Iraq has more money than they know how to spend

Tell me again why we're funding Iraq? Especially in light of the OPEC decision to screw everyone, it's time to cut their money now. As in tomorrow. What complete idiot thought of spending $339 million in US money to teach Iraq how to spend their oil wealth?

Iraq's government has an unusual money problem as much of the world grapples with a credit crunch — it can't spend its oil riches fast enough.

The U.S. is trying to change that by training Iraqi bureaucrats struggling to emerge from a centralized system in which nearly all decisions — from where to build a water treatment plant to which workers would do the job — came from the top.

Money also was scarce for more than a decade after the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions to punish Saddam Hussein's regime for the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"Our efforts are devoted to helping the Iraqis spend their own money," said Marc Wall, the U.S. Embassy's coordinator for economic transition in Iraq. "We've zeroed in on it in the last year or two."

The issue came to the fore this summer when the U.S. General Accounting Office predicted Iraq could finish the year with as much as a $79 billion cumulative surplus because of oil revenues and unspent funds from previous budgets.

The August report drew outrage in Congress, where lawmakers asked why the Iraqis haven't spent more of their own money on reconstruction efforts while U.S. taxpayers shell out some $12 billion a month for Iraq — most for military operations.

How about we cut the spigot of taxpayer money off and see how quickly they figure out how to spend their oil money? Something tells me they would learn pretty fast, but maybe McCain and the GOP would rather coddle that regime for a few hundred more years. I would rather give Wall Street $700 million in bonus money than spend one more cent in Iraq. Read the rest of this post...

Princess Sparkle Pony is not amused

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Friday Orchid Blogging

Encyclia fragrans

I haven't had anything blooming in a while, and cut back on the orchid buying a while back - so I could winnow my collection to a smaller number of plants I really liked. This is a plant I got years ago, and it's blooming for the first time - this guy likes a lot of light, and I suspect having it outside for six months this unusually temperate year did it some good. It's called Encyclia fragrans, and it's a species (i.e., not a man-made hodge podge of various species, but a pure species in and of itself). It's a fragrant plant, more so during the day. It's a bit wintergreen scented. If you look at the pictures below, you'll see the flowers in various stages of opening on the right and left side of the photo.



And below is the entire plant. Orchids are not the prettiest of plants. Which only makes the flowers that much more stunning.



Enjoy. Read the rest of this post...

McCain campaign staff member's perp walk

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More racist McCain supporters at rally in Denver

This is the most racist I've seen McCain supporters act to date. Talking about "putting a monkey in the White House." Talking about wearing turbans. About Obama being a communist. People, this is what the Republican party has been turned into. Does anyone, Republican or Democrat, really want to be associated with these people? Judging by the growing number of senior Republican leaders, and now even top McCain supporters, abandoning McCain and endorsing Obama, the answer is apparently no. Just watch these people. What a sad spectacle. What an embarrassment.

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Joe Lieberman on Palin: "Thank God she's not going to have to be president from day one."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Oh, and Lieberman adds that he "hopes" McCain lives out his term if elected. Hopes? That's the best he can do? Looks like Holy Joe is starting to see the writing on the wall. Not easy pulling those knives out of so friends' backs, is it Joe?

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McCain campaign pushed mutilation hoax, even added their own incendiary "facts"

Remember the deranged McCain staffer who made up a story yesterday that she was supposedly attacked and mutilated by a crazed Obama fan (of course a black man) while she was trying to get money from an ATM? Well, we now know the woman is a liar and filed a false police report, apparently having carved her own face in an effort to throw the election for her boss, John McCain.

Now we learn that McCain's Pennsylvania communications director pushed the hoax mutilation story to the media, even claiming that the supposed "B" carved on the victim's face stood for "Barack Obama." Reportedly, McCain and Palin both called the hoaxer to offer their support. Imagine the judgment, or lack thereof, of McCain and Plain. There's that vetting problem again. TPM has more:

This is problematic because the McCain campaign doesn't want to have been perceived as pushing an incendiary story that not only turned out to be a hoax but which police officials said today risked blowing up into a "national incident" and has local police preparing to file charges against the hoaxster.

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Wash Post: "McCain Campaign Post-Mortem"

Now there's a headline that could sink a thousand ships. These stories are devastating to McCain. To his staff. To his voters. To his donors. It's just non-stop bad news, and now "post-mortems" - that's about as bad as it can get. Here is Chris Cillizza's piece about the upcoming, or shall I say impending, New York Times story this coming Sunday (but it's out now) about how McCain basically lost the election. Here are two interesting points from Cillizza's summary of the MUCH-longer NYT article:

The germ of the Sarah Palin pick began with an interview in 2007 on "The Charlie Rose Show" where the Alaska governor faced off with Arizona Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano. The interview caught the eye of campaign manager Rick Davis; "what he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues -- energy independence and ethics reform -- and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview," writes Draper of Davis' reaction to Palin's performance. Schmidt was on board with the pick early on; Salter was convinced later after meeting with Palin personally.

Politicians hate to be publicly psychoanalyzed (who wouldn't?) but Draper deftly paints the mind of McCain. "The flipside of John McCain's metanarrative of personal valor has always been palpable self righteousness"...

I'd previously raised that last point myself. There's a certain smugness to McCain running around determining who is and isn't a good American, as he and Palin have been doing. McCain thinks an awful lot of himself. Read the rest of this post...

Apple donates $100,000 to "No on 8" campaign

Excellent! I don't recall seeing a donation from Google when Google came out against Prop 8, but perhaps my Googling skills were insufficient. Anyone else know?

UPDATE: The Google execs have donated as well, good for them. Now maybe they can double their donation in order to make up for their abysmal twisted violation of their own civil rights ad policy.

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Bush casts his vote for a third term

Trying to insure his legacy, Bush cast his vote for McCain today.

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FOX VP: Race-baiting hoax means McCain's quest for the presidency "is over"

From ThinkProgress

On his blog yesterday, Fox News Executive VP John Moody, who is a Pittsburgh native, wrote that the incident’s credibility was inextricably tied to McCain’s campaign:

This incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.

If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.

For Pittsburgh, a city that has done so much to shape American history over the centuries, another moment of truth is at hand.

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Google running anti-gay ads in violation of its own policy

CALL TO ACTION: If you think these ads should be pulled from Google ads for "advocating against a protected group" and causing a "chilling and discriminatory effect" on Google employees and customers, please send Google an e-mail or call them at (650) 930-3555. Ask them to stop making money from our fight for equality. Remind them that - as Sergey said - this is "an issue of equality."

I've sat on this story from Bilerico for a few hours, in order to get more information, and even possibly get the issue resolved quietly. No such luck.

In a nutshell, Google has an explicit policy for its advertising that says no ad may advocate against a protected class, and among those protected classes is "sexual orientation." Yet, Google is running ads from anti-gay forces advocating the repeal of gay marriage in California, and advocating against gays in Arizona.

That's a clear violation of Google's policy against advocacy ads targeted protected groups. Period.

I love Google. I love Blogger (belonging to Google). I love that Google, for whatever reason, decided to embrace an incredibly progressive ad policy, banning advocacy ads against minorities. What I don't love is Google acting like a typical bad American corporation, and shoving its explicit written policies out the window when things become uncomfortable.

It would be one thing if Google didn't have a policy banning such ads. But it does. And bully for Google for being so progressive. But don't tell me now that it's okay to run such ads when your own explicit policy forbids is. One argument I heard is that Google would permit ads for the anti-gays if the ads simply said "Vote YES on Prop 8" (that's the anti-gay marriage proposition that would repeal the marriages of thousands of gay couples and make their children instant bastards). That would be okay, per Google. But Google might not allow ads that say "Vote Yes on Prop 8, which would ban gay marriage."

What's the difference? They both advocate against a protected group, they both advocate for the same legislation - the first one is simply more sly about it. So ads for the Klan are fine so long as they don't tell you that the legislation they're pushing is actually to repeal the 15th amendment and a few more parts of the Constitution protecting blacks? Discriminatory advertising is fine so long as you don't tell anyone that's what it really is. Huh? One could argue that in fact it's more progressive to REQUIRE the anti-gay to tell people what the ad is about - to tell people that Prop 8 bans gay marriage, that would probabl get us more votes on our side than an ad stealthily seeking support for Prop 8 while not telling you what it does.

What is the point in having an ad policy prohibiting advocacy against protected minorities if you permit advocacy against those same minorities provided the advocacy is circumspect about its evil, bigoted, hateful intentions? We're not talking banning Wal-Mart's "buy our new clothing!" ad because Wal-Mart sometimes takes positions against the interests of the disabled - that does not per se make a Wal-Mart ad "advocacy against a protected class." But if Wal-Mart were to take out an ad advocating for legislation hurting people with disabilities, that WOULD be advocacy against a protected class. Google is trying to pretend that we're talking about generic ads since the ads don't specify what the Prop really does. That's a patently absurd interpretation of their no anti-minority advocacy policy.

I'm sorry, but this is weasely and creepy and corporate of Google. I'm frankly surprised that they have such an inclusive ad policy - I'm downright impressed in fact. And I'm heartened that Google execs are campaigning for Obama, and that they've come out against Prop 8. But how can Google come out against Proposition that Google says per se isn't advocating anything bad against gays? Would Google support Prop 8, provided the Prop8ers don't mention gays? The entire this is inconsistent.

In spite of its good work, if Google is going to start haggling over the definition of "is" when a simple mater of their own explicit civil rights policy arises, then maybe we need to reconsider whether the days of "good" Google are numbered. Read the rest of this post...

HOAX: McCain volunteer admits "Obama supporter mutilated me" story was a lie

This photo is of a hoax. A McCain staffer who thought it might be cute to invent her own hate crime and blame it on black men in general and Barack Obama in particular. What a freaking witch. Of course, she's such an idiot that she claimed the mean black man carved a "B" for "Barack" on her face after he found out she worked for McCain - except the B was carved backwards, like it would be if you carved it in your own face while looking in a mirror. What a hateful, stupid woman.




From KDKA:

Police sources tell KDKA that a campaign worker has now confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter "B" in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker.

Ashley Todd, 20, of Texas, initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield and that the suspect became enraged and started beating her after seeing her GOP sticker on her car.

Police investigating the alleged attack, however, began to notice some inconsistencies in her story and administered a polygraph test.

Authorities, however, declined to release the results of that test.

Investigators did say that they received photos from the ATM machine and "the photographs were verified as not being the victim making the transaction."

This afternoon, a Pittsburgh police commander told KDKA Investigator Marty Griffin that Todd confessed to making up the story.

The commander added that Todd will face charges; but police have not commented on what those charges will be.

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Iraq just screwed us on oil prices

Guess who just supported OPEC drastically cutting oil production in order to artificially keep oil prices at record highs?

Our best buddy, and OPEC member, Iraq!

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain Al-Shahristani said that crude priced below $80 a barrel would force his country to rethink its spending next year.

"Our budget for 2009 is based on $80 per barrel and so any fall beyond that is going to cause a strain on our budget," he said.

Oh yes, God forbid oil prices fall below $80 a barrel. I feel your pain. Considering the fact that our country is spending $100bn a year on that hell hole you call a country. And now you think $80/barrel is a fair price? SCREW YOU.

Screw them all. OPEC, of which Iraq is a member, along with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait (two more of our wonderful stab-you-in-the-back "friends"), announced today drastic cutbacks in oil production in order to keep oil prices artificially high.

Seriously, screw them all. Screw Saudi Arabia, a corrupt dictatorship whose own citizens were behind 9/11. Screw Kuwait, whose ass we should never save again. We're on the verge of a massive worldwide recession, and these SOBs are more than happy to shove us into the grave. Screw them all. It's high time we considered these countries as not our friends, and treated them accordingly. We need a long-term strategy to separate ourselves from these nutjobs and their energy. They are not our friends. And as for Iraq, what are we doing there? Read the rest of this post...

Republican former Mass. governor Weld endorses Obama

Drip drip drip...

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican, endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president on Friday, citing the senator's good judgment, "deep sense of calm" and "first-class political temperament."

Weld said he's never endorsed a Democrat for president before, but in the last six weeks or so, it became "close to a no-brainer." Obama has a history of bringing Democrats, Republicans and independents together and is the best choice at a time when America's standing in the world is at a low point, he said.

"It's not often you get a guy with his combination of qualities, chief among which I would say is the deep sense of calm he displays, and I think that's a product of his equally deep intelligence," he said in a phone interview.

Other than Her Royal Highness Lady Lynn de Redneck, how many big-name Dems have endorsed McCain?

[Crickets]

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Sarah Palin Refuses To Answer Whether Or Not Abortion Clinic Bombers Are Terrorists

Ari has the transcript, and more:

Brian Williams: Back to the notion of terrorists and terrorism, this word has come up in relation to Mr. Ayers -- hanging out with terrorist – domestic terrorists. It is said that it gives it a vaguely post uh 9-11 hint, using that word, that we don’t normally associate with domestic crimes. Are we changing the definition? Are the people who set fire to American cities during the ‘60’s terrorists, under this definition? Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist under the definition?

Sarah Palin: There is no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was um one who sought to destroy our US Capitol and our Pentagon -- that is a domestic terrorist. There’s no question there. Now others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or um facilities, that uh, it would be unacceptable -- I don’t know if you could use the word terrorist, but its unacceptable and it would not be condoned of course on our watch. I don’t know if what you are asking is if I regret referring to Bill Ayers as an unrepentant domestic terrorist. I don’t regret characterizing him as that.

Brian Williams: I’m just asking what other categories you would put in there. Abortion clinic bombers? Protesters in cities where fires were started, Molotov cocktails, were thrown? People died.

Sarah Palin: I would put in that category of Bill Ayers anyone else who would seek to destroy our United States Capitol and our Pentagon and would seek to destroy innocent Americans.

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Joe and Rob talk about polls

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That Palin makeup artist makes a lot of money (more than any other individual on the campaign in early October)

Via the Caucus at the NY Times, this one speaks for itself:

Who was the highest paid individual in Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October as it headed down the homestretch?

Not Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser; not Nicolle Wallace, his senior communications staff member. It was Amy Strozzi, who was identified by the Washington Post this week as Gov. Sarah Palin’s traveling makeup artist, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night.

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?”, was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi’s payment as “PERSONNEL SVC/EQUIPMENT.”

The payment on Oct. 10 made Ms. Strozzi the single highest-paid individual in the campaign for that two-week period.

Read the rest of this post...

Expect a crazy day on Wall Street: "Stock markets were in freefall around the world"

Looks like we're going to keep talking about the economic crisis:

Stock index futures tumbled so sharply on Friday they had to be frozen at several points as global markets tumbled on signs the global economy is in the throes of recession.

Stock markets were in freefall around the world as panicked investors moved to liquidate risky positions. Japan's Nikkei index ended down 9.6 percent and European shares lost 8 percent.

By 7:00 a.m. in New York December Dow Jones futures were down 6.3 percent, Standard & Poor's 500 futures were off 6.6 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures were down 6.8 percent.

All three contracts lost the maximum amount permissible before the start of futures trading in the United States.

Both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq said trading would open as normal at 9:30 a.m EDT.

Frozen? I don't purport to know how this all works, but that just doesn't bode well.

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Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

11 days.

All week, I think a lot of people have been holding their collective breaths, waiting to see if anything John McCain and Sarah Palin have been saying or doing has had an impact. Nothing has, really. The polls are holding. And as the McCain/Palin attacks have become increasingly hysterical, Obama stays steady and keeps moving forward.

Palin will be deposed today in yet another investigation of the Troopergate scandal. Todd, too. But, on Sunday, it's apparently big news that Palin is campaigning with Elisabeth Hasselbeck from "The View." ABC News actually sent a "Breaking News" email about this development yesterday. (Note to ABC News: That's not really "Breaking News.")

It's great fun to read all the articles popping up about the intra-GOP fighting. We'll see a lot more of those over the next couple weeks. Have at it, kids.

11 days.

Thread the news.... Read the rest of this post...

British economy shrinks more than expected

The UK economy had been the envy of Europe for years but those high times seem to be an an end. One third of the British economy is related to banking/finance so problems in that sector along with even more personal debt than the US (shocking as that may be) spells serious trouble in the months to come. On that news, European markets are dropping hard in early trading, following negative days across Asia.

The British economy shrank more than expected and for the first time in 16 years in the third quarter of 2008, as fears grow the country could be in for a painful and prolonged recession.

The Office for National Statistics said on Friday gross domestic product fell 0.5 percent in the three months to September, the biggest drop since Q4 1990 and the first contraction since Q2 1992.

Analysts had forecast a fall of 0.2 percent.

On the year, GDP was 0.3 percent higher, the weakest rate of growth since Q2 1992.

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Federal Reserve's Bear Stearns holdings lose $2 billion

One can only imagine how much more of this is out there. It's anyone's guess whether this market is is going back up, heading down or going nowhere so more losses remain a strong possibility.

The value of the Bear Stearns' portfolio held by the Federal Reserve hase declined 9% to $26.8 billion from $29.5 billion last quarter, the Fed said.

The portfolio is now valued at $2 billion less than initial loan to JPMorgan Chase earlier this year.

It's important to remember though that even with these losses, on top of previous losses, Congress still can't find time to make Wall Street bonuses an issue. If you want nightly news TV theater, there's plenty of it in Washington but when it comes to the serious issue of a $70 billion bonus pool for Wall Street they will have none of it. Heaven forbid we ask Wall Street to sacrifice their bonus money because accountability isn't fair...for Wall Street. Read the rest of this post...

AIG using up $123 billion loan

That didn't take very long. Any more Republicans want to lecture us again on the juicy terms and all the money we're going to make from this deal? Who ever would have guessed that $123 billion was not going to be enough? I need to sit down I'm so surprised.

The troubled insurance giant American International Group already has consumed three-quarters of a federal $123 billion rescue loan, a little more than a month after the government stepped in to save the company from bankruptcy.

AIG has borrowed $90.3 billion from the Federal Reserve's credit line as of yesterday, the bulk of it to pay off bad bets the company made in guaranteeing other firms' risky mortgage investments. That's up from roughly $83 billion AIG had borrowed a week ago, and the $68 billion level it reached a week before that. The news comes as the company's new chief executive warned Wednesday that the government's financial lifeline may not be enough to keep AIG afloat.

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Q3 foreclosure filings way up

Just imagine what will happen when the unemployment rate increases. AP:

The number of homeowners ensnared in the foreclosure crisis grew by more than 70 percent in the third quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2007, according to data released Thursday.

Nationwide, nearly 766,000 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice from July through September, up 71 percent from a year earlier, said foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc.

By the end of the year, RealtyTrac expects more than a million bank-owned properties to have piled up on the market, representing around a third of all properties for sale in the U.S.

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Palin sports Democratic scarf

This story is a day or two old, but can we really ever get enough stories about how much of a blithering idiot our once-potential-future-president is?

It may sound silly, but keep this in mind. Sarah Palin is spending over $13,000 a month on make-up. She spent $150,000 last month on clothes. Her image is HUGELY important to this campaign. Yet she puts on a clearly Democratic scarf with donkeys on it. In the image-conscious world she and her high-paid GOP consultants live in, this is a huge gaffe. And it's just one more piece of evidence to suggest that she's a blithering idiot.

Though, a reader just pointed out to me: What staffer would have let her go out with that on? A staffer who wanted to sabotage her perhaps? Read the rest of this post...