Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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There's your "change" from the Obama administration
• The CIA says its agents destroyed the videotapes of their torture of 14 prisoners at Guantanamo. The ACLU wants to know what happened, and sought access to transcripts in which the torture victims described what had been done to them. Under the Bush-Cheney administration the CIA refused to release those transcripts, and under the Obama administration they were released but useless, because all descriptions of the torture was redacted (and there's your "change" from the Obama administration). Now the ACLU is asking a judge to order the CIA to release the documents, but this time without allowing the redaction of information about the prisoners' torture. ACLU attorney Ben Wizner's logic is so sound I'm ready to bang my gavel right now: “While much is known about the Bush administration’s torture program, the CIA is continuing to censor the most important eyewitnesses — the torture victims themselves. The CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations in order to hide its crimes from the American public; the Obama administration should not prolong this cover-up by suppressing the victims’ firsthand accounts." And from Wizner's court filing: "No court has ever upheld the suppression of descriptions of government misconduct on the ground that those descriptions would inflame the nation’s enemies. To do so would enshrine into the [Freedom of Information Act] the fundamentally antidemocratic principle that the more egregious the government misconduct at issue, the more protected it would be from public disclosure." • Seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have signed a joint letter asking Attorney General Eric Holder to scuttle any investigations into torture beyond the "legal" bounds of torture. As I have yet to see any sign of integrity from Holder, nobody should be surprised if he complies. • Max at The Progressive Puppy found a "wanted for treason" poster with a picture of John F Kennedy, at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Thousands of copies of the poster were distributed in Dallas in the days before Kennedy's 1963 visit. And Max wonders, is that where the right-wing's hatemongers and liars are leading us again? You probably know my answer to that question.
• So whatever happened to the massive amounts of taxpayers' money that went out the door and into the black hole boondoggle called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Vanity Fair does a good job providing the complex and infuriating answer. Here's an excerpt, but the whole article is worth a read: "... Over the next three months, Treasury poured nearly $239 billion into 296 of the nation’s 8,000 banks. The money went to big banks. It went to small banks. It went to banks that desperately wanted the money. It went to banks that didn’t want the money at all but had been ordered by Treasury to take it anyway. It went to banks that were quite happy to accept the windfall, and used the money simply to buy other banks. Some banks received as much as $45 billion, others as little as $1.5 million. Sixty-seven percent went to eight institutions; 33 percent went to the rest. And that was just the money that went to banks. Tens of billions more went to other companies, all before Barack Obama took office. It was the largest single financial intervention by Treasury into the banking system in U.S. history. "But once the money left the building, the government lost all track of it. The Treasury Department knew where it had sent the money, but nothing about what was done with it. Did the money aid the recovery? Was it spent for the purposes Congress intended? Did it save banks from collapse? Paulson’s Treasury Department had no idea, and didn’t seem to care. It never required the banks to explain what they did with this unprecedented infusion of capital. ..." • The Obama administration is planning to tinker with but keep the Threat Level advisory system — you know, the much laughed-at color coded system where green means be a little scared, blue means be more scared, on up through yellow, orange, and red, which means be scared out of your pants and go running naked down the street. Even ignoring for the moment the overwhelming evidence that the Threat Level system has been rigged for political purposes, the system has never served any purpose except to keep Americans frightened, because there's never been any indication of what ordinary people or even police agencies are supposed to do when the alleged danger rises from yellow to orange. Except, of course, be more scared. If the Obama administration is unwilling to simply scuttle this relic from the totally politicized Bush-Cheney administration, it means (again and obviously) that the Obama administration isn't changing much of anything. • Of course, the Obama administration is changing things, just far too few and far too slowly for my tastes. But credit where credit is due: The day after the Obama administration announced that it wouldn't be constructing the Bush-Cheney administration's nutty missile shield in Eastern Europe, Russia announced that it's not going to follow through on its threat to place missiles near Poland. This coverage seems to poo-poo Russia's move as insignificant, and I'll concede that a working reporter with a Russian-sounding name probably knows a lot more about these matters than I do. • According to the ACLU, 188 people were cited in Pittsburgh from 2005-07 for "contempt of cop", i.e., giving a policeman lip, asking an impertinent question, or offering an officer an impolite finger. So Carlos Miller and the Constitution are right, you do have the right to flip off cops, but only if you have the time, the inclination, and the money to litigate it afterwards. • An Arizona couple is suing Wal-Mart and the state after the retail giant called the cops over utterly benign but — oh my god — nude photos of the couple's kids in the bathtub. Read the gruesome details here, but be advised that the link might not be safe for work. Or take a short cut to the moral of the story: If you're taking pictures that could conceivably offend anyone anywhere, don't have those pictures developed by the dweebs and automatons at Wal-Mart (or, sadly, the dweebs and automatons at pretty much any other retail outlet). • Some egghead at U-Cal Davis is working with pharma giant Roche to develop a drug to "reverse mental retardation". Insert your own jokes about Republicans and teabaggers, but I gotta say seriously, this sounds like an area where scientific meddling is weird and probably ill-advised. The brain is who we are, and that's not something to be messed with by taking a pill or a shot. See also Sven's comments about this, in which the above is enthusiastically disputed. • Republicans are outraged, panicked, terrified, et cetera, because Syracuse University is conducting a study that involves (brace yourself for the horror) surveying students about their sex lives. I'll pause here so that you can go wash your hands. • A mere two months ago, Congressman Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R-South Carolina) introduced legislation to swiftly grant permanent resident status to an illegal immigrant. OMG! • I got a kick and a half out of Joe Armstrong's recollection of a wingnut teacher in light of our wingnut times. • Harry, your host at Unknown News, likes compact fluorescent light bulbs that save a little on the energy bill. Helen, your hostess, hates 'em, because they cast an ugly hospital-white light that makes everything in the room look pale and icky, as opposed to the slightly yellowish light cast by a traditional light bulb. So we turn to you, dear readers and friends — is there a brand of compact fluorescents that can light the room without turning Helen's stomach? • You might not know about William Mulholland, namesake of L.A.'s Mulholland Drive. • A tip o' the hat to Photography is Not a Crime, Jeremy D., Joe G., Joseph D., Sherri B., Lon Garm, Scott L., JR Mooneyham, SirJ, Bill T., Wig, the letter Z, and the love of my life (who prefers to remain anonymous). Also updated today: Our daily dialogue.
Obama asks kangaroo court to hop slower
• Military defense attorneys have asked a military judge to halt the pending kangaroo trials of several Guantanamo prisoners accused of participation in the It's time to call bullsh*t on this whole sham-a-rama. The USA, alleged beacon of liberty and bastion of democracy, has been holding these alleged suspects for years, but they can't tried in ordinary courts because — because why, exactly? Because the evidence just ain't there, or everything prosecutors "know" came by way of torture, or the facts must remain classified for vague reasons that can't be explained, or yada yada yada. It's all just wrong, legally, morally, and every which way anything can be wrong. If there was evidence proving these people's guilt they would've been tried and imprisoned years ago under ordinary law, and if ordinary law ain't good enough to prove the government's case then the charges are all just dried droppings from a bovine anus. Enough already. Let 'em go, close Guantanamo, and let's get to work trying to make America stand for the right things instead of these ghastly circumventions of justice. • Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) is annoyed that the Iraqis haven't shown more gratitude for all that America's done for their country. "We went to Iraq to try and free your people and now we're being blamed for sectarian violence," Rohrabacher says. "Don't blame us because that type of bloodlust exists in your society." And then he angrily stormed out of a Congressional meeting with a few members of Iraq's Council of Representatives. Neocon psychosis at its most obnoxiously obvious. It's official: Those pesky Iraqis are ungrateful. • The Obama administration has decided not to proceed with the Bush-Cheney administration's phenomenally stupid plans to build a "missile defense shield" in Poland. • Bush-Cheney Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton is under investigation for corruption while she held the office. • By a far-too-narrow 2-1 decision, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Jamie Lee Jones, who was gang-raped and imprisoned by co-workers at Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad, can sue her former employer. KBR, showing again that corporations are far from human, had argued that under the terms of her contract she couldn't sue no matter how many times she was raped, no matter how long she was imprisoned. • The Wall Street Journal charges $2 for a copy at the newsstand, a hefty price when it's lying to its readers. • Time, which I believe still costs $2.95 at the store, doesn't directly lie this time. They just withhold the truth, reporting that there's a wide dispute about how many people attended last weekend's Klan rally in Washington DC, but failing to note how the right-wing's liars intentionally exaggerated the officially estimated attendance some thirty-fold. • Newsweek throws up its hands at the "complete partisan hackery" on both sides, as Republicans hyperventilate over the "czars" non-issue, and Democrats are "proffering inflated claims to counter". What these "inflated claims" might be is not explained by Newsweek, leaving — again — the false impression of "he said, she said". One side claims Obama's czars are turning America into Russia, while the other side says that's not true, and there's just no way of knowing who's telling the truth — at least not if you're reading Newsweek. I wonder, why would anyone read Newsweek? And it's a serious question. Why would anyone who's intelligent spend actual money on Newsweek, Time, the Wall Street Journal, or other purported news sources that can't bring themselves to tell the truth about the news? Seems like a flawed business model to me. • World water temperatures in August were the highest they've been in the 129 years since records have been kept. If that doesn't get your attention, global climate change is starting to make beer taste worse. • In Afghanistan, the official results are in, and to no-one's surprise, American puppet ruler Hamid Karzai has stolen the election. • Indiana's voter ID law, declared perfectly legal by the increasingly right-wing US Supreme Court last year, has now been invalidated by a state court.
• Libertarian economist Peter Schiff has announced that he's running for the Senate in Connecticut, hoping to unseat Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut). World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon announced her candidacy yesterday, so Dodd now has two big-money opponents. • In Pennsylvania, Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania) — who's been as red as your average red-state politician for decades — is lying that he wants single-payer on the table in the debate over health care reform. He needs to sound like a Democrat, because he's being challenged in next year's Democratic primary by Congressman Joe Sestak (D-Pennsylvania), who's a real Democrat. • I hate smoking and smokers in public places as much as anyone. I've been described as a bit extreme on the subject, and before it became commonly accepted that one shouldn't smoke in restaurants and stores I made a scene about it in too many places to count. But. But the notion they've proposed in New York City, to ban smoking in public parks, is just absurd. • Births among unwed teenagers are more common in America's more openly religions states. • It's been a couple of weeks since Scott Mooney, coach of Breckinridge County High School in Harned, Kentucky, took an uncertain number of players on the team ("eight or nine", it says here) on an unauthorized field trip to his Baptist church to be baptized. When this kind of stuff makes the headlines I'm always a little curious to see what happens next, but I've been unable to find a word of follow-up on how or whether Coach Mooney's o-so-Christian wrist was slapped. Has anyone heard anything about the aftermath that hasn't made Google News? He's a Baptist in Kentucky, so I'm expecting he'll get plenty of backslaps and beers. • On Jay Leno's new prime time show, moviemaker Michael Moore was a guest on Tuesday night, and he made a few obvious, common sense observations of the sort that make perfect sense and thus are rarely allowed on the teevee box. • You might not know about Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of RJ Reynolds Tobacco. • A tip o' the hat to Cassandra, Lamar. B., The Anonymous Liberal, Joe G., Joseph D., Lon Garm, Scott L., JR Mooneyham, SirJ, Bill T., Wig, the letter Z, and the love of my life (who prefers to remain anonymous). Updated today: Our bad cops page, daily dialogue, and mystery links.
• A mere nine months after the inauguration, top-level White House advisors are starting to notice that the Obama administration is being slimed seven days a week by conservative liars and propaganda suppliers. You don't say! So in the Oval Office, they're huddling their heads together to try to figure out what to do about lies from Republicans, which makes me wonder where they've been keeping their heads for the past twenty years. • Why, yes, the Obama administration certainly does support keeping some of the most offensive and un-American aspects of the PATRIOT Act. President Obama’s people want the same powers that George W Bush’s people had, to look at your library records, or use those nifty but unConstitutional “roving wiretaps” and so forth. It’s the Obama administration, so nothing much has changed. • The Alabama Supreme Court has upheld a state law banning the sale of dildos and vibrators, because "public morality can still serve as a legitimate rational basis for regulating commercial activity". With apologies to our few friends in the South, I wouldn't return to that region even if you paid my bus fare. • An Australian woman faces up to seven years in prison for obtaining RU486 and using it to end her pregnancy. • President Obama has announced that tariffs will be imposed on Chinese tire imports. It's a tiny but appreciated step in the right direction, but the Obama administration will impose only a 35% tariff, not the 55% tariff that was recommended by the International Trade Commission, and the tariff will decline each year and end after three years. Like his
• In what will apparently be this week's Republican insanity, there's plenty of fake outrage over former President Jimmy Carter's statement that racism might play a part in the right-wing's perpetual hysteria over everything President Obama says or does. The response is stupid and sad, as of course, anyone who chats with white Americans once in a while has heard racist comments about President Obama, but the deluded and the deluding are now calling Carter racist. And predictably, even Democrats are trying to distance themselves from Carter's obvious honesty. Carter has a nasty habit of telling the truth and the entire establishment goes bonkers and trips over themselves in denouncing him. • Is it worth the time and trouble to go into detailed connect-the-dots mode in pointing out the right-wing media's coded racism? Will Bunch does it well, but what's the point? Anybody who's not bright enough to see the racism Bunch points out without having it pointed out is way too dim to read the article or get anything from it. • Rush Limbaugh has called for the re-segregation of buses. • Earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, and tsunamis are all coming our way, thanks to global climate change. Maybe if they add bleeding hemorrhoids and persistent arthritis to the list, it'll finally get the attention of the rich old farts who run the world. • Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth says that she and her paper’s advertisers prefer "happier stories, not 'depressing' ones", which of course sets the stage for unpleasant or non-chipper stories to get spiked. • Republicans in the California state legislature have effectively blocked federal funding for state health care programs and swine flu preparations, among other such 'accomplishments'. • Big-time wrestling maven Linda McMahon is running for the Senate, hoping for the Republican nomination to run against the incumbent, Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut). And of course it sounds silly, but Dodd shouldn't dismiss her candidacy as a joke. If there’s one thing McMahon and her husband Vince know about it’s showmanship, and if there’s a second thing they know about it’s winning. • Lunatic lawyer Orly Taitz's latest birther complaint has been deemed "frivolous" and rather brusquely tossed.
• Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and wanna-bee President of the United States warns of the dangers of electromagnetic pulse. • The daughter of a hippie has led archaeologists to the commune where she spent some of her childhood, and experts are now working there to retrieve beads and roach clips and other artifacts. My youth and maybe yours has become an archaeological dig. • You might not know about William Still, father of the Underground Railroad. • A tip o' the hat to Bad Attitudes, Corrente, Pandagon, Alas!, Joe G., Lon Garm, Scott L., JR Mooneyham, SirJ, Wig, the letter Z, and the love of my life who prefers to remain anonymous. Updated today: Our bad cops page, daily dialogue, and mystery links.
the recession is over • The recession is over and the recovery is underway, says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Let's just say, I'm not convinced Bernanke's right, and not convinced Bernanke should be managing anything more complicated than a fryer at KFC. • Judge Laurence Silberman (Reagan 1985) has ruled that American mercenaries in Afghanistan are immune from being sued, even for wildly criminal acts. Silberman's stark partisanship and misdeeds go all the way back to his involvement in the Ronald Reagan campaign's 1980 efforts to thwart the release of Americans being held hostage in Iran, since that might have won re-election for President Jimmy Carter. Of course, Silberman was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush.
• The Obama administration's perpetual outreach to the lunatic fringe of the right-wing and their resolute determination to pursue bipartisanship with these fervent obstructionists has become a parody of spinelessness. Is it possible, as some bright people seem to believe, that the President and his people are so staggeringly stupid that they don't understand that they're shooting themselves in the foot, over and over and over again? • In addition to lying that the President was lying, it appears that Congressman Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) was lying when he later claimed to have been an immigration attorney. Of course, in the present-day Republican Party, being a liar is required and the bigger the lie the better, so perhaps he'll be Sarah Palinb's running mate in 2012. • Reading Dan Gilmore's list of things he'd do if he was running a news organization, I found myself wishing he was running a news organization. • Pollution is causing lots of problems for American fish. A new study looked at fish in nine major river basins, and found all sorts of genetic malfunctions. In a lot of waterways, about a third of male smallmouth bass are growing eggs, not generally a male thing to do. • Famed Iraqi shoe-tosser and folk hero Muntazer al-Zaidi was released from prison on Monday. He says he was waterboarded, electrocuted and repeatedly beaten while in custody. • Congressman Pete Stark (D-California) got a bit prickly while doing Q-and-A on health care reform with a teabagger. • The Washington Post has again allowed its op-ed pages to be used for another right-wing-tilted column propagating lies and misleading information, this time by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas). You know, I used to subscribe to three daily newspapers and one was the Washington Post, though I've never lived in Washington DC. It was a great newspaper, but that was a long, long time ago. A lot of the hardships newspapers are facing is because of the internet, but some of the circulation slide at papers like The Post is because people can be lied to for free, so paying for lies is a hard sell. • A new book from a (former, presumably) Bush-Cheney administration insider illuminates again just how phenomonally clueless GW Bush was. • You might not know about Helen Taussig, who saved countless infants' lives. • A tip o' the hat to boing boing, Lon Garm, JR Mooneyham, the love of my life who prefers to remain anonymous, and the letter Z. Updated today: Our bad cops page, daily dialogue, and mystery links.
Our disappointment becomes a bumper sticker
• The US troops have attacked a tiny town in Somalia. It's described as "a village near Barawe", and this bloodshed is allegedly necessary because "Many experts fear Somalia is becoming a haven for al-Qaida, a place for terrorists to train and gather strength — much like Afghanistan in the 1990s". Hmmm. "Much like Afghanistan"? And how's that working out? In the last week, the last month, the last year, and the next week, the next month, the next year, more innocent civilians have been and will be killed by American military action in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Pakistan, in the Philippines, in Somalia, and wherever else the so-called War on Terror is underway, than the death toll of all the terrorists everywhere. So long as American foreign policy is conducted with attacks on villages and by killer drones from above, terrorism will continue to be a popular response, because the victims of America's constant mis-use of its military might can't defend their homes and families by writing a letter to the editor. • Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the Doc Strangelovesque commander of American forces in Afghanistan, says he sees no indication of a serious al-Qaida presence in that country. • The Obama administration is making hollow, paper-thin policy adjustments at the American-run Bagram Prison in Afghanistan. For the very first time, prisoners will be able to call witnesses in their defense, though apparently they’ll still have to do all their legal wrangling on paper, and still not have access to even military defense lawyers. President Obama, where's that 'change' you promised? • 31 people have been arrested in raids on medical marijuana clinics in the San Diego area, conducted by local police and the Drug Enforcement Administration. And here’s word of a similar raid two states north, in Spokane. The war on drugs is idiotic, wasteful, and the opposite of freedom, but that's been obvious for decades to anyone who thinks. The war on medical marijuana, though, takes this stupidity to phenomenal heights of inhumanity. The Obama administration, just like the Bush-Cheney administration, is happy to prosecute the sick and dying if they're smoking their pain meds, instead of buying a prescription from Big Pharma. • The Obama administration wants to make it illegal for illegal immigrants to buy health insurance through the much-ballyhooed government exchange system. Sounds cruel and counterproductive, but it'll make the barbarian racists of the far right-wing happy, so Obama's willing to do it. I'll also add, I don't understand the proposed exchange system, which seems unnecessarily complicated even before this latest curious stipulation. We're two+ months into a circus masquerading as a debate and there's still no single bill to read and try to understand. It's pointless at this point but I'll say again what I told the President's minions a few weeks ago, when I still held out some hope that someone somewhere in the administration was serious about health care reform: Everyone knows what Medicare is and most people like it, so if the administration seriously wanted health care reform they'd stop this charade and just give Americans the choice of buying into Medicare. But that proposal would be instantly popular with the people and awfully hard to demonize, so the Obama administration wouldn't be interested. President Obama, where's that 'change' you promised? • “I want everybody here to hear my words,” Mr. Obama said. “We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses. Those on Wall Street cannot resume taking risks without regard for consequences, and expect that next time, American taxpayers will be there to break their fall.” Well, OK, your words have been heard, Mr President, but they’re bullsh*t. Just like the previous President, you’ve given Wall Street's criminals billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money to assure that they feel no financial punishment for their crimes, and you’ve proposed pretty dang close to nuthin’ in regulation that might prevent such shenanigans from being repeated. • Federal Judge Jed Rakoff (Clinton 1995) has vacated the atrocious settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Bank of America, wherein the latter agreed to pay a paltry $33-million fine to clear away evidence of its crimes. A judge who cares about justice? How peculiar, but in a good way. • Nick George, a California college student, was handcuffed and detained for five hours at the Philadelphia airport because ... he's studying Arabic, and had Arabic-language flash cards in his backpack. I do hope we're not yet so far gone that Mr George can't sue and win enough money to retire young and endow the ACLU with a few million dollars. • If there's a recurring theme to today's entry (and to pretty much everything out of DC over the past several months) it's, "President Obama, where's that 'change' you promised?" And seriously, other than the new guy's face and better oratory skills, it's hard to see exactly what's different from what the old guy did. It's a strain on our budget to have bumper stickers printed but we're doing it, just because it's really time to cover up the "Obama '08" sticker that's on our refrigerator. Our new sticker, at the top of today's entry, says in big letters "President Obama, where's that 'change' you promised?", and in smaller letters "Start standing up to the radical right-wing". For three bucks we'll send you one. • Teaching kids an important lesson about journalism in America, Sue Vaughn, the principal of Orange County High School of the Arts in Santa Ana, censored the school paper’s investigative piece on the company that’s running the cafeteria. • An Indiana man was jailed for two years without even being allowed to see an attorney, over sex abuse charges that seem ludicrous on their face. When he finally was allowed a sit-down with a lawyer, justice moved swiftly and the charges have been dropped, but the victim, one Donald Clark Woods, wants plenty of cash and ought to get it. • On the three major networks' newscasts, the outburst from Congressman Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) got more airtime than Obama's speech on health care reform. To their credit and to my surprise, though, ABC and NBC pointed out that Wilson's "You lie!" claim was false. • Saturday's gathering of perhaps 70,000 right-wingers protesting the existence of government was front-page news in the right-tilting Washington Post. In 2003, when millions protested worldwide and at least 100,000 protested in Washington DC against the impending war on Iraq, it wasn't front-page worthy in the Post. • Glenn Beck's takedown of former Obama administration environmental wonk Van Jones was part of a bigger ploy to keep anything green from emerging from DC. • Swine flu is still a worry. Wash your hands. • In England, there are some 2,000 reports of unpleasant side effects, up to and including paralysis, from the cervical cancer vaccine that’s being administered to adolescent girls. • The District Attorney in Milwaukee is asking a judge to block DNA testing that could prove a convicted rapist's innocence. Why? • After three years of mystery surrounding the deaths of millions of bees — colony collapse disorder — some scientists now suspect it's being caused by a virus. I actually had a chat with a moron a few months ago who thought this colony collapse disorder was a good thing (picnics will be so much nicer without bees, he told me), so I'll point out the obvious: Without bees we don't get pollination, and to a large extent that means we don't get crops. • Goodwill has returned a stature worth upwards of $500,000 that was donated to the charity/retailer by someone who didn't know its worth. • A biopic about Charles Darwin has been unable to find a distributor in America, because Darwin is so very controversial among the morons here. • You might not know about James Craig Watson. • A tip o' the hat to horsesass.org, Legalize Marijuana, uggabugga, Decrepit Old Fool, Scott L., Lon Garm, JR Mooneyham, the love of my life who prefers to remain anonymous, and the letter Z. Updated today: Our bad cops page, daily dialogue, mystery links, and right wing calls to violence.
Attorney General Eric Holder is an accomplice after the fact
• Bradley Schlozman was an official of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division while it was intentionally ignoring civil rights cases unless the victims were white. He plainly perjured himself before Congress, claiming that politics and ideology weren't taken into account in hiring during the Bush-Cheney years (hey, stop laughing, I'm serious here). As part of what seems to be the Obama administration's official "look the other way" policy, Schlozman won't be prosecuted. I fail to see much distinction between Justice Department officials who break the law, and Justice Department officials who ignore lawbreaking. It would be silly to suggest that Attorney General Eric Holder hasn't restored some integrity at the Justice Department, but his resolute unwillingness to prosecute Bush-Cheney officials makes him an accomplice after the fact, a criminal no less than John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, and Michael Mukasey. President Obama, where's the change? • The sell-out of health care "reform" is happening in more ways than we can keep tabs on it, but it appears that "reform" will mandate individual coverage but offer no public option. Man, that's a lucrative doubleheader for the insurance industry, and it's expected to give the bloodsuckers upwards of ten-million new paying customers. Whatever health care reform we see will, it seems certain it'll be written by the insurance industry or written for the insurance industry's benefit. Given the President's lackluster leadership, where he's only willing to lead toward compromise, always another compromise toward glorious biparisanship that matters above all else, I'll be pleasantly surprised if the final legislation doesn't make the American health care crisis acutely more lethal than it presently is. • Heath Honesty: "I can no longer deny that Obama is an abomination on par with GWB and Cheney any day of the week, as it seems are practically all in the DC beltway. I can no longer advance for him good will on account that he... remind me again what he has done that's been positive?" • In Taiwan, former President Chen Shui-bian gets life in prison. (By law, his conviction must be appealed.) Several times in several countries since GW Bush and Dick Cheney left office, we've seen how corruption in high office should be dealt with. Perhaps America will get it right in time to put Barack Obama in prison some day, but I'm not optimistic. In America, corruption is the way things work. • Some 70,000 racists, deluded fools, and arch-conservatives marched on Washington DC on Saturday. Here are some photos and some more photos, and this one's my favorite. Right-wing liars (but I repeat myself) claim the crowd was 2,000,000. • When the Obama administration reaches out to American Christian leaders, apparently the outreach is limited to leaders on the nutball far-right. Peg Chamberlin is the President-elect of the National Council of Churches, the group that represents ordinary non-nutball Christian denominations, and she says that nobody from the White House ever calls leaders of mainstream Lutheran, Methodist, Congregational, and other churches that teach "God is Love" instead of hate the homos and ban abortion etc. • The fire chief who was shot by a cop during a court appearance over tickets has been charged with battery. Possibly he will be the one to see the inside of a holding cell! • The known number of forged letters in support of dirty coal energy, claiming to be from activist groups, is now 14. • Rodney King has beat up a cop, in the boxing ring. • You might not know about Norman Borlaug. • A tip o' the hat to Joan, Lon Garm, JR Mooneyham, the love of my life who prefers to remain anonymous, and the letter Z. Updated today: Our bad cops page, daily dialogue, and mystery links.
Bumbling incompetence, or aiding and abetting criminal activity?
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawyers have said in a court filing that they did the right thing in not bringing anyone at Merrill Lynch to any form of justice, and in looking the other way as the firm's new owner, Bank of America, misled investors on upcoming Merrill Lynch bonuses. Bumbling incompetence, or aiding and abetting criminal activity? Looks like the latter. • Barry Ritholtz rightly points out the opportunity missed by the Obama administration, to re-regulate the wild west Wall Street in the aftermath of the financial meltdown. Mr Titholtz briefly but accurately explains what the Obama administration should have done, and only misses the mark, I think, with his seeming assumption that this was an accident, a blunder, a tactical error. Letting the criminals of Wall Street walk free, and setting up no regulatory mechanism to prevent similar swindles from recurring, was so colossally stupid that it defies credulity to see it as just an oopsie. Seems much more likely to me that the Obama administration's response, like the megabillion-dollar bailout, was what Wall Street wanted, and what Wall Street wants Wall Street gets. • Chris D. says it well: "A vote for Democrats is to be sold down the river. A vote for Republicans is to be whored and forced to reimburse your abusive john. A vote for an independent is to be mocked and abused and most likely sold out to one of the stronger parties ..." • From what happened at Wednesday's hearing before the Supreme Court on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, it looks like nobody should be surprised if the paltry few laws keeping corporations from absolute control of American government are struck down. • Federal prosecutors allege that mercenary-murderers working for Blackwater (now calling itself Xe) "specifically intended to kill" civilians in their Iraq killing sprees. • The U.S. envoy to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran's nuclear program is reaching the point where we should all wring our hands and worry extensively. Based on the track record of overwrought hysteria, though, US officials are not at all credible on such matters.
• Yosi Sargent, someone I've never heard of who was communications director at the National Endowment for the Arts, has been demoted to some as-yet unspecified position after being criticized by Glenn Beck on Fox News. According to Beck (and what a comical phrase, "According to Beck", as if that's a weighty attribution) Sargent's sin was arranging a conference call in which artists were urged to "create works in support of Obama policies". The NEA says the call was not inappropriate. Sargent's demotion comes mere days after former White House environmental adviser Van Jones was forced out after being criticized by Beck. It's almost as if Obama's people do the hiring, but Glenn Beck does the firing. • And Beck says there's more to come: "By the end of the week (today, apparently), you will see that something that everybody feels in their gut is wrong, but nobody has really exposed it, is going to be exposed this week and you will see, by the end of the week, that people will go to jail. What's happening in this country right now, I've said this for a while, I believe is one of the most important stories in American history. You're going to see the beginning of it and people will go to jail." Beck is mentally unbalanced, and that's not an insult, it's a serious statement. His delusions are dangerous, not funny. Quoting my friend Heidi, he's Howard Beale with a mean streak, and his large and growing audience undoubtedly includes our nation's next Timothy McVeigh. • At a memorial service for Walter Cronkite a few days ago, President Obama gave a eulogy for the man that doubles as a brief but compelling evaluation of what's wrong with journalism today. • ABC News will have to struggle on without John Stossel, arguably the network's worst reporter, who's jumping to Fox News. I rarely watch the abysmal 20/20, but a few weeks ago I happened to catch his propaganda piece against health care reform, which reinforced virtually every right-wing talking point, and did so more effectively than any ad, op-ed, or teabaggers I've seen. As we watched it, I mentioned to my wife that Stossel's stilted miscoverage could be broadcast on Fox News and they wouldn't have to change anything but the ABC logo in the corner of the screen. Stossel and his pornstar moustache will be very much at home at his new workplace. • During the Bush-Cheney administration, alleged Christian right-wing leaders had frequent meetings with President GW Bush. • The Arlington Independent School District, where students weren't able to see President Obama's boring but innocuous speech on Tuesday, will bus fifth-graders on a field trip to hear former President George W. Bush give a speech. • British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has apologized to the late Alan Turing. • Rush Limbaugh has solved the health care crisis. • You might not know about Alexander Grothendieck. • A tip o' the hat to The Big Picture, Lon Garm, JR Mooneyham, zZaRDoZz, the love of my life who prefers to remain anonymous, and the letter Z. Updated today: Our bad cops page, daily dialogue, it's been debunked, casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, and mystery links. • We're going camping over the weekend, but unless we're fatally mosquitoed we'll be back by Monday.
• In President Obama's speech to Congress last night, it was an orgasm for the ears when he finally said that the Republicans' lies are lies. By most measures it was a damned fine speech (we couldn't bear to watch, but we've read the text). The President said he wants to ban discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, and he wants to outlaw recission, and there were a few more lines calculated to draw applause from the left. You can check just about any of the usual big blogs and find a happy response. Our response is a lot less than happy, because President Obama signaled his willingness to compromise on the public option. As we've said before, the public option was already a half-hearted compromise from the common sense solution, single-payer, so the President wants a compromise within a compromise, and with more compromise undoubtedly yet to come. That's the best we're going to get. Compromise is the only principle we've seen from the Obama White House, and compromise will be this administration's downfall. I can't say it better or more succinctly than Elliott Cook, so I'll simply quote him: "I can't afford to buy health insurance, but I've lived without health insurance for years. If the government is going to 'solve' this problem by giving me a subsidy and telling me I must send payments to UnitedHealth or some other killer corporation, the answer is no. I won't do it." President Barack Obama's message to the sick, the working poor, the un-insured, the under-insured, the insured, and of course the Left is, we'll compromise your life away. Or in simpler language, go to hell. Well, for what little it's worth, our reply to the Obama administration is: The feeling is mutual.
• During the President's speech, he was heckled by Republicans, including Congressman Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina), who will undoubtedly be hailed as a folk hero on the Right-wing for shouting "You lie!" when the President said that health care reform wouldn't subsidize medical care for illegal immigrants. Wilson's outburst has already inspired a flood of contributions for his opponent in next year's election, and there's plenty of mainstream news coverage pointing out that Wilson's comment was rude and unprecedented and a breach of ordinary protocol. As of 7:45 AM the morning after the speech, though, I've been unable to find any coverage anywhere in the big-money media that explains, on the same page in the same article, that Wilson's shout wasn't just rude, it was untrue. Of course, Wilson's shout was untrue. [Update: A few hours later, I found a pretty good write-up that made both points, at Time of all places.] • California has fined its five largest insurance companies almost $19-million — utterly chump change — for canceling the insurance policies of customers who had the gall to get sick. And these are the companies you're going to be required by law to sign up with. • Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón is going forward with war crimes prosecutions of six Bush-Cheney administration officials. • Brits say then-VP Dick Cheney nearly destroyed prosecution of three terrorists ... • Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (Moe) says that the recession is over, which provides further evidence that the Three Stooges are running Obama’s economic team. • The bailout of GM and Chrysler will probably end up costing American taxpayers upwards of $20-billion. At least we're getting something for that money — the possibility that these companies will survive and continue manufacturing American cars in America. That's a much better deal that the much more expensive bailout of Wall Street, which amounts to untold hundreds of billions for bupkis. • Hospital officials in Afghanistan say the US military stormed the place, "breaking down doors and tying up staff and visitors in a hunt for insurgents". • Ali Soufan is an FBI interrogator who's good at his job, and whose job doesn't include torture. Among other things, he's the guy who got valuable information out of the dreaded Abu Zubayda ... before Zubayda was tortured under orders from the Bush-Cheney administration. Well, in a New York Times op-ed over the weekend, Soufan explained how counterproductive torture has been. Virtually all corners of the media have given screaming headlines and credence to claims of how "effective" American torture was, claims emanating from Dick Cheney and other unabashed war criminals. An expert insider responds by telling the truth and it's hidden on the op-ed page, as if the truth of the matter is just some guy's opinion. It belongs on the front page, as news.
• Iraqi shoe-tosser Muntazer al-Zaidi is scheduled to be released from prison this coming Monday. He's seen as a national hero in Iraq, of course, and he certainly has my admiration. • In Maine, the Catholic Diocese is passing the offering plate for an ad campaign against equal rights for gays. • A brief history of corporate whining, 1842-2009. • Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has written, or more likely had ghostwritten, a summary of her lies on health care reform, which has been dutifully published in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. It is worth reading only if you feel the need to keep current on propaganda aimed at the stupid and gullible. • This sure as heck won't be unknown news, but I never grow weary of very moral Republicans getting caught in their own hypocrisy. • Here's all you need to know about Henry Kissinger. • A tip o' the hat to Candleblog, Cab Drollery, Lon Garm, JR Mooneyham, Bad Attitudes, SirJ, Cassandra, Scott L., West Virginia Surf Report, Bloggasm, Ampersand, Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!, the love of my life who prefers to remain anonymous, and the letter Z. Updated today: Our bad cops page, daily dialogue, it's been debunked, and mystery links.
Bush-Cheney administration pushed for "Nuremberg defense"
• Newly-released documents show that the Bush-Cheney administration sought to have the precedent of the Nuremberg trials overturned, so the claim of "just following orders" would get war criminals off the hook. Can there be a greater shame for America? Sure, just wait a week for the next revelations. And yet, this is remarkably unsurprising to anyone who's been aware of the Bush-Cheney administration beyond the corporate media's bland headlines, which are generally crafted to offend or alarm no-one. I'll be pleasantly surprised if you read or hear about this in the mainstream media at all, and I'll eat my underwear if it get a fraction of the coverage it rather obviously merits. • Physicians for Human Rights says its investigation shows that the doctors and psychologists who monitored the CIA torture routine during the Bush-Cheney administration "came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation". This is presumably something else for Attorney General Eric Holder to turn a blind eye to, but — no problem, he seems to have an endless supply of blind eyes. • Nobody else facilitates the killing and injury of more people than America. • Almost $400-million has been spent lobbying Congress on health care reform. In terms of lobbying, it is the most expensive legislation in American history, because several huge conglomerates have one hell of a lot of profit on the line. • For days now, there's been non-stop speculation about what President Obama might say in his big speech on health care reform, and are you as weary of it all as I am? It's a matter of life and death for tens of thousands of Americans every year, and instead of an intelligent debate we've been given the Barnum & Bailey Circus of Stupid. Well, Obama's big speech is tonight, and whatever he says in his Hamlet act, it all comes down to one
• Here's the newest sickening scheme from Wall Street, where regulations don't regulate. Buy insurance policies from impoverished senior citizens for around 40¢ on the dollar, then bundle these policies for brokering as securitized packages. I can hear the pitch in my head: "Why, old folks are dying every day and we're not making a profit off it." • You can tell a lot about someone by whether they'll stand behind a friend when the going gets tough. The Obama administration won't. • Here's a quick primer on the ethics charges against Congressman Charles Rangel (D-New York). • There is apparently nothing short of being arrested that costs a major corporate CEO his job. "CIT Group Inc., the 101-year-old commercial lender, extended the employment contract of Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Peek for a year as the company struggles to avoid bankruptcy." • And now, a moment of WTF: French President Nicolas Sarkozy surrounds himself with short people to give the illusion that he's taller. • I sure thought Glee was going to stink like a toilet full but unflushed for a week, but to my surprise... it was pretty good. • You might not know about Robert Watson-Watt. • A tip o' the hat to Scott L., Lon Garm, JR Mooneyham, the love of my life who prefers to remain anonymous, and the letter Z. Updated today: Our bad cops page, daily dialogue, and mystery links.
Recommended sites for gathering unknown or underreported news: Media Matters Pro Publica ThinkProgress Washington Monthly TruthOut
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