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FREE AT LAST

Even though it's not completely the way I want it yet, I'm going to start posting over at the new place tomorrow morning.

So please switch your bookmarks and blogroll links now to direct you to my new home at susiemadrak.com.

Some of the new benefits:

1) Not Blogger.
2) No more long, long posts on the front page. I'll have that handy "read more" capability.
3) Cleaner design.
4) Shorter time for page loading.

I hope you like it. The old site will remain but as of tomorrow a.m., all posts will be at the cool new hang.
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FOLLOW THE BOUNCING BALL

One of the Kossacks has put together quite an impressive timeline showing the connections with neocon Larry Franklin, just charged with passing information to Israel:

1970 - An FBI wiretap authorized for the Israeli Embassy picked up Richard Perle, then a Senator's staffer and working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, discussing with an Embassy official classified information which he said had been supplied to him by a staff member on the National Security Council. An NSC/FBI investigation found the staff member, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, who had been previously investigated in 1967 while a staff member of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, for suspected unauthorized transmission to an Israeli Government official of a classified document concerning the commencement of the 1967 war in the Middle East.

1978 - While working for the Arms Control and Disarmament agency in 1978, Paul Wolfowitz was the subject of an investigation that alleged he had provided a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government to an Israeli government official via an AIPAC intermediary. However, the probe was eventually dropped.

April 1979 - The Attorney General's office recommends that Dr. Stephen Bryen, then a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, be investigated by a grand jury because he had been overheard in the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop offering classified documents to Israeli Embassy official Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington, in the presence of the director of AIPAC. The investigation was eventually shut down and Bryen resigned. He then served as Executive Director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and provided consulting services to AIPAC.

1981 - Shortly before being appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (ISP), Perle was paid a consulting fee by an Israeli arms manufacturer, Soltam. Shortly after assuming his post, Perle wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Army urging evaluation and purchase of 155 mm. shells manufactured by Soltam. Bryen becomes Deputy to Perle and receives top secret clearances. Wolfowitz, as head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, hires Michael Ledeen as a Special Advisor.

1982 - Perle hires Douglas Feith to be his Special Counsel (he later becomes Deputy Assistant Secretary for Negotiations Policy). F. Michael Maloof also becomes an aide to Perle as Foreign Affairs Specialist.

1983 - Feith is fired because he had been the object of an inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. FBI had opened an inquiry into this allegation. Also, on the recommendation of Perle, Ledeen was hired at the Department of Defense as a consultant on terrorism, where his superior first became concerned that he was viewing classified material that he was not cleared to see.

Lots more, go read it.
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HIGH CRIMES

Knight Ridder picks up the British Iraq memo story:

WASHINGTON - A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain's just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policy.

The document, which summarizes a July 23, 2002, meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair with his top security advisers, reports on a visit to Washington by the head of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service.

The visit took place while the Bush administration was still declaring to the American public that no decision had been made to go to war.

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable," the MI-6 chief said at the meeting, according to the memo. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," weapons of mass destruction.

The memo said "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

As Greg Palast said, how much more does it take to get Bush impeached?
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FALLING DOWN

Rolling Stone:

In fact, it may already be too late to prevent Iraq from exploding. Iraq's new government is stuck in a fatal Catch-22: To have any credibility among Iraqis it must break with the U.S. and oppose the occupation, but it couldn't last a week without the protection of American troops. The Bush administration is also stuck. Its failure to stabilize Iraq, and the continuing casualties there, have led to a steady slide in the president's popularity: Polls show that a majority of Americans no longer think that the war in Iraq was worth fighting in the first place. Yet withdrawing from Iraq would only lead to more chaos, and the rest of the world has exhibited little interest in cleaning up America's mess. Of the two dozen or so countries that sent troops to Iraq, fewer and fewer remain: Spain, Portugal, Hungary and New Zealand have already quit, and the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Italy have announced they are getting out. Even if the United Nations agreed to step in, there is little or no chance that the administration will internationalize control over Iraq. In the face of a full-scale civil war in Iraq, says a source close to the U.S. military, Bush intends to go it alone.

"Our policy is to make Iraq a colony," he says. "We won't let go."

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Your Seduction Style: Siren / Rake

You possess an unbridled sensuality that appeals to many. The minute you meet anyone, you can make the crave you almost immediately. You give others the chance to lose control with you... spiraling into carnal bliss. A dangerous lover, you both fascinate and scare those you attract.

[Via Blondesense.]

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AN APPLE A DAY

If you're an IT geek who makes network decisions, you should read this. Because it's not just Windows that's the security risk, it's also Intel hardware:

What's most interesting about this is what it reveals about the respondents: specifically that they're so focused on fighting Microsoft's alligators that they don't see the hardware side of their security problems and are blind to the BSD-based Mac OS X option for running Microsoft Office without Microsoft Windows.

At present, attacks on Microsoft's Windows products are generally drawn from a different population of possible attacks than those on Unix variants such as BSD, Linux and Solaris. From a practical perspective, the key difference is that attacks on Wintel tend to have two parts: A software vulnerability is exploited to give a remote attacker access to the x86 hardware and that access is then used to gain control of the machine.

In contrast, attacks on Unix generally require some form of initial legal access to the machine and focus on finding software ways to upgrade priveleges illegally.

***
In other words, if security concerns are your most important driver for desktop change, and Microsoft Office compatibility is your most significant barrier, then switching to Macs actually offers you the best of all possible worlds. Microsoft Office on Unix/Risc with a better GUI, longer product life, some cash savings and a performance bonus thrown in.

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GO SETH

Young Philly Politics:

Today, in the continuing effort of Philadelphia bloggers to make a real impact in the upcoming District Attorney's race, we are taking part in the third united day of action for Seth Williams (see Day 1, Day 2).

Today, our goal is simple: to get as many Philadelphia voters as possible to pledge their vote to Seth. In an election where turnout will be in the 20's, getting as many people involved and committed to voting will be crucial.What we are doing is asking our readers to take ten seconds and pledge their vote, (let them know Young Philly Politics sent you), and to commit to sending an email out to their fellow Philadelphia voters asking them to do the same. (A sample email is contained in the post below.)

Above all else, we are coordinating again to spread the word and tell them to go to www.seth4da.com/vote, and become a part of the Philadelphia grassroots community that is making waves around the City, and around the blogosphere.

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BULLYING

Oh, but union members are the "thugs":

WASHINGTON, May 4 - The Bush administration has warned the nation's biggest labor federation that union-run pension funds may be breaking the law in opposing President Bush's Social Security proposals.

In a letter on Tuesday to the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the Department of Labor said it was "very concerned" that pension plans might be spending workers' money to "advocate a particular result in the current Social Security debate."

The Labor Department also warned the federation that pension plans could be violating their fiduciary responsibilities by suggesting that they might take their investment business away from Wall Street firms that support Mr. Bush's plans.

The department did not cite any specific instances and it stopped short of any formal accusations. But the letter came after a well-orchestrated campaign by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to criticize investment firms that appeared to be supporting Mr. Bush's proposal for private investment accounts. "A fiduciary may never increase a plan's expenses, sacrifice the security of promised benefits, or reduce the return on plan assets, in order to promote its views on Social Security or any other broad policy issue," the letter said.

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A NATIONAL DISGRACE

You might say I relate:

WASHINGTON — More than 18,000 adults in the USA die each year because they are uninsured and can't get proper health care, researchers report in a landmark study released Tuesday.

The 193-page report, "Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late," examines the plight of 30 million — one in seven — working-age Americans whose employers don't provide insurance and who don't qualify for government medical care.

I've been obsessing about this a lot lately, because this is the third week in a row my boss had no assignments for me and I'm worried about 1) losing my job and thus 2) losing my health insurance. Again.

It became even more of an issue when I found a painful lump last week on my pelvic bone. I looked it up online and everything came up bone cancer. (And if it's malignant, they take off your leg.) I went to the doctor's office; the physician's assistant who examined me frowned and said she really couldn't tell what it was, to the point where she didn't even know what tests to order. So she referred me to a surgeon.

The local surgeon couldn't see me until the middle of June.

I wasn't waiting, so I called the University of Penn health system. They're very thorough; they take all your information and refer you to the appropriate specialist. ("I need to know how far down into the hair the lump is," the intake person insisted. Now, that's thorough.) Unfortunately, the appointment person for this particular doctor wasn't in until Monday morning, so I tried to put it out of my head over the weekend. Hah! Fat chance.

I kept obsessing: What if I lose my job and I don't have insurance? People assume you get the same treatment with Medicaid - but you don't. And how do you live? Yeah, you can get Social Security disability - but it takes a long time until you're approved. (My ex-husband finally got his approval the day after he died. Fortunately for him, he had disability insurance through his job. Most people don't.) Who would take care of me? How the fuck could I even manage, hopping around on one leg?

My brain was on overload.

When I called Monday, the secretary said, "Oh yes, Ms. Madrak. We've been expecting your call. The doctor will see you today at 12:30." Gulp. I had that same reaction I had years ago when a strange doctor patted my hand after examining my sinuses. Oh my God, he's patting my hand, I said to myself, panicking. My worst fears were confirmed when he said, "I'm not going to lie to you, honey. It doesn't look good." Fortunately, I dodged the bullet that time.

So I drove downtown. When I checked in at the desk, I discovered I was seeing the guy who's the department head of gynecologic oncology. Oh, swell, I thought. Glad that I was getting a top gun, upset at his specialty.

I really liked this doctor. "How come you self-referred?" he wanted to know. "Well, they keep referring me to these people who practice at a second-tier suburban hospital," I said. "As long as my insurance will cover it, I feel a lot better coming here." He laughed.

He examined me and told me it wasn't a lump on the bone. "I know it feels like that, but it isn't," he reassured me. "I'm 95 percent sure it's an inguinal hernia. I can't say for sure without the test, but I wouldn't worry. The P.A. probably couldn't tell because they're so unusual in women."

Then he asked if I'd ever been evaluated for polycystic ovary syndrome. I sighed. "I've been back and forth with doctors about that for nine months," I said. "I'm seeing what I hope is a competent endocrinologist next week."

Anyway, I'm not dying of bone cancer. They're not going to cut off my leg. I do have health insurance, at least for now. (No work, but I do have insurance.)

But what if? No one should have to ask that question in America.

It's a national disgrace.
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DECONSTRUCTING

Chris Bowers has a lengthy look at why the Democrats' problems aren't going to be solved by "reframing" the issues (and I wholeheartedly agree):

As far as I can tell, the main problem facing Democrats is that conservatives, when compared to liberals, have superior organizational control and power over what Louis Althusser famously called Ideological State Apparatuses and what on this blog I have taken to calling ideological conversion machines.

To put this another way, I believe that conservatives are largely in control of those mechanisms that determine an individual's ideological outlook, which these days is largely determinative of how an individual ends up voting.

I believe that our problems are growing particuarly severe when it comes to four specific ideological machines...

If you're serious about understanding politics, you should read this.
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REWRITING THE CONSTITUTION

Sigh...
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MOM'S THE WORD

A special Mother's Day story about a major league pitcher with two mommies.
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CALLING IT QUITS

Ah yes, a woman scorned can be quite creative.
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HMMM

From 1674, the Women's Petition Against Coffee:

Never did Men wear greater Breeches, or carry less in them of any Mettle whatsoever. There was a glorious Dispensation ('twas surely in the Golden Age) when Lusty Ladds of seven or eight hundred years old, Got Sons and Daughters; and we have read, how a Prince of Spain was forced to make a Law, that Men should not Repeat the Grand Kindness to their Wives, above NINE times in a night: But Alas! Alas! Those forwards Days are gone, The dull Lubbers want a Spur now, rather than a Bridle: being so far from doing any works of Supererregation that we find them not capable of performing those Devoirs which their Duty, and our Expectations Exact.

The Occasion of which Insufferable Disaster, after a serious Enquiry, and Discussion of the Point by the Learned of the Faculty, we can Attribute to nothing more than the Excessive use of that Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called COFFEE, which Riffling Nature of her Choicest Treasures, and Drying up the Radical
Moisture, has so Eunucht our Husbands, and Crippled our more kind Gallants, that they are become as Impotent, as Age, and as unfruitful as those Desarts whence that
unhappy Berry is said to be brought.

Nine times in one night? Damn! Those really were the good old days.
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OY

Via Seeing the Forest: How to detect a housing bubble.
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WORD TO THE WISE

Google has a new web accelerator that's supposed to speed page loads for broadband users. I tried it for about two hours last night and had to remove it; it's really buggy and the browser kept shutting down.
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TAKE THEM OUT OF THE BALLGAME

Buzz Bissinger on steroid use in baseball:

But the true villains are baseball's owners, greedy and feckless throughout the game's history, and in the case of this latest mess, guilty of cynically jettisoning the game's subtlety and complexity to turn it into a slugfest circus - home-run madness passed off as baseball. Regardless of who knew what when, steroids helped to advance that master plan.

***
Rejecting the singular pace and flow of the game, owners decided that fans instead wanted to see interminable contests where home runs became as prevalent as peanuts.

***
The owners put other changes in play to further enhance their vision of baseball as T-ball. They started building smaller ballparks, in part to make the game more enticing for fans, but also because smaller ballparks potentially meant more home runs. As a result of willy-nilly expansion, the quality of major league pitching worsened in the 1990's, another boon to home-run madness. So was the advent of a smaller strike zone, as well as a ball that seemed juiced-up to players, despite official denials. With the use of steroids allowed to fester, all the pieces were in place for a radical revision of the game.

Yep. The steroid problem wasn't the beginning. They also changed the height of the pitcher's mound and stopped enforcing the regulation strike zone; that lengthened the games and turned them into hours-long snoozefests.

I rarely go to a MLB park anymore. The tickets are too expensive, the games are too long and it doesn't hold the same thrill it used to. I go to the local AA stadiums (we're lucky enough to have three of them in the Philadelphia area) or I go to see friends and relatives play in the local league. (I saw a pitching duel of a game the other week that rivaled anything I've seen in the major leagues.)

But I'm in a growing minority. These management changes helped turn off an entire new generation of potential fans, who complain (not without justification) that baseball is "boring" and "too long."

It wasn't. And if you didn't learn to love the game before they ruined it, you probably never will.
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RUNNING GOVERNMENT LIKE A BUSINESS

And see how well that worked:

Numerous breakdowns in management and oversight occurred when the Interior Department, on behalf of military forces in Iraq, hired private sector interrogators to work in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, according to a Government Accountability Office report released last week.

Government employees in many cases failed to understand their responsibility for overseeing the hired employees, and this created an environment in which the contractor took on roles and responsibilities normally reserved for government employees, the report (GAO-05-201) stated.

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HIDING

From the Washington Note, more ass-covering:

Wow. Richard Lugar is a decent, respectable, "fair and balanced" guy -- but I really don't understand this.

He has weighed in on the question of what materials the State Department should send at Senator Biden's request and which not to worry about. This is unprecedented in an otherwise collegial Senate committee -- one of the view where a spirit of collaboration and mutual respect between both sides still burned strong.

Well, that light of bipartisanship is flickering.

To cut to the chase -- until I can write more -- Lugar has written a letter today to Condi Rice praising the State Department for complying with various materials and information requests from Senator Biden. He then indicates that given the limited time, State should comply with just four of the nine information requests that the Minority on the Foreign Relations Committee has made.

Here are copies of the Lugar letter and the nine items requested. A check mark is next to those Lugar feels are a priority.

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RECUSAL

Way to cover your ass:

WASHINGTON May 4, 2005 — Two Republican members of the House ethics committee will not participate in any investigation of Majority Leader Tom DeLay because they contributed to DeLay's legal defense chairman, the ethics panel chairman said Wednesday.

The chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said Reps. Lamar Smith of Texas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma agreed with him that the past contributions "raised doubts however unwarranted about whether those members would be able to judge fairly allegations of impropriety against Mr. DeLay."

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BREAKING NEWS

IBM to cut 10,000-13,000 jobs.

Oh yeah, we're booming right along. Thousands of families with the ground kicked out from under them...

UPDATE: The bulk of the layoffs will be in Europe. That doesn't make it any less devastating.
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WHAT I'M LISTENING TO: "Oh Well," Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine.

Maya was telling me how much she liked the newest Fiona Apple album, the one they wouldn't release. I told her I thought Fiona was a tad precious; that I'd listened to it and it didn't really impress me.

Well, I listened to it again. I was wrong.

What you did to me made me see myself
Somethin' awful
A voice once stentorian is now again
Meek and muffled
It took me such a long time to get back up
The first time you did it
I spent all I had to get it back
And now it seems I've been outbidded

My peace and quiet was stolen from me
When I was looking with calm affection
You were searching out my imperfections

What wasted unconditional love
On somebody
Who doesn't believe in the stuff

You came up on me like a hypnic jerk
When I was just about settled
And when it counts you recoil
With the cryptic word and leave a love belittled

Oh what a cold and common old way to go
I was feeding on the need for you to know me
Devastated at the rage you found below me

What wasted unconditional love
On somebody
Who doesn't believe in this life

Oh, well.

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GOING IN CIRCLES

The Rude Pundit takes a trip down memory lane to reminisce how many times we've "turned the corner" in Iraq.
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JUST PLAIN EVIL

Well, Jesus H. Christ. The All Spin Zone has a real doozy:

AIDS campaigners have welcomed a decision by Brazil to turn down US funds because of a clause in the agreement condemning prostitution.

The US development agency, USAid, had offered Brazil around $40m (£21m).

But Brazil's top Aids official, Pedro Chequer, said the US' conservative approach to treating the disease would not help.

Correspondents say references to prostitution are likely to become a condition for all US Aids funding.

Washington says it is important not to promote prostitution, and does not want any of its funds to be spent on treating prostitutes.

Prostitutes spread AIDS (and other STDs). But we shouldn't treat them, because that way, men will simply stop going to prostitutes!

Oh yeah. Just like they did in Victorian England.
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BREAKING NEWS

Judge declares a mistrial in England case:

May 4, 2005 — FORT HOOD, Texas (Reuters) - A military judge on Wednesday rejected a guilty plea by Lynndie England, a key figure in the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, after evidence in her trial indicated she considered herself innocent.

Two days after initially accepting England's plea of guilty to seven of nine charges, which was submitted after negotiations with the prosecution, Judge Col. James Pohl told the court: "The plea deal is canceled."

He had repeatedly interrupted proceedings to warn that testimony by England, 22, and other witnesses speaking on her behalf, which was meant as mitigation to secure a shorter prison term, was verging on a statement of her innocence.

"Both sides have indicated to me there is no way to resolve this inconsistency," Pohl told the court after a recess to discuss the issue on Wednesday afternoon.

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FOUR DEAD IN OHIO

From reader Tom Ware on the 35th anniversary of Kent State:

Of Tin Soldiers, and The Day the Music Died

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” “Fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology which embraces nationalism as the transcendent value of society. The rise of Fascism relies upon the manipulation of populist sentiment in times of national crisis. Based on fundamentalist revolutionary ideas, Fascism defines itself through intense xenophobia, militarism, and supremacist ideals. Although secular in nature, Fascism's emphasis on mythic beliefs such as divine mandates, racial imperatives, and violent struggle places highly concentrated power in the hands of a self-selected elite from whom all authority flows to lesser elites, such as law enforcement, intellectuals, and the media.”

- Il Duce Benito Mussolini, 1935

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961


“It’d be easier if it were a dictatorship, if I was the dictator.”

- G.W. Bush, 2002

Thirty-five years ago today, four young Americans were gunned down by members of the neo-fascist military industrial complex, the very same military industrial complex departing Republican President and Supreme Commander Allied Forces WWII Dwight D. Eisenhower just ten years earlier had warned the nation to beware. The very same military industrial complex that now controls this government, controls this state, this land, this nation… driving what was once a beacon of freedom to the world into a Fascist Theocracy.

Three were exercising their First Amendment right to express their opinion. The fourth…

was merely walking between classes.

What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground
How could you run when you know?
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I decided to read up on the side effects of the radioactive crap they put into my veins today, and found that the most common side effect was "special senses," followed closely by "taste perversion" and parosmia. (Whatever the hell that is.)

Does this mean I'm going to develop x-ray vision or be able to fly? Gee, I hope so.

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IN MEMORIAM

Go read TBogg. Now.
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HERDING CATS

These Democrats better get in line:

Seven House Democrats skipped town before the major budget vote last Thursday, infuriating some of their colleagues and giving a handful of vulnerable Republicans a virtual hall pass to vote against their party.

As the whereabouts of two or three truant Democrats were unknown for the 8:30 vote on the House-Senate budget resolution, Democratic Party leaders were disappointed that lawmakers would put their political and parochial interests ahead of the party’s plan to force vulnerable Republicans to vote for a budget that Democrats insist will be difficult to defend in swing districts.

By holding the vote open for 30 minutes, GOP leaders were able to pressure some Republican holdouts to back the budget while releasing others to vote against it. The bill passed, 214-211, with 15 Republicans voting no along with every present Democratic member. For most of the roll-call vote, Democrats had more votes.

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INTERESTING

Finally, an arrest:

WASHINGTON -- The FBI arrested a Pentagon analyst Wednesday on charges that he illegally passed classified information about potential attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq to employees of a pro-Israel group.

Larry Franklin, 58, of Kearneysville, W. Va., turned himself in Wednesday morning, FBI spokeswoman Debra Weierman said. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Virginia later Wednesday, Weierman said.

Go here for background.
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That's City Hall over to the right, in the background. 

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BULLSHIT

Flounder plays moral equivalence games:

Scott McClellan, President Bush's press secretary, said Tuesday evening that he would be glad to end the use of background-only briefings--if White House reporters would stop using anonymous sources in their reporting. "I told them upfront that I would be the first to sign on if we could get an end to the use of anonymous sources in the media," McClellan told E&P;, referring to a meeting he had with a half-dozen Washington bureau chiefs last week. He said that "people in the heartland" feel that "anonymous sources use them to hide behind efforts to generate negative publicity."

McClellan's comments followed E&P;'s report Tuesday that a group of top Washington bureau chiefs had launched a campaign to pressure government officials, including McClellan, to allow briefings with reporters to be held on the record. The bureau chiefs contend that the background-only briefings force them to use sourcing that is, essentially, anonymous, reducing their credibility.

Some veteran journalists have suggested that Washington reporters boycott background-only briefings to send a stronger signal. "Maybe it's time to take another shot at it," Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of The Washington Post, told E&P.; He recalled a failed boycott attempt in the late 1960's, which he says did not work because it did not have unified support. "There is certainly more interest in it now," he declared.

Fucking lazy reporters with no backbone... look, the White House press corpse is made up of the young guns who covered the campaign - chosen mostly for physical stamina, because it's so punishing to be on the road.

After the election's over, they move them to the White House. But since they're so young, they're lacking in the all-important institutional knowledge and context, leaving them much more open to intimidation, flattery and manipulation.

Absolutely, they should boycott this nonsense, and their bosses should back them. When are they going to figure it out? The real stories aren't in the White House briefing room. They're in the paperwork - and they're out in the departments, where people are willing to talk.
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DON'T PISS ON MY LEG AND TELL ME IT'S RAINING

Matt Yglesias dropkicks the unctuous little Joe Klein:

What can you do about a guy like Joe Klein? As if his support for the Bush phase-out wasn't bad enough, he needs to insist that Democratic opposition to Bush's plan is not only misguided (by his lights), but is, in fact, comprised of "phony bleats of outrage from leading Democrats" who are "more interested in the demagogic exploitation of the issue than they are in the impact of baby boom retirement on their grandchildren."

I can assure everyone that my outrage is entirely genuine. It's also never been clear to me why the High Lords of Punditry think it's unacceptably "demagogic" to point out that the Republican Party wants to gut middle class retirement security. And then there's this shameful effort to pretend that privatization is all about helping out young people. But as I've point out before, under Bush's plan the younger you are the more your benefits are cut!

If you think it's crucially important to the future of the country to finance tax cuts for today's wealthiest individuals by sharply reducing the living standards today's twentysomethings will enjoy when we retire, then fine. I'll say you're wrong, but lots of people have misplaced priorities. But to pretend that you're doing my generation some kind of favor is just absurd.

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ONE STEP CLOSER TO DISPOSABLE LABOR

I got this yesterday from Jordan:

AFL-CIO staff wore black to work today, and for good reason. Coming only a few days after Workers Memorial Day, 169 positions were eliminated, including half of the four-person Health and Safety Department's professional staff. Deborah Weinstock and Rob McGarrah have been given notice that their positions will no longer be funded, although it is unclear when these changes will take place. What's left of the department will be merged into the newly-created Government Affairs Department. 52 new positions will be created at the federation.

This is a sad day for workers, for the labor movement and for all those who care about the health, safety and working conditions of American workers.

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FREEBIE

Still plenty of Gmail invites left if you want one.

The useful thing is, because they have so much storage, you can forward all that stuff you need to keep but don't want cluttering up your drive - old emails, pix, etc.
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GUERRILLA IN WONDERLAND

I was a tad grumpy because I couldn't eat before the test. I was sitting in this room where they make you wait for the radioactive Drano to finish coursing through your veins before they take the spooky pictures with their Super Gamma Camera.

My fellow inmates were Lenny, Steve and Stephanie. Stephanie was the only one having actual symptoms - pain that shot up her arm into her jawbone. Steve had high cholesterol; Lenny's doctor thought it was a good idea, since all his blood tests were on the high side of normal. I was the only one there because of their EKG.

The room where they take the pictures of your heart was so cold, my teeth were chattering. They wouldn't let me wear my hoodie because of the zipper, so I was freezing. I had to lie back and be an ice sculpture for ten minutes. Then it was on to the treadmill, where I had a strange (for me, anyway) reaction: I started to feel lightheaded, and then I watched the wall turn into this vibrating geometric grid. (It was a lot like the optical migraine thing I see when I'm in sunlight, only bigger.) Hopefully, it was just hyperventilation. Who knows?



The thing that was cool, though, was I talked the technician into letting me see the pictures of my heart. She showed me how she sliced the pictures to look at different layers, showed me closeups of my left ventricle and made my heart rotate on the screen. It was so interesting. (And I'm such a geek.)

I was surprised at how small and lean my heart looked. Somehow, I thought it would be bigger.
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I am: 6% Republican.

"You're a complete liberal, utterly without a trace of Republicanism. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure. (You hope.)"

Are You A Republican?
[Via our new friend from Upyernoz.]
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FUN

I'm off at this ungodly hour for a treadmill stress test (it won't be pretty). I'll catch up with y'all when I get back - assuming I haven't keeled over, because now that I look at the instructions I probably should have read yesterday, I wasn't supposed to have any caffeine for the 24 hours preceding the test.

Hah hah hah....
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GOD'S WILL

Interesting piece from a fundamentalist who deconstructs the Dominionist fringe taking over the Republicans:

The significance of the Reconstructionist movement is not its numbers, but the power of its ideas and their surprisingly rapid acceptance. Many on the Christian Right are unaware that they hold Reconstructionist ideas. Because as a theology it is controversial, even among evangelicals, many who are consciously influenced by it avoid the label. This furtiveness is not, however, as significant as the potency of the ideology itself. Generally, Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of "Biblical Law." Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment beyond such crimes as kidnapping, rape, and murder to include, among other things, blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality ("Christian Reconstructionism: Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence: Part 1 -- Overview and Roots," by Frederick Clarkson, 3/94 The Public Eye).

- The "Christian" Reconstruction movement (CRM) claims that believers possess a cultural mandate from God to reclaim in this age dominion over human society -- a dominion forfeited by the fall, but supposedly regained for immediate claim with the New Birth experience. As believers obey this mandate, gradually gaining dominion over earthly society, this present world will supposedly become "Christianized," inaugurating the Millennium. In reality, if effected, the entire earthly society would be placed under an O.T. "Theonomy" law system, rather than the N.T. teaching of believers as a group of "called out" saints from the world. They want to apply Old Testament law to today's society. This includes slavery as an alternative to prisons and capital punishment for a variety of offenses (murder, homosexuality, etc.).

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SOCIALISTS

Lots of nice people at Drinking Liberally tonight. The smoke wasn't too bad and I understand when the weather's warm, they open all the windows.

Jim C. from Rittenhouse was showing everyone his inclusion in The Advocate's big article on "must read" blogs. Way to go, Jim!
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YEE HAW

Perfect:

NEW YORK (AP) - If Comedy Central's Jon Stewart is the comic version of Peter Jennings or Brian Williams, Stephen Colbert promises to be the same for Bill O'Reilly and others like him. The Daily Show regular will star each night in The Colbert Report, likely starting in September. Comedy Central is revamping its schedule, recognizing that late-night programming is essentially prime time for its youthful audience.

... Besides lampooning O'Reilly, the king of the cable TV opinion shows, he's sending up people such as Sean Hannity, Joe Scarborough and Anderson Cooper, he said.

One segment of his show, Worthy Opponent, will feature Colbert debating Colbert.

"I always wanted to do more with this character," he said. While The Daily Show skewers reporters, its primary focus is on newsmakers. The Colbert Report will look full time at the news process, with a backstage look at his character and interview subjects.

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PERSONAL APPEARANCE

Hey kids, I'll be over at Drinking Liberally tonight if you want to drop by and say hi. I should be there after 7 p.m.

Tuesdays at Ten Stone (21st and South), 6-9pm

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DAY LATE, DOLLAR SHORT

You'll notice Bob Woodward never has anything useful to add until it's too late:

CBS/AP) Investigative reporter Bob Woodward of The Washington Post reveals, in his new book "Plan of Attack," how plans for the Iraq war began, in secret, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Woodward talked exclusively to CBS News' Mike Wallace for this Sunday's "60 Minutes." [CBS and Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Woodward's book, are both owned by Viacom.]

The Woodward book is packed with hitherto secret stories out of the mouth of the president and his top aides in the year preceding the president's final decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

Among them:

Just 72 days after 9/11, President Bush ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to come up with a secret war plan to get Saddam. Rumsfeld passed the order on to Gen. Tommy Franks and gave Franks a blank check worth hundreds of millions of dollars. But the Congress was kept in the dark about it.

It was Vice President Dick Cheney who Woodward describes as the powerful, steamrolling force who had developed what his colleagues called a "fever" to take down Saddam by armed attack.

Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was dead set against going to war against Iraq, barely speak to each other. Their relationship remains hostile.

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CARL JUNG: STILL A GENIUS

I rest my case:

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. (AP) - A pastor and his wife have been charged with arson in a fire that gutted their church last week, authorities said Tuesday.

The Monday arrests of The Rev. Harold Hunter and Patricia Hunter came just one day after the pastor gave a sermon in which he said he prayed for the "sick, sadistic" person who burned down the church. No one was hurt in the blaze.

Police would not discuss a possible motive, but said they had suspected that Thursday's fire and three earlier acts of vandalism at the 64-year-old Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church were an inside job.

"We found some gas that was located on the pastor's shoes and we also found clothing in the residence that had gasoline on it," said Summerville Police Capt. Craig Legates.

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Another view of the Delaware River from Penn's Landing.  

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MAN BITES DOG

Judge upholds law in Florida:

PALM BEACH COUNTY, FL (AHN) - The controversy over whether a 13-year-old girl in DCF custody can have an abortion ended Monday after a Palm Beach County judge ruled she had a constitutional right to the procedure despite DCF's objections.

"Legally speaking, it's not a difficult decision to make," Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez said. "Morally speaking, it's a very difficult decision for this court to make. ... But I'm not here to make the moral decision. I'm here to make the legal decisions."

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POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Screw these corporate predators. Anyone who has cable knows how exploitive these bastards are - because they have no real competition:

More than 50 U.S. cities have set up or plan to install wireless broadband networks. Minneapolis is the latest to join the list.

A number of think tanks oppose such moves. And some state lawmakers look to ban cities from going into the wireless business.

Critics say city wireless networks waste tax money. The goal of city networks -- low-cost broadband Internet access for all -- is noble. But business, not cities, should meet that goal, they say.

Cities are "proposing to cover large areas with wireless," said Steve Titch, a researcher for the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank. "But this is a very dubious proposition for cities."

Advocates say city-owned wireless is needed, since private services don't provide adequate access at fair rates. And the backlash against municipal plans was spurred by corporate wireless providers, they say, not individuals.

"This isn't a grass-roots backlash," said Ron Sege, chief executive of wireless gear firm Tropos Networks, which supports municipal wireless plans. "This is an organized campaign of disinformation."

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FUNDRAISER

Investigative reporter Greg Palast needs money to keep going. We need Greg Palast. If you can help, please do so.
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PROTECTING US

I was just thinking about the viral nature of Bush's hardcore support - viral, in that it changes and adapts all the time to changes in the environment. All those people who said they voted for him because he'd "do a better job protecting us" - what's their reason this week?

When asked during the campaign debates to name the gravest danger facing the United States, President Bush and challenger Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) gave the same answer: a nuclear device in the hands of terrorists.

But more than 3 1/2 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. government has failed to adequately prepare first responders and the public for a nuclear strike, according to emergency preparedness and nuclear experts and federal reports.

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RIGHT FUCKING ON

The normally mild-mannered E.J. Dionne kicks ass today:

There is a name for those who continue to sit at a gambling table even after they learn that the game is fixed. They are called fools.

Now that President Bush has proposed Social Security benefit cuts through "progressive indexing," his critics are said to have an obligation to negotiate in good faith to achieve a solution. There are just two problems with that sentence: The words "good faith" and "solution."

***
That the president is fixing the Social Security reform game should be obvious. The most basic corruption of the process is the way the Republican congressional leadership has transformed the bargaining that once took place between the House and the Senate.

In the old days, when each house produced different versions of the same bill, a "conference" committee typically including members of both parties from both houses would thrash out the details and reach a compromise. Now the Republicans will concede whatever is necessary to get a bill out of the Senate, even as the lockstep-Republican House produces a right-wing version of the same proposal. In conferences, Republicans routinely freeze out all but the most pliable Democrats. The supposed "compromise" that emerges is not a compromise at all. Democrats who go along become enablers of a game being played with a stacked deck.

The game is also fixed because the president has narrowed the range of Social Security options to protect his most questionable policy choices.

***
Walking away from a rigged game is hard for some people, especially when those running it and the respected opinion-makers who support them insist that this time the game will truly be on the level. But, especially when the danger involves gambling away the future of Social Security, the truly responsible thing is to leave the table.

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SECURE

Feeling safer yet?

Adding to concerns about the security of personal information, Time Warner yesterday reported the loss of computer backup tapes containing sensitive data, including the names and Social Security numbers of about 600,000 people. They include current and former employees, some of their dependents and beneficiaries, and even individuals who have simply provided services for the company.

Time Warner said the data, on 40 tapes in a container the size of a cooler, disappeared more than a month ago while being shipped to an offsite storage center.

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PRESSURE

Ethics start at the top, so as you can imagine, it's a real problem:

It was late September when the 21-year-old man, fresh from a three-week commitment in a psychiatric ward, showed up at an Army recruiting station in southern Ohio. The two recruiters there wasted no time signing him up, and even after the man's parents told them he had bipolar disorder - a diagnosis that would disqualify him - he was all set to be shipped to boot camp, and perhaps Iraq after that, before senior officers found out and canceled the enlistment.

Despite an Army investigation, the recruiters were not punished and were still working in the area late last month.

Two hundred miles away, in northern Ohio, another recruiter said the incident hardly surprised him. He has been bending or breaking enlistment rules for months, he said, hiding police records and medical histories of potential recruits. His commanders have encouraged such deception, he said, because they know there is no other way to meet the Army's stiff recruitment quotas.

"The problem is that no one wants to join," the recruiter said. "We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by."

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REASSURING

Let's see. Not enough troops, not enough people signing up for the military and Rummy says it's absurd to think there'll be a draft. Don't you feel better now?

WASHINGTON, May 2 - The concentration of American troops and weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan limits the Pentagon's ability to deal with other potential armed conflicts, the military's highest ranking officer reported to Congress on Monday.

The officer, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed Congress in a classified report that major combat operations elsewhere in the world, should they be necessary, would probably be more protracted and produce higher American and foreign civilian casualties because of the commitment of Pentagon resources in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A half dozen Pentagon civilian and military officials were discussing the outlines of the report on Monday as it was being officially delivered to Congress; one government official provided a copy to The New York Times. The officials who discussed the assessment demanded anonymity because it is a classified document.

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WHAT I'M LISTENING TO: Some years ago (when I still owned a funky blue Buick Regal), I was having dinner at the White Dog Cafe and I parked around the corner on Chestnut Street. When I came back, my side window had been smashed. They took the only two things in the car: a comic book, and a cassette tape of "Famous Blue Raincoat," Jennifer Warnes' Leonard Cohen tribute.

"I hope he listens to it and slits his fucking wrists," I said to my friend. Then I laughed. Because hey, before the clinically depressed had Prozac, there was Leonard Cohen.

"Famous Blue Raincoat," Jennifer Warnes:

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening
I hear that you're building your house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now
I hope you're keeping some kind of record

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time I saw you, you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you never came home without Lili Marlene
And you treated some woman to a flake of your life
And when she came home, she was nobody's wife

Well I see you there
With the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake --

She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you
Oh what can I tell you
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you
I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here
For Jane or for me
I want you to know your enemy is sleeping
I want you to know
Your woman is free.

Yes, and thanks for the trouble you took
From her eyes
I thought it was there for good
So I never really tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear --

Sincerely, A Friend.

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SEE NO EVIL

John Conyers today:

"Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the United States was too busy with wall-to-wall coverage of a "runaway bride" to cover a bombshell report out of the British newspapers," Conyers writes. "The London Times reports that the British government and the United States government had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in 2002, before authorization was sought for such an attack in Congress, and had discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so."

"The Times reports, based on a newly discovered document, that in 2002 British Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a meeting in which he expressed his support for "regime change" through the use of force in Iraq and was warned by the nation's top lawyer that such an action would be illegal," he adds. "Blair also discussed the need for America to "create" conditions to justify the war."

Conyers says he is seeking an inquiry.

"This should not be allowed to fall down the memory hole during wall-to-wall coverage of the Michael Jackson trial and a runaway bride," he remarks. "To prevent that from occuring, I am circulating the following letter among my House colleagues and asking them to sign on to it."

Will's pretty pissed, too.

I don't know why. I mean, you don't think the runaway bride is important? I mean, Julia Roberts made a movie with that title. Hello?
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DEAD MAN WALKING?

I've said all along they won't allow Saddam to live long enough to testify:

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer accused Iranian-backed Iraqi politicians of plotting to assassinate the ousted dictator in prison and said Monday he held the United States responsible for Saddam's safety.

Ziad al-Khasawneh said he based his information in a nessage purportedly sent by a former Iraqi govt official he identified as Hazem al-Obeidi addressed to Saddam's legal team and posted on a pro-Saddam web site.

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DRAFTY

Gee, how do you suppose they'll handle this?

WASHINGTON - The Army missed its goals for signing up recruits in April and expects to do so again in May, and the Marines also fell short, officials said today, as the Iraq war further strained the all-volunteer U.S. military.

The Army and Marines provide the ground forces fighting rebels in the two-year-old Iraq war that has killed nearly 1,600 U.S. troops. At least 51 American troops died in April.

The active-duty Army missed its April recruiting goal and was 15 percent behind its year-to-date target, officials said. An internal forecast indicated the active-duty Army and part-time Army Reserve and Army National Guard also will miss their May goals.

The active-duty Army, striving to attract 80,000 recruits in the 2005 fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, has now missed its recruiting targets for three straight months.

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OOPS A DAISY

Looks like I wuz fooled. That previous press release was a hoax - but a good one:

Washington, DC – The hoax press release distributed under the name of the Traditional Values Coalition is the most recent tactic in an ongoing campaign of harassment of the conservative church group over the past year, according to the Coalition’s Washington office.

“Our computers have seen more viruses than a pediatrician’s office,” said TVC Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon. “Today’s phony press release is just the latest dirty trick aimed at discrediting our efforts on behalf of America’s churches.”

“We thought Mrs. Bush’s remarks at the correspondents’ dinner were hilarious. We are very pleased that she is America’s First Lady.”

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WHAT I'M LISTENING TO: "Hungry Heart," Bruce Springsteen.

I was never "into" Bruce the way people are, you know, into Bruce. But I've liked him since the early days; I spent many a night dancing to "Rosalita" at the old Jail House in West Philly. It was the kind of song you couldn't sit though.

Anyway, in John Lennon's very last interview, they asked him what he liked in current music. One of the songs he mentioned was "Hungry Heart."

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a hungry heart

I met her in a Kingstown bar
We fell in love, I knew it had to end
We took what we had and we ripped it apart
Now here I am down in Kingstown again

Everybody needs a place to rest
Everybody wants to have a home
Don't make no difference what nobody says
Ain't nobody likes to be alone.

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*pop*

Via Bump, this from WashPo:

The super-charged local real estate market that has sent home prices soaring is increasingly leaving prospective sellers hesitant to put their homes on the market, believing they cannot find an affordable move-up house, according to real estate agents.

That, in turn, is translating to a tighter supply of homes for sale.

"This is a fear of being homeless and not finding anything, which is a well-founded fear," said Ron Sitrin, a Long & Foster Real Estate Inc. agent in the District. "But the more a potential move-up buyer is afraid to put his home on the market, the more difficulty people will have finding homes. It's a giant Catch-22."

Traditionally, home ownership has been about trading up. People bought a starter house and lived there for a while. Then, as their families grew or their incomes rose, they moved to a bigger house or a tonier neighborhood. But the hot local real estate market is disrupting that pattern.

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TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

Yeah, I just hope the Repugs run this corrupt, racist fuck for president. From Political Wire:

We've noted it before, but the New York Sun repeats reports that a "small but influential group of GOP insiders" are urging Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) "to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008." The chatter should only increase with President Bush's visit to Mississippi tomorrow "to tout his Social Security initiative."

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FREEDOM ISN'T FREE

You know, not only did we invade their country, we screwed up their infrastructure and they still don't have reliable electricity:

BAGHDAD -- When his lights and television go dark, as they regularly do, Khalid Qasim Ali flips a switch in his living room to bring back the power. This electricity is not state-supplied. Instead, it comes from a generator three blocks away that is connected to Ali's home by a wire strung in the air.

All told, 107 families in Baghdad's working-class neighborhood of Topchi are hooked up to the generator. The arrangement gives them power during the long blackouts that are routine in Iraq. It also darkens the skies over Topchi with a tangled skein of unsightly, dangerous cables. Like everyone else, Ali is billed by the ampere. He pays the generator's owner around $10 a month.

"We should enjoy electricity without using a generator because Iraq is a wealthy country," said Ali, a 65-year-old retired truck driver. "Regretfully, the Americans did nothing since they came."

Thousands of roaring generators in Iraqi back yards, driveways and street corners demonstrate that after two years and at least $1.2 billion, the U.S. effort to resuscitate Iraq's electrical system is still very wide of its mark. In fact, the national grid's average daily output of 4,000-4,200 megawatts falls below its prewar level of about 4,400 megawatts.

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'MANLINESS UNDER ATTACK'

Ah, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. After all, we have to put up with their bad parody of Christianity:

WASHINGTON, DC - The First Lady may have stolen the show with her surprise comedy routine at the 91st White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, but not everyone appreciated her jokes and one-liners poking fun at President Bush. At least one organization of conservative Christians quickly lashed out at Mrs. Bush's performance, warning that her remarks at the President's expense were a public refutation of the Biblical command that wives should respect their husbands.

According to an official statement released over the weekend by the Coalition for Traditional Values, an organization that seeks a more flexible relationship between church and state, Mrs. Bush's jokes at her husband's expense amounted to a public emasculation of the President. Pastor Roy DeLong, the statement's author and chair of the group, warns that the First Lady's performance comes at a time when the Mr. Bush's "manliness is already under attack."

Yeah, okay, people are wondering about Jimmy Jeff's sleepovers and Bubble Boy's the only person who was in the White House every time he visited, but I'm sure it's all very sweet. A pajama party, with milk and cookies. Just like Michael Jackson.
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WAITING FOR THE BURST

Warren Buffett warns of the impending residential housing bubble, and I agree.

Not everyone does, of course. I was talking to a real estate broker the other day, and he pooh-poohed the idea. "There is no bubble," he said, waving his hand. He said he was seeing bigger down payments and much less full financing.

But he did say he thought this generation of new homeowners was "spoiled" and were buying houses that were far beyond their needs.

"I probably shouldn't say this - after all, it's my living," he said. "But these kids now have the idea they deserve the best of everything, and shouldn't have to wait for any of it. Look at their cars. I only buy used cars for myself, I think new cars are a waste of money. But they wouldn't dream of it."

A few days ado, I got into a heated discussion at Duncan's comments section over the contention that it was difficult to have a middle-class life on $90K. Lots of readers agreed; I didn't. With the exception of absurdly high metro real estate markets like NYC, San Francisco and Boston, you can manage reasonably well on $90K. It's that people confuse their "wants" with needs.

They also buy into overpriced school districts, thinking it's the only way their kid will ever get into a good college. Not true - admissions reps look at how well a student did for their environment. If you live in a top district, it's a lot harder for your kid to stand out.

And with every price-inflated suburban home someone buys in those districts, the bigger the bubble gets. Sooner or later, it'll pop. It has to.
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DIMING OUT DISSENT

Oh sure, we have free speech. We're just not supposed to use it:

In the fall, the Secret Service gave her a call.

"They said they wanted to ask me some questions," she recalls. "I said sure. They said someone called them and said I had signs up in my yard that were threatening the President. I said I did have some signs in my yard, but I wasn't threatening the President. The worst I've ever said was that he's an Evildoer. And this Secret Service man specifically asked me about the sign about Mr. Cheney. He said, "That's from revelations." I said, "Yes, I have no desire to destroy anybody. I'm just quoting out of the Bible." His name, she said, was Agent Brian Atkins.

Then on January 11, she had some unexpected visitors.

ìI was actually taking a nap, and there was a knock on my door, there was a West Virginia State Trooper and a Secret Service agent,î she says, identifying them as Trooper R. J. Boggs and Agent James Lanham. ìThey asked to come in. And I let them. And they started interviewing me.î

Jensen, who at the time was running for city council, asked why they were there.

"Apparently someone had made a statement that I'd been canvassing door to door and had said I wanted to cut President Bush's head off," she says. "I told Agent Lanham that I was running for city council, but I hadn't started my door-to-door campaign yet and I never had said anything like that."

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SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL

Julian over at the Lounge takes down Instahack:

I should be beyond surprise of this sort, but it's still a little striking to see self-righteous dudgeon and disingenuous horseshit combined in such close proximity and copious quantity. Glenn's reminding everyone of his "link-rich refutation" of the "revisionist" claim that democracy promotion wasn't part of the rationale for invading Iraq.

Since most of his readers presumably were, like, alive and paying attention in the run-up to the war, I can only assume that this is a case of self deception, in which case it's a fairly heroic instance of the phenomenon. The argument appears to be this: Since the value of ousting a despot and incubating a democracy was mentioned as a fringe benefit of removing this dire and immediate threat to American national security, anyone who regards the emphasis placed on it now as an ex-post rationalization for a mistaken policy is engaged in "revisionist history." Look at all the speeches we can link to where Bush used the words "democracy" and "Iraq" in the same sentence!

Seriously now. We all know that this was advanced as a benefit of the invasion, but gimme a break. If someone sells you "a Porche with a nice stereo system" and you then discover you've actually bought a Dodge Dart, are you supposed to be mollified because it actually has had a nice stereo system installed? Democratization was supposed to be a happy side effect of eliminating the WMDs—that was why we had to do this right the fuck now before the "smoking gun" came in the form of a "mushroom cloud," why we couldn't keep pushing for a diplomatic solution. Anyone else remember that?

There were, of course, a few bloggers who thought that creating a democracy in the region was the best reason to go to war. But they all acknowledged at the time, at least, that this wasn't how the war was being sold, though they acknowledged that clever folk like them could get the message by reading between the lines.

They just make shit up.
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WARONS

Via the Gadflyer:

Larry Beinhart, author of Wag the Dog and The Librarian, has an interesting take on our predilection for fighting wars that are really wars in name only. Take a minute and stream it with QuickTime or Windows Media Player.

I'll just note here that Beinhart is amazingly prescient. As I've said before, "Wag the Dog" was not about Clinton - it was about the Bushes. So is "The Librarian." Great books, both of them, and well worth reading.
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SLEIGHT OF HAND

Krugman:

I asked Jason Furman of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to calculate the benefit cuts under the Bush scheme as a percentage of pre-retirement income. That's a way to see who would really bear the burden of the proposed cuts. It turns out that the middle class would face severe cuts, but the wealthy would not.

The average worker - average pay now is $37,000 - retiring in 2075 would face a cut equal to 10 percent of pre-retirement income. Workers earning 60 percent more than average, the equivalent of $58,000 today, would see benefit cuts equal to almost 13 percent of their income before retirement.

But above that level, the cuts would become less and less significant. Workers earning three times the average wage would face cuts equal to only 9 percent of their income before retirement. Someone earning the equivalent of $1 million today would see benefit cuts equal to only 1 percent of pre-retirement income.

In short, this would be a gut punch to the middle class, but a fleabite for the truly wealthy.

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SAVING IRAQ

Bob Herbert:

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' "

"Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam.

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LISTEN, PEOPLE

Max speaks:

My antennae sense a drift of Democrats towards a bipartisan benefit cut solution to the imaginary Social Security solvency problem. One signal is the awful Kinsley column today. As I said a while back, the scenario to dread is one wherein the Dems collaborate in benefit cuts while the Bushies say we tried to get you private accounts to lessen the pain of benefit cuts, just elect another ten R senators and you'll have the accounts. After all, "Everybody" agrees there's a problem.

This is the fruit of conceding that there is at least some kind of teensy-weensy problem with solvency that requires immediate action. Crappy arguments ('Maybe Saddam doesn't have WMDs') didn't stop the Iraqi invasion. They won't prevent privatization of Social Security either.

There is no gotdamn problem with Social Security. Not today, not in 2018, not in 2060. The need to use income taxes as required by law to repay debts to the Trust Fund up until 2041 is no more of a roadblock than the need to pay taxes for anything else. And the amount of taxes needed to repay Trust Fund debt is the same as the amount needed to keep the program whole after 2041.

Why do Dems think there is a problem? Because they are afraid of the Washington Post and the rest of the innumerate, uninformed idiots of the Mainstream Media. I can't think of any other reasons.

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias on why Kinsley is wrong, wrong, wrong.
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FLOWERS FOR GOLDBERG

You'll have to have some familiarity with "Flowers for Algernon" to get this (and National Review Online's Jonah Goldberg, for that matter). But if you do, you'll know just how brilliant TBogg is.
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ENFORCERS

I'll take this with a grain of salt until I see something happen:

With little fanfare and some adept bureaucratic maneuvering, a partnership between the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and a select group of Justice Department prosecutors has been forged to identify and single out for prosecution the nation's most flagrant workplace safety violators.

The initiative does not entail new legislation or regulation. Instead, it seeks to marshal a spectrum of existing laws that carry considerably stiffer penalties than those governing workplace safety alone. They include environmental laws, criminal statutes more commonly used in racketeering and white-collar crime cases, and even some provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a corporate reform law.

The result, those involved say, should be to increase significantly the number of prosecutions brought against dangerous employers, particularly in cases involving death or injury.

This new approach addresses a chronic weakness in the regulatory system - the failure of federal agencies to take a coordinated approach toward corporations that repeatedly violate the same safety and environmental regulations. The E.P.A. and OSHA in particular have a history of behaving like estranged relatives. Yet the central premise of this unfolding strategy is that shoddy workplace safety often goes hand in hand with shoddy environmental practices.

"If you don't care about protecting your workers, it probably stands to reason that you don't care about protecting the environment either," said David M. Uhlmann, chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section, which is charged with bringing these new prosecutions.

The effort is noteworthy in an administration that has generally resisted efforts to increase penalties for safety and environmental violations. It has declined to support such steps as making it a felony for employers to commit willful safety violations that cause a worker's death. Such violations are currently misdemeanors, punishable by up to six months in jail. Instead, the administration has emphasized a more collaborative approach, offering companies increased technical assistance, for instance, on how to comply with regulations.

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BYE BYE

Via Duncan, apparently Little Ricky is getting nervous:

A Roll Call report shows that the Senate's resident wild-eyed right-wing lunatic, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum (R), is starting to get extremely nervous that he is going to get booted out of office in 2006. A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Santorum's opponent, Pennsylvania State Treasurer Bobby Casey (D), already has a 14 point lead over Santorum.

Santorum has responded by deploying his media consultant to attack Casey for supposedly not answering questions. This, despite Philadelphia Daily News columnist Gar Joseph writing Friday that he got straight answers from Casey when he called to ask his position on five controversial issues. "We got straight answers. No spin. No Kerry-style nuance,” Joseph wrote. That apparently bothers the extremist Santorum, whose consultant actually criticized Casey for being "so adept at taking the middle positions." As if it's a bad thing to be a mainstream politician instead of an insane ideologue like Santorum.

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WHO'S CRAZY NOW?

Interview with Helen Thomas:

But there were a lot of alternative sources of news and investigative journalism, and there was also the world press doing its job. Don't mainstream journalists look at these other sources?

We have a herd mentality here. It was groupthink. Nobody wanted to get out of line. Reporters felt that they shouldn't push too hard. I didn't feel that way. I was against this war from day one, and I kept challenging the White House spokesperson, Ari Fleischer. One day, about six months before the U.S. invasion, I said, "Ari, why does the president want to kill thousands of people?" I mean that's about as simplistic as I could put it. And he said, "Why are you saying that, Helen? They have a dictator! They have no say in their country!" I said, "Neither do we." I went up to Condoleezza Rice after the U.S. invasion and said, "Where are the weapons? Where's the smoking gun? Where's the mushroom cloud?" She said, "Saddam used these weapons twelve years ago, he had them. ..." And then she went up in smoke herself. She flew out of there with her eyes blazing, so angry that she should be challenged.

Regarding the White House press corps, is it sort of the cream of the crop of journalists who get to be part of those briefings?

Every new administration comes in with a new crop of reporters who have been on the campaign with them and have gotten to know them, and their bosses say, "You're going to the White House because you know intimately so-and-so and can call them up and get an interview." So not only do they tend to be young, but they tend not to question what is said.

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ASSHOLES

Boy, they won't rest until they've stamped out every single dissenting view:

WASHINGTON, May 1 - The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders - including the chief executive of PBS - to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an outside consultant to keep track of the guests' political leanings on one program, "Now With Bill Moyers."

In late March, on the recommendation of administration officials, Mr. Tomlinson hired the director of the White House Office of Global Communications as a senior staff member, corporation officials said. While she was still on the White House staff, she helped draft guidelines governing the work of two ombudsmen whom the corporation recently appointed to review the content of public radio and television broadcasts.

Mr. Tomlinson also encouraged corporation and public broadcasting officials to broadcast "The Journal Editorial Report," whose host, Paul Gigot, is editor of the conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. And while a search firm has been retained to find a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the corporation's president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last month, Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state.

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FREEBIES

By the way, I still have a bunch of Gmail invites for anyone who wants one. Let me know if you do.
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HOLIDAY

I almost forgot: Happy Beltane, y'all! What's not to like? It's the "most overtly sexual festival."
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EVIL BASTARDS

The wheel of the gods turns exceeding slow, but exceeding fine:

The man who led Britain's armed forces into Iraq has said that Tony Blair and the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, will join British soldiers in the dock if the military are ever prosecuted for war crimes in Iraq.

In a remarkably frank interview that goes to the heart of the political row over the Attorney General's legal advice, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said he did not have full legal cover from prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

'If my soldiers went to jail and I did, some other people would go with me,' said Boyce.

In his most detailed explanation yet of why he demanded an unequivocal assurance from lawyers that the war was legal, he said: 'I wanted to make sure that we had this anchor which has been signed by the government law officer ...

'It may not stop us from being charged, but, by God, it would make sure other people were brought into the frame as well.'

Pressed by The Observer on whether he meant the Prime Minister and the Attorney General, Boyce replied: 'Too bloody right.'

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WAG THE DOG

You know, the original "Wag the Dog" book was written about Bush, not Clinton - and it was right on the money:

A SECRET document from the heart of government reveals today that Tony Blair privately committed Britain to war with Iraq and then set out to lure Saddam Hussein into providing the legal justification.

The Downing Street minutes, headed “Secret and strictly personal — UK eyes only”, detail one of the most important meetings ahead of the invasion.

It was chaired by the prime minister and attended by his inner circle. The document reveals Blair backed “regime change” by force from the outset, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, that such action could be illegal.

The minutes, published by The Sunday Times today, begins with the warning: “This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. The paper should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know.” It records a meeting in July 2002, attended by military and intelligence chiefs, at which Blair discussed military options having already committed himself to supporting President George Bush’s plans for ousting Saddam.

“If the political context were right, people would support regime change,” said Blair. He added that the key issues were “whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan space to work”.

The political strategy proved to be arguing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed such a threat that military action had to be taken. However, at the July meeting Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said the case for war was “thin” as “Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran”.

Straw suggested they should “work up” an ultimatum about weapons inspectors that would “help with the legal justification”. Blair is recorded as saying that “it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors”.

A separate secret briefing for the meeting said Britain and America had to “create” conditions to justify a war.

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LIE DOWN WITH DOGS, RISE UP WITH FLEAS

Back when this war first started, I pointed out we'd allied ourselves with some pretty nasty regimes. And now, the ladies and gentlemen of the press seem surprised that we're using them as attack dogs:

Seven months before Sept. 11, 2001, the State Department issued a human rights report on Uzbekistan. It was a litany of horrors.

The police repeatedly tortured prisoners, State Department officials wrote, noting that the most common techniques were "beating, often with blunt weapons, and asphyxiation with a gas mask." Separately, international human rights groups had reported that torture in Uzbek jails included boiling of body parts, using electroshock on genitals and plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. Two prisoners were boiled to death, the groups reported. The February 2001 State Department report stated bluntly, "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights."

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, however, the Bush administration turned to Uzbekistan as a partner in fighting global terrorism. The nation, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, granted the United States the use of a military base for fighting the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan. President Bush welcomed President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan to the White House, and the United States has given Uzbekistan more than $500 million for border control and other security measures.

Now there is growing evidence that the United States has sent terror suspects to Uzbekistan for detention and interrogation, even as Uzbekistan's treatment of its own prisoners continues to earn it admonishments from around the world, including from the State Department.

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BUSH'S WAR ON THE PRESS

Alterman:

Journalists, George Bernard Shaw once said, "are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization." How odd, given the profession's un-equaled reputation for narcissism, that Shaw's observation holds true even when the collapsing "civilization" is their own.

Make no mistake: The Bush Administration and its ideological allies are employing every means available to undermine journalists' ability to exercise their First Amendment function to hold power accountable. In fact, the Administration recognizes no such constitutional role for the press. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has insisted that the media "don't represent the public any more than other people do.... I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."

Bush himself, on more than one occasion, has told reporters he does not read their work and prefers to live inside the information bubble blown by his loyal minions. Vice President Cheney feels free to kick the New York Times off his press plane, and John Ashcroft can refuse to speak with any print reporters during his Patriot-Act-a-palooza publicity tour, just to compliant local TV. As an unnamed Bush official told reporter Ron Suskind, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." For those who didn't like it, another Bush adviser explained, "Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered two to one by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read the New York Times or Washington Post or the LA Times."

As usual, Alterman has that historian's view that serves us well. Go read the whole thing.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY

She sounds smarter than a lot of adults:

“Why can’t I make my own decision?”

That was the blunt question to a judge from a pregnant 13-year-old girl ensnared in a Palm Beach County court fight over whether she can have an abortion.

“I don’t know,” Circuit Judge Ronald Alvarez replied, according to a recording of the closed hearing obtained Friday.

“You don’t know?” replied the girl, who is a ward of the state. “Aren’t you the judge?”

UPDATE:

A pregnant 13-year-old girl in Florida has been told she cannot have an abortion because she lacks the maturity to make such a decision.

A state court granted an injunction which prevents the girl from terminating her pregnancy.

She is three months pregnant and had planned to have an abortion on Tuesday of this week.

The American Civil Liberties Union says it will launch an urgent appeal against the ruling.

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CAUSE AND EFFECT

I was at this great dinner party last night. I always have such a wonderful time with these friends, I end up drinking - which I don't do very often. In fact, I had three margaritas.

Oy. It's been decades since I had a hangover. But I have one now. Thank God for Excedrin.
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UPDATE

The big move went well and all the old posts are over at the new place. Still trying to figure out what happened to the Haloscan comments because ideally, I wanted to import all the old ones to the new site.

There are still several days of tweaking ahead and I'll link to the new digs when it's all ready.
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MOVING ON UP

Hey kids, things will be a little screwy today as we're finally making the data trek to the new site. If all goes well, you'll see a link here to the new place in the next day or two.

Moving on up
To the East Side
To a deluxe apartment
In the sky....
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THE BIG PICTURE

Yep:

As the full dimensions of President Bush's Social Security plan come into view, so too does a broader vision of reducing most Americans' reliance on government programs that long have helped see them through economic difficulties.

Although Bush devoted most of his prime-time news conference Thursday to describing how he would expand Social Security protections, virtually all of his improvements would be aimed at the bottom one-third of American wage earners. The remaining two-thirds or so would see their future Social Security benefits curtailed, a reduction that they'd be encouraged to make up by saving and investing of their own.

The president often portrays his effort as simply trying to accommodate reality; funds to pay full Social Security benefits are expected to run out toward the middle of the century. But his approach also corresponds to a long-held conservative goal of reducing Washington's influence in the lives of ordinary Americans and to the aim of Bush chief political strategist Karl Rove to realign the nation along Republican principles.

"What you're going to see is an effort to scale back middle-class entitlements that many people do not need and to become more focused on the anti-poverty aspects of these programs," said Michael Tanner, a senior official with the small-government Cato Institute in Washington.

"We're going to tell non-poor Americans that they are going to have to save more on their own and not depend on a transfer from government," he said.

Ah, but certain non-poor Americans will always be able to count on their subsidy checks from places like the Cato Institute...
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PRIORITIES

Some cannon fodder is more equal than others:

A new policy is poised to go in place that could change the face of West Point athletics, allowing Army athletes in any sport who sign a pro contract to serve two years active duty and six in the reserves upon graduation. The proposal is expected to be approved by Army officials within weeks.

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RUNAWAY BRIDE

It never amazes me - the lengths to which people will go instead of simply telling each other the truth:

(CNN) -- A Georgia woman, who was found in New Mexico early Saturday and who said she had been abducted, admitted today she had made up the story because she was nervous about her upcoming wedding, police said.

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