Category: Politics

Never Will You Find a More Retched Hive of Scum and Villany

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Here is an interesting story aboutMark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s main political strategist.

Penn is CEO of the global PR firm Burson-Marsteller, which has a union busting division.

It also turns out that he’s done extensive work for the Tobacco industry and the Nuclear Industry, among other unsavory characters, and his work for tobacco has continued since he has been advising Hillary on her senate campaigns.

You judge politicians by the company they keep, and this guy is bad news, perhaps as bad as the dope dealer and his racist father on the Guiliani campaign.

Great Headlines: Ahmadinejobless

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It’s the hed for a Foreign Policy Magazine article about the Iranian president, and how his general cluelessness is leading to his irrelevancy, and possible removal.

That being said, the article is substantive, and right off, it makes the important point:

Iran’s radical president is sinking fast, and he knows it. Now, there’s only one man who can keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad out of the unemployment line: George W. Bush.

There has been no greater resource for fundamentalist dictatorships and terrorists than George W. Bush, and his crusade against his father the norms of international behavior.

George W. Bush: Generating capital for terrorists and religious fundamentalists since 2001.

DPRK to Start Fielding More Advanced Missiles

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North Koreawill be fielding modern solid propellant missiles.

This is a natural development. Missiles and missile technology are their only real exports, and, absent a nuclear capability (which we don’t want them to have) it is their only credible deterrent.

Furthermore, these weapons are legal.

Of course, you have a former Bush administration official *cough* corrupt incompetent *cough* and a US Army general *cough* Bush Toady *cough* acting as if the sky is falling.

The North Korean has a very real fear of a sneak attack from the US. As long as Cheney is anywhere near the levers of power, this fear is justified.

Even if the fear were not justified, the best course of action is to attempt to reduce that fear, rather than stoking it with bellicose and jingoistic rhetoric.

Gordon Brown Has Nothing to Fear from These Morons

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The Register has an article, ISPs face down Tories on file sharing, where the ISPs basically told Conservative Party Leader David Cameron to go pound sand after a speech that he gave to record distributors.

The ISPA’s response was blunt:

A spokesman for ISPA said: “The Internet Watch Foundation is very focused in what it does and has taken a long time to get there working with the police. Unlike distributing images of child abuse, copyright infringement can be a civil offence.

“Any kind of blocking has to be the preserve of the courts.”

People who use music online understand the dynamics. They understand that record distributors cheat artists as an integral part of their business model. They understand that these companies want to make people pay multiple times that these people OWN, in order to put it on a walkman, or in their cars.

For the Tories to be sucking up to these folks confirms the worst suspicions of every British voter.

Why Are So Many Highly Skilled People Eking Out a Living as Bloggers

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I’m a strictly amateur blogger. I support my family as an engineer. I don’t need your money, but there are a lot of talented and highly educated people who live on the hairy edge of poverty blogging.

Phoenix Woman, who I’ve known since our Table Talk days, gives a good reason as to why:

The reason that there are so many great bloggers is that there are so many highly-educated, highly-talented throwaways. People who for reasons of cost, or health, or because their conscience was better than their management’s have been stripped of their jobs, replaced by foreigners, sent into humiliated exile in their own land. And, again, this is by plan. The H1-B (and other visas) have been used to drive down American wages and working conditions. The oversupply of scientists, engineers, and other highly-skilled people is deliberate, bipartisan, and planned at the highest levels of government.

The conventional wisdom for the past 25 years has been cheap labor economics, and the subsistance level bloggers are just one symptom of people who have done what the conventional wisdom says to do, and have been shafted as a result.

While free trade is a good thing in the abstract, a bad free trade deal is worse than no free trade deal.

Maybe, Just Maybe, Senate Democrats Know What This is

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Perhaps this is no longer terra ingognita

Check out the NY Times article, Sensing a Shift, Reid Will Press for an Iraq Exit, Harry Reid is saying that they haven’t done enough, and I think that he means it.

I think that the so-called moderate Vichy wing of the Democratic party got one chance, and they lost. After seeing the poll numbers plummet, the Democrats now realize the equation:

  • Knuckle under again, and the Republicans gain points.
  • Take this to the mat, using everything at their disposal, and they gain points.

The country favors impeaching Cheney, and is close to favoring this with Bush.

Additionally, every time the Republicans senators vote for the war, they lose votes, and 2008 is already figuring to be a bad year for the Repuiblican senators who will be standing for re-election then.

Not One Step Back

We Have Entered Bizarro World.

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The first serious Republican candidate to to say “Out of Iraq” sweeps the table in the primaries.

That is what the message is here.

Well, that, and the fact that McCain is a sick old man who has sold whatever integrity he ever had to the Bush white house.

Ron Paul Tops McCain in Cash on Hand

ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Reports: Though often regarded as a longshot candidate for president, Republican Ron Paul tells ABC News that he has an impressive $2.4 million in cash on hand after raising an equal amount during the second quarter, putting him ahead of one-time Republican frontrunner John McCain, who reported this week he has only $2 million in the bank.

…..

“I think some of the candidates are on the down-slope, and we’re on the up-slope,” said Paul.

Paul’s cash on hand puts him in third place in the Republican field in that important metric, although he is well behind leader Rudy Giuliani, who has $18 million in the bank, and Mitt Romney, with $12 million.
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Paul Krugman Deserves a Nobel

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If not in economics, then in something else. This guy has been speaking the truth for a LONG time.

Sacrifice Is for Suckers
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

On this Fourth of July, President Bush compared the Iraq war to the Revolutionary War, and called for “more patience, more courage and more sacrifice.” Unfortunately, it seems that nobody asked the obvious question: “What sacrifices have you and your friends made, Mr. President?”

On second thought, there would be no point in asking that question. In Mr. Bush’s world, only the little people make sacrifices.

You see, the Iraq war, although Mr. Bush insists that it’s part of a Global War on Terror™, a fight to the death between good and evil, isn’t like America’s other great wars — wars in which the wealthy shared the financial burden through higher taxes and many members of the elite fought for their country.

This time around, Mr. Bush celebrated Mission Accomplished by cutting tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while handing out huge no-bid contracts to politically connected corporations. And in the four years since, as the insurgency Mr. Bush initially taunted with the cry of “Bring them on” has claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and left thousands more grievously wounded, the children of the elite — especially the Republican elite — have been conspicuously absent from the battlefield.

The Bushies, it seems, like starting fights, but they don’t believe in paying any of the cost of those fights or bearing any of the risks. Above all, they don’t believe that they or their friends should face any personal or professional penalties for trivial sins like distorting intelligence to get America into an unnecessary war, or totally botching that war’s execution.

The Web site Think Progress has a summary of what happened to the men behind the war after we didn’t find W.M.D., and weren’t welcomed as liberators: “The architects of war: Where are they now?” To read that summary is to be awed by the comprehensiveness and generosity of the neocon welfare system. Even Paul Wolfowitz, who managed the rare feat of messing up not one but two high-level jobs, has found refuge at the American Enterprise Institute.

Which brings us to the case of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Jr.

The hysteria of the neocons over the prospect that Mr. Libby might actually do time for committing perjury was a sight to behold. In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal titled “Fallen Soldier,” Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University cited the soldier’s creed: “I will never leave a fallen comrade.” He went on to declare that “Scooter Libby was a soldier in your — our — war in Iraq.”

Ah, yes. Shuffling papers in an air-conditioned Washington office is exactly like putting your life on the line in Anbar or Baghdad. Spending 30 months in a minimum-security prison, with a comfortable think-tank job waiting at the other end, is exactly like having half your face or both your legs blown off by an I.E.D.

What lay behind the hysteria, of course, was the prospect that for the very first time one of the people who tricked America into war, then endangered national security yet again in the effort to cover their tracks, might pay some price. But Mr. Ajami needn’t have worried.

Back when the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity began, Mr. Bush insisted that if anyone in his administration had violated the law, “that person will be taken care of.” Now we know what he meant. Mr. Bush hasn’t challenged the verdict in the Libby case, and other people convicted of similar offenses have spent substantial periods of time in prison. But Mr. Libby goes free.

Oh, and don’t fret about the fact that Mr. Libby still had to pay a fine. Does anyone doubt that his friends will find a way to pick up the tab?

Mr. Bush says that Mr. Libby’s punishment remains “harsh” because his reputation is “forever damaged.” Meanwhile, Mr. Bush employs, as a deputy national security adviser, none other than Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty to unlawfully withholding information from Congress in the Iran-contra affair. Mr. Abrams was one of six Iran-contra defendants pardoned by Mr. Bush’s father, who was himself a subject of the special prosecutor’s investigation of the scandal.

In other words, obstruction of justice when it gets too close to home is a family tradition. And being a loyal Bushie means never having to say you’re sorry.

Well, At Least the Editorial Page Can’t Get Any Worse

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Here are some links about the possible takeover of Dow Jones (including the Wall Street Journal) by Rupert Murdoch’s news corp.

The bottom line is this: It would be impossible for the Wall Street Journal editorial page to get any worse. It has been dutifully publishing lies, frequently lies that are directly contradicted by the front page stories.

The issue is whether or not it will make the news in the WSJ worse, and the answer is that over the long term, it almost certainly will.

The real question is whether this is a bad thing. Any number of people buy the Journal in spite of its editorial page, and to the degree that the WSJ becomes less “essential” it means that fewer people will be exposed to this, and and it will become less of a spring board for pundits to do the shows.

All in all, the loss of a source of legitimacy to the insane right wingers might be a net plus.

What Charlie Said

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In this case, Charles Pierce, in a letter to Eric Alterman.

Damn, that dude can write.

…..
I don’t know if it counts if you only said it in a bar and never wrote it down anywhere, but back in 1988, when it became plain that absolutely nobody was going to pay a price — criminal, civil, or in the case of the senior Bush, political — for the staggering mess that was Iran-Contra, I was in the late, lamented Eliot Lounge in Boston, chewing it over with a friend who’d reported extensively on the scandal. I told him that the country was going to pay a fearsome price one day for having let these crimes go unpunished. That the whole business lodged something malignant deep in the government that needed to be roughly, and bloodily, excised.
…..

Dems are Finally Telling Lieberman to Go Cheney Himself

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Let me be the first to say:


Don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out, loser.

Altitude Drop For Lieberman the Hawk
by Steve Kornacki
Early last week, a distressing, if not entirely unsurprising, Newsweek poll found that fully 40 percent of American adults continue to believe that Iraq was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.

It must, then, have been this exasperating chunk of the electorate that Joe Lieberman had in mind when he declared Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that Democrats are doomed in the 2008 presidential race unless they re-embrace the Iraq War.

“I think that’s the best tradition of our party, and if we don’t recapture it … the Democratic candidate is going to have a hard time winning that election next year,” Mr. Lieberman said, likening his own hawkish Iraq posture to Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Henry “Scoop” Jackson – all of them much too deceased to protest such a questionable comparison.

Ouch!!!!!

…

Given the Senate’s partisan balance – 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats (one still recuperating from a December cerebral hemorrhage), and two tie-breaking independents who caucus with the Democrats – Democrats are still technically at Mr. Lieberman’s mercy, their fragile control of the chamber dependent on his continued willingness to live up to his campaign pledge to side with his old party for organizational purposes.

But it’s now apparent that they need nothing more than that from him. Republicans have labored to portray Mr. Lieberman’s defeat in last year’s Senate primary as evidence that the Democratic Party has been over-run by weak-willed McGoverniks, a contention that Mr. Lieberman, in making reference to Democrats’ past vulnerabilities on foreign policy and national security issues, sought to reinforce on Sunday.

That game, however, has ceased to work. In years past – 2004 and 2002, say – a public association with Mr. Lieberman was helpful to Democrats, a reassurance to a more hawkish electorate that they were as “tough” as the G.O.P. But in 2007, embracing Mr. Lieberman’s intransigence is a decided political liability – evidenced most startlingly by a recent poll that found that even 58 percent of Republicans in Iowa want a troop withdrawal in the next six months. When, as he did on Sunday, Mr. Lieberman uses a national television interview to dust off old attacks on the Democratic Party’s foreign policy credentials while at the same time actually declaring that “the surge is working,” it only benefits his former party’s standing with the war-wary public. There are few, if any Democrats, quaking at his threat to endorse a Republican in ’08.

…

Those politicians are on the run to catch up with the public before November 2008. Mr. Lieberman should probably consider himself lucky that his seat was up last year – and not next year.

Congress Grows a Set of Balls (FINALLY!)

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Not only is this of limited utility and provocative, it’s being pushed because it’s provocative.

Lynn Cheney was trying to start a war with China in the early 1990s, and Francis Fukuyama said that during the 90s, “There was actually a deliberate search for an enemy because they felt that the Republican Party didn’t do as well”.

This is a calculated attempt to put a new enemy in the pipe line for Republican partisan advantage.

Senate threatens Bush missile plan
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Friday July 6, 2007

Guardian
President George Bush’s controversial plan to establish a missile defence system in eastern Europe could be scuppered next week if Congress votes to block funding.

The Senate appears ready to join the House in cutting from the defence budget the millions Mr Bush requested to fund US missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. The president would have to use his veto to go ahead but that would put the whole defence budget in peril.

The Senate move would add to the lengthy list of obstacles that have built up to Mr Bush’s plan. A consequence would be to end the stand-off with Moscow, which views the missile system as a threat. Speaking on Monday at the Bush family retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, reiterated his opposition to placing the missile system so close to Russia. There is also opposition within Poland and the Czech Republic.

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“DC Madame” Phone Records Available.

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The big lesson, of course, is about how asset forfeiture is used in coercive ways in the United States.

The fact that it is this totalitarian regime is going to reveal all the law and order types who want to be made to dress up in French maid uniforms and be urinated upon, is really just an ironic side effect of this policy.

Judge lifts injunction on ‘DC madam’ phone records

A judge in the US district court in Washington, D.C. has lifted the temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the so-called ‘DC madam,’ Deborah Jeane Palfrey, from selling or distributing the list of phone records from her escort business.

“The List in question is the Defendant’s personal property,” wrote judge Gladys Kessler, “and contains only a log of telephone numbers. It was neither seized by the Government when it searched the Defendant’s residence in California, nor listed in the Indictment putting the Defendant on notice as to which items of her property were subject to forfeiture.”

Kessler concluded that the government had not satisfied the requirements of the forfeiture statute that would enable them to make the “extraordinary step of freezing the property of an individual, not yet convicted of any crime, and barring her from giving away that property.”

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Some Things Never Change

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One of these things is that you will never find a more useless, self-centered, inbred, addle brained royal family than the House of Habsburg.

That being said, why the hell did this guy, get this back in the first place? Its a national treasure, not a plaything for the idle wealthy.

The estate is a duty to those who choose to serve their land in word and deed as nobility, not a toy to be discarded when bored.

Heir puts ‘Dracula’s Castle’ for sale

By ALEXANDRU ALEXE, Associated Press WriterMon Jul 2, 2:18 PM ET

A Habsburg heir is hoping someone will take a bite of his offer Monday to sell “Dracula’s Castle” in Transylvania.

The medieval Bran Castle, perched on a cliff near Brasov in mountainous central Romania, is a top tourist attraction because of its ties to Prince Vlad the Impaler, the warlord whose cruelty inspired Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, “Dracula.”

Legend has it that the ruthless Vlad — who earned his nickname because of the way he tortured his enemies — spent one night in the 1400s at the castle.

The Habsburgs formally put the Bran Castle on the market Monday, a U.S.-based investment company said. No selling price was announced.

Bran Castle was built in the 14th century to serve as a fortress to protect against the invading Ottoman Turks. The royal family moved into the castle in the 1920s, living there until the communist regime confiscated it from Princess Ileana in 1948.

After being restored in the late 1980s and following the end of communist rule in Romania, it gained popularity as a tourist attraction known as “Dracula’s Castle.”

In May 2006, the castle was returned to Princess Ileana’s son, New York architect Archduke Dominic Habsburg. He pledged to keep it open as a museum until 2009.

…..

Opposition lawmakers have claimed the government’s decision to return the castle to Habsburg was illegal because of procedural errors.

Democracy Taken to Stupid Extremes

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Ummm…This has fiasco written all over it.

On the other hand, Shatner and Nimoy are sure to get Knighthoods.

Brown calls for e-petitions to get debated in Parliament
By Chris Williams
Published Wednesday 4th July 2007 15:22 GMT

Gordon Brown has thrown caution to the web, and called for a new e-petitions system which would force Parliament to debate issues popular with internet users.

Buried in a wide-ranging parliamentary statement on constitutional reform yesterday, he said: “I also encourage this House to agree a new process for ensuring consideration of petitions from members of the public.”

In a later briefing with journalists, the Prime Minister’s spokesman explained that a consultation would be held on setting the threshold figure at which a parliamentary debate would be triggered by petitions.

As evidence for the consultation, we’d submit the fact that according to the 2001 census, 390,000 Britons claim to belong to the Jedi religion. Perhaps quite a high threshold would be best, then.

…

People that I Hate To Agree With

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There are times when I find myself agreeing with people or organizations that I find abhorent.
This is one of those times.
First, Andrew Sullivan, Proud Endorser of the Racist and Sloppy Bell Curve:

The bottom line for Americans is this: George Bush’s friends do not go to jail. Your friends do.

This is a very simple matter. Either Libby is subject to the rule of law or not. Bush’s action is constitutionally solid but morally and politically indefensible – an act of arrogance born of permanent privilege that still, somehow, even after all these years, manages to shock.

And if that didn’t make me feel queasy, there is The Moonie Washington Times, whose sole purpose seems to be giving the New York Sun a run for its money regarding the hackticular nature of it’s news and editorial sections:

But none of this exonerates the commutation. Perjury is a serious crime. This newspaper argued on behalf of its seriousness in the 1990s, during the Clinton perjury controversy, and today is no different. We’d have hoped that more conservatives would agree. The integrity of the judicial process depends on fact-finding and truth-telling. A jury found Libby guilty of not only perjury but also obstruction justice and lying to a grand jury. It handed down a very supportable verdict.