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How Fiting

Compare this

U.S. intelligence officials on Friday said Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council with ties to senior Pentagon officials, gave intelligence secrets to Iran so closely held in the U.S. government that only "a handful" of senior officials know them.

with this.

As he readies a prime-time speech Monday to try to repair public support for his Iraq policies, President Bush took a philosophical turn Friday, advising college graduates to "choose your friends carefully."

...On the job and elsewhere in life, choose your friends carefully," the president advised after receiving an honorary doctor of science degree. " In my job, I got to pick just about everybody I work with. I've been happy with my choices -- although I wish The company you keep has a way of rubbing off on you, and that can be a good thing, or a bad thing.someone had warned me about all of Dick Cheney's wild partying."

Yeah. On another note, we've got to listen to another prime time speech from Bush on Iraq? Oh joy.

One Way To Do It

Heh.

BELOIT, Wis. -- Strip club owners are putting a little bada-bing in the presidential campaign by asking patrons to turn their eyes away from the stage for a moment to fill out a voter registration form -- and then vote against President Bush.

''It's not to say our industry loves John Kerry or anything like that,'' said Dave Manack, associate publisher of E.D. Publications, which publishes Exotic Dancer magazine. ''But George Bush, if he's re-elected, it could be very damaging to our industry.''

Fearful that conservatives might turn off the colored lights for good, a trade organization for adult nightclubs is asking owners to register customers and employees and then encourage them to cast their ballots against the president. Micheal Ocello, president of the Association of Club Executives, said the group believes the president's brand of conservatism is bad for business.

UPDATE: Charles actually got to this earlier. Glad to see he's keeping, ahem, abreast of the situation as well.

Flashback

In light of stories on the current, ballooning, debt-enhancing budget that the Bush Administration is trying to get passed, I thought it would be fun to take a look into the past. The 1994 Republican Contract With America helped Newt Gingrich and his cronies take back the House for the GOP. It was this contract that directly affects politics today. The GOP made promises to get important bills passed that would help further their conservative cause. Let's take a look at number one on the list.

1. THE FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT

A balanced budget/tax limitation amendment and a legislative line-item veto to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress, requiring them to live under the same budget constraints as families and businesses.

This is number one on the contract because it used to be the most important thing to conservatives. Now they just spend money like drunken sailors, ensuring that Social Security and Medicare will go bankrupt in the future. This is what Evan Press surmises in his piece in The Nation.

Of course, there's a more cynical way to interpret the Administration's tax-cutting agenda: Punching holes in the budget is a good thing, since it will eventually force Congress to begin slashing federal programs (Social Security, Medicare) that are politically untouchable right now. This is the long-term vision of people like Grover Norquist, who believes Republicans can begin "starving the beast" (the federal government) once they lock in a majority in the House and Senate and cement their control over a one-party state.

But alas, I digress. Let's take a look at number eight on the Republicans' Most Wanted.

8. THE JOB CREATION AND WAGE ENHANCEMENT ACT

Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages.

Well, we're weaker on jobs and there hasn't been a wage enhancement since 1997. All Congressional Republicans might want to dust of their copies of the Contract With America, because they seem to have forgotten what it says.

Questioning The Boss

Looks like the budget won't get passed easily after all. Last night I read a piece in the last issue of The Nation about how real conservatives aren't happy with Bush's fiscal policies. I'm shocked that more Republican Senators aren't voicing their opinions.

Unable to a squelch a six-week mutiny over President Bush's tax-cutting agenda, Senate Republican leaders on Thursday conceded that they could not muster enough votes to pass a $2.4 trillion budget plan and abruptly postponed a vote until at least next month.

"It's premature to bring it to a vote tonight," said Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, after spending much of the day trying to persuade a handful of centrist Republicans to abandon their insistence that any new tax cuts be paid for with either spending cuts or tax increases.

It's a real shocker when Republicans have to resort to demanding tax increases to pay for tax cuts. The issue is simple, really. You cannot increase entitlement programs, spend money on Iraq like it's going out of style, and continue to cut taxes at the same time. But, as Dick Cheney says, "deficits don't matter." Thanks, Dick. And my grandkids will thank you, too.

The Hot Summer Ahead

Could the suicide bombers be coming?

The FBI is warning law enforcement agencies to be on the alert for the possibility that suicide bombers may attempt to strike inside the United States. A lightly classified intelligence bulletin circulated Thursday to 18,000 U.S. law enforcement bodies is headlined "Possible suicide bomber indicators," and was distributed via the Bureau’s secure Law Enforcement Online (LEO) Intranet. It warns local badge-carriers to look for obvious signs of trouble — people wearing heavy, bulky jackets on warm days, smelling of chemicals, trailing wires from their jackets — as well, more subtle ones, such as tightly clenched fists. Someone who never shows his palms could be gripping a detonator rigged to go off when a button is released. "If you shoot him, you ' re still not safe because his hands relax and the bomb explodes," says a counter-terrorism official.

The FBI bulletin also notes that suicide bombers may disguise themselves in stolen military, police or firefighter's garb, or even as pregnant women.

FBI sources say there's no hard intelligence warning of specific plans by terrorists to launch suicide attacks here like those wreaking havoc in Israel and Iraq. But, says one official, the circular was prompted by "a renewed concern" that fury at the U.S. for its occupation of Iraq or its support of Israel could move some extremists to attempt to bring the war to the American homeland. "At the end the day, it's probably one of the simplest forms of attack, and it's one of the hardest to detect," says one counter-terror veteran.

In fact, U.S. analysts are at a loss to explain why the homeland has thus far escaped such attacks, since a number of extremist groups, particularly Hamas, have a sizeable presence here. One factor, officials say, is that terror leaders still regard America as a cash cow, and don't want to antagonize moderate Muslim donors. Another reason, says one specialist, may simply be that while there seems to be an endless supply of fanatical youths willing to die for the cause in the Middle East, most of them simply can't get visas to the U.S.

Glad to see that big money donors are problems for extremists as well.

Huh?

Are we in bizarro world now?

Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi said his relations with the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority were "non-existent" after an overnight raid against his house.

"My relationship with the CPA now is non-existent ..." he told reporters after claiming a firefight had narrowly been avoided between his guards and US-backed Iraqi police during the raid.

"I am America's best friend in Iraq; if the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."

The former Pentagon favourite also called on US President George W. Bush to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqi people without delay.

"My message to the CPA is let my people go, let my people be free. We are grateful to President Bush for liberating Iraq but it is time for the Iraqi people to run their affairs," he told a press conference.

This has got to be one of the strangest stories we've seen in awhile.

The Morning After

Oh shit, what did I do?

Mitchell Blaser claims he got a financial stripping -- at a topless club. He's suing after more than $28,000 was charged to his American Express card at Scores in New York City. But a Scores spokesman maintains the charges are legit -- saying Blaser was spending like a rock star.

Blaser is an insurance company CFO.

According to the club, Blaser's charges included $17,000 of the most expensive champagne they sell -- and another seven-grand for lap dances and other drinks. The club claims employees checked with Amex several times during the night in question, to see if Blaser's credit line permitted the spending spree.

Blaser says he had complained about an inflated eight-thousand dollar tab at the club -- and only found about the 28-thousand in charges when he called American Express the next day.

To Be Or Not To Be

Robert Novak let's the cat out of the bag and tells us that Bush might not be a real conservative. Then his column implodes by telling us to vote for Bush anyway.

During George W. Bush's keynote address to the 40th anniversary black-tie banquet of the American Conservative Union (ACU) last week, diners rose repeatedly to applaud the president's remarks. But one man kept his seat through the 40-minute oration. It was no liberal interloper but conservative stalwart Donald Devine.

...The conventional wisdom portrays the latest Zogby Poll's 81 percent of Republican voters committed to Bush as reflecting extraordinary loyalty to the president by the GOP base. Actually, when nearly one out of five Republicans cannot flatly say they support Bush, that could spell defeat in a closely contested election. When Don Devine is among those one out of five, it signifies that the president's record does not please all conservatives.

...What most bothers Devine and other conservatives is steady growth of government under this Republican president. If Devine's purpose in devoting his life to politics was to limit government's reach, he feels betrayed that Bush has outstripped his liberal predecessors in domestic spending. A study by Brian Riedl for the conservative Heritage Foundation last December showed government spending had exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II. Riedl called it a "colossal expansion of the federal government since 1998."

Curbing this expansion surely has not been on the top of Bush's agenda for much of his time in the White House. Until recently, when a presidential political aide heard conservative complaints about runaway spending, he predictably would point to the partial-birth abortion ban and tax cuts rather than address the grievance. In the last few months, the president's men have talked a better game about spending. Nevertheless, it is too late to satisfy Republicans such as Devine who care deeply about governmental growth.

...Bush's saving grace for the 2004 election may be John Kerry. In the end, I am sure Don Devine will cast his ballot for George W. Bush, if only because the alternative is noxious. How many of the rest of that 19 percent of non-Bush voting Republicans in the Zogby Poll will fall in line may determine the outcome Nov. 2. That is the importance of Devine's little sit-down strike.

I'll wager that the percentage of Republicans who don't like Bush will grow over the next few months. Just wait until all the scandals seem to break at once.

You've Got To Read This

Daniel, via Ezra, point us to the most scathing attack on President Bush yet.

Read it.

The Compassion Of Romney

How can a state that gave us Kennedy and Kerry have a guy like Mitt Romney at the helm?

Gov. Mitt Romney may "end-run'' the Attorney General's Office and prosecute out-of-state gay married couples on his own, according to municipal officials.

An obscure statute empowers the Registrar of Vital Statistics, under supervision of the Commissioner of Public Health, to prosecute violations in the marriage laws - including a 1913 law that prohibits couples from marrying here if their home states do not allow it.

"Our solicitor was told by the governor's office that the registrar could actually enforce the marriage laws,'' said Mark Horan, spokesman for Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone.

You've gotta love the tolerance and compassion.

How The Mighty Have Fallen

It's amazing how quickly the relationship with Chalabi deteriorated over the last few weeks. This is a breaking story from CNN.com.

U.S. military personnel and Iraqi police have raided the compound of the Iraqi National Congress and the nearby home of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi.

Chalabi's nephew, Salim Chalabi, said the forces entered his uncle's home, put a gun to Chalabi's head and threatened him.

Hopefully we'll get some details over the course of the day. It's always been a wonder to me how our government trusted Chalabi so much. Looks like this is another error in judgment.

Breakin' The Law, Breakin' The Law

File under forgone conclusion.

The General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Thursday that the Bush administration had violated federal law by producing and disseminating television news segments that portray the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.

The agency said the videos were a form of "covert propaganda" because the government was not identified as the source of the materials, broadcast by at least 40 television stations in 33 markets. The agency also expressed some concern about the content of the videos, but based its ruling on the lack of disclosure.

...The accounting office said the administration's misuse of federal money "also constitutes a violation of the Antideficiency Act," which prohibits spending in excess of appropriations. Under the law, the secretary of health and human services, Tommy G. Thompson, must report the violation to Congress and the president, with "a statement of actions taken" to prevent a recurrence.

This doesn't surprise me in the least. It just really pisses me off. Can we do something about using the Treasury Department to disseminate propaganda next? More of the same. Can't we just get into our time machines and punch in 11/2/2004 already?

Read Josh

He lays a scathing attack on William Safire.

Conservatives hunting for media-bias in the Times often pick on its more liberal columnists. In fact, if there's bias to be found, it's in Safire. Only lack of interest and respect for conservative opinion can fully explain Safire's continued presence on the page.

Don't Try Too Hard

I'm not so sure about this strategy. Most informed (I stress informed) people understand that a lot of variables go into the price of gas. But it's an election year, so let the games begin.

So far, the American public isn't blaming President Bush for steadily spiraling gasoline prices. The global oil- producing cartel is the bad guy, in the eyes of most Americans. But in an election year, hot issues usually feed into voter decision making. Democrats are working overtime to make sure $2-plus-per-gallon gas works to their advantage. Republicans are pedaling furiously to keep the blame at bay.

...For Democrats, the goal is to get Americans to turn their sights away from OPEC and see rising gas prices in the larger context of economic anxiety. Even with some economic indicators, such as job creation, on the upswing, Democrats are telling voters they're still losing ground, because of higher healthcare, college, and fuel costs.

Just as President Bush knows, tying yourself too close to something volatile can come back to bite you in the ass. (Iraq) So if the Dems succeed in tying Bush to the cost of gasoline, and prices lower before November, then he'll come out looking like a winner on this issue. Of course, we'll still have Iraq. And that's a whole other barrel of monkeys for Bush.

MySQL Fixed

For those of you who care, I seem to have fixed the problem. Last night I was attempting to import entries from another installation of MT to the one that I use to administer Nosey Online. Things got screwed up during the import, plus I made a few mistakes. So after last night the numbering for all my individual index pages was waaay off. I tried to fix it but the numbers were still skewed. The biggest problem was that everyone who had linked to an individual post in the past would find that link to be dead today.

I figured out a way to get into the MySQL database, delete all the entries, and start over. I had to create 2 test pages and delete them just to get the numbering correct again. So as of right now, I think all the inbound links should be pointing to the correct pages. If you find one that's still broken, I apologize. Anyway, thanks to Charles Kuffner for the help. (I deleted that original call for help post and didn't do a backup before I did. All the other posts were backed up, thank God.)

Freeing The Nominees

At least this will no longer be a campaign issue in the fall.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday freed dozens of President Bush's judicial nominees from confirmation limbo after reaching an agreement that will prevent the White House from bypassing objections to its most contentious choices.

Under the deal, Democrats will allow votes on 25 noncontroversial appointments to the district and appeals courts that they have been holding up for months. In exchange, Bush agreed not to invoke his constitutional power to make recess appointments while Congress is away, as he has done twice in recent months with judicial nominees.

The deal lasts until a second Bush presidency begins or a new president takes office, officials said. The agreement was struck days before the Senate began its Memorial Day recess.

So this is now a moot point. Bush gets his nominees and Dems get a promise. One thing in the article gives me pause. Throughout all of the hullabaloo, listening to the GOP scream and rant about the Dems being unfair, all the news seemed to indicate that none of Bush's nominees were getting appointed. I knew that to be false, but I didn't realize just how many did get confirmed.

After the 25th judge is confirmed, the Senate will have put 198 of Bush's nominees on the federal trial and appeals courts, senators said.

Democrats have used the threat of a filibuster to block Senate confirmation of six U.S. Appeals Court nominees: Pickering, Pryor, Texas judge Priscilla Owen, Latino lawyer Miguel Estrada and California judges Carolyn Kuhl and Janice Rogers Brown.

So before the agreement, the Senate confirmed 173 appointees. And the GOP was pissed off about the filibuster threat against six nominees? They made it seem that the Democratic Senators refused to get anything done. This is what happens when balance in government ceases to exist.

The Death State

Way to go Texas! (This one's for you Charles)

A mentally ill man convicted of killing two people in 1992 was executed by lethal injection in Texas late yesterday after Governor Rick Perry rejected a state parole board recommendation of mercy, the Associated Press said.

Kelsey Patterson, 50, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, maintained his innocence, AP reported. "Give me my life back,'' he said in his final words.

The board voted 5-1 yesterday to recommend that Patterson's sentence be reduced to life in prison for the murders near Dallas, AP reported. The vote marks the first time such a request has been made the day before a scheduled execution since the death penalty was reintroduced in Texas in 1982, AP said. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to spare Patterson.

Let's keep executing kids too, while we're at it.

No Kidding

This one a surprise to anybody?

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of the Iraq war, said yesterday that the Pentagon underestimated its enemy, failing to predict how resilient Saddam Hussein and his government would be.

In a rare admission of prewar miscalculations, Wolfowitz also said it's impossible to say how long a large American military force will have to stay in Iraq after political power is handed to Iraqis on June 30.

...Answering a question about miscalculations made to date in the year-old campaign, Wolfowitz said: "I would say of all the things that were underestimated, the one that almost no one that I know of predicted . . . was to properly estimate the resilience of the regime that had abused this country for 35 years."

Wolfowitz said he doesn't know how long a large US military force will have to stay in Iraq after power has been handed back to the people there. "The next year or year and a half will be so critical; that is the time it will take to stand up Iraqi security" forces that are fully trained, equipped, and organized and to elect a government to take over from the interim group that will assume power on June 30, Wolfowitz said.

Arrogance begat stupidity. The whole notion of "a smaller, faster, deadlier" fighting force is being proven wrong day by day. By stating that "it's impossible to say how long a large American military force will have to stay in Iraq after political power is handed to Iraqis on June 30," they've pretty much admitted that we'll be there indefinitely. And the June 30th thing is largely ceremonial. When kids continue to die over there, will it make a difference who's in charge?

Conversations

I wonder how the discussion will go.

Ralph Nader and John Kerry are set to meet today -- but there's little sign this year's political dynamic will change.

Nader is making it clear that he does not intend to withdraw from the presidential race. And aides to Kerry say the Democrat won't ask him to do so.

...Aides say Kerry is likely to make the case that the two should work together to beat President Bush.

Probably something like this.

KERRY: Get out of the race, jerkoff!

NADER: I can't sir. I'm an egomaniac.

Fun With Pictures

Thanks to my brother Brendan for pointing out this picture from CNN.com today.

UPDATE: Dave Johnson at Seeing The Forest actually took a picture of this sign himself. He lives nearby and had it posted before CNN did. So credit should go to him.

Lack Of Links

Tgirsch over at Lean Left is wondering if they've been controversial enough lately. So in your quest to get links, Tgirsch, I offer you this comment:

Just call NASCAR the most boring professional "sport." That'll be controversial enough for all the NASCAR dads. All of whom, I'm sure, read your blog.

Worse Than Watergate?

Fred Kaplan's piece has been blogged all over the place, so I don't mean to be redundant. There are just a few grafs I want to talk about. Kaplan cites two pieces you need to read first, however. Seymour Hersh's article in The New Yorker and a piece in Newsweek. (emphasis added)

The White House is about to get hit by the biggest tsunami since the Iran-Contra affair, maybe since Watergate. President George W. Bush is trapped inside the compound, immobilized by his own stay-the-course campaign strategy. Can he escape the massive tidal waves? Maybe. But at this point, it's not clear how.

...Read together, the magazine articles spell out an elaborate, all-inclusive chain of command in this scandal. Bush knew about it. Rumsfeld ordered it. His undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Steven Cambone, administered it. Cambone's deputy, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, instructed Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had been executing the program involving al-Qaida suspects at Guantanamo, to go do the same at Abu Ghraib. Miller told Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the 800th Military Brigade, that the prison would now be dedicated to gathering intelligence. Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, also seems to have had a hand in this sequence, as did William Haynes, the Pentagon's general counsel. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, learned about the improper interrogations—from the International Committee of the Red Cross, if not from anyone else—but said or did nothing about it for two months, until it was clear that photographs were coming out. Meanwhile, those involved in the interrogations included officers from military intelligence, the CIA, and private contractors, as well as the mysterious figures from the Pentagon's secret operation.

...What is Bush to do? There's not much he can do. Many, including loyal Republicans worried about the election, are urging him to fire Rumsfeld. But that move probably wouldn't stop the investigations. In fact, the confirmation hearings for Rummy's replacement would serve as yet another forum for all the questions—about Abu Ghraib, the war in Iraq, and military policy generally—that the administration is trying to stave off. More than that, Bush has said repeatedly that he won't get rid of Rumsfeld. If he did, especially if he did so under political pressure, he would undermine his most appealing campaign slogan—that he stays the course, doesn't buckle, says what he means and does what he says.

It's the last sentence above that outlines what I believe to be the downfall of the administration. The inability to accept responsibility for mistakes and to move forward after correcting them. Keeping alive the image of "a leader who stays the course" is more important that getting things done right. Bush's first (and hopefully last) term in office has been marked by the strategic daily push to get reelected. It is this focused determination that has given us the scandal at Abu Ghraib. In the end, responsiblity will be laid at the feet of those who failed to take their blinders off and see the big picture.

A Cold Stiff Breeze

It's been a week or two, so it's time for the latest round of military draft talk. This discussion is timely considering the main story line in last night's Las Vegas season finale centered on Danny McCoy getting called up for war. Danny was on Inactive Reserves. Nick Confessore at TAPPED provides the ammo. (Via Atrios)

IT'S DRAFTY IN HERE. A friend of mine who is currently an inactive Army reservist forwarded me some memos he received regarding future mobilizations -- memos that indicate that we are not far from some kind of conscription in the next few years. According to my friend, recruiters are telling inactive reservists that they're going to be called up one way or another eventually, so they might as well sign up now and get into non-Iraq-deploying units while they still can. There's also a "warning order" -- i.e., a heads-up -- from the Army's personnel command that talks about the involuntary transfer of inactive reservists to the active reserves, and thus into units that are on deck for the next few Iraq rotations. My understanding of how reserve call-ups work is imperfect, but if memory serves, the inactive reservists -- known as the Individual Ready Reserve -- are people who have already fulfilled their term of enlistment but can be called up as individuals if the military needs their particular skills or specialty badly enough. In other words, after a couple of years of dipping into the main reserves -- essentially chewing through them to sustain post-9/11 deployments, the Afghanistan occupation, and then the Iraq invasion -- we're now dipping into the inactive reserves. And if we still need more manpower after that -- well, then we start drafting.

There is no question we do not have enough manpower (among other things) in the active-duty military to sustain our current "operations tempo," as the military wonks call it. And there are many good arguments to be made for reinstating the draft, albeit one that would look very different from the corrupt and unfair Vietnam-era draft. It's worth thinking now about what kind of draft we'd like to see if the need for one becomes inavoidable.

Moving forward on discussions regarding the draft is impossible during an election year. If all this about calling up the Inactive Reserves turns out to be true, then the draft can't be too far behind. A draft would provide needed troops. So until a draft can be implemented, they will look into every other way possible to get more soldiers.

This Has Got To Stop

Citing bits of text from this piece doesn't do Rick Perlstein any justice. But here's a winner. (Via Atrios)

"Everything that you're discussing is information you're not supposed to have," barked Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed by Upton and obtained by the Voice.

The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be "the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital," the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and David's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth.

There's really nothing to say. Evangelical Chirstians directly influencing US policy on the Middle East. Ugh. Just read the whole piece. It'll make your head spin.

The More You Know

Thomas has a great essay on why oil sucks.

But this president does not claim a "Republican stance" on oil. A lot of Republicans want us to sever all our ties to the Middle East, period. The parties that President Bush represents on this issue are the oil companies and the Saudi royal family. That's not some conspiracy theory, either. It just plain fact. The administration has done nothing to hide this. Worse, they have tapped into a misguided, populist sentiment in this country that cheap gas is a birthright and that war to secure the oil supply is justified, even if it means turning billions of people against us.

And don't tell me that gas is still cheap. I know that. Don't tell me about the Toyota Prius or that wind farm out in Colorado. I know we are developing new technologies. But we need more than that. We need leaders who tell it to us straight, leaders who level with us about the mess we are in and the monstrous task we face. Every time another American soldier or Iraqi civilian gets blown up, it's another death that could have been avoided had we not been so greedy, so ignorant, so naive about oil. THAT is the issue and I want to start hearing other people getting angry about this.