Category: Evil

We Need to Primary Him Now!!!

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I’m beginning to think that the Republicans, the ½ sane ones anyway, may have been right in their criticisms in 2008 when they tried to portray him as a self-absorbed narcissist.

I am increasingly convinced that he obsessed with his own legacy such a degree that he just does not care about right and wrong.

He thinks that he is so damn awesome that he can somehow create a post partisan partisan paradise, with sparkle ponies!

To be fair, it could be that he’s just enamored by the idea that government should be private companies run by his Harvard buddies, but the effect is the same.

The latest episode in this is that he is trying to cut a deal with Republicans on the debt ceiling which is all cuts, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid:

President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner rushed Thursday to strike agreement on a far-reaching plan to reduce the national debt but faced a revolt from Democrats furious that the accord appeared to include no immediate provision to raise taxes.

With 12 days left until the Treasury begins to run short of cash, Obama and Boehner (R-Ohio) were still pursuing the most ambitious plan to restrain the national debt in at least 20 years. Talks focused on sharp cuts in agency spending and politically painful changes to cherished health and retirement programs aimed at saving roughly $3 trillion over the next decade.

More savings would be generated through an overhaul of the tax code that would lower personal and corporate income tax rates while eliminating or reducing an array of popular tax breaks, such as the deduction for home mortgage interest. But the talks envisioned no specific tax increases as part of legislation to lift the debt limit, and the tax rewrite would be postponed until next year.

Democrats reacted with outrage as word filtered to Capitol Hill, saying the emerging agreement appeared to violate their pledge not to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as Obama’s promise not to make deep cuts in programs for the poor without extracting some tax concessions from the rich.

………

After a lunchtime meeting between Lew and Senate Democrats, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) made no attempt to hide his anger, telling reporters that his caucus would oppose the “potential agreement” because it appeared to include no clear guarantee of increased revenue.

“The president always talked about balance, that there had to be some fairness in this, that this can’t be all cuts. There has to be a balance. There has to be some revenue and cuts. My caucus agrees with that,” Reid said. “I hope that the president sticks with that. I’m confident that he will.”

Congressional and administration officials said the White House informed Democratic leaders about the talks after Obama met privately with Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) late Wednesday. Congressional aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail private discussions, said the White House acknowledged that the emerging agreement is “to the right of the Gang of Six” — a bipartisan Senate debt-reduction framework unveiled this week — and far removed from what Democrats have said would be acceptable.

Obama summoned top Democratic leaders in both the House and the Senate back to the White House later Thursday for further discussions.

Barack Obama is the Manchurian Democrat.

To be fair, sources within the Obama administration are denying this, but as John Aravosis notes, in terms identical to when they killed the public option in secret:

Obama White House’s Dan Pfeiffer on rumors that they sold out the public option:

A rumor is making the rounds that the White House and Senator Reid are pursuing different strategies on the public option. Those rumors are absolutely false.

In his September 9th address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition. That continues to be the President’s position.

We all know how that went.

Obama White House on the rumors that the President has sold out on the budget deal:

A White House spokesman called the claims from aides “not credible” — the result of having a “3rd hand version of the facts.”

And here’s more on the record from – wait for it – Dan Pfeiffer:

pfeiffer44 Dan Pfeiffer
Anyone reporting a $3 trillion deal without revenues is incorrect. POTUS believes we need a balanced approach that includes revenues.

Barack Obama is going to f%$# the American people, and he’s going to f%$# the Democratic party, and while he does not understand it, he’s going to make Sarah Palin President, because the American people hate the idea of cutting entitlements, and like taxing the rich, and he’s decided that we are all idiots, so he’s setting it up so that Republicans will be completely insulated from the consequences of gutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

How is Barack Obama Different from George W. Bush?

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No this is not a lead in for a joke it’s a real question because Barack “I’m Shutting Down the CIA Black Sites” Obama has set up a new CIA black site:

Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport. The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat” operations against members of Al Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.

As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu. While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu. Among the sources who provided information for this story are senior Somali intelligence officials; senior members of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG); former prisoners held at the underground prison; and several well-connected Somali analysts and militia leaders, some of whom have worked with US agents, including those from the CIA. A US official, who confirmed the existence of both sites, told The Nation, “It makes complete sense to have a strong counterterrorism partnership” with the Somali government.

The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US agents “are here full time,” a senior Somali intelligence official told me. At times, he said, there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu, but he stressed that those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they advise and train Somali agents. “In this environment, it’s very tricky. They want to help us, but the situation is not allowing them to do [it] however they want. They are not in control of the politics, they are not in control of the security,” he adds. “They are not controlling the environment like Afghanistan and Iraq. In Somalia, the situation is fluid, the situation is changing, personalities changing.”

Bullsh%@.

This is not an existing state security apparatus who is doing us a favor, this the CIA, and possibly the NSA running another black site.

The “official government” in Somolia controls, “Somali government forces control roughly thirty square miles of territory in Mogadishu thanks in large part to the US-funded and -armed 9,000-member AMISOM force.”

This government controls about half the land area of Liechtenstein and that only by dint of massive foreign aid.

Seriously, what Barack Obama has done by way of the rule of law and civil rights is worse than what George W. Bush did, because he has normalized behavior, both by refusing to investigate criminality, and by aping the policies of Bush/Cheney.

…and it’s not getting any coverage by the MSM.

He’s Proposing Means Testing Medicare? Is He Nuts?

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One of the reason that Social Security and Medicare are popular are because they both apply to everyone.

When you start trying to exclude people for being too rich, you remove a powerful constituency that supports the programs, and save next to no money, and set the stage for a lower level, until finally the programs are just for the poor, and they are easier to kill.

Well, at his press conference, this is what Barack Obama proposed:

“The fall back position, the third option, and what I consider the least attractive option, is one in which we raise the debt ceiling without making any significant progress on reducing the deficit,” he said.

Obama specifically highlighted the possibility of additional means-testing for Medicare as a way to achieve savings, noting that his proposal would not affect current beneficiaries.

“You can envision a situation where for somebody in my position — me having to pay a little bit more — would be appropriate…and that could make a difference,” Obama said during a Friday press conference.

Will someone please primary the bastard before he destroys the last vestige of the New Deal? Please?

His narcissistic interest in accomplishing big things, even when they are bad big things, is profoundly troubling.

But of Course, It’s Florida…

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Attourneys in the Florida Attorney General’s office were forced to resign with no notice or any opportunity to communicate what they had found:

A lead foreclosure fraud investigator for the state said she and a colleague were forced to resign from the Florida attorney general’s office, unexpectedly ending their nearly yearlong pursuit to hold law firms and banks accountable.

Former Assistant Attorney General Theresa Edwards and colleague June Clarkson had been investigating the state’s so-called “foreclosure mills,” uncovering evidence of legal malpractice that also implicated banks and loan serv­icers.

Despite positive performance evaluations, Edwards said the two were told during a meeting with their supervisor in late May to give up their jobs voluntarily or be let go. Edwards said no reason was given for the move.

“It all happened very abruptly,” said Edwards, who had worked in the attorney general’s office for about three years.

The foreclosure investigations were launched under former Attorney General Bill McCollum, but Edwards said she sensed changes were coming under Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“I think they wanted to put people in there that were more in line with their thinking,” Edwards said.

Bondi’s press secretary said Tuesday that foreclosure investigations are still open and are being personally led or supervised by Division Director Richard Lawson.

Yeah sure. Rick Scott is determined to get to the bottom of rich lawyers cheating ordinary people.

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Even though Geithner has denied the rumors that he would be leaving, this hasn’t stopped unnamed sources for floating the names of potential replacements , and this scares the hell out of me:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would like to leave the Obama administration this fall if economic conditions are stronger and the debt ceiling debate is resolved in a timely manner, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

Possible replacements to be President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, according to a senior administration official, include Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, and Roger Altman, a prominent investment banker and former deputy Treasury secretary.

So, the front runners are two investment bankers, one of whom co-chaired the cat food commission and launched a full frontal assault on social security, with the hope of delivering that pot of money to Wall Street.

But if you think that the front runners are scary, just look at the B-team:

Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, is considered a strong dark-horse candidate.Dimon has said he is not interested in public office but many on Wall Street believe he would accept the job if asked by Obama. But the White House will have to decide whether Dimon, who leads the most successful bank in the U.S., is too closely aligned with Wall Street.

Jamie F%$#ing Diamond.  The man who whines because he doesn’t think that overpaid, incompetent, corrupt, immoral, and very very rich rat f%$#s are having their asses kissed enough?

Is there any limit to the extremes to which Barack Obama and His Clueless Minions™ will go to put their tongues up the anuses of the banksters who have wrecked our economy?

It appears not.

Shoot me now!

Well, the DoJ is Saying that it Might Investigate Torturing People to Death

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Of the 101 cases that special prosecutor John Durham investigated, he referred just 2 to be considered for further investigation.

Both of them were murder by torture, out of the dozens of cases of murder by torture, and the hundreds (probably thousands) of cases of torture without a death being involved.

As Glenn Greenwald observes, it doesn’t matter, because the Obama administration has ruled out prosecuting anyone who authorized torture but did not actually physically conduct it themselves:

In August, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder — under continuous, aggressive prodding by the Obama White House — announced that three categories of individuals responsible for Bush-era torture crimes would be fully immunized from any form of criminal investigation and prosecution: (1) Bush officials who ordered the torture (Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld); (2) Bush lawyers who legally approved it (Yoo, Bybee, Levin), and (3) those in the CIA and the military who tortured within the confines of the permission slips they were given by those officials and lawyers (i.e., “good-faith” torturers). The one exception to this sweeping immunity was that low-level CIA agents and servicemembers who went so far beyond the torture permission slips as to basically commit brutal, unauthorized murder would be subject to a “preliminary review” to determine if a full investigation was warranted — in other words, the Abu Ghraib model of justice was being applied, where only low-ranking scapegoats would be subject to possible punishment while high-level officials would be protected.

Adam Serwer makes the obvious conclusion, that absent prosecution of those who authorized torture, it will happen again.

In the matter of crimes against humanity, of which torture is one, the cover-up is a crime as well, and it is ongoing, and so not (yet) subject to the statute of limitations, so I hope that some future Justice Department will take the time to criminally investigate the Obama administration on this.  (Unfortunately, this would almost certainly involve a Republican President)

Otherwise, torture is the law of the land right now.

Remember, the Banksters Own Our Asses

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That’s why the Federal Reserve almost doubled the interchange fees that banks can charge on debit card swipes, despite the fact that the initial proposal was much higher than what is charged in other industrialized nations:

Responding to an outcry from financial institutions, federal regulators on Wednesday significantly increased a new limit on fees that large banks can charge to merchants for processing debit card purchases, and they delayed the implementation of the cap until October.

The Federal Reserve voted 4-1 to set the limit for so-called swipe fees at 21 cents per transaction, an increase from the 12-cent fee it proposed in December. That fee would have gone into effect next month for large banks with more than $10 billion in assets.

In addition, the Fed on Wednesday allowed debit card issuers to add a fee of .05% of each purchase to cover a portion of fraud losses. That would add 2 cents to a $40 purchase. And debit card issuers could add a 1-cent-per-transaction fee if they undertook tougher fraud prevention policies and procedures.

The Fed said the new fee for an average transaction would be 24 cents. That’s still a big decrease from the current average swipe fee of 44 cents.

BTW, that “outcry from financial institutions,” they refuse to happens every time someone tries to reduce the ability of the banksters to rob the general public, and the “Responding to”, means that the Fed really has no interest inhelping consumers, they just had to determine the least that they could do to avoid a sh%$ storm.

Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve can bite my shiny metal………

Judge Enjoins Kansas Defacto Abortion Ban

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Maddow has been on this like white on rice

Kansas just passed a series of regulations that closed down the 3 abortion clinics in the state.

Following the adoption of the regulations, which included things like the size of janitors closets (!), the clinics had about a week to comply:

After deliberating about an hour, U.S District Judge Carlos Murguia issued an order late this afternoon blocking new Kansas licensing regulations for abortion clinics.

The temporary restraining order was sought by two Kansas City area abortion clinics that had been denied licenses under rules that took effect today. It will be in effect until a later court decision on the issue.

…

They contend that the licensing process was an organized and deliberate attempt by Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration to shut down abortion clinics in Kansas.

…

Brownback, a staunch abortion opponent, signed the new licensing requirements into law along with three other new abortion restrictions approved by the Legislature this year.

Providers said the state didn’t send out the rules until after the close of business June 17, less than two weeks before the new licensing was scheduled to start. They said they didn’t receive the new regulations until the following Monday, June 20.

The compressed licensing process, coupled with the strict requirements, made it impossible to meet the law, they argued in their legal filings.

Six days after Aid for Women applied for a license, the state said it wouldn’t grant one based on its application alone, the clinic’s complaint said. At no point, the clinic contends, did regulators discuss why they denied the license or what corrective measures might be undertaken.

The clinic argued that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment had no factual basis for the denial because it hadn’t even inspected the clinic.

One of the things that the above article does not mention, and Rachel Maddow does, (at about 5:30 in the video) is that, in addition to banning abortion clinics, the new regulations allow Kansas authorities do have access to people’s medical records without a warrant.

So they take the records, and they will use those records to harass the patients.

We really need to understand that those who would criminalize abortion folks with a minor political difference whose feelings we should try to accommodate.

These are people who offer open and enthusiastic support to assassination and other forms of terrorism, and if we are to use material support statutes against Islamists, we should use them against them as well.

More Evidence That We Live in a Feudal Society

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This time, it’s the credit report bureaus who are practicing Droit du seigneur* on us without lube:

The credit rating bureaus, whose reports influence everything from credit cards to mortgages to job offers, have a two-tiered system for resolving errors — one for the rich, the well-connected, the well-known and the powerful, and the other for everyone else.

The three major agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, keep a V.I.P. list of sorts, according to consumer lawyers and legal documents, consisting of celebrities, politicians, judges and other influential people. Those on the list — and they may not even realize they are on it — get special help from workers in the United States in fixing mistakes on their credit reports. Any errors are usually corrected immediately, one lawyer said.

For everyone else, disputes are herded into a largely automated system. Their complaints are often electronically ferried to a subcontractor overseas, where a worker spends, on average, about two minutes figuring out the gist of the matter, boiling it down to a one-to-three-digit computer code that signifies the problem — “account not his/hers,” for example — and sending a dispute form to the creditor to investigate. Many times, consumer advocates say, the investigation translates to a perfunctory check of its records.

“The legal responsibility of the credit reporting agencies and of the creditors is well established,” said Leonard Bennett, a consumer lawyer in Newport News, Va. “There is a requirement that they do meaningful research and analysis, and it is almost never done.”

For the rest of us, it’s all just serfdom.

*Droit du seigneur is the apparently mythical practice of granting the lord of the manor the right to deflower new brides on their wedding night.

This is the Legacy of Arne Duncan

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You know, the guy who ran the Chicago schools, and was chosen to run the Department of Education, where he has gone full in on bashing teachers supporting the for-profit educational industrial complex.

Well. I’m not sure if he set the tone in the Chicago School district, or was just a product of it, but the fact that the Chicago Public Schools froze teacher salaries while jacking up pay for senior executives:

Though they voted last week to rescind four percent pay raises for teachers and union school workers, the Chicago Board of Education today is expected to approve salaries for the newly installed Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard and four other top executives that, by and large, mark substantial increases over their predecessors’ pay.

As the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday, Brizard’s base salary – $250,000 – tops former CPS head Ron Huberman’s salary by $20,000 – and is the highest pay rate for any city executive excluding the city’s new police chief, Garry McCarthy. It is also an annual salary nearly $40,000 higher than the head of New York City’s school system, though less than the public schools chiefs in Los Angeles and other cities.

Salaries for the other four executives are less dramatic, but still more than their Daley administration predecessors. New Chief Education Officer Noemi Donoso, who is slated to rake in $195,000, is making $2,150 more than the former education officer. New Chief of Staff Andrea Saenz, who will be paid $165,000 annually, is making $49,000 more than those who came before. CPS chief administrative officer Tim Cawley and communications officer Becky Carroll are slated to take in $35,833 and $34,617 base salary increases over their Daley counterparts, earning $215,000 and $165,000 salaries respectively.

So their goal is to make American schools more like the banks.

They sh%$ on the workers, and extract as much money as possible out of the enterprise to overpay the incompetent rat-f%$#s in charge.

Too Big to Fail, and Now Too Big to Sue

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That is what the Supreme Court ruled today. They basically said that despite the fact that Wal-Mart systematically discriminated against women in every one of their stores, the millions of women impacted were too large a group to be certified as a class for a class-action suit:

But Wal-Mart doesn’t have to worry any more.

Justice Scalia expressed the Court’s opinion — which was unanimous — that the class action suit was too large and varied to carry forward.

So the solution to avoid pesky lawsuits for real wrong doing, you just have to be so big that the courts will give you a free pass.

First the banks are above the law, and now the monster that Sam Walton created.

Stop the world, I want to get off.

More Like George W. Bush Every Day

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Barack Obama ignored the formal opinions of senior professional legal staff in the Department of Justice on the Libya campaign:

President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.

If there is a defining legacy of the Obama administration, it may be in the formalization of the Nixonian principle that if the President does it, regardless of the settled law, it’s legal.

Perhaps it’s time to dispense with our unique form of government, and move to a parliamentary one, because if there are no constraints on the executive beyond elections, then the political system must be able to force elections at times like this.

90% of All Nursing Home Patients End Up On Medicaid

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Which means that it’s an issue that the Republicans will use to scare old people, but Obama and the Congressional Democrats are negotiating draconian cuts in the program, because they have some sort of twisted political suicide pact thing going on:

This would be brutal for the poor, particularly in Republican states, but even in blue ones. Governors are champing at the bit to cut enrollment and increase cost sharing. State budgets are still strained, and Medicaid is among the highest expenditures. Much of Medicaid spending goes to keep poor seniors in nursing homes, so a lot of the cuts would get targeted there. Which means that you can call this the “Force Your Mother-in-Law to Move In With You Act.”

Keep in mind that fully half of all the coverage expansions in the Affordable Care Act come from a Medicaid expansion. A removal of MOE [maintenance of effort requirements, which prohibit states from gutting the program] would basically undercut that; even though the federal government would pick up all the costs of the Medicaid expansion, states want to reduce their current level, and so the coverage expansion will just unravel. Or, the feds will put the burden on the states, and the states will just opt out of it. You’re talking about millions and millions of beneficiaries losing their coverage.

Un-dirtyword-believably stupid, particularly when Medicaid is a vehicle for much of the theoretical improvements in coverage under Obama’s precious Affordable Health Care Act.

I’m beginning to think that, notwithstanding his intellect, Obama really is not interested in doing anything beyond checking off boxes on something that resembles a standardized test, whether it makes a difference or not.

Ironically, that is his education policy.

They Went After Juan Cole?

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The New York Times has discovered that Bush and His Evil Minions™ set the CIA on distinguished professor, and well known blogger, Juan Cole:

A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

It is not clear whether the White House received any damaging material about Professor Cole or whether the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies ever provided any information or spied on him. Mr. Carle said that a memorandum written by his supervisor included derogatory details about Professor Cole, but that it may have been deleted before reaching the White House. Mr. Carle also said he did not know the origins of that information or who at the White House had requested it.

And just in case you are wondering if he is a disgruntled spy who went to the Times, he isn’t. The Times came to him:

Mr. Carle, who retired in 2007, has not previously disclosed his allegations. He did so only after he was approached by The New York Times, which learned of the episode elsewhere. While Mr. Carle, 54, has written a book to be published next month about his role in the interrogation of a terrorism suspect, it does not include his allegations about the White House’s requests concerning the Michigan professor.

My money is on it being someone in Dick Cheney’s office, because it smells like Cheney.

Crap

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On a party line vote, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has reinstated Scott Walker’s union busting law:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, just hours before a deadline imposed by state legislative Republicans, just reinstated the anti-union law which a district court judge had blocked because it violated state open meetings requirements. They made the novel interpretation that those requirements don’t apply to the legislature.

The court found a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state’s open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when they hastily approved the measure and made it possible for the Senate to take it up. In doing so, the Supreme Court overruled a Dane County judge who had struck down the legislation, ending one challenge to the law even as new challenges are likely to emerge.

The majority opinion was by Justices Michael Gableman, David Prosser, Patience Roggensack and Annette Ziegler. The other three justices – Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and N. Patrick Crooks – concurred in part and dissented in part.

Not that I have to tell you this, but the four who signed the majority opinion were all nominated by Republicans, while the three who dissented were all nominated by Democrats.

I now expect the court to find a way to stop the recall elections.

The DoJ Has Been Thoroughly Politicized by Republicans Since 1980

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Investigative reporter Murray Waas, has a rundown of John Ensign’s law breaking, and the fact that the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute him, or Tom Coburn, who is hip deep in the web of back door payoffs, coverups, and a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

But, as Nicole Belle observes, they have still found time to indict John Edwards for paying off a mistress.

What we need to understand here is that since Ronald Reagan, successive Republican administrations have done their level best to politicize the DoJ, and it’s worked.

The professional staff of the Justice Department is no longer professional.

I do not know what the fix is, but Obama’s decision to allow 2nd rate political hacks from the Bush administration to remain on staff, even though civil service regulations were flouted, was exactly the wrong thing to do.

Your Moment of Schadenfreude

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One of the conditions of James O’Keefe’s probation for attempting to but Senator Mary Landrieu’s office is that he needs permission to leave the state of New Jersey.

His latest request was denied:

A federal judge has denied a request by James O’Keefe, the conservative auteur-provocateur, to make a series of trips outside New Jersey.

Since O’Keefe is on probation for his conviction last year for his role in a harebrained undercover operation inside Senator Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans district office, he has to get judicial approval to travel outside New Jersey, where he resides with his family. As part of the scheme targeting the Louisiana Democrat, two O’Keefe cronies dressed up as telephone repairmen and sought access to the politician’s telephone system (O’Keefe–himself a noted master of disguise–was secretly recording the goings-on with his cell phone).

Knowles’s order does not detail his reasons for vetoing the 26-year-old O’Keefe’s motion. The judge has routinely approved prior O’Keefe travel requests.

My guess here is that the judge realized that O’Keefe’s travel was an attempt by him to get paid for his admitted (he pled guilty) wrongdoing, and decided that this was an inappropriate way for him to spend his probation.

Maybe he can get a job washing dishes, or counseling poor people.

Heh.

When You Elect a Contemptible Greedhead Criminal As Your Leader…

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At least when it’s clear that he is a crook and a liar, you clearly deserve to reap the whirlwind

Case in point, Florida Governor Rick Scott, who presided over Columbia/HCA while it was defrauding Medicare, and proceeded to take the 5th amendment around 75 times during the investigation.

And now it apopears that the dumb-ass voters of Florida are having a bit of buyers remorse:

Gov. Rick Scott is one of the least popular governors in America, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll that shows 57 percent of voters disapprove of his job performance.

Only 29 percent favor the job Scott is doing, the poll of 1,196 registered voters shows.

Scott’s job-performance numbers mirror public sentiment about the $69.7 billion state budget, which cuts schools, healthcare and programs for the environment. The poll finds that 54 percent of voters say the budget is “unfair” to someone like them, while 29 percent favor it.

Scott has praised what he calls the “jobs budget” as a way to get Florida’s economy moving. But despite the nickname, the budget will lead to more layoffs in the short-term because it eliminates nearly 4,500 state worker positions.

Tough titties, Floridians, you elected him, and you don’t have a recall law for state wide official, so for the next few years, it will suck to be you.

Another Shanda Before the Goyim

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This time, it’s House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who is insisting that any aid that any aid going to the tornado ravaged town of Joplin Missouri be offset by budget cuts:

Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Monday that if Congress passes an emergency spending bill to help Missouri’s tornado victims, the extra money will have to be cut from somewhere else.

“If there is support for a supplemental, it would be accompanied by support for having pay-fors to that supplemental,” Mr. Cantor, Virginia Republican, told reporters at the Capitol. The term “pay-fors” is used by lawmakers to signal cuts or tax increases used to pay for new spending.

Note that this sort of callous disregard for this sort of disaster not only puts him on the wrong side of all decent people, it puts him on the wrong side of Tom “The Hammer” Delay, who supported borrowing to fund hurricane Katrina relief.

Remember, It’s Only Censorship if It’s a Government

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So Murdoch owned Sky Italia dropping Current TV because it hired Keith Olbermann:

Former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV cable network has claimed Rupert Murdoch’s Italian satellite TV company dropped the network in Italy because it hired liberal politics news anchor Keith Olbermann.

Imagine that.

If there is a lesson to the travails of Silvio Berlusconi, it is that private unregulated mass media outlets are a cancer on democracy, and Rupert Murdoch is just another example of this.