Category: Corruption

Illegal Political Prosecutionsin Bush DoJ Started in 2001

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This is an impeachable offense, pure and simple:

In the last two weeks, two sources, one of them inside of the Justice Department, have told me that a scheme was hatched in the upper echelons of the Bush Administration shortly after it took office in 2001 or early in 2002. The project identified John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as likely Democratic challengers to President Bush, and identified prominent trial lawyers around the United States as the likely financial vehicle for Edward’s rise. It directed that their campaign finance records be fly-specked, and that offenses not be treated as administrative matters but rather as serious criminal offenses.

…

The deliberate use of the state security apparatus to target opponents and their supporters is illegal, and was the sort of circumstance that was specifically envisioned by the founding fathers as a reason for impeachment now.

Blackwater Broke a Guy Out of Prison?

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Well, it turns out that theIraqi government has had repeated problems with Blackwater’s actions, with a number of incidents, including breaking Iraqi Electricity Minister Ahyam al Samarrai out of a Green Zone jail in December. Samarrai had been awaiting sentencing on charges that he had embezzled $2.5 billion that was intended to rebuild Iraq’s decrepit electricity grid.

This is getting out of hand.

Braking: FBI Taped Ted Stevens In Anti-Corruption Sting

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Ted Stevens, perhaps the most odious Senator in the history of the body, is going down.

FBI Agents Taped Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens As Part of Corruption Sting

MATT APUZZO
AP News

Sep 20, 2007 19:15 EDT

The FBI, working with an Alaska oil contractor, secretly taped telephone calls with Sen. Ted Stevens as part of a public corruption sting, according to people close to the investigation.

The secret recordings suggest the Justice Department was eyeing Stevens long before June, when the Republican senator first publicly acknowledged he was under scrutiny. At that time, it appeared Stevens was a new focus in a case that had already ensnared several state lawmakers.

More as it comes, but right now, pass the popcorn.

Henry Wasman and the Case of the Inspector General Who Didn’t

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Henry Waxman has founc another winner in the Bush Administration, this tiem, it’s the Inspector General for the State Department.

Case in point, When asked to investigate allegations of slave labor in the construction of the Iraqi Embassy, he interviewed only those employees that the contractor hand picked for him to interview.

At the rate this guy is going, he’ll soon be Cheney’s chief of staff.

More Haditha Massacre Coverup

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Once again, an a junior officer who knows enough to rat out more senior officers scates.

Capt. Lucas M. McConnell of Napa was granted immunity and ordered to cooperate with officials looking into the November 2005 killings, the Marines said in a press release.

….

Lt. Gen. James Mattis dismissed dereliction of duty charges against McConnell on Sept. 12. and determined that “administrative measures” were an appropriate punishment, the Marines said.

Seriously.

A sergeant gets jail, but a captain, who would be in a position to finger a colonel, who might in turn finger generals…nothing.

This is an excercise in ass covering.

Salad is Bad for You

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Or at least it is when you combine it with “self regulation”, because Dole has recalled 5,058 bags of salad mix.

More bad E Coli. Of note, a lot of this is literally bulls^%$, or at least cow waste, and these strains of E Coli are not natural for cows. It’s when we feed them a corn laden diet that their digestive tract was never designed to handle, their waste becomes hyper acidic, and this pathogen loves these conditions.

Behind Schedule and Over Budget, Lockheed Attemps to Sell Reduced Testing for JSF.

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LM is claiming that they can save money by “streamline” testing by using lessons from the F-22.

This is bulls*&%.

What they are really saying is that they are behind schedule and over budget, and that they are going to attempt to field these aircraft without proper testing in order to save money and time.

It is a request for a bailout, with shortcomings being fixed under a later cost plus contract.

Is There Some Sort of Fix in on the “Duke” Cunningham Invegation?

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This is weird. Thomas Kontogiannis, who has already admitted to bribing disgraced former Republican Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham was out on bail and money laundering, and as such he was not supposed to leave the country.

It turns out that he did leave the country, he went to a vacation resort in Greece, and the judge was ready to revoke bail and to lock him up, when an assistant U.S. Attorney said at a hearing this morning that the man’s recent trip to Greece was at the direction of federal agents.

This is beyond weird.

I’m wondering if someone in the DoJ wanted to send Kontogiannis a message about not fingering too many Republicans, and thought that they could do so more easily in Greece.

Iraqis Order Blackwater out of Iraq

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Here is where we get to fish or cut bait time. The Iraqi Government* has told Blackwater to get out, and has suspended their license to operate.

This is not surprising. They are a bunch of trigger happy goons who have immunity from Iraqi law and the military’s UCMJ.

The interesting thing here is that Blackwater, nor (IIRC) any of of the other mercenaries employed by the US, are operating under an Iraqi license.

On the other hand, Blackwater is operating under a State Department contract, and while this may give them a measure of diplomatic immunity, it also allows them to be declared personae non grata, and forced to leave the country.

My guess is that Malaki will be told to pound sand, and thus the government will be revealed to be a puppet of the US formed primarily to allocate oil resources to American oil companies.

*Yes, I know that “Iraqi Government” is currently an oxymoron.

Schadenfreude, Silicon Valley Rat Bastard Edition

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SCO has filed bankruptcy.

Now that they have lost their bogus Unix claims, and owe back royalties, they are running to the bankruptcy court. I just hope that the court looks into the ties between SCO and Microflaccid™, because it’s clear that they were induced by Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and their Evil Minions™ to do this in order to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about Linux.

On Republican Wives

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I don’t generally venture too deeply into sexuality. It’s not that I’m a prude, but except on an academic level (I can give you schpiel on how neoteny influences human sexuality), I’m not particularly interested in the sexual motivations of people that I don’t know.

Suzie Bright, however, has a very good insight into the head of the Republican political wife, when she asks the question, “How does Suzanne Craig, wife of the outed senator, stand next to her liar of a husband at a press conference and not hurl her guts?“

It is a complex matter, but I think that Ms. Bright’s essay shines a lot of light on it.

Petraeus Is Eddie Haskell

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For those of you who are not American, or are too young to remember him, Eddie Haskell is a character from an almost year old comedy, “Leave it to Beaver*“. He was the friend of the title character’s older brother, and a repulsive troublemaker who never failed to suck up to the adults when they were around†.

Well, it appears that Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), and the good general’s boss feels much the same way about Petraeus as the audience was supposed to about Eddie Haskell. It has been reported that the admiral told the general that he thought he was:

“an ass-kissing little chickens*it” and added, “I hate people like that”, the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

Of note, Fallon appears to be a stand up guy, who is doing major pushback against the politicization of the military, and he has been steadfast, in opposing an attack on Iran.

Fallon acquired a reputation for a willingness to stand up to powerful figures during his tenure as commander in chief of the Pacific Command from February 2005 to March 2007. He pushed hard for a conciliatory line toward and China, which put him in conflict with senior military and civilian officials with a vested interest in pointing to China as a future rival and threat.

He demonstrated his independence from the White House when he refused in February to go along with a proposal to send a third naval carrier task force to the Persian Gulf, as reported by IPS in May. Fallon questioned the military necessity for the move, which would have signaled to Iran a readiness to go to war. Fallon also privately vowed that there would be no war against Iran on his watch, implying that he would quit rather than accept such a policy.

It should also be noted that the General’s duties in Iraq had been securing arms Saddam’s military, the ones that are used against us, and training the Iraqi police force, the one that is a Shia militia actively engaging in ethnic cleansing.

Let us pray that there are more Fallons than Petraeus in the Pentagon.

Sorry if this is old news, but Rosh Hashana has gotten me a bit behind.

*This show had what had to be the most unintentionally sexual line on TV of the day, at least until Batman’s gay innuendo, “Gee Ward, weren’t you a bit hard on the Beaver last night?”

†It should be noted that the actor who played him, went on to become a police officer, and was shot in the line of duty, forcing his retirement from the force, so he was nothing like Eddie.

Subprime meltdown finally affects beer drinkers

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It’s a wonderful headline for this Asia Times article, but there is some real meat and potatoes if you scroll down a bit.

…

He relates, “In 1983, the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] was faced with an awkward dilemma. If it continued to include the cost of housing in the Consumer Price Index, the CPI would reflect an inflation rate of 15%, thereby making the country’s economy look like a banana republic. Worse, since investors and bond traders have historically demanded a 2% real return after inflation, that would mean that bond and money market yields could climb as high as 17%.”

Yikes! What to do, what to do, what to do whattodowhattodo? “The BLS’s solution was as simple as it was shocking: exclude the cost of housing as a component in the CPI, and substitute a so-called ‘Owner Equivalent Rent’ component based on what a homeowner might ‘rent’ his house for.” Hahaha! The government resorts to lying! “Wow! Why didn’t we think of this before?” they are heard to ask among themselves.

Fortunately for the government, it worked. “The result of this statistical sleight of hand was immediate and gratifying,” Mr Hardaway writes, “for the reported inflation index quickly dropped to 2%”, down from the real, and horrifying, 15% which was due “in part” to the drop in rents caused by speculators wanting to “offset their holding costs by renting out their homes while their prices skyrocketed, thereby flooding the market with rentals that pushed down the cost of renting a house or apartment.” Hahaha!

You can almost hear the contempt in his voice when he says, “While the BLS was correct in assuming that this statistical ruse would fool the average citizen into believing that inflation was only 2% (and therefore be willing to accept a meager 4% return on his bank savings), what is remarkable is that the ruse also fooled the bond traders, and apparently continues to do so, leading analyst Peter Schiff to describe these supposed savvy bond traders as the ‘hormonal teenagers of the capital markets’.”

Putting it all together, he concludes, “The present subprime credit crisis can be directly traced back to the BLS decision to exclude the price of housing from the CPI. It is now clear that the ‘benign’ inflation figures reported over the last 10 years” were, (using my awesome editorial powers to insert my own words for special emphasis), “A big stinking load of lying crap by the corrupt Federal Reserve and the despicable government (except Ron Paul).”

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This subterfuge has not just been about housing. It’s everywhere in the BLS statistics, and it’s used to shortchange pensioners and to mask the real decline in standard of living for the median worker in the US since the early 1970s.