Jalal Talabanivetoed the legislation because it puts off a vote in Kirkuk, where the Kurds, including Talibani, want a vote to establish governance of the oil rich region.
This Iraq thing is going so damn well, huh?
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
IP Legislation Gone Insane, Chapter LVXXIII
Armin Meiwes, who killed and ate a voluntary victim Christmas in 2001, has succeeded in obtaining an injunction against the release of a horror film, because it is based on what he did.
He claimed that the film infringed on his, “Personality Rights”, which in Germany is something in between privacy rights and the “right of publicity” that is used against Elvis impersonators:
The Court looked into the degree to which the pursuit of artistic freedom interfered with the personality rights of Meiwes. It found that artistic freedom was not so powerful a right that it allowed for someone’s life to be made into a horror film.
Meiwes advertised online for someone to be killed and eaten by him. Bernd Jürgen Brandes responded to his advert and tried to join Meiwes in eating his own severed penis before being killed and eaten.
Meiwes was arrested and in 2004 convicted of manslaughter. Prosecutors then changed their case and asked for a retrial in 2005, questioning whether Brandes was in a fit mental state to have given his consent to the killing.
Meiwes was convicted of murder and is serving an eight and a half year jail term. Reports have emerged that in prison he has become a vegetarian.
I guess it’s refreshing to know that the internet doesn’t have a monopoly on really sick sh#@.
Drug Warrior Call For War On Drugs in Afghanstan, Damn the Consequences
Thomas Schweich, the former enior counternarcotics official in the United States Embassy in Kabul, is claiming that the Afghan government is hopelessly corrupt and that Afghanistan is nearly a narco-state.
The allegations as reported are alarming, but when you read his essay on the his experiences there, it becomes far less concerning.
It’s clear that this guy is a hard core drug warrior. He opposes payments in lieu of growing poppies, supports aerial spraying of defoliants, military operations for poppy eradication, etc.
This is precisely the sort of crap that pushes peasants to the Taliban, but he sees everything through the lens of “drugs bad”, and ignores secondary effects, so he’s now writing a tell-all.
It is this myopic view that created the disaster of prohibition, and is fostering the disastrous ‘war on drugs” now.
Cuba Playing Russian Bomber Rumor Close to the Vest
Fidel Castro wrote an online column saying that, “Raul did very well keeping a dignified silence.”
Both Russia and Cuba have everything to gain from ambiguity, and so I think that they will continue to be ambiguous.
That’s part of Teddy Roosevelt’s idea behind the hole “talk softly” foreign relations.
I would note that the rumor is not about a permanent base, just a refueling base, but that would still give NORAD fits.
Obama Makes $5 Million Buy of Olympic Ads
Good move, I don’t watch the Olympics, so if someone could send me a link to whatever ads he puts up, I’d appreciate it.
I think that some ads linking McCain to, “more of the same”, would be good, but that’s out of my pay grade.
Economics Update
While the Federal Reserve is afraid to say the word, it appears from their latest report that we are seeing stagflation.
Jobless benefit claims just spiked above 400,000, up 34,000 from last week to 406,000, the highest reading since March.
Again, let me note that the weekly numbers have a lot of noise, but this news still sucks.
What’s more we have increasing evidence that the downturn is not “decoupled”, but is effecting other economies, with consumer and corporate confidence in Europe coming in well below expectations.
Not surprisingly, the bad news out of Europe, which points to interest rate moderation there, has bolstered the dollar.
Some real estate numbers came out today, and they are not good.
home sales fell 2.6% from may, and are now at an annual rate of 4.93 million/year, the lowest rate since 1998.
If you are wondering what might happen when mortgage rates rise, you should break out the popcorn, because it looks like that show might be starting soon. Rates went up 0.37% last week to 6.63% for a 30 year fixed mortgage.
Because of all this, I am not surprised thatthe number of vacant homes has remained at more than 2.2 million.
Energy was flippity floppity today, with oil up by about a dollar, and retail gasoline prices down again.
Why John Sidney McCain Didn’t Talk to the Exorcist
I mentioned that the sick old man was going to Louisiana to talk with Bobby “The Exorcist” Jindal, and the scuttlebutt was that he was sizing him up as a VP running mate.
Well, he also intended to fly to an oil rig, to talk about the safety of oil rigs, and to falsely state that there was not a single oil spill post Katrina:
Dennis Knizley looks out on an oil rig beached just off of Dauphin Island, Ala., Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 30, 2005, a day after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the island and brought the enormous structure a few hundred yards from shore. (AP Photo/Birmingham Post-Herald, Jan-Michael Stump)
In fact, there were somewhere between 146 and 595 oil spills, depending on whose numbers you use, that spewed 9 million gallons of oil.
In any case, the McCain campaign canceled the flight to the oil rig, claiming that the “weather” was to blame, though the weather was actually pretty good, it further south, on the Tex-Mex border where Dolly was hitting.
More likely what stopped him from giving the speech was the fact that there was a barge accident on the Mississippi that day, which spilled 419,000 gallons of oil, and it would have made the campaign stop look like a clown show.
Come to think of it, the entire campaign is starting to look like a clown show, and I’m beginning to wonder if God hates the John McCain campaign.
Novak’s Hit and Run Victim Still in Hospital
It appears that the victim, 86 year old Don Clifford Liljenquist, is in worse shape than previously reported, and is still in the hospital, though this may be complicated by his age and history of homelessness.
All Novak has gotten out of this is a $50 fine.
Considering the reports of witnesses, there should be further investigation…but there won’t be, because Bob Novak is above the law.
The Plame-Wlsons have issued a statement which bears repeating:
Our sympathies go out to the victim of Novak’s action. Once again Novak has demonstrated his callous disregard for the rights of others, as well as his chronic inability to accept responsibility for his actions.
We have long argued that responsible adults should take Novak’s typewriter away. The time has arrived for them to also take away the keys to his Corvette.
Indeed.
More Media in the Tank for John Sidney McCain III
Well, in the aftermath of CBS’s selective editing, we have Howie Kurtz, “Mr. Conflict of Interest”, alibiing for CBS deliberately mis-editing the interview.
Seriously, someone is in the tank for McCain…Hell, everyone in the media has this “man crush” for McCain, which is why this is not wall to wall 24/7 news right now, because they “know” McCain, and they “know” it’s not fair to hold him to his word.
Fannie Mae Has $5 Billion Overhang in Unsold Foreclosures
And the number is getting bigger, because they are picking up homes twice as fast as they are selling them.
On a related note, it appears that you can pick up a 3br in Flint, MI for $5,000 (the number of zeros are correct)…That’s a depressed community.
And the GM Dead Pool Continues
Toyota sold more cars than GM sales in first half of the year, and it looks as if it will outsell GM for 2008, which would be the first time in 76 years that GM was not number 1 worldwide.
Allegations of Bribery In Indian Nuke Vote
The last link gets into the opposition of Kumari Mayawati to the measure. She is the defacto national representative of India’s Dalit (untouchable) population, and based on what I’ve read about her indicates that she is a very skilled politician, and so probably she’s setting herself up for a larger role in the next government.
One thing that I am sure of though is that it won’t make it through this session of the US Congress, because the Hyde Act requires that Congress be in session continuously for 30 days before a vote is held, and that will not happen in late July of an election year.
Novak Does to Pedestrian What He Does to the Truth
He ran down a pedestrian, and then tried to leave the scene of the accident, prompting a bicyclist to pull in front of his car to stop him.
Unfortunately, the man who gleefully leaked the name of one of the CIA’s chief covert operatives on WMDs is unlikely to get any jail time. He was only cited for “failure to yield.”
Barack Obama: Fire Cass Sunstein
BTD at Talkleft has the goods:
It appears that Sunstein has suggested that only the “Egregious Crimes” of Bush and His Evil Minions™ be pursued under an Obama administration.
While both BTD and I agree that the standard of Jonathan Turley on Olbermann, that all crimes by the executive are “egregious”, is excessive (Turley supported impeachment over “Monicagate”).
I would further argue that pursuing all the “high crimes and misdemeanors” of the Bush administration would not be possible, as there are simply too few lawyers in Washington, DC to do this.
That being said, there are certain crimes that must be pursued, because otherwise it subverts the rule of law, which is already quite weak inside the Beltway.
What sort of crimes? Things like illegal wiretapping, WHICH CASS SUNSTEIN SUPPORTED, and the military kangaroo courts of Gitmo detainees, WHICH CASS SUNSTEIN SUPPORTED (See here and here).
He justifies them by supporting the proposition that we elect a king with unlimited power every 4 years.
This should be reason enough to remove him completely from the campaign, and from any position in your future administration.
Economics Update
Fairly slow news day: retail gasoline down, oil down, and dollar up.
In what has to be the most obvious bit of analysis this week, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHE)) is saying that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may record more losses as a result of the moribund real estate market….Seriously, this could have come out of a fortune cookie, particularly since we are seeing more indicators that the housing market has not hit bottom:
Mortgage applications fell 6.2% last week, (again, note that this is a noisy number), and California foreclosures hit a 20 year high in the 2nd quarter….actually the most ever, since they didn’t start collecting the numbers until 1988.
It Appears that Some People Want to Relive the 1960s
Specifically, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
There are now rumors that Russia may start basing nuclear capable bombers in Cuba in response to the US installing an ABM system in Europe directed at them (let’s be honest, if it were actually aimed at the Iranians, as claimed, it would be further south, to give coverage to Turkey and Italy).
General Norton Schwartz, the nominee for Air Force chief of staff, said, “I think we should stand strong and indicate that that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line, for the United States of America.“
I agree….as does the expansion of NATO eastward, and a the European missile defense system crosses a red line for the Russians.
Russian political culture is not driven by a need to engage in the world. Russian political culture is driven by a paranoia about the world, and we seem to be taking steps guaranteed to stoke their paranoia.
It’s almost as if someone wanted to recreate the Cold War for political gain.
3rd U.S. Circurt Court of Appeals Strikes Down COPA
They found the law uvague and an infringement on the first amendment and so declared the Child Online Protection Act unconstitutional:
“It is apparent that COPA, like the Communications Decency Act before it, ‘effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another,’ Reno, 521 U.S. at 874, 117 S.Ct. at 2346, and thus is overbroad. For this reason, COPA violates the First Amendment,” the judges wrote. “These burdens would chill protected speech.”
I expect an appeal, but the fact is that the mechanisms are more restrictive, and less effective than filters, and as such appear to be unconstitutional, though IANAL.
McCain’s Meets With Jindal
So it appears that John Sidney McCain III is spending some time in Louisiana, but besides mentions of a visit with governor Bobby Jindal, nothing else is specified.
Maybe they want the performing whack job, he has claimed to have performed an exorcism, to be VP. It certainly would be entertaining.
Of other note, it article indicates that Bob Novak got owned on the leak that McCain would announce a VP pick this week:
Robert Novak, the columnist who helped trigger the VP frenzy with a blog posting Monday, told Fox News on Tuesday that he might have been duped by a McCain campaign aide.
Novak said he was encouraged by “a very senior McCain aide” to put out the story that McCain would name his running mate this week. He said he since has been told by “certain people” he “may have been used.”
Gee….You think????
Bush Caves on Housing Bailout Bill
They now say that he will sign the bill.
I guess that he doesn’t want another override this month.
No, Wall Street is Choking on a Pretzel
It appears that at one of Bush’s closed fundraisers, someone had a home video camera, and caught him saying that, “Wall Street ‘got drunk’ and now has a hangover.”
I guess you talk about what you know.