Happy New Year, George, from Representative Charlie Rangel, (D – NY15). New York Daily News (01.01.07), via FirstDraft:
“‘More than any other President that I can think of, you have really, truly shattered the myth of white supremacy.'”
“Rangel showcased his comedic chops by ripping into the White House during his standup debut in midtown Saturday night – all in fun, of course.”
Of course!!
Charlie also told the crowd that Dick Cheney keeps inviting him to go hunting.
Beat The Press (01.03.07) (link in original):
“The Washington Post claims that the federal deficit hit a record $413 billion in 2004. While this is a record in nominal dollars, that is a meaningless number, as I trust the Post’s reporter knows. The deficit in 1983 was $207.8 billion.”
“That was smaller in nominal dollars than the 2004 deficit, but so what? The U.S. economy was less than one-third as large in 1983.”
Dean sez: “The current deficits are larger than can be sustained, but there is no reason to try to mislead readers to make things sound more scary. Reality is bad enough.”
George sez he wants “bipartisan” solutions. He sez he really, really means it. Can you believe the Dems are skeptical? AP (01.04.07):
“‘We now have the opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus to fight and win the war,’ Bush said.
Democrats say they welcome his new approach, then point out there was nothing stopping him before.”
“‘We certainly want to work with the president,’ said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the Senate Democrats’ campaign chief. ‘We hope that when the president says compromise, it means more than do it my way, which is what he’s meant in the past.'”
And you thought these guys were dumb. Washington Post (01.03.07), via Washington Monthly:
“Embattled Home Depot Chief Executive Robert L. Nardelli, under fire from stockholders for earning hundreds of millions at the same time the company’s stock fell and market share dropped, resigned suddenly today and will walk away with a severance package of $210 million, the company announced.”
“At a disastrous Home Depot annual meeting last May, Nardelli, the only director present, refused to answer questions or respond to criticism from shareholders about the hundreds of millions in pay, benefits and stock options he had pulled down since he took over leadership of the chain in 2000.”
Old Bob raked in $240 million overall. What did he do to command such a lofty sum? “During his leadership of the nation’s second largest retail chain after Wal-Mart, Home Depot lost market share to home-improvement rival Lowe’s Cos. and its stock price declined almost 8 percent.”
Kevin asks the questions we might have asked except (as is usually the case) he thought of it first: “I wonder what Nardelli would have been paid if he had actually increased Home Depot’s value? Would there be enough money in the world?”
Man, is Keith playing this like a master or what? Virgil is so outmatched here, it ain’t even funny. Washington Post (01.03.05), via Think Progress:
“Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he’d take his oath of office on the Koran — especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.
Yet the holy book at tomorrow’s ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We’ve learned that the new congressman — in a savvy bit of political symbolism — will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.”
“‘He wanted to use a Koran that was special,’ said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison’s 5th District, was happy to help.”
“Jefferson’s copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson’s collection and has his customary initialing on the pages.”
Virgil is such a fucking tool, it’s unbelievable. Keith continues to make him look like an even bigger moron than he already is, as difficult as that may be.
Cooperation? Yeah, we’ve heard of it. AP (01.02.06):
“President Bush, facing a Democratic-controlled Congress for the first time, is urging lawmakers to work with his administration and warning that ‘political statements’ in the form of legislation would result in a stalemate.
We must work together, says the Prez. “‘To do that, however, we can’t play politics as usual,’ he said.”
How might we expect this spirit of cooperation to be implemented? Ha! You think these guys give a shit about cooperation? “This administration doesn’t do policy, they do politics. If Bush says something in a speech, it’s because they think it will sound good in a speech, period.”
Actions, as they say, speak louder than words. LATimes (01.03.07):
“Setting up what could become the first showdown between the Bush administration and the new Democratic Congress, the Justice Department has refused to turn over two secret documents, describing the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies for suspected terrorists, to the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who asked for the documents in November, said Tuesday that the department’s response suggested that President Bush’s promise to work with the new Congress ‘may have been only political lip service.'”
Congress, Bush poised for 1st friction
In what will become the standard refrain from the Administration in all of these inquiries, “the Justice Department said the information he sought was classified and included confidential legal opinions that were privileged”, and that “disclosing sensitive operational information, such as interrogation techniques, would help the enemy.”
Leahy is not amused. “‘It is disappointing that the Department of Justice and the White House have squandered another opportunity to work cooperatively with Congress,’ he said Tuesday in a statement.”
“‘The department’s decision to brush off my request for information about the administration’s troubling interrogation policies is not the constructive step toward bipartisanship that I had hoped for, given President Bush’s promise to work with us.'”
Leahy has said he’s more than ready to force the issue. Last November, from the NYTimes (11.23.06):
“‘I expect real answers, or we’ll have testimony under oath until we get them,’ Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, who will head the committee beginning in January, said in an interview this week. ‘We’re entitled to know these answers, and in many instances we don’t get them because people are hiding their mistakes. And that’s no excuse.'”
He isn’t the only member of Congress lining up for a shot at George. This is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Who the hell is he kidding? AP (12.30.06), via Digby:
“A man unhappy with an Islamic association’s plans to build a mosque next to his property has staged pig races as a protest during afternoon prayers.
Craig Baker, 46, sold merchandise and grilled sausages Friday for about 100 people who showed up in heavy rain. He insisted he wasn’t trying to offend anyone with the pigs, which are forbidden from the Muslim diet.”
“‘I am just defending my rights and my property,’ Baker said. ‘They totally disrespected me and my family.'”
So what did Katy Islamic Association do that was so disrespectful? It bought some property next to Baker’s to build “a mosque, community center, athletic facilities and a school”, then asked Baker to stop grazing his cows on their land.
The reaction from the Association about the pig races? Something along the lines of BFD.
“Muslims don’t hate pigs, they just don’t eat them, said engineer Kamel Fotouh, president of the 500-member Katy Islamic Association in this Houston suburb.”
“‘I don’t care if he races, roasts or slaughters pigs,’ said Yousef Allam, a spokesman for the group.”
“Resident Susan Canavespe said the pig racing wasn’t mean-spirited — ‘It’s just Texas-spirited.'”
Happy New Year. Love, Congress. Bloomberg (12.31.06):
Republican Senator Richard Lugar, outgoing chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said President George W. Bush should consult with the incoming Democratic-led U.S. Congress before announcing plans for Iraq.
‘In the past, the administration has been inclined not to disregard Congress, but to not take Congress very seriously, Lugar said today on Fox News. ‘I think this time Congress has to be taken seriously.'”
Lugar Says Bush Should Consult With New U.S. Congress on Iraq
“Lugar suggested that members of the Foreign Relations panel be allowed to study Bush’s proposal before the president addresses the nation sometime after Jan. 1.”
And if he doesn’t let ’em review it? The good Senator sez George then “can expect ‘a lot of hearings, a lot of study, a lot of criticism'”. “The debate could get ugly, ‘and it need not,’ he said.”
“When they hanged him, he was America’s vanquished foe, likened to Hitler and Stalin for the murderous evil of his ways. What is forgotten is that once, for more than a decade, Saddam Hussein was staunchly supported by the US.”
How Washington and London helped to create the monster they went to war to destroy
“Indeed, it was Washington that supplied him with many of the weapons of mass destruction the dictator used against his foes – weapons that one day would serve as a pretext for the US-led invasion that toppled him.”
Saddam took over in 1978. In 1980, he attacked Iran. “Washington was under no illusions about the brutality of Saddam’s regime. But as Tehran gained the upper hand in the fighting, he came to be seen as the lesser of two evils – a vital bulwark against domination by a radical, anti-Western Iran of the strategically vital Gulf region, with its colossal oil reserves.”
“Quietly, the US delivered the technology, weapons and logistical support to prevent Iraq’s defeat. Its policy was symbolised by the cordial meeting in Baghdad in December 1983 between Saddam and a certain Donald Rumsfeld, then President Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East.”
Saddam was our boy right up until he invaded Kuwait in August, 1990. “Indeed, just a week earlier, on 25 July 1990, the American ambassador, April Glaspie, had met Saddam. According to a transcript of the meeting, she informed him that Washington had no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, ‘like your border disagreement with Kuwait’.”
Saddam took that as a green light to attack. The rest, as they say, is history.
“It is a matter of debate whether Iraqis are now worse off than under Saddam’s dictatorship. The chaos in their country, however, has produced one undisputed winner: an unchecked Iran, more menacing today than in Ayatollah Khomeini’s time.”
Any way you look at it, it’ll be hard to replace Saparmurat. NYTimes (12.27.06):
“Five days after the death of Turkmenistan’s authoritarian president, Saparmurat Niyazov, the upper chamber of the legislature agreed Tuesday to schedule an election for Feb. 11 to pick his successor but also limited those who could run to the six candidates it chose.
The assembly signaled its tacit endorsement of the acting president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, a deputy prime minister, by unanimously approving his candidacy.”
Gurbanguly “was the only candidate to receive a unanimous vote.”
“The Constitution barred Mr. Berdymukhammedov’s candidacy because it said an acting president could not run. But the assembly voted to change the Constitution to allow his candidacy.”
“Speaking to legislators, Turkmenistan’s chief of elections, Murad Kariyev, promised to administer a fair election and provide voting stations with transparent ballot boxes.”
Transparent ballot boxes? As you can see inside ’em?
Anyway, there was another Constitutional issue which also was summarily resolved. LATimes (12.27.06):
“Under the constitution, the speaker of parliament, a smaller and less powerful body than the People’s Council, should have become acting president.
But the man holding that post, Ovezgeldy Atayev, was pushed aside and arrested within hours of Niyazov’s death.”
“The prosecutor general’s office accused him of inciting discord among clans.” If that wasn’t enough, Ovezgeldy was also accused of “abuse of authority and immoral conduct.”
Microsoft sez: “Windows Vista is engineered to be the most secure version of Windows yet. The new features in Windows Vista help to give you the control and confidence you need to get the most out of your PC.” On the other hand. NYTimes (12.24.06), via Gilliard:
“Microsoft is facing an early crisis of confidence in the quality of its Windows Vista operating system as computer security researchers and hackers have begun to find potentially serious flaws in the system that was released to corporate customers late last month.
On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista.”
And that’s not all, folks. “(O)ver the weekend a Silicon Valley computer security firm said it had notified Microsoft that it had also found that flaw, as well as five other vulnerabilities, including one serious error in the software code underlying the company’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser.”
“The browser flaw is particularly troubling because it potentially means that Web users could become infected with malicious software simply by visiting a booby-trapped site. That would make it possible for an attacker to inject rogue software into the Vista-based computer, according to executives at Determina, a company based in Redwood City, Calif., that sells software intended to protect against operating system and other vulnerabilities.”
In the past, Determina has helped old Bill Gates out by publishing its own patches to Microsoft software.
Daniel Gross (12.24.06) (link in original):
“Another anti-capitalist, anti-free-market, business ignoramus for universal health care. Self-made billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman.”
Mort, number 382 on the Forbes list of “The World’s Billionaires“, has this to say (12.17.06):
“Tens of millions of Americans live in fear that a major health problem can reduce them to bankruptcy. They realize their families are one health crisis away from family hardship, which is a key reason for the pervasive feeling of personal and permanent insecurity.”
“If there is one single source of risk our policymakers must tackle, it is health insurance. We must not muddle on, a band-aid here and a band-aid there. We must find some way to provide universal health insurance, especially to cover all children. This is one of the critical reasons that Americans are nervous and no longer believe that the next generation will be better off.”
Remember the good old days, when the Privateers were all touting the Chilean Social Security system as the answer to our prayers? No? Here’s an example, from José Piñera, the guy who designed the system. Cato (12.17.98):
“America’s Social Security system will go bust in 2010. As political leaders scramble to save it, they’ve overlooked an obvious free-market solution that works. They need only look at Chile.”
Ignoring the fact that José’s statement that Social Security here will “go bust in 2010” is a crock of shit, how well has his program worked? Well by golly, it’s worked so well, the Chilean government is chucking it. NYTimes (12.19.06):
“Responding to growing complaints that the privatized pension system here is failing to deliver adequate benefits, the Chilean government has recommended that it be supplanted by a system in which the state would play a much larger role.”
The replacement is “meant to stimulate competition, reducing the high costs to contributors and the extraordinarily high profits for pension fund administrators that analysts blame for some of the current problems.”
So the privatized plan resulted in extraordinarily high profits for pension fund administrators? Wow. Isn’t that something? Who’d a thunk it?
Fact of the matter is the damned thing never really worked. NYTimes (12.27.05):
“Under the Chilean program – which President Bush has cited as a model for his plans to overhaul Social Security – the promise was that such investments, by helping to spur economic growth and generating higher returns, would deliver monthly pension benefits larger than what the traditional system could offer.
But now that the first generation of workers to depend on the new system is beginning to retire, Chileans are finding that it is falling far short of what was originally advertised under the authoritarian government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.”
“For all the program’s success in economic terms, the government continues to direct billions of dollars to a safety net for those whose contributions were not large enough to ensure even a minimum pension approaching $140 a month.”
“Even many middle-class workers who contributed regularly are finding that their private accounts – burdened with hidden fees that may have soaked up as much as a third of their original investment – are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system.”
If a Chilean had stuck with “the government’s original pay-as-you-go system, the maximum retirement benefit [would be] about $1,250 a month.” For those who went with the private retirement plan, “workers would have to contribute more than $250,000 over their careers, a target that has been reached by fewer than 500 of the private system’s 7 million past and present contributors.”
Jeepers. Who’da figured this’d be going on? LATimes (12.24.06):
“‘A hundred armed Taliban men passed through the Pakistani border with their equipment, and with their rocket-propelled grenade launchers,’ said Qasim Khail, commander of the Afghan border police’s 2nd Brigade, which guards the post here.
‘And they retreated the same way. There are only two escape routes out of here, and both of them end at a Pakistani border post.’
“Confidential documents obtained by The Times show that for at least two years, U.S. military intelligence agencies have warned American commanders that Taliban militants were arming and training in Pakistan, then slipping into Afghanistan with the help of Pakistani border control officers.”
“On Sept. 5, Pashtun tribal leaders in Pakistan’s North Waziristan border region signed a pact with the central government in Islamabad led by President Pervez Musharraf, an avowed ally of the U.S. in its declared war on terrorism.”
Said pact also including amnesty for Osama.
“Under the agreement, the Pakistani army, which had fought fierce battles with pro-Taliban militants, withdrew from the region, leaving a tribal force in charge of border posts. In return, the tribesmen foreswore giving support, training and sanctuary to Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked fighters, although some foreigners were allowed to remain.”
They foreswore? Ha! Check’s in the mail too, you chumps.
“But the violence has not abated. Instead, Afghan officials and the U.S. military say that since the pact was signed, cross-border attacks have escalated.”
My, my. Color us shocked. The more things change, the more they stay the same. McClatchy (09.01.06):
“Zia Mojadedi, a senior national security aide to Karzai, criticized the Bush administration for accepting Pakistani assurances that the new truces include rebel promises not to join the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
‘The thrust of (Pakistan’s) strategy remains the same: how to milk the Americans’ for more money, he said.”
Boy. How’d we ever get fooled on that one?
Yahoo continues to take on water. Bloomberg (12.22.06):
“Google Inc. displaced Yahoo! Inc. as the world’s second-most visited Web site in November and closed in on leader Microsoft Corp., a market researcher said today.
Visitors to Google’s sites rose 9.1 percent to 475.7 million in November from a year earlier, while those to Yahoo sites rose 5.2 percent to 475.3 million, ComScore Networks Inc. said today.”
“Both sites trail Microsoft, which had 501.7 million visitors, ComScore said.”
Yahoo tried for eight years to make a go of providing video content. They never could figure out how to do it. In the meantime, Google bought YouTube. The rest, as they say, is history.
Green Angel
Jasper Johns (1990)
KNOBBOY 