Read this terrific speech by Al Gore, courtesy of Atrios.

{ 2:29 PM }

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Cheney and Chalabi, sittin' in a tree.... It's time we recognized that the future vice president (and then-CEO of Halliburton) spent the Clinton years making his war plans by attending barbecues and golfing with an embezzler and an Iranian spy.

{ 8:02 AM }

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Perdition accomplished. The Bush administration's invasion of Iraq has at last earned its "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Unfortunately, it was Osama bin Laden's mission they accomplished (BBC):

The occupation of Iraq has helped al-Qaeda recruit more members, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The influential group's annual report says the network has reconstituted itself after losing its Afghan base.

It adds that Osama Bin Laden's followers have set their sights on attacking the US and its close allies.

They would ideally like future operations to make use of weapons of mass destruction, it reports.

The institute quotes conservative intelligence estimates as saying that the group has 18,000 potential operatives and is present in more than 60 countries.

Meanwhile, we spent $200 billion to flush a WMD-free Saddam Hussein from a hole in the ground.

Here's a prayer for anyone in an American skyscraper: "Jesus, please protect us from your followers."

{ 1:51 PM }

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Unenlisted sisters. A regular reader emails to inform us that the Bush twins have plans other than defending the United States against Iraq's WMD (Newsweek):

Now that the first Daughters have graduated from college (Barbara from Yale and Jenna from the University of Texas), what's next? First up: a taste of the spotlight. The two have already sat for an interview and photo shoot for Vogue—the first of many interviews they'll do this summer. Then, after a European vacation with friends, the twins will return to Washington to work for Dad. They have their choice of jobs: pitching in at the suburban Virginia HQ, helping at a field office or perhaps hitting the campaign trail. The president is elated about their deciding to join the family business, but are the Bushes nervous about the increased scrutiny of their daughters? "You bet," says one White House official.

Why weren't 788 American soldiers asked to do a photo shoot for Vogue? Oh, right, it's because they're dead.

{ 4:12 PM }

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The Chalabi-Miller Axis of Evil. Now that Chalabi is being vilified, it's time to get Judith Miller and her editors at the New York Times too (Editor & Publisher):

...one must painfully recall the now famous May 1, 2003, e-mail to the paper's Baghdad Bureau Chief John Burns from star Times reporter in Iraq, Judith Miller, who wrote: "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper. ... He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper."

Oh, how quickly the Times forgets its friends, Chalabi must be thinking today.

Describing Chalabi, Sanger wrote today: "He became a master of the art of the leak, giving new currency to the suspicions about Mr. Hussein's weapons." Leaks? Who was his favored drop? Miller of the Times, although there were many others.

And in today's Times editorial: "Before the war, Ahmad Chalabi told Washington hawks exactly what they wanted to hear about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction ... Much of the information Mr. Chalabi had produced was dead wrong. He was one of the chief cheerleaders for the theory that Iraq had vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction. ... But he can't be made a scapegoat.

"The Bush administration should have known what it was doing when it gave enormous credence to a questionable character whose own self-interest was totally invested in getting the Americans to invade Iraq. ..."

Left unsaid is that the Times should have known better, as well. Yet, incredibly, the paper of record has never run a corrective editor's note to clean up the mess that Miller made for the Times' integrity.

Link via the indispensable Cursor.

{ 9:35 AM }

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Minute motorcade. After that scary assassination attempt by his bicycle, Potus is taking no more chances. (Dana Milbank/WaPo via Wonkette):

Potus motorcade departed Private Residence No. 1 at about 4:57 edt and arrived at Private Residence No. 2 at about 4:58 e.d.t., traveling a total distance of about 200 yards.

Here's a photo of bicycle-related abrasions on the face and hand of Potus the peripatetic pussy, also courtesy of Wonkette.

{ 8:20 AM }

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Q: What changed you?

A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed. [Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey]

{ 8:48 AM }

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The Berg mystery, redux. In response to this post about Nick Berg, Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog alerts me via email to the growth industry in alternative theories about Berg's demise.

The chain starts with this post by Soj at Daily Kos, a lengthy and thorough introduction to the mystery that was Nick Berg, particularly with respect to his relationship with Aziz Taee.

Following this are the speculations about Berg's chair (this detail about the coincidence of a mass-produced, ubiquitous item never impressed me), and CNN's agreement with the conspiracy theorists that the Jordanian Zarqawi doesn't sound Jordanian, according to Octavia Nadr, CNN Sr. Editor for Arab Affairs.

But the slippery slope of suspicions leads us to this all-Berg blog, authored by Soj, the Daily Kos poster mentioned above, where we can find out reams of information about connections between Berg and Zacharias Moussaoui, and many other incredible details.

And now The Agonist, who agrees the whole case is "very shadowy," informs us from an Iranian website that Berg was a CIA special agent who sought to make contacts with key Al-Qaeda leadership circles before he was uncovered by Al-Zarqawi.

Confession: I have not seen the video. I don't like violent movies and the purported reality behind violent propaganda is even more difficult to stomach.

But most difficult to stomach is the uncertainty of not knowing whose propaganda the Berg video is. The numerous inconsistencies and illogical aspects of the video (Why does a self-identified man wear a mask? Why are the timelines so screwy? Doesn't the real Zarqawi wear a prosthesis? Why are the masked men so damn fat?), combined with the fact that the political value and timing of the video was much more beneficial to the Bush administration than to any other party, makes the whole thing a big, sickening, persistent question mark.

{ 2:19 PM }

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Hallibacon. Those wacky protesters are at it again (Houston Chronicle):

Halliburton's shareholder meeting on Wednesday attracted more than 300 protesters, including a jazz combo, women dressed in pink and a 25-foot inflatable pig.

[...]

Some protesters, however, did manage to get inside the hotel to do more than talk.

Five slipped past front-door security at the luxury hotel 20 minutes before the meeting and shackled themselves to brass banisters in front of the security checkpoint on the third floor.

The four men and women chanted: "Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown and Root — go to Iraq to loot, loot, loot." They also shouted, "Oil is not worth human blood" before covering themselves in fake blood made out of corn syrup and red dye.

[...]

The five included Andrea Buffa, who was credited by many of the protesters outside as the main organizer of the demonstrations. She recruited the local activists who went to jail, secured the delivery of the inflatable pig, dubbed Hallibacon, for the occasion and scouted out the Four Seasons for a room above its front door.

Her colleague Jodie Evans rented the room for $355 so 15 minutes before the meeting she could unfurl a 10-foot-by-30-foot pink banner out a narrow window that read, "Cheney's in bed with Halliburton, but we got screwed."

[...]

After the meeting, [Halliburton chairman, president and CEO Dave] Lesar spent about 10 minutes answering shareholder questions.

One of the first ones asked was how many Halliburton workers have been killed or wounded in Iraq.

Lesar said 35 workers, most of them truck drivers, have been killed in the war zone. He did not know how many employees suffered injuries, but estimated 100 had.

[...]

More than an hour after the shareholder meeting adjourned, activists continued to chant, pass out fake $100 bills with Cheney's face on them, play their instruments and dance.

Interesting that the CEO had a rough idea of how many expendable truck drivers had been lost, but "did not know" how many Halliburton employees had been injured.

The liberal bias in the media coverage of this story was obvious when one of CNN's talking heads referred to one of the pig-masked protesters this morning, in all earnestness: "That's a pinko pig."

In another moment of editorial hilarity, the Houston's Chronicle's lead story wasn't the Halliburton pig-masked protesters but "A surgical alternative for obese kids."

More on the protest from KHOU.

{ 8:14 AM }

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"Stealing from Grandma Millie to buy Dick Cheney" or "Who Killed J. Clifford Baxter?" How much could Enron steal from California in raised energy prices based on fake demand? Enough to fuck us all (LA Times):

Enron Corp. employees spoke of "stealing" up to $2 million a day from California during the 2000-01 energy crisis and suggested that their market-gaming ploys would be presented to top management, possibly including Jeffrey K. Skilling and Kenneth L. Lay, according to documents released Monday.

The evidence of apparent scheming — in one recorded conversation, traders brag about taking money from "Grandma Millie" in California — is in a filing by a utility in Snohomish County, Wash. The municipal power unit north of Seattle wants refunds for alleged overcharges made by Enron during the electricity market meltdown.

The utility obtained transcripts of routinely recorded trader discussions from the Justice Department, which seized them in its Enron investigation.

While it has long been established that Enron engaged in market-gaming tactics — two top traders have pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges for manipulating California's energy market and a third awaits trial — the 450 pages of recorded conversations provide another vivid look into the organization's exploitive subculture.

They also suggest that knowledge of alleged wrongdoing may have reached the level of Skilling, Enron's former chief executive, and Lay, the former chairman.

In a Sept. 14, 2000, conversation, an employee named "Sue" [Susan J. Mara, Enron's California director of regulatory affairs until December 2001] from Enron's governmental affairs operation checks in with a trader named "Bob" for information that could be used in an in-house presentation to corporate executives.

"This is the time of year when government affairs has to prove how valuable it is to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling," Sue said, according to the transcript.

[...]

In a different conversation in the transcripts, Enron's West Coast trading chief, Timothy N. Belden, discusses the profitability of the company's strategies in California, particularly those executed by a trading desk led by Jeffrey S. Richter:

"Well he makes … between one and two [million] a day, which never shows up on any curve shift…. He steals money from California to the tune of about a million — "

At this point the other speaker interrupts, asking Belden to rephrase what he just said.

"OK," Belden says. "He, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day."

All of which leads to many questions, among them the focus of the quest for a guilty party: who would ultimately take the fall for siphoning billions of dollars from California ?

Lay and Skilling, to insulate themselves, would need a convenient scapegoat. The obvious choice would be the chairman and chief executive of Enron North America before he become chief strategy officer and then vice chairman: J. Clifford Baxter.

Not a stupid man, Cliff Baxter probably saw the writing on the wall about a week before the end of his life. That was when he visited Jeff Skilling, whose account of the meeting is unfortunately the only one we have and therefore highly suspect:

Baxter resigned in May 2001 reportedly after complaining about accounting practices that later brought down Enron. He, Skilling and other former and current Enron executives were sued by investors and employers after the company crashed.

About a week before his death, Baxter came to Skilling's home and talked for three hours.

"He was very angry about the plaintiffs' lawyers, and they were coming after him," Skilling said. "He was very angry about that because he had spent a lifetime building security for his family."

The account of the meeting Skilling gives is a little too pat. That's not a three-hour conversation. More likely what took place was something like Texas Hold 'Em: a game of who's going to show their cards first. And to whom, and at what price.

First the flop: Baxter's public dissent over the accounting practices made it probable that he was not in much of a position to insulate Skilling from anything.

Baxter's hole card: who knows, but it had to be substantially damning to the two people above him. And Skilling had to know that he and Lay were in big trouble if Baxter wouldn't cooperate.

Skilling's hole card: ruthlessness. By May 2001 Enron had already achieved everything it had set out to do: screwing California out of billions through its artificial energy pricing, and the successful secret engineering of US energy policy with a compliant vice president named Dick Cheney.

The scale of Enron's crimes were unparalleled, with devious strategies to screw everyone in sight — whole companies, states, and countries. Baxter knew it, bitched about it, and was now in a position to rat out the whole scheme to save his own ass.

In light of all that, the game ended predictably. The flicker of conscience named J. Clifford Baxter "committed suicide" a week after his three-hour poker game with Skilling. Are the quotation marks around "suicide" necessary? Maybe, maybe not.

Meanwhile, California stayed screwed. Lay and Skilling are still free men. Free and very rich men. And the ultimate mystery remains unsolved: we still don't know what Enron discussed with Cheney in those early 2001 meetings that set US energy policy.

{ 4:28 PM }

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Florida's brimming with "potential felons." Florida wants to earn its frontrunner status in the eradication of American democracy. Again. Orlando Sentinel:

The state's push to remove thousands of "potential felons" from voter rolls is causing angst among local election officials, who worry about inaccurate information, unfair results and yet another round of election-year lawsuits.

Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles, who has almost 2,200 potential felons to verify, said computer data supplied to counties by the state is riddled with problems, including wrong names and criminal charges that may have been reduced.

Under state law, it is county election officials, not the state, who must verify convictions and notify people who would be dropped from voter rolls.

"You have to sift through it all - and that comes down to us," said Cowles, a Democrat. "We become the one who needs to face the voter."

State officials have identified nearly 50,000 voters as "potential felons" who could be stripped from voter lists - many of them Democrats and minorities who could swing an election in a state where Republicans and Democrats are roughly equal in number.

How exactly does anyone identify a "potential felon"? Is it about history, or proximity, or intention, or temptation, or what? If I even think about committing an enormous fraud, will I go to prison, like Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling?

Oh, yeah. Right.

{ 12:40 PM }

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Terror alert level: Ignored. Fred Kaplan in Slate correctly focuses on the aspect of the White House culpability story that is being drowned out by the disgusting spectacles of Abu Ghraib and Nick Berg: the deliberate negligence of Zarqawi:

It's a tossup which is more disturbing: a president who passes up the chance to kill a top-level enemy in the war on terrorism for the sake of pursuing a reckless diversion in Iraq—or a president who leaves a government's most profound decision, the choice of war or peace, to his aides.

The "failure of leadership" meme that Taguba made public last week has the shape of a much larger theme that applies to the entire Bush White House.

{ 10:55 AM }

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Bongo serenade. New York is assuredly the place to be this summer (Michael Powell [!] in the WaPo):

So many are working so hard to ensure that the Republicans obtain a cacophonous New York experience [for their convention]. The antiwar, anti-Bush folks at United for Peace and Justice want to obtain a permit to march 250,000 people past Madison Square Garden -- home to the Republican convention -- and up to Central Park for a vast rally on the Sunday before the convention [August 29, 2004].

City parks officials have so far denied the permit, arguing that too many feet could cause irreparable harm to the grass.

A group known as the "hacktivists" vows to unleash a fury on the Republican convention Web site. Another one, Shadowprotest.org, encourages New Yorkers to volunteer to serve as goodwill ambassadors -- but not show up to work. "I don't need to reach every New Yorker," said David Lynn, the organizer of Shadowprotest.org. "I just need to find a couple thousand malcontents."

Firefighter and police unions will rally to protest their city contract offers. Anarchist bikers plot random street swarms. The Missile Dick Chicks want a permit, as do the Trotskyites and Billionaires for Bush, which wants to hold a benefit for corporate welfare.

The Yippie Party applied for a camping permit for 20,000 people in a Lower East Side park. To sweeten the request, it offered to provide cops and National Guard soldiers -- should they show up -- with free massages, bongo serenades and medical marijuana.

The Yippies leader (a relative term, that) acknowledged that the probability of obtaining such a permit was very low.

"We were denied in four days. We think that's a record," said John Penley, a Yippie elder. "Now we plan to open a welcome center staffed by punksters and anarchists and squatters. We just want to help out."

[…]

Civil libertarians note that more than 20 groups have applied for march and rally permits, and the city has not approved one. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed more than 300 complaints against the city for its treatment of demonstrators at a march just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Since then, police have several times denied requests for high-visibility rallies.

Oddly enough, both the supposedly-lefty New York Times and the determinedly-righty New York Post agree that dissent is more important than a healthy lawn, which puts them at odds with America's increasingly suburban NIMBY-pambyism.

After all that New Yorkers have been through since 9-11-01, and after all the war crimes that have been carried out in their names, they don't need no stinking permit to make their voices heard. With their unbelievable resourcefulness and fuck-you-too spirit, New Yorkers will once again prove that they live in the greatest city in the world.

{ 8:53 AM }

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Congratulations to U of Illinois senior Devon M. Largio, who graduates this weekend.

Her thesis, “Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq:  The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress, and the Media from September 12, 2001 to October 11, 2002,” identifies the 27 faulty rationales put forth by the Bushies in their rush to war.

{ 6:03 PM }

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The Berg mystery. The whole Nick Berg story stinks, and not just the grisly images that have been so strangely promoted by the mainstream media.

What exactly was he doing there that was so mysterious? Photographing Abu Ghraib? (WaPo):

Wearing a large tool belt and using metal grippers and rope, Berg began climbing transmission towers, taking photographs of structural damage that he would later show to prospective clients [for his services in installing, inspecting and repairing telecommunications and utility towers]. The work, which was itself dangerous, took him to hostile areas.

Once, he climbed a tower in Abu Ghraib, an impoverished western suburb of Baghdad infamous as the site of Iraq's largest prison. A local farmer became enraged, thinking that Berg was trying to steal parts of the already damaged structure.

What could you see from that tower?

There are mysteries aplenty. From a reader's email:

I am starting to think Berg was a Mossad agent. Let's see, you're a 26 year old Jewish guy and you show up in a country whose inhabitants hate Jews. You are there completely alone with no safety net and no one watching your back? Makes sense to me. Could he have been installing listening devices in those radio towers he was working on. There is a whole prison full of Iraqis being broken while while waiting to be interrogated and the FBI is questioning a Jewish guy from Philadelphia? Why is his body coming home though Dover, the place reserved for military bodies? Will his coffin be draped in an American flag? Will the press be allowed to photograph his coffin? It doesn't conform with the DOD restrictions for that sort of thing.

Why is his body coming home through Dover?

But, wait, there's more.

Xymphora points out a report that claims "Berg, who was Jewish, had written materials which were “anti-Semitic” in tone."

But there are several other details that simply don't jive with the official story. Why was Berg in a US Guantanamo-style orange jumpsuit? Why are the five masked men so fat, when all the naked Iraqis we've seen recently are so thin? Why are their hands so darn white?

It's obvious that the story has tremendous pro-Bush regime propaganda value. That's why it's looking more and more like a fraud, a distraction, and a lie.

{ 10:05 AM }

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Nine cents for a dollar. One of the chief public rationales for the 401(k) retirement savings system is that it enables employees to "take control" of their own retirement investments and have some discretion over how the money is invested.

Unless, of course, you were an Enron employee and were stuck with a boatload of company stock that your CEO was simultaneously touting in public and dumping in private (while lavishly contributing to a certain campaign in 2000 that did not win the popular vote). If you're unlucky enough to have been part of the Enron 401(k) experiment, you know that you have been screwed out of your retirement savings. Remember, this was your own money you were screwed out of, money you actually contributed to your savings by having it deducted from your paychecks.

But now it appears there may be a glint of light at the end of the tunnel for Enron employees. From the Houston Chronicle, "Up to 20,000 could split $69 million" by Mary Flood and David Kaplan:

Enron workers who saw their stock-based retirement plans vaporize in the wake of the company's collapse could recoup some of their losses with the partial settlement of two lawsuits announced Wednesday.

The lawsuits stem from complaints that Enron executives and others breached their duty owed to employees under pension laws.

Should U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon give her blessing to the deals, current and former employees would receive $69.2 million of the $86.5 million settlement sometime in the late summer or fall.

Wow! $69.2 million! That sounds great!

Except for the problem of dividing it among 20,000 employees, which parcels out to $3,450 each.

When you consider that the average account balance in a 401(k) plan in 2002 was $39,885, and there is no reason to think that Enron's 401(k) plan was anything less than average, then each employee's settlement would effectively provide them with a return on their life savings of – 91 percent. Yes, that's a negative number. Nine cents on the dollar is all they will get of their own money. All thanks to Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, and their beneficiaries in the White House whose campaign was partially funded with Enron's skimmed and imaginary profits.

The employees of Enron are a symbol of what has happened to Americans since the turn of the millennium. From surplus to deficit, from plus to minus, from productive to disgraced. All because of the consistent incompetence or outright fraudulence of those running the show.

Nine cents on the dollar is what's left after you pay for the crimes of management, as we will see again when the crimes of Kenny Boy's friends at George & Co. are finally tallied long after they're gone.

{ 1:02 PM }

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Rumsfailure. "Is it possible it won't work? Yes," Rumsfeld said.

{ 12:15 PM }

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Literary early warnings. Dong Resin wrote a book "about Paris Hilton from the point of view of her dog." The Tinkerbell Hilton Diaries.

Really.

{ 12:01 PM }

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Words fail us. The millions spent to influence the election boil down to something even smaller than soundbites: single words. From the fascinating Pew Cesearch Center's post- Iraq prison scandal poll:

The most frequently used words to describe the Democratic nominee are the lukewarm terms "good," "hopeful," "okay," and "better than Bush." The top negative term applied to Kerry is "liar," and is mentioned far more often than it was three months ago. Perhaps more directly showing the impact of the campaign on the candidates image, a number of respondents described Kerry as "indecisive" "wishy-washy" "undecided" and "uncertain," terms that went virtually unmentioned three months ago.

But no single word has come to dominate the public's perception of John Kerry as "boring" did with Al Gore four years ago. Across multiple surveys during the early election season, this word was associated with the former vice president more than any other, often by large margins.

While the balance of positive and negative responses about George W. Bush have remained largely the same, the negative terms Bush's critics use to describe the president negatively have shifted. Three months ago, "liar" was the most often used negative word used to describe the president, mentioned twice as often as terms like "incompetent" or "stupid."

Today, the order of these phrases has reversed, with "incompetent" most frequently mentioned by Bush's critics, far more often than references to the president's dishonesty. One criticism of the president that has remained consistently high over the past year is "arrogance," which has been the first or second most used word by Bush opponents in three consecutive surveys.

Bush's supporters continue to describe the president as "honest," "leader," "strong,"and cite his "integrity." Mentions of Bush's faith also arise frequently: many of his supporters describe Bush as "Christian."

When the most powerful position in the world is decided by the contest of individual words that spring into the minds of voters in a dozen-odd swing states, we all deserve the shit that occupies the White House.

It's difficult to distinguish which is the greater travesty: the democracy we supposedly aim to export through our military invasions, or the democracy we undermine at home with our American Idol market research idiocy.

{ 4:31 PM }

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The faithless media. Joe Klein in Time:

...democracy doesn't easily lend itself to evangelism; it requires more than faith. It requires a solid, educated middle class and a sophisticated understanding of law, transparency and minority rights. It certainly can't be imposed by outsiders, not in a fractious region where outsiders are considered infidels. This is not rocket science. It is conventional wisdom among democracy and human-rights activists—and yet the Administration allowed itself to be blinded by righteousness. Why? Because moral pomposity is almost always a camouflage for baser fears and desires. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives share a primal belief in the use of military power to intimidate enemies. If the U.S. didn't strike back "big time," it would be perceived as weak. (Crushing the peripheral Taliban and staying focused on rooting out al-Qaeda cells wasn't "big" enough.) The President may have had some personal motives—doing to Saddam Hussein what his father didn't; filling out Karl Rove's prescription of a strong leader; making the world safe for his friends in the energy industry. The neoconservatives had ulterior motives too: almost all were fervent believers in the state of Israel and, as a prominent Turkish official told me last week, "they didn't want Saddam's rockets falling on Tel Aviv." At the very least, they were hoping to intimidate the Palestinians into accepting Ariel Sharon's vision of a "state" without sovereignty.

Abu Ghraib made a mockery of American idealism. It made all the baser motives—oil, dad, Israel—more believable. And it represents all the moral complexities this President has chosen to ignore—all the perverse consequences of an occupation.

The believability of the baser motives, moral complexities, and perverse consequences of this president and his invasion of Iraq have been actively discussed throughout this entire fiasco, starting shortly after 9-11-01, but you had to read the fringe media and blogs to see it.

The mainstream media are only now getting even the remotest clue as to what has been going on in our names around the world — because they did not have enough faith in context, perspective, facts, noncommercial principles, or their readers. They refused to dig, to question, to verify, to challenge.

They had faith without doubt in the president who sold them the idea of faith without doubt.

The truth has been waiting there, in plain view, all along. But the media's sense of outrage suddenly comes out of hiding now, all because of a few fucking pictures.

What a bunch of lazy, illiterate slobs.

{ 12:37 PM }

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