate drinking water supplies with carcinogens and is therefore required by law to be regulated by the EPA.” Halliburton has spent years trying to get the federal government to exempt the technique from environmental regulations.” A senior Environmental Protection Agency recently revealed that “the EPA [initially concluded] that the technique can be dangerous to public health, but then [deleted] the conclusion after Cheney’s office demanded it.” Furthermore, six of the seven EPA panel members who decided that the technique was “safe” had all come from the energy industry.

Not to mention the reduction of the requested tobacco penalty from $130 to $10 billion. Talk about a red pen!

An Article You Will Not See in WaPo or NYTimes

Fatal shooting of teacher illustrates why Iraqis fear U.S. convoys

Knight-Ridder is a good source for both sides of the story on Iraq and elsewhere.

No one knows what Khinaisar saw or thought. She was shot once in the head, and she died five days later, on June 3. She spoke only once during that period, when her husband arrived at the hospital. When she heard him speak, she quietly called out his name: Mohsen.

In the car, the soldiers found only a purse and a Quran on the dashboard. They found no evidence that the 57-year-old teacher was a suicide bomber.

It's not clear how often American soldiers, strangers in a strange land where it's virtually impossible to distinguish friend from foe, mistakenly kill Iraqi civilians. U.S. officials say they keep no statistics, and since last year, the Iraqi Ministry of Health has refused to release the ones it keeps.

At the Iraqi Assistance Center, which pays families for damage caused by American forces, the head of the compensation section said the center receives 1,000 requests a month, but most of them are for property damage. The head of the center, Col. Chester Wernicki of the 353rd Civil Affairs Command from Staten Island, N.Y., said he doesn't keep information on how many claims have been filed for deaths.

Many Iraqis say they understand why U.S. forces must be here: to keep the country intact, protect its fragile new government and stop the violence.

But enough civilians have been killed in one-sided encounters with scared American troops that Baghdadis cower whenever Americans are near. Whenever American troops leave their bases, they say, everyone is vulnerable.

This is the reality in Iraq. We make enemies of those who would support us by sending a too-small, poorly trained force. Not enough troops to make the streets safe. Not enough who speak the language. No intelligence on the opposition. Car bombings kill dozens every day. To compensate, our troops become trigger-happy and shoot people because they don't know who they are or if they can trust them. When in doubt, shoot. So the Bush Administration can hide this truth, they don't keep the statistics on how many innocent Iraqis are killed in this manner.

Clusterfuck.

How to Steal a Presidential Election, Part Deux.

Allegations arose before '04 election
Democrats say Noe case concealed to assist Bush

Here's the scandal:

Officials muffle concerns

The Blade first reported problems with Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation investments on April 3 [2005] in a story revealing that the agency had given $50 million since 1998 to Mr. Noe to create a rare-coin fund.

At the time, he was a Republican appointee to the Ohio Board of Regents and Ohio Turnpike Commission and a major GOP fund-raiser for not only President Bush but for Governor Taft and a host of other top Ohio Republicans.

Three weeks ago, Mr. Noe's attorneys told law enforcement authorities that $10 million to $12 million of the state's rare-coin assets were "unaccounted for."

In a 2000 review of Mr. Noe's coin investment, Keith Elliott, manager of internal audits for the bureau, wrote that the practices of the coin fund "could potentially expose both the BWC and the fund managers to adverse public scrutiny regarding the appropriate use of state funds."

In the year before the election, a number of concerns about the coin fund came to the attention of top state officials, who failed to make them public.

First, in October, 2003, two state-owned coins worth $300,000 were reported stolen in the mail, and then a 2004 audit of the venture's Colorado subsidiary showed that 119 coins worth $93,000 were reported missing.

Mr. Noe never notified Colorado authorities about the missing coins - and information was not made public about the loss until The Blade's stories began.

The allegation today is that Noe lost $215 million from the state fund intended for injured workers.

And the cover-up:

Lucas County, Ohio officials knew of charges that Republican fundraiser Tom Noe was cheating federal election contribution laws in March, 2004, yet conveniently for Bush, the allegations never made it to public view until after the November election.

The county (Republican-controlled, natch) was taking testimony before a grand jury in June of 2004 but never transmitted the information to the feds until three weeks before the election.

Never made it to public view until after the election & the certification of the results.

Neat trick, eh?

Fun with David Brooks

What Makes Bill Frist Run?

Another coup for mainstream journalism, here.

David Brooks writes a column outlining how much he likes the "real" Bill Frist, but how he has strayed from his roots.

This part made me laugh out loud.

....These days he seems not so much the leader of the Senate conservatives, but someone who is playing the role. And because he is behaving in ways that don't seem entirely authentic, he is often trying just a bit too hard, striking the notes more forcefully than they need to be struck.

That is what happened during the Terri Schiavo affair. It's not quite fair to say that Frist diagnosed Schiavo from a TV screen, but he did put himself on the wrong side of the autopsy that came out last week. He did betray his medical training, which is the core of his being, to please a key constituency group.

Of course, he DID diagnose her from a TV screen:

"I have looked at the video footage. Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of the case, she does respond."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
Senate Floor Remarks
March 17, 2005

Which we know definitively was bullshit (most of us knew it was bullshit at that time, but now we have a pathological diagnosis, the medical gold standard):

An exhaustive autopsy found that Terri Schiavo's brain had withered to half the normal size since her collapse in 1990 and that no treatment could have remotely improved her condition, medical examiners said on Wednesday . . . The autopsy also found that the brain deterioration had left her blind.
The New York Times
Schiavo Autopsy Says Brain, Withered, Was Untreatable
June 15, 2005

(via Billmon)

Then I read TBogg, and he had me laughing out loud about this:

Bill Frist: Cheating, two-timing man-slut

David Brooks finds honor in sleeping around on your fiancé:

Bill Frist was his high school's class president. He was a quarterback on the football team and a member of the honor society, and lived amid the upper crust of Nashville society. He dated the head cheerleader, and while he was in med school they were engaged to be married.

But while interning in Boston, he met another woman, spent a dinner and a night with her, and fell in love. Two days before his wedding, he flew back to Nashville and broke off his engagement. "Everyone listened carefully to what I said, all the lame explanations I had that were and were not the truth," Frist later wrote, "and they nodded and dealt with it and I went on my way."

I've always admired that anecdote. It took guts to break off the grand wedding that was in the works - to risk alienating everyone he had grown up with for the sake of the woman he had suddenly come to love. Furthermore here was a Bill Frist who knew his own heart.

.......and makes a man who cheats on his fiancé the Senate Majority Leader.

Bobo's World: Where your wedding is only a dinner and a blow job away from collapsing like a Papier Mâchè submarine.

Not only is Brooks column incredibly lame, it's also recycled from a column he wrote in 2003 for the Weekly Standard, his last MSM outpost. The 2003 piece contains the "Mom motored me around" story, the broken engagement story (if he were a white woman, would the Times have put "Runaway Bride" in the header?), and the same "everyone who knows him loves him" crap.

David Brooks, real (crappy) journalist.

Cindy Sheehan's Testimony on Downing Street Memo

When Dana Milbank, faux journalist, wrote his piece mocking John Conyers' hearing on the Downing Street memos, he ignored what really happened at the event. As a public service from a lowly pajama-wearing blogger, here's what he could have reported, the moving testimony of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in George W. Bush's Gratuitous War in Iraq:

Congressman Conyers and all, it is an honor to be here to testify about the effect that the revelations of the Downing Street Memo has had on me and my family. It is an honor that I wish never had to happen. I believe that not any of us should be gathered here today for this reason: as the result of an invasion/occupation that never should have occured.

My son, Spc Casey Austin Sheehan, was KIA in Sadr City Baghdad on 04/04/04. He was in Iraq for only 2 weeks before L. Paul Bremer inflamed the Shi’ite Militia into a rebellion which resulted in the deaths of Casey and 6 other brave soldiers who were tragically killed in an ambush. Bill Mitchell, the father of Sgt. Mike Mitchell who was one of the other soldiers killed that awful day is with us here. This is a picture of Casey when he was 7 months old. It's an enlargement of a picture he carried in his wallet until the day he was killed. He loved this picture of himself. It was returned to us with his personal effects from Iraq. He always sucked on those two fingers. When he was born, he had a flat face from passing through the birth canal and we called him "Edward G" short for Edward G. Robinson. How many of you have seen your child in his/her premature coffin? It is a shocking and very painful sight. The most heartbreaking aspect of seeing Casey lying in his casket for me, was that his face was flat again because he had no muscle tone. He looked like he did when he was a baby laying in his bassinette. The most tragic irony is that if the Downing Street Memo proves to be true, Casey and thousands of people should still be alive.

I believed before our leaders invaded Iraq in March, 2003, and I am even more convinced now, that this aggression on Iraq was based on a lie of historic proportions and was blatantly unnecessary. The so-called Downing Street Memo dated 23 July, 2003 only confirms what I already suspected: the leadership of this country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on prefabricated and cherry picked intelligence. Iraq was no threat to the United States of America and the devastating sanctions and bombing raids against Iraq were working. As a matter of fact, in interviews in 1999 with respected journalist, and long time Bush family friend, David Herskowitz, then Governor George Bush stated: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.” It looks like George Bush was ready to lead this country into an avoidable war even before he became president.

From the expose of the Downing Street Memo and the conversations with George Bush from 1999, it seems like the invasion of Iraq and the deaths of so many innocent people were preordained. It appears that my boy Casey was given a death sentence even before he joined the Army in May of 2000.

When a President lies to Congress and the American people, it is a serious offense. If the Downing Street Memo proves to be true, then it would appear that the president, vice president and many members of the cabinet deceived the world before the invasion of Iraq. As the result of this alleged lie, over 1700 brave young Americans who were only trying to do their duties have come home in flag draped coffins: images, as if they were ashamed of our children, our leaders won’t even let the American people see; thousands upon thousands of Iraqis who were guilty only of the crime of living in Iraq are dead; thousands of our young people will go through the rest of their lives missing one or more limbs, and too many will come home missing parts of their souls and humanity.

Kevin Lucey who found his Marine son, Jeffrey, who was recently home from Iraq, hanging dead from a garden hose in his basement wrote to me:

We ask daily where was the urgency; where was the necessity of rushing in. Can anyone explain to us, his mother and to his father as to why he felt that he had to die by his own hand. Why are the ones in position of power so afraid to ask people like us to discuss what happened to Jeff? Jeff can teach us so much. This war was so misguided and had so many other agendas which had nothing to do with the country.
Kevin, who cradled his son when he was his sweet baby boy, cradled Jeff's lifeless body for the last time in his arms after he cut him down from the hose. The Jeff that the Lucey's saw march off to a wreckless war was not the one who limped home. The Jeff his family knew died in Iraq, murdered by the inhumanity of gratutitous war.

The deceptions and betrayals that led to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq cost my family a price too dear to pay and almost too much to bear: the precious and young life of Casey. Casey was a good soldier who loved his family, his community, his country, and his God. He was trustworthy and trusting and the leadership of his country seemingly betrayed him. He was an indispensable part of our family. An obedient, sweet, funny, and loving son to myself and his father, Pat, and an adored big brother to his sisters, Carly and Jane, and his brother Andy. And the beloved nephew to my sister, Auntie, who is here with me today. Our family has been devastated and torn asunder by his murder.

I believe that the reasons that we citizens of the United States of America were given for the invasion of Iraq have unequivocally been proven to be false. I also believe that Casey and his buddies have been killed to line the pockets of already wealthy people and to feed the insatiable war machine that has always devoured our young. Casey died saving his buddies and I know so many of our brave young soldiers died doing the same thing: but he and his fellow members of the military should never have been sent to Iraq. I know the family of Sgt. Sherwood Baker, who was killed guarding a team that was looking for the mythic WMD's in Baghdad. The same WMD's that were the justification for invading Iraq as outlined in the Downing Street Memo. Sherwood's brother, Dante Zappala, and his dad, Al Zappala are here with us today. I believe the Downing Street Memo proves that our leaders betrayed too many innocents into an early grave. The lives of the ones left behind are shattered almost beyond repair.

I also believe an investigation into the Downing Street Memo is completely warranted and the necessary first step into righting the wrong that is Iraq and holding someone accountable for the needless, senseless, and avoidable deaths of many thousands. As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter if one is a Democrat or a Republican, a full investigation into the veracity of the Downing Street Memo must be initiated immediately. Casey was not asked his political affiliation before he was sent to die in Iraq. The innocent people who are having their blood shed by the bucketsful in Iraq don’t even know or care what American partisan politicking is all about. Every minute that we waste in gathering signatures on petitions, or arguing about partisan politics, more blood is being spilled in Iraq. How many more families here in America are going to get the visit from the Grim Reaper dressed in a US military uniform while we are trying to get our Congressional Leadership to do their duties to the Constitution and to the people of America? I believe that Congress expediently abrogated their Constitutional responsibility to declare war when they passed the War Power's Act, and they bear at least some responsibility for the needless heartache wrought on this world by our government. I believe that supporting a full investigation into the Downing Street Memo is a good beginning for Congress to redeem itself for abandoning the Constitution and the American people.

There are too many stories of heartache and loss to tell at a hearing like this. I have brought testimonies of other families who have been devastated by the war. Their soldiers' names are: Sgt. Sherwood Baker, KIA 04/26/04; 1st Lt. Neil Santoriello, KIA 08/13/04; Sgt Mike Mitchell, KIA 04/04/04; Spc Casey Sheehan, also KIA 04/04/04; Lt. Jeff Kaylor, KIA 04/07/03; Spc Kevin S.K. Wessell, KIA 04/19/05; Spc. Jonathan Castro, KIA 12/21/04; PFC William Prichard, KIA 02/11/04; Spc Joseph Blickenstaff, KIA 12/08/03, and 1st Lt Kenneth Ballard, KIA 05/30/04. I would like to have the testimonies put into the record and recorded for all to read the words of boundless love, bottomless loss, and deep despair.

There are a few people around the US and a couple of my fellow witnesses who were a little justifiably worried that in my anger and anguish over Casey's premeditated death, I would use some swear words, as I have been known to do on occasion when speaking about the subject. Mr. Conyers, out of my deep respect for you, the other representatives here, my fellow witnesses, and viewers of these historic proceedings, I was able to make it through an entire testimony without using any profanity. However, If anyone deserves to be angry and use profanity, it is I. What happened to Casey and humanity because of the apparent dearth of honesty in our country's leadership is so profane that it defies even my vocabulary skills. We as Americans should be offended more by the profanity of the actions of this administration then by swear words. We have all heard the old adage that actions speak louder than words and for the sake of Casey and our other precious children, please hold someone accountable for their actions and their words of deception.

Again, I would like to thank you for inviting me to testify today and giving me a chance to tell my story, which is the tragic story of too many familes here in the US and in Iraq. I hope and pray that this is the first step in exposing the lies to the light and bringing justice for the ones who can no longer speak for themselves. More importantly, I hope this is a step in bringing our other children home from the lie of historic proportions that is Iraq. Thank you.