Category: Evil

Cheney Admits to Engineering Outing of CIA Operative to FBI

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Ummmm…wow????

Legally, it may be a gray zone, because there is no evidence that he actually explicitly gave the order to out Valerie Plame, but Murray Waas, one of the better investigative journalist of my generation has gotten his hands on the notes from FBI interview with dick Cheney, and it’s very clear that he rewrote the talking points on the push-back on Joe Wilson’s OP/ED debunking the Niger-Iraq-Uranium claim in such a way as to make it nearly inevitable that Plame would be outed:

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

(emphasis mine)

Of course, I expect Cheney to be among those pardoned between January 15 and January 20, so it will amount to nothing.

GOP: ‘Action Alert – Auto Bailout’ – The News Hole – msnbc.com

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

Well, it looks like the good folks at MSNBC’s Countdown, have come across a memo to Republican senators detailing strategies on the auto maker bailout.

We are all stunned and saddened that it seems to show that that the the use of the filibuster in the Senate was a crass political anti-union ploy.

Needless to say, I am disappointed. I could never imagine the Republicans using the Senate and the filibuster as nothing more than a vehicle* for crass political posturing:

From:
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:12 AM
To:
Subject: Action Alert — Auto Bailout

Today at noon, Senators Ensign, Shelby, Coburn and DeMint will hold a press conference in the Senate Radio/TV Gallery. They would appreciate our support through messaging and attending the press conference, if possible. The message they want us to deliver is:

1. This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.

2. This rush to judgment is the same thing that happened with the TARP. Members did not have an opportunity to read or digest the legislation and therefore could not understand the consequences of it. We should not rush to pass this because Detroit says the sky is falling.

The sooner you can have press releases and documents like this in the hands of members and the press, the better. Please contact me if you need additional information. Again, the hardest thing for the democrats to do is get 60 votes. If we can hold the Republicans, we can beat this.

(emphasis mine)

So all this Sturm and Drang is just a way to take cheap shots at labor….Hoocoodanode?

*Pun not intended

Now We See the Real Shrub

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So the elections are over, and now, unencumbered by future elections and even the remotest possibility of a political future, we see the real George W. Bush, and he makes the George W. Bush of the past 7 years look like Al Gore.

I first came across this when I found out that he had issued an executive order stripping 5000 employees of the BATF, some of whom are already represented by a union, of their collective bargaining rights.

Think Progress has a list of what he’s pushing through now, titled Bush’s Backward Sprint To The Finish, and it’s grim: (quoting directly)

  • HEALTH CARE
    • – Cutting medicaid
    • – Allowing healthcare workers to refuse “morally objectionable” procedures [meaning allowing anyone to refuse birth control and abortion at any time]
    • – Revising rules for international drug trials [more dead foreign babies]
    • – Narrowing the definition of combat related disability [meaning that if you get injured when your vehicle crashes because the vehicle in front of you gets blown up, it’s no longer “combat related]
    • – Allowing states to set premiums and higher co-payments
  • ENVIRONMENT
    • – Allowing mining near the Grand Canyon
    • – Discounting global warming when assessing species risks
    • – Weakening the Endangered Species Act
    • – Eliminating review of fishing regulations
    • – Allowing more emissions from power plants
    • – Opening protected land to energy development
    • – Allowing factory farms to self-regulate waste
    • – Altering solid waste definition
    • – Allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone
    • – Allowing coal companies to dump dirt and rock into streams
  • CIVIL LIBERTIES
    • – Allowing guns in national parks
    • – Allowing broader law-enforcement monitoring
    • – Implementing the REAL ID Act
  • LABOR
    • – Making it harder to take time off
    • – Allowing truckers to work 14 hour days [More dead on the US interstates]
    • – Requiring labor unions to file extensive financial reports
    • – Making it harder to regulate toxic substances on the job
    • – Stripping collective bargaining rights from federal employees
    • – Relaxing rules on investment adviser conflicts of interest
  • ADMINISTRATION
    • – Moving political appointees to permanent posts

The complete list, with descriptions is at the link.

This is someone would not be satisfied until he destroys everything America really stands for.

Not Enough Bullets: The Ever Present AIG

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Or more specifically, the man who ran the company into the ground, Hank Greenberg, who is demanding more information on the government bailout of his former firm, because he feels that it may have adversely effected his portfolio:

Greenberg wants the government to do more for AIG, suggesting it provide guarantees to cover counterparty collateral agreements, according to an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

(emphasis mine)

What was it that I just said about the WSJ Editorial Page again?

We really need to send the lot of them to prison.

I Wish Your Intelligence Had Been Adequate

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Bush was interviewed by Charlie Gibson:

BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that’s not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

Let’s see, we have documents from the British saying that your intel was complete ballocks, the French thought that it was complete ballocks, the Germans thought that it was complete ballocks, the Israelis thought that it was complete ballocks.

You systematically excluded anything that did not support your wish to invade Iraq, and you, and the rest of your Evil Minions&trade should all be on your way to the Hague.

Bush Administration Ignored Warnings…Again

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This time on the effect that zero down, negative equity and other risky mortgages might have if allowed to continue:

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

They soft pedaled Saudi involvement in terrorism both before and after 911 because the House of Saud is an FOB (Friend of Bush), and they soft pedaled sleazy mortgage agents because they gave money to Republithugs.

That’s what it’s all about for them.

Not Enough Bullets: AIG, Again

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They claim to have dropped bonuses, but they made “retention payments” to top level executives, including, “$3 million to retirement services chief Jay Wintrob.”

Who is Jay Wintrob?

Wintrob is CEO of AIG Retirement Services Inc., the division that sells annuities. He was chief operating officer of SunAmerica when AIG bought the firm for $19.7 billion in 1998. The business he now heads may sell for about $12 billion, according to Gary Ransom, analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton Cochran Caronia Waller. Wintrob didn’t return a call seeking comment.

So, he lost about 7.7 billion for AIG, and they feel the need to pay him money to keep him.

We need to start sending these guys to jail.

More Corruption in the Siegelman Case

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Now it appears that the US Attorney for the district, who was married to a Republican operative, and allegedly recused herself….Well, not so much:

It was those connections that led Ms. Canary, under pressure, to publicly withdraw from the Siegelman case in May 2002 — she “completely recused herself,” said the acting United States attorney, Louis Franklin — as proof that the prosecution of Mr. Siegelman would be free of partisan bias.

Yet in her complaint, the Justice Department employee, Tamarah T. Grimes, cited several instances suggesting Ms. Canary maintained a close watch on the case. Ms. Grimes said a legal aide in the office reported on Mr. Siegelman’s trial to Ms. Canary or her top deputy “every day, sometimes several times per day by telephone.” Once, she observed Ms. Canary “frantically pacing in the executive suite” after a courtroom blowup, “pleading with someone” to get on the phone to “tell Louis he has to control his temper.”

Ms. Grimes also disclosed an e-mail message written by Ms. Canary commenting on legal strategy in the case and suggesting to aides that Mr. Siegelman not be allowed to “comment on court activities in the media.” Ms. Grimes, who is also in a dispute with the department related to her accusations that the Siegelman prosecution team had harassed her, cited the affidavit of a former legal aide in the Montgomery office, Elizabeth Jane Crooks, who wrote that “the morning that the trial started, the U.S. attorney herself carried food and beverage over to the courthouse to support the ‘Trial Team.’ ”

Some more people who need to go to jail to show what’s wrong.

To quote Pat Boone, they “should be displayed publicly and have all of his fingers and toes broken, and then publicly executed so they who think [that] those like the
imprisoned Manson and Sirhan are glamorous — will think differently.”

Though to be fair to Mr. Boone, he was talking about a neo-Nazi murderer who went after children in a day care center, but the offense against society here is at least as corrosive.

True Evil

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To demand full obedience, no thought, no doubts, no conscience, just obedience.

And only 72.9 miles driving distance from me:

Rob Foster was 16 when his family unraveled.

He had told his parents that he wanted to leave Calvary Temple, the Pentecostal church in Sterling the family had attended for decades. But church leaders were blunt with his parents: Throw your son out of the house, or you will be excommunicated. And so that December two years ago, Gary and Marsha Foster told Rob that he had to leave. They would not see him or talk to him.

It’s repulsive, and if subjected churches to the same level of fiscal accountability as other non-profits, it’s clear that he would be in jail for that

Tom Friedman, Suck on This

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Tom Friedman, the New York Times Columnist, and blithering idiot, who is always suggesting that we should give the Iraq War, “Another 6 Months,” is having financial difficulties.

You see, he married into money, a lot of money. His wife is an heir to the General Growth Properties fortune, and since September, the value of the stock in the company in which the family wealth is held has fallen in value from a high of $51/share to 35¢ a share (See stock chart below), taking the value of the family fortune from $3.6 billion to $25 million.

In fact, GGP is warning of a potential bankruptcy.

As to my saying, “suck on this,” I am actually quoting Thomas Friedman, who, in an interview with Charlie Rose, suggested that it was imperative that we invade some Arab country to show that we were serius:

We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big state right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.

…

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?” You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.

(emphasis mine)

This places him in exactly the same position as the Rwandan radio broadcasters who were convicted of crimes against humanity, and any misfortune that he suffers for his continuing advocacy of an invasion that has cost hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians renders me incapable of feeling the smallest bit of sympathy.

I guess it makes me a bad person, but I haven’t had a hand in killing nearly a million Iraqis….Scratch that…We all had a hand in that as Americans, because it was done in our name, but he was cheer leading from his position atop the most respected news paper in the nation.

Here is the vid of the interview. Look at it, because this is what evil looks like.

Why Do People Hire Michael Barone?

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In a just world, people would leave when he walked into the room, because anyone who would say this:

A roomful of academics erupted in angry boos Tuesday morning after political analyst Michael Barone said journalists trashed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, because “she did not abort her Down syndrome baby.”

Is not a functioning member of humanity.

He later claimed that it was a joke, which makes it worse, because if he actually believes that, he is sick, and if it’s a joke, he’s just evil.

Spencer Ackerman Misses the Big Picture

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quotes the following from the Heritage Foundation:

October 30, 2008
The New Cold War: Reviving the U.S. Presence in the Arctic
by Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., Lajos F. Szaszdi, Ph.D., and Jim Dolbow
Backgrounder #2202

The Arctic is quickly reemerging as a strategic area where vital U.S. interests are at stake. The geo­political and geo-economic importance of the Arctic region is rising rapidly, and its mineral wealth will likely transform the region into a booming eco­nomic frontier in the 21st century. The coasts and continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean are estimated to hold large deposits of oil, natural gas, and meth­ane hydrate (natural gas) clusters along with large quantities of valuable minerals.

He seems to think that, “important corners of the Republican Party remain frothing, bloodshot-eyeball insane.”

He’s wrong. These folks are completely sane. The Republican party, of which the Heritage foundation is an integral part, needs to have a big scary enemy to further their partisan electoral goals.

Additionally, it furthers their policy goals, because the money going into the military makes it difficult to find resources for social programs.

This is not insanity, this is a complete lack of conscience. War is just a way to win elections.

More IP Insanity

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Berlin public transportation company BVG and Netherlands Dutch Rail have banned iPhone applications that give users schedule data (see also here).

By “banned” we mean pulled off of iTunes, because they claim that the programs violate their copyright on their transit schedules:

The application – which locates users via their mobile telephone network, tells them which BVG metro stops they can find nearby and helps plan timely routes – is popular with users, but not BVG. The company contacted Witt three weeks ago, telling him the program violated their copyright and demanding he remove it from iTunes. The decision has raised user hackles on internet forums, the paper reported.

I can think of no better example of how IP laws have become insane.

The idea that transit companies would assert property rights over their schedules is completely delusional.

Oh, To Hell With It, Should I Just Register, “NotEnoughBullets.com”?

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So now, we find that Wall Street has lines it won’t cross, specifically, they consider obscene bonuses to be a matter of principle:

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) — Wall Street’s chief executives will hunker down and pay bonuses this year in the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, a taxpayer bailout and mounting political outcry, industry veterans say.

…

How many yachts to you need to water ski behind?

Seriously these folks are well on their way to killing more Americans and harming the country in to a degree that Osama bin Laden could only dream of.

Let’s just declare them economic terrorists, and freeze their assets.

$6 Billion on Mercs…so Far

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Nathan Hodge uncovers this little bit of chocalatey goodness from the most recent report of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

And that’s just the stuff that the SIGIR found.

What’s more the report says that the numbers should go up as the troops pull out, because, “requirements for private security services for DoS [Department of State] and USAID would likely increase to compensate for support previously provided by the military.”

Lovely. The US needs to sign onto the anti-mercenary treaty, and shut down this entire industry.

Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan Is Shocked At Meltdownan

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So now Greenspan is shocked that a completely unregulated market leads to irrational speculation and abuse.

At the core of the theory capitalism is the idea that selfish people thinking only of themselves are what make the system work.*

If you had ever gotten your head far enough out of Ayn Rand’s long dead festering ass, you would have noticed that there were dozens, if not hundreds, of people you worked with who told you that this was going to happen.

You sir, are not a tool, because a tool has a use.

*Yes, I am paraphrasing Keynes.

Not Enough Bullets, Regulation Edition

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Even after the government bailout, AIG is still lobbying to relax regulations on its business:

When the U.S. took control of failing mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it prohibited them from lobbying. But it hasn’t banned the practice at AIG, a huge insurer that is still 20%-owned by public shareholders.

AIG is currently working to ease some provisions in a new federal law establishing strict oversight of mortgage originators, according to state regulators. The law requires that originators be licensed by the states, and that they supply comprehensive information so state regulators can track their activities.

To quote Bruce Cockburn, “If I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-bitch would die.”