NOT!!!!
We already know that Bush and His Evil Minions™ did not want the general testifying publicly before congress, and that the so called “Petraeus Report” is really being written by white house hacks, but now we are supposed to believe that his testimony being scheduled on 911 is just a coincidence.
I want to stop living in “The Onion” world.
Elvira Arellano, who has been claiming sanctuary in a church for about a year has been arrested.
I understand that a number of people on either side of the issue will either see her as a victim of a system that would separate her from her son, or as a law breaker hiding behind that same son. (Truth be told, I’m on the harsher side of this)
The bigger picture has nothing to do with immigration or children. It has to do with the fact that federal, state, and local authorities allowed a church to grant her sanctuary.
The idea of Church as sanctuary from law enforcement is a throwback to established religions in Europe, and something that the founding fathers specifically wanted to eliminate.
I would argue that when a church wants to claim “sanctuary” society, and law enforcement in particular, is under a specific obligation to seize that person with all deliberate speed.
Ben Bernanke has now said that his concern is market stability, and not inflation.
It happens that it looks like the inflation numbers that he works with are completely bogus:
One of the “secrets” to Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan’s success as Fed chairman, was that he successfully pushed for adjustments to the consumer price index (CPI) to lower the reported inflation rate.
Right now, we are generally reporting an inflation rate of less than 3%.
There has been an agreement between the Fed and the government to understate inflation for some time. The justification is that it makes everyone look good, and allows for stealth cuts for entitlements.
Dean Baker correctly criticizes the New York Times for mischaracterizing the nature of immigration in this article.
The Times claims that poor immigrants find far more in the way of barriers than do the rich, and rightly notes that while poor immigrants may run across the borders, “The United States much more severely restricts the flows of highly educated immigrants than less-educated immigrants, it just uses different mechanisms. In the case of highly educated immigrants, the government at least partially enforces laws that prohibit employers from hiring immigrants at wages that are lower than what citizens would be willing to work for. There are no newspapers, hospitals, universities, or law firms that bring in large numbers of undocumented professionals and pay them half of the prevailing wage in their occupation. Such an institution would almost certainly be shut down, with the employers facing prosecution.“
This is not entirely accurate either. While the poor may be smuggled across borders in the back of 18 wheelers, and the more well to do will fly in, which makes the trek for the former easier, the divide is not between rich and poor, but between workers, and “professionals”.
Programmers, engineers, and nurses (which kind of eliminates your hospital example) are routinely replaced by lower paid H1b/L1 workers, and these visas are also used to lower wages in the fields.
The divide is that people who draw up this policy (Lawyers, Economists, and other Academicians), those who belong to professions that they might want their children to go into (Doctors), and those who are needed to cheer lead these policies (Journalists), are protected.
It’s about protecting, “People like us”, more than it is about rich and poor.
Well, it appears that Michigan will move up its primary to January 15.
That pushes New Hampshire to January 8, and Iowa likely to 2007. This is out of hand.
This is an artifact of the movement, which really got rolling in 1988, to create “super Tuesdays”. The original purpose was to nominate a Southerner (remember Good Ole Boy Michael “Scooter” Dukakkis nominated in 1988?), but it has served to render any primary outside of the first month following Iowa irrelevant.
The Serbian Government is calling to reinsert its troops back into Kosovo. You know, the folks who committed genocide?
Enough is enough. I know that the Russians will veto any UN resolution giving Kosovo independence, but this does not prevent the US, UK, France, etc. from recognizing the nation.
It should be remembered the Serbian authorities are not victims, but rather perpetrators of unspeakable acts, and because of this, they lack any moral claim over the region.
It appears that the good Senator Collins is objecting to the Tom Allen campaign sending a staffer to follow her public appearances and video what she says.
Standard operating procedure for campaigns these days, and a great way of showing how a candidate talks out of both sides of their mouth.
Collins’ problem is that she’s been Bush’s bitch. When push comes to shove, she’s never voted against him. Her “bipartisanship” consists of joint pressers with Lieberman.
That’s how she guarantees no real opposition to her in the primaries (all of Bush’s support is from the party faithful), but she can’t go and talk to small wingnut audiences and tell them what a loyal Bushie she is if those speeches end up on Youtube.
It’s funny…Cold and tasteless, but funny.
(H/t trappmountain for finding this)
You know how all of Bush and His Evil Minions™ have been talking about David Petraeus’s report on progress in Iraq? It now appears that there is no such thing as the Petraeus Report. Instead, “Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.”
But it gets EVEN BETTER. It appears that the Bush administration won’t even let Petraeus testify before congress at a public hearing. “Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration’s progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.”
I guess that they are afraid that the good General might tell the truth.
Even more amazing, it has been practiced by the normally quite hacktacular Nedra Pickler in debunking a right wing troll storm.
A few days back, Obama said, “We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.”
Not only is this an accurate assessment, the US tactics are bad enough that the Brits want US troops and aircraft out of their sector because they are generating too much support for the Taliban through their indiscriminate bombing.
Now we see a real fact check:
As of Aug. 1, the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can’t be attributed to one party.
Very, very amusing.
As TPM Reader DC puts it, Giuliani combines Bush’s foreign policy genius with Clinton’s sexual impulse control.
(ed.note: Look, I love Bill. But this one was too good to pass up.)
Then there’s TPM Reader TP who notes that had the Captain of the Titanic survived we probably wouldn’t have feted him as the go-to guy on iceberg defense.
From a John Edwards, regarding Karl Rove’s departure from the White House:
I like it…Short, sweet, to the point.
Open left is looking to do some Google ad buys to go after Democrats who folded on the 180 Day spy for all FISA vote.
This is a good thing. This was cowardice, pure and simple.
On a personal note, as a long time Washington Redskin’s fan, I just want to say that this is not the first time that Heath Shuler has folded up like overcooked broccoli under pressure.
So is her Husband, Christopher Gersten.
The Monday WaPo had a very very good article describing how Chavez and Gersten used a phony PAC to bilk people out of money. Only 1% of the money contributed went to politics. The rest went to salaries and expenses of Chavez, Gersten, and her friends and family.
Instead, most of the donations were channeled back into new fundraising efforts, and some were used to provide a modest but steady source of income for Chavez and four family members, who served as treasurers and consultants to the committees. Much of the remaining funds went to pay for expenses such as furniture, auto repairs and insurance, and rent for the Sterling office the groups share. Even Chavez’s health insurance was paid for a time from political donations.
“I guess you could call it the family business,” Chavez said in an interview.
There is nothing illegal about running political committees the way she and her family have done, and Chavez said that none of the money has been spent for personal items and that she has done nothing wrong.
They are useless, both of them. Linda Chavez is little more than a talking head, and Gersten took AIPAC down it’s right wing Likudnik path.
In a community with a moral center, it is unlikely that either of them would ever work again. In Washington, DC, not so much. They probably got high fives from political consultants on both sides of the aisle.
That’s about the only thing that might break our army worse now.
It turns out that Will Heaton, Bob Ney’s chief of staff, wore a wire to get the goods on him for the feds.
No honor among thieves, I guess…Except, of course, the Omertà that the Bush administration seems to be able to enforce.
The Pirate Party is the group that sponsors Pirate Bay bit torrent site. They also stand for office in Sweden.
An American branch has now opened up.
I approve of their goals, but they are not going anywhere here.
It does look like there is an increasingly mainstream chorus against what has become a drumbeat against boneheaded copyright and patent laws though/
Karl Rove has handed in his resignation, effective the end of August.
That’s not a whole bunch of notice, so one wonders what the back story is.
He is suggesting that he wants to spend more time with his family, which is such a cliché that no one with half a brain believes this.
I see three possibilities:
I find this very unlikely. The Washington press loves him, and if this were the case, it would have been around the time that Libby was convicted.
Likely, and I believe that this dispute might very well be spelled Alberto Gonzalez. I believe that his continued presence is coming from Bush, and not the people around him.
I hope so. It would have to be big, and shattering…but I think that I want this too much to discuss this in an objective matter.
Most likely alternative.
[on edit]There is also the possibility that he’s leaving to join a presidential campaign.
Kansas????
Yes, Kansas. The State GOP there has formed loyalty committee.
TOPEKA – The state Republican Party is forming a loyalty committee so that it can punish officers who endorse or contribute to Democrats.
…
The state committee’s actions struck a sour note for some Republicans, particularly moderates on issues such as abortion. Bob Beatty, a Washburn University political scientist, suggested the loyalty committee could prove a “public relations disaster.”
“Ironically, it smacks most of the Communist Party,” Beatty said Monday. “That’s the kind of public irony that most parties try to avoid — the party of freedom telling people they have no freedom.”
Gee. You think????? Josef Stalin is laughing in hell.
And, Kobach said, the grounds for removing someone from office are fairly narrow: They must publicly endorse or contribute to a non-Republican running in Kansas.
“This rule will operate primarily as a deterrent,” Kobach said. “My anticipation is that once the rule is in effect, you won’t see too many elected party leaders engaging in this kind of behavior.”
Vee must all Goose schtep in unison.*
But Andy Wollen, president of the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority, a moderate group, mused about the GOP creating a “grand high inquisitor.”
“When you hear the term loyalty committee, what runs through your mind?” he said. “Joseph McCarthy. George Orwell.”
Cloud supports the loyalty committee, even though he has run afoul of conservatives who dominate the party leadership.
He earned their public criticism for signing a fundraising letter for Wollen’s group in March, criticizing the party’s leadership and suggesting people give to the Kansas Traditional Republican Majority.
You know, in America, people are supposed to have the right to call their party leaders right wing nutcase wackjobs, particularly when they are right wing nutcase wackjobs.
If they could hook a dynamo to George Orwell’s grave, we’d power all of California.
*Yes, I know, mixing Nazis and Communist is a very mixed metaphor thing.
Well, it looks like Bloomberg is going to have to turn over their records on the most likely illegal spying on peaceful demonstrators at the 2004 Republithug convention.
I think that we are about to discover that he is only marginally less unpleasant than Rudy.