What Driftglass Said

Photoshopped Image Downloaded from Drifty's Joint

Corrupt Governor Update


Done, as usual, with that unique and well, shit, just go see for yourselves.

Love Ya Drifty.

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Illinois Governor Arrested

Photo Downloaded from New York Times Online

Rod R. Blagojevich Arrested

As Mr. Blagojevich mulled the Senate appointment, prosecutors say, he discussed gaining “a substantial salary” at a nonprofit foundation or organization connected to labor unions, placing his wife on corporate boards where she might earn as much as $150,000 a year and trying to gain promises of campaign money, or even a cabinet post or ambassadorship, for himself.

A 76-page affidavit from the United States Attorney’s office in Northern Illinois says Mr. Blagojevich was heard on wiretaps over the last month planning to “sell or trade Illinois’ United States Senate seat vacated by Pres-elect Barack Obama for financial and personal benefits for himself and his wife.”

In an earlier recorded conversation, prosecutors say, Mr. Blagojevich said he was approached by an associate of “Candidate 5” with an offer of $500,000 in exchange for the Senate seat.

This is exactly the type of thing that we were supposed to be fighting against. I hope for either a swift acquittal or a swift guilty plea. There doesn't appear to be much grey area here. Funny how the Bush "Justice" Department manages to root out Democrats while letting blatant assholes like Randy "Duke" Cunningham run scams out of the House while living on a yacht.

UPDATE:

The Chicago Tribune has posted the criminal complaint in pdf format.

UPDATE II:

what driftglass sed.

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Verdict in on Ted Stevens

Photo Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons

Seven Counts

Guilty!
Guilty!
Guilty!
Guilty!
Guilty!
Guilty!
Guilty!


The Bush Administration has so degraded the office of the U.S. Attorney and the Courts they almost had this case thrown out because of prosecutorial misconduct and incompetance. That should be scary. Stevens has long been labeled one of the most corrupt members of Congress and that they almost fumbled away this case is disturbing on many levels.

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TLG: Favorite Political Find of the Day 9/9/08

Ok, this site and the interactive graphic are brilliant. Learn about all the McCain lobbyists, see what they were paid and how much green they gave to the McSame Campaign. This one needs to be enjoyed far and wide.

How about it, GNB'ers? Who's your favorite lobbyist working with John McSame? Click the image or head on over to http://www.mccainslobbyists.com/

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Rove Subpoened...

WASHINGTON -- The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday subpoenaed President Bush's former chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to testify about whether the White House improperly meddled with the Justice Department.

Accusations of politics influencing decisions at the department led to the resignation last year of Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.

It's unclear whether Rove will ever be forced to testify. The White House refuses to let him or other top aides testify about private conversations with Bush, citing executive privilege to block Congress' demands.

The subpoena orders Rove to appear before the House panel on July 10. Lawmakers want to ask him about the White House's role in firing nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, a Democrat. -- Seattle PI

Let the 45 day countdown begin. It was a mistake for Rove to leave the White House, he has little protection now and can get no help from the president's lawyers. They didn't release Siegelman because they thought he was guilty, it must have been really obvious to the appellate judge that he was railroaded. This case has the smell of Rove's rancid paws all over it. Will Rove be taking Siegelman's cell before the end of the year? They are going to love his pudgy pasty fat ass in the joint. Tossed Salad anyone?

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U.S. Special Counsel Office Raided by FBI

WASHINGTON — The office of the official responsible for protecting federal workers from political interference was raided by F.B.I. agents on Tuesday as part of an investigation into whether he himself mixed politics with official business.

The raid took place at the office of Scott J. Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel. Computers and documents were seized by agents trying to determine whether Mr. Bloch obstructed justice by hiring an outside company to “scrub” his computer files, The Associated Press reported. Investigators also searched Mr. Bloch’s home in suburban Virginia after obtaining a subpoena. --NYTimes.com

I really am enjoying watching the walls come crumbling down around the Bush administration. These complete incompetents that Bush hired are walking around in a minefield of stupid. These guys were Karl Rove's toadies, and Bloch himself is one of the homo-hatin' Bush partisans. Lovely people.

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I Believe The Term Is, “Sweat Like A Pig”?

“Hello Karl-O...”

I'm no behavioral scientist, but after we dealt with the tale of Karl Rove's uh...“people's” seeming over-reaction to “60 Minutes' airing of an interview with Don Siegelman—a.k.a. someone who is rapidly earning the moniker of “The Wrong Man To Have Fucked With”, it would appear that our favorite porcine protagonist appears to be getting a bit hotter under his wattle-spilled collar.

Via Crooks and Liars and Dan Abrams' “Verdict”:

So what happens when a journalist actually does his/her job and exposes corruption at the highest levels of our government? They get complaint letters from the criminals they exposed. Abrams detailed tonight that he received a 5-page letter from Rove complaining about the great reporting he’s been doing on the political prosecution of Don Siegelman.

“Today the House Judiciary Committee asked Rove to testify under oath about the case. But just last week, we asked Rove‘s attorney, Robert Luskin, in an E-mail whether Rove would testify if subpoenaed by congress. His attorney said, quote, 'Sure. Although it seems to me that the question is somewhat offensive. It assumes he has something to hide even though Gov. Siegelman‘s uncorroborated assertions aside, there is literally no credible evidence whatsoever to substantiate his charges.'

Now under pressure from congress, Luskin has completely backtracked, telling roll call, quote, 'Whether, when and about what a former White House official will testify is not for me or my client to decide but is part of an ongoing negotiation between the White House and congress over executive privilege issues.'

Since Rove has said he had no conversations with the White House about it, what is the executive privilege here? Rove also sent me an angry five-page letter yesterday suggesting all sorts of questions he thinks I could have and should have asked various guests in the program including the former governor himself.

But he only suggested questions, no answers. We‘ll probably talk more about that letter later and I‘ll be responding to Mr. Rove.

Mr. Rove, this is your opportunity to answer under oath many of the questions you suggest I should have asked. Your attorney had said in no uncertain terms you would testify. We have the E-mail. And since you seemed determine to get to the truth, I would think you would embrace this opportunity to testify to congress.

We are not going to let this story die. A jury found Don Siegelman guilty. But if his prosecution was driven by partisans after him because he was a Democrat, in this case needs to be revisited, and an appellate court has ruled it will be.

Counsel Robert Luskin's letter to Abrams on behalf of Rove—a five-page jobbie(!)—absolutely reeks of the same panicky over-reaction shown in the nutty string pulling that got Siegelman's damning “60 Minutes” interview blanked in half of Alabama. Seems pretty bent out of shape over things Abrams didn't actually say in his report. Oopsie! For all the bluster about the cool and calm and confidence of Rove, one cannot help but notice a strange hypersensitivity on this particular issue. There's an over-compensation at play here and a sloppy one at that. Blackouts? Five-page letters to a program that half the “Countdown” audience tunes out of?? Hmmmm...

Why, if I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to say that in Rove's supposed “post”-political career (Yes, I put “post” in scare-quotes. I'd take note of the decidedly Rovian ad-pushes in the still crimson-necktied North Carolina and other potential swing states. It's almost as if his team is trying to get their shots in now—peculiarly early—for some reason. Maybe someone's worried that there may be more pressing fish to fry come general-election crunch-time), hastened by an oddly-timed resignation and a lame-duck administration that inspires outright derision and not a worry of retribution, there may be actual concern about the freshly emboldened people out gunning for him.

You see...when you “ratfuck” enough people for a long enough time, the odds are that at some point, the law of averages will out, and you yourself may feel the not-so-gentle-probings of rodentis phallicus. Siegelman's down for the “slam-bam” and has no interest in lube or sweet talk. It would appear that others aren't terribly concerned with the mess that is sloppy seconds either. Via Newsweek:

The trial of Chicago developer and political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko has been closely watched for any mention of the defendant's onetime friend, Barack Obama. But last week, prosecutors threw a curveball, telling the judge that one of their witnesses is prepared to raise the name of another prominent Washington hand: Karl Rive. Former Illinois state official Ali Ata is expected to testify about a conversation he had with Rezko in which the developer alleged Rove was "working with" a top Illinois Republican to remove the Chicago U.S. attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The allegation, which Rove denies, quickly reverberated in Washington. Democrats in Congress now want to question Ata. They believe he can help buttress their theory that Rove played a key role in discussions that led to the firings of U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department in 2006. The House Judiciary Committee "intends to investigate the facts and circumstances alleged in this testimony," panel chairman Rep. John Conyers of Michigan said in a statement to NEWSWEEK.

Investigators are intrigued by the timing of the alleged conversation about Fitzgerald. According to the Rezko prosecutors, it took place in November 2004—weeks after Fitzgerald had subpoenaed Rove to testify for the third time in another matter he was aggressively investigating, the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. A source familiar with Ata's testimony (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters) said that Ata was meeting regularly with Rezko that fall. The two men shared a concern about Fitzgerald's ongoing probe of Illinois public officials. In one of those conversations, the developer allegedly told Ata that Bob Kjellander, a prominent GOP state lobbyist, was talking to Rove about getting rid of Fitzgerald. The reason: to "get a new U.S. attorney" who would not pursue the Illinois corruption probe, the source said. Ata, who has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is now cooperating with the Feds, has no evidence that the conversation took place other than what Rezko allegedly told him, the source says.

Intrigung...to say the least. But Rove according to the article denies the allegation whole-heartedly. Until that is, his all-over-the-place ass-coverer lawyer Luskin decided that statement should be...well, qualified just a bit. The categorical denial shifted to that old standby of soap-opera amnesia victims and pressured White House hacks “I don't recall” when it came down to GOP bigwig Kjellander's pressing him on Fitzgerald's removal.

And then, Luskin tried to hop into the DeLorean yet again, to go back in time and “fix” things...

I (Paul Kiel of TPM—ed. note) spoke to Luskin just now, and he said that his statement ought to be qualified a bit: his statement on Kgellander stands as is, he said, but during the independent counsel investigation, he said, Rove was "frequently" approached about canning Fitzgerald: "a number of people approached Karl and suggested that Fitzgerald be removed because of the alleged politicization of the investigation, but he never took any follow-up steps except to say that I can't talk about that. He didn't want to do anything seen as compromising Fitzgerald's independence." Those approaches, Luskin said, came during fundraisers or other political events "in an unsolicited way.... Karl simply never responded and did not take any action."

That is an awful lot of frantic ass-covering isn't it? Like a butt-nekkid Charles Barkley trying to stitch a pair of bermudas from a single square of Charmin. It's interesting to note that this was supposed to be Rove's freeing “cool-out” time where he could lay back without having to deal with the day-to-days of shtupping two other government branches in the pooper and instead freelance as an as-needed, Ratfucker Emeritus—doing the neccessary odd bit of craven evil to minimize Democratic gains this election cycle and to steal votes at the presidential-level wherever possible. Having to deal with pesky, subpoena-level shit like this was not part of the game plan. And it resurrects all sorts of ugliness, like the U/S. Attorneys scandal, and the specter of GOP criminality as we enter the stretch run of election season.

It's a perfect storm of distraction for the GOP's one-time ace (remember “The Math?”) message master and vote rainmaker. And from the looks of his clunky and ham-fisted responses to these things, they may wind up as more than just “distractions”. Yes, Luskin will do his lawyerly best to stall, dodge and clog up the works to try and keep Rove's incendiary hands off any Bibles between now and January 20th 2009, but I think people tend to get a liitle bolder when they feel a bully can't hurt 'em any more.

I think you'll hear Rove's name come up in a few more stories in ways that'll put him even more on the defensive as the months trundle on. Whether there'll be enough dimes dropped to maka a dollar remains to be seen. But a simple law of science is that oil and water do not mix—and a once-greasy,impossible to catch pig is now starting to sweat a little. Sweat's mostly water last time I checked.

Catch a piggie by the toe...if he hollers, don't let him go...

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Lobbyist Vicki Iseman Missing

It's been 3 weeks since the whole McCain is sleeping with lobbyists thing broke and no one has seen Vicki Iseman. Usually the corporate media goes bananas over a missing blonde girl, but not this time. I know we had listen to them repeat the words Spitzer and Prostitute over and over again, that got their little chicken brains all engrossed like some sparkly things, but honestly you would think somebody would be interested in finding out what happened to Vicki Iseman. She is the central figure in a situation concerning the republican nominee for president and a sitting senator. She became "unavailable for comment" immediately when this broke and no one has heard from her since.

Where is Vicki Iseman?

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Banking Irregularities

So, they caught Eliot Spitzer (D) with all this sophisticated banking software that tracks money over periods of time being re-structured into making payments to these hookers, right?

Well, how come...

The NRCC yesterday gave new information about the potential scope of the fraud. Mr. Ward apparently made unauthorized wire transfers totaling "several hundred thousand dollars" from NRCC accounts into other Republican campaign committees that he also managed as treasurer, said NRCC lawyer, Robert Kelner of the law firm Covington & Burling LLP. Mr. Kelner said that Mr. Ward then apparently made wire transfers from those outside Republican accounts into his own personal and business bank accounts. The NRCC has traced such activity back to 2004, but its investigation is continuing, he said.

"The evidence we have today indicates we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual," Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the NRCC chairman, said in a statement.

How come, the Feds didn't have a clue that this GOP fella took $1 million out of the NRCC? But they busted Spitzer in less than a month... That sure is a head scratcher...

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Spitzer Resigns (at some point, I presume)

ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation. -- NYT

Stupid. Monumentally stupid.

And like that, he's done.

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And now for my next impersonation...Jesse Owens!

“Run, run Rudolph! Got to cover your be-hind!”

"Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."—Satchel Paige










“The past lies upon the present like a giant's dead body”—Nathaniel Hawthorne (House of the Seven Gables)









MR. BURNS: Quick Smithers. Bring the mind eraser device!

SMITHERS:You mean the revolver, sir?

MR. BURNS: Precisely.
—C. Montgomery Burns






I was tempted to use a “Have You Seen Me?” milk carton graphic with this post. Why? Because the post's subject has been hiding out for almost a week—a helluva thing when you consider that the Iowa caucuses said subject's participating in are about a month away.

But when you've had as bad a week as Rudolph W. (“And the 'W' is for 'What the fuck hit me?'”) Giuliani, hide out like an off-his-meds, late-60's Brian Wilson is what you'd better do. Lest the press keep dogging your steps, asking about...well, you signing off on the NYPD's secretly walking your mistress's dog on the city's dime and lying about it.

Ohhhhh, what an awful week. Just an Off-Broadway, avant-garde production of “Murder On The Orient Express” kind of week for dear, sweet (like an almond-scented drink) Rudy. There, in that pivotal scene at the end, the train's riders walk one by one into the hushed berth...

NYC Comptroller William Thompson:

Questions just seemed to mount Thursday about the way Giuliani or his aides handled the security bills. Auditors for City Comptroller William Thompson uncovered the problems in 2001, and he says Giuliani's men slammed the door shut on them.

“"The Giuliani administration just refused to provide answers,” Thompson said.

“Shluk!”, goes the bent, serrated bread knife.


Former New York Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins:

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."

When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that.

“Shluk!”, goes the rusty steak knife with the busted tip.


New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly:

"I don't recall anybody, any statements about delay," Kelly told reporters.

He said all bills for the police details for Dinkins and now for Mayor Mike Bloomberg are handled directly "through the police department."

“Shluk!”, is the sound as paring knife makes when shoved in past the hilt...


Former Giuliani appointee NYC Procurement Policy Board head, Brendan Sexton:

“The cover-up of this and the explanations for it have been so disingenuous,”

-----------------------------

“He didn't want anybody to know what he was doing. That's the truth. I don't care about his personal life - it's not shocking to me that he wanted to visit his girlfriend...”
-----------------------------
“The part that's disturbing to me is that my organization or any government organization could be used to conceal from the public how their money was being spent.”

“Shluk! Shluk!”, goes the spork melted into a crude, jailhouse shiv.


And the present (unmarried) NYC Mayor's girlfriend, Diana Taylor:

Taylor, 52, takes the bus every day to her midtown office and rides the subway to business appointments. In the six years Taylor and Bloomberg have lived together, she said she has never had reason to want or need personal NYPD security.

“I don't have security in Bogota or Nairobi or Moscow when I travel there on business, why would I need security in the safest city in the world?” Taylor told the Daily News yesterday.

“Shl-u-u-u-u-u-uk!”, is the sound a melon-baller makes as it plunges into a sucking wound.


When the high point of your week as a politician is the battle between names for your sex/money/corrution scandal, it has been a rough seven days. (Driving Miss Judi, The Shag Fund, Fornigate, America's Playa, and 69/11? Sex ON The City won out.)

And when the low point is your poll numbers cratering to where a Keane-eyed, bible-thumping, ethically-compromised crazy has eliminated your double-digit lead to pull even with you...well, the word abysmal comes to mind.

You would think that maybe with Huckabee's newfound limelight—and the scrutiny it's brought, exposing partisanship-fueled pardons of serial rapists who go out and rape again, and kill on his watch, and Mitt Romney's gardeners becoming a campaign issue along with his declaration of “faith”, and diss of non-faith (¡Azaleas, Si! ¡Atheism, NO!), that somehow Giuilani could manage to sneak his way back to a semblance of respectability by flying through all of that “chaff”

You'd be as wrong as a supermarket selling holiday hams as “Delicious For Chanukah”.

The bubblin' crude keeps a' comin up through the ground. (Via Attaturk at Atrios)

Judith Nathan got security earlier
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS—Friday, December 7th 2007, 4:00 AM

Judith Nathan got taxpayer-funded chauffeur services from the NYPD earlier than previously disclosed—even before her affair with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was revealed, witnesses and sources tell the Daily News...

Thursday, Giuliani aides changed their story. They said Nathan had received previously undisclosed "threats" earlier in 2000, and that protection was provided at those times.

They refused to provide dates, describe the nature of the threats or confirm—as witnesses and a law enforcement source now contend - that the protection began before she was publicly identified as the married mayor's girlfriend in May 2000.

Blub-blub-a'-blub!

It's juicy! It's got sizzle! And it's kicking him in his ass, for as Trapper John said over at Kos's place:

“Two things capture the American attention like no other: sex and money. Only scandals involving sex or money garner any serious public interest. Even then, a money scandal without sex leads most Americans to yawn. And dogged persistence can outlast most sex scandals (see Vitter, David). But when you combine the two -- when you add adultery to misappropriation of taxpayer money -- magical things happen. It's like that beautiful chemical reaction when heat, yeast, and sugar meet. There's an unusual smell, then lots of hot air, and then everything blows up real big.”

Damn straight. But the world's a funny place. The indestructible Achilles was felled by an arrow to his vulnerable heel. The nearly untouchable Al Capone went down on tax evasion charges. And Rudy could well be a'-swirlin' down Le Crappéur himself thanks to this petty thievery and cover-up, but...

There's a bigger story.

Salon's Joe Conason pointed this out when he said last week,

...“When the nation's news executives decided which of two highly embarrassing Giuliani stories to feature, nearly all of them made the wrong choice. While they lavished enormous attention upon a Politico story dealing with adultery and bureaucracy, they should be devoting at least as much time to yet another in the long series of Wayne Barrett scoops in the Village Voice, because this one involves business and terrorism.”

And what was that story? It's the one that forced him to quietly—rat-piss-on-cotton-in-a-vacuum-room-quietly—step down as chairman of the shady-fuck “firm” that bears his name?

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has stepped down as head of his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, after months of refusing to disclose the firm's clients or the role he played.

--------------------------------

While insisting the firm's client list was confidential, Giuliani has noted the media have named a number of his clients.

Published reports have identified one client as the Persian Gulf country of Qatar, which was accused of sheltering suspected September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, although that country today it is a U.S. ally.

Keith Olbermann picked up the ball on the story the day “Sex On The City” broke—reporting on the tawdry fun, and the more serious story, with it's negative September 11th implications for the supposedly “impervious on 9-11” Giuliani.

There are countless what ifs about 9/11, hundreds of events, maybe thousands of lives, any one of which if just altered slightly might have preempted the attacks. But this one involves a man identified tonight as a close business associate of Mr. Giuliani‘s. A man accused of having harbored in, then helped 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed escape from the Gulf nation of Qatar hours before the arrest that would have been affected by an FBI team.

The war on terror candidate looking tonight, a lot more like the ties to terror candidate. Wayne Barrett of the “Village Voice” reporting that Mr. Giuliani‘s extensive business contracts with the nation of Qatar tie him directly to the man who kept Khalid Sheik Mohammed out of American hands. He is Abdullah Bin Khalid Al-Thani, he was Qatar‘s Islamic Affairs Minister at the time and its Interior Minister since 2001 when the FBI was hours away from closing in on Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 1996, Al-Thani who was harboring the suspect is widely accused of tipping him off to the FBI agent‘s imminent arrival as well as giving him 20 blank passports. Former CIA case officer, Robert Bayer says he did so with the blessing and probably the direct orders of this man, the Emir of Qatar.

You may remember, Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani from his trip to New York City during the 9/11 aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, most of it to go to the families of the victims. Mayor Giuliani more than glad to take that check and to serve as Emir‘s personal tour guide during his visit and to be his fellow guest on the Larry King Show on CNN. That, it seems, was only the beginning of their alliance. Years after his mayoralty had ended, Mr. Giuliani was to begin a far more lucrative partisanship with the government of Qatar, specifically with the Interior Ministry run by, you guessed it, the fellow member of Qatar‘s royal family, Abdullah Al-Thani.

If letting the 9/11 mastermind go were not bad enough for that man, Al-Thani is also said to have hosted Osama Bin Laden on two separate visits to his farm. It is with this terrorist aider and abettor that Mr. Giuliani‘s security firm, a subsidiary of Giuliani Partners has worked on undisclosed number of contracts, reports the “Village Voice,” some of which Giuliani himself and his employees openly have acknowledged. Mr. Giuliani telling a South African newspaper in June 2006, that he, quote, “Recently helped Qatar to transform Doha in advanced of the Asian Games, an Olympic style competition that his firm oversaw for last December.

--------------------------------

OLBERMANN: Even if Rudy Giuliani did not know about the central role that Qatar has played as a facilitator of terrorism, if he didn‘t know that in October of 2001 when he hosted the Emir and was his, you know, tour guide, television pal, was there enough evidence making the case against Qatar by the time the Giuliani Partners started doing business with that country in 2005?

BARRETT: Keith, he would have had to have been deaf, dumb, and blind not to know it because he then in 2005 had running his security unit, two of the FBI agents who had been pursuing the Qatar relationship. In fact, Ali Sulfan (ph) who was the lead FBI investigator in both the Khobar towers case and the Afghan - no excuse me, in the Cole case, he was the lead investigator and the investigation of the embassy bombings in Africa, he was the lead investigator and Qatar. I have a hard time with the pronunciation of it but a Qatar charitable society that the Emir directed the funding of this—they participated directly in the funding of the bombing in—of the African Embassy. So, if he just looked around and listened to his own staff he would have known.

“Sex On The City” is merely the smoke—choking, acrid smoke at that, but smoke nonetheless. This client list for his firm is the fire. He fought the release of their names and affiliations, but what with all the newfound super-scrutiny (The Daily News' relentless digging out the damning, earlier-than-stated police/chauffeuring is a big, flashing alarm to the Giuliani camp that “Gold Fever” has struck the press corps.) into his dealings, for him to ditch the company means he's running scared.

That client list is slowly being unearthed, and my guess is that his firm was starting to get calls from reporters for confirmation of this and that—with this and that being damaging info about the nature and provenance of those clients. The kinds of things that could freeze the lifeboats to their moorings as the S.S. Rudiana takes on water from an hull-ripping iceberg hit.

Run...Run from your past, Rudy! Quick as you can in your orthopedic shoes—run,—if I may paraphrase gen. George S. Patton—you malevolent son-of-a-bitch!

But remember what former heavyweight champion Joe Louis said...





“You can run...but you can't hide.”













And speaking of “run”, the buttah from all this...popcorn is runnin' all over the floor!

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Immunity?

Potential prosecution of Blackwater guards allegedly involved in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians last month may have been compromised because the guards received immunity for statements they made to State Department officials investigating the incident, federal law enforcement officials said yesterday. -- WAPO

This is fucking bullshit. Where the hell does the State Department get the authority to grant immunity? Just the sort of bullshit that I would expect completely incompetent Condi Rice to come up with. Hauptsturmführer Prince must be happy as a pig in shit. That was money well spent. Its no problem if you are a friend of George Bush.

Scooter Libby granted immunity.

ATT and the other Telecom companies about to be granted immunity.

Did these guys get immunity?

On December 21, 2006, the U.S. military charged eight Marines in connection with the incident.[6] Four of the Marines, Frank Wuterich, Sanick de la Cruz, Justin Sharratt and Stephen Tatum were accused of unpremeditated murder. Tatum was further charged with negligent homicide and assault, while de la Cruz was also charged with making a false statement. Squad leader Frank Wuterich was charged with 12 counts of unpremeditated murder. -- wiki/Haditha_killings

The U.S. Department of Defense removed seventeen soldiers and officers from duty, and seven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault, and battery. Between May 2004 and September 2005, seven soldiers were convicted in courts martial, sentenced to federal prison time, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, Specialist Charles Graner, and his former fiancée, Specialist Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison, respectively. -- /wiki/Abu_Ghraib

To be clear, I don't think any of them should get immunity from prosecution. But if we are talking about who should get a break. I damn sure don't give a flying fig about some $500,000 a year mercenary who is accountable to no one and does nothing to help us accomplish the mission in Iraq. Nothing.

Well, God Save the King... what was it that Pete Stark said? The amusement of the president, sounds about right.

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Do Something (Else)

Americans -- right and left -- have, from the day the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, been uniquely afflicted by this weirdly zealous missionary belief that, whatever's going on with non-Americans anywhere in the world, we have a God-given mandate to step in and Do Something.

We feel good about World War II because that was one of the (rare, if we're honest about it) occasions in which we Did Something that actually turned out well (with a couple of notable exceptions involving Japanese in camps here, and Japanese and nuclear bombs there). Every one of the dozens of excuses given for our presence in Iraq has also proceed from this prime assumption that it's both our duty and our right to Do Something -- restore freedom, establish democracy, save the world from terrorism, disarm a rogue nation, establish our own almighty presence among the heathen, whatever. From Manifest Destiny to San Juan Hill to the Global War on Terror, we see ourselves as somehow required, mandated, obligated to get out there and foist the blessings of American-style liberty (and, lest we forget -- though our victims seldom do -- our superior Protestant morality and our own economic interests) on the whole world...whether they want them or not.

This pious need to meddle with people For Their Own Good is, in fact, the thing that the rest of the world finds most annoying (and occasionally, terrifying) about us. They don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because we just can't seem to let them the fuck alone.

Jesse's post below, compassionate as it is, strikes me as coming out of this rather dubious tradition. The disaster in Africa exists in the first place because a bunch of European colonial powers felt that same impulse to Do Something -- in this case, convert the heathen to Christianity; move them down off the disease-free hilltops into the malarial swamps (Africans preferred to haul water for miles in pots rather than move closer to the source because living away from the river meant not dying); enslave them in plantations and mines; export their wealth, break up their traditional governments (some of which were powerful empires in their own right); and extend faux invitations to the global power party, eliding the fact that the club rules stated clearly that no black or brown people would actually ever be admitted.

We're now 50 years into the post-colonial era -- but Westerners, public and private, are still all over Africa, doggedly trying to Do Something. And it's past time to admit the truth of the matter, which is: not one whit of anything they've ever done has worked worth a damn.

UN and NGO observers in Africa have been locked in a 20+-year chicken-and-egg debate over whether it's the poverty or the corruption that keeps the continent mired in disaster. Everybody agrees that those are the ubiquitous twin evils at the core of every other problem; the debate is over which one you tackle first, and how. But the intractable truth of Africa's trouble is that the corruption causes the poverty; and the poverty enfeebles people to the point where they can't fight the corruption. Together, the two are locked into a system that runs so tightly there are absolutely no cracks in it to exploit, no way to stick a crowbar in the works and pry the sucker apart.

Much better people than us have tried -- over and over again -- and only made themselves crazy and broke. The system itself just sucked up all their money and energy, using it to fuel another turn of the vicious cycle that ultimately made things worse than ever. The irony is that, in almost every instance, the poverty and the corruption got started in the first place because of Western do-good policies gone awry. And now both are so pervasive that even the best-planned, best-funded, smartest attempts to Do Something end up utterly swamped by them.

The sheer overwhelming head-spinning massiveness of this swamp leads to equally massive acts of forgetting. One of Bill Gates' current Bright Ideas is to bring the Green Revolution back to Africa. He's evidently forgotten -- or nobody bothered to tell him -- that the original Green Revolution of the 1960s was the source of much of the current trouble. It gave the men of Africa tractors and irrigation and big-scale farming and chemical fertilizers and high-yield seed. Which, in turn, stripped the topsoil and overwhelmed local aquifers and disrupted traditional farming methods and put the farmers (and, ultimately, their little countries) in hock to the fertilizer and seed people and the World Bank -- and also, for good measure, completely disregarded the fact that most of the old-style farming had been done by women in the first place, which added reverberating social dislocations on top of the ecological ruin, backbreaking debt, and famine. Bill Gates thinks this is a miracle worth repeating. Only people who don't know any better -- or those in the corrupt elites both here and there who stand to profit from this grand idea -- could possibly agree.

The only coherent lesson I've drawn from my long reading about our endless attempts to Do Something in Africa is that we've Done Enough Now. We've done so much, in fact, that the best thing we can do at this point -- the only thing, in fact, that we haven't ever tried -- is to leave these people alone.

I mean it. We've been piss-poor Bringers of Light to the Dark Continent. The place is worse off, by every measure you can think of, than it was before we showed up. I think real progress starts when we deeply, sincerely look that fact in the face and own it. Corruption persists because Western money makes it possible. Poverty persists because Western companies profit from African serfdom. If we disappeared, those two core factors wouldn't vanish overnight; but at least the Africans themselves would have a fighting chance to restore a truly African social and political order, and build an economy that profited more of them as well.

There are things we can do, but none of them will help overnight. Oprah's taken a lot of criticism for her very la-di-da girls' school; but she's turning out 100 exceptional young women a year who will be qualified to attend the world's top universities, and eventually represent the continent among the world's intellectual elite. Twenty years from now, Africa will be blessed with a sisterhood of a thousand brilliant women whose strong native voices will shape policy for their countries, and who will form the basis for a new African-bred meritocracy. Their personalities and their education will give them the power to advocate for Africa's true needs in the face of overpowering Western interests. That's a gift that will keep on giving. If we're going to do something, let's build 20 more schools like it to ensure that the continent's own brightest lights can shine in ways that will bring some real, long-lasting change.

And then, let's encourage the UN to build a world-class university in central Africa for this rising intellectual elite to teach in, and for the next generation to be trained in. Educating the first generation in Europe and the US is necessary; but we should use the time to build excellent African institutions in which the continent's own culture, agriculture, economics, policy, and priorities are preserved and taught to future generations. All that money wasted on tractors and seed -- just a fraction of it might have endowed such an institution, which would have empowered Africans to Do For Themselves. The fact that the post-colonial meddlers didn't take this basic and obvious step back around, say, 1964 tells you all you need to know about how they tacitly viewed Africa's role as a permanent dependent on Western largess. They never planned for Africa to be able to fend for itself. If they had, the continent would have had its own Harvard and Stanford by now.

Another idea is former World Bank president Joe Stieglitz' proposal that the countries of the world should be ranked in terms of overall prosperity (he suggests specific data points to be used in this reckoning) -- and then held to a rule that no country can export goods to a country with a lower ranking than its own. This rule would allow poor countries to develop local and export markets for would-be manufacturers, which would in turn create jobs, capital, and real national economies. At the same time, it would prevent multinationals from coming in and undercutting local markets and producers, which eliminates jobs, stifles local economies, and perpetuates the cycle of poverty. Nike and Coke would have to give up their places in the Lesotho market -- but there are some sacrifices worth making for the overall peace and stability of the globe.

If the Africans want help, let them ask for it -- through legitimate governments and NGOs that they themselves run. (We can help a lot by simply refusing to deal with non-elected dictators and suspect governments.) We can give them microloans for the new businesses, shelter their budding markets, provide faculty for their schools and engineers for their wells and roads. We know a few things that do work. But it's important that we not do them unless and until they're asked for.

But, before any of that happens, let's start by admitting that the days when Western do-gooders can or should just rush in and Do Something are now Over. Over a century of attempts to help/improve/convert/exploit, we've heaped as much calamity on these people as any group of humans can possibly stand.

Chaos, panic, disorder: Our work in Africa is done.

There's more...

Give Us Money Now

DEA Takes $23,700 From U.S. Trucker

Driving while Mexican-American is apparently enough to get your money taken in New Mexico. But don't worry. File a lawsuit to prove its yours, and you can have it back in a year. Probably.

Land Line Magazine - for Professional Truckers

A Texas trucker whose $23,000 in cash was confiscated from his truck by federal drug agents has sued the federal government to get his money back.

Anastasio Prieto – a U.S. citizen who resides in El Paso, TX, and is contracted with Schneider National Carriers – said he distrusts banks and chooses to carry large amounts of cash.

According to court documents, Prieto passed through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint on U.S. 54 on Aug. 8 before pulling into a weigh station in New Mexico. A New Mexico Department of Public Safety officer told Prieto his trailer had a worn tire, and an officer asked if he could search the truck.

After Prieto allowed the search, the officer asked him whether he had possession of needles or cash in excess of $10,000. Prieto told the officer he had no needles but he did have $23,700 in cash, which was taken by officers who then contacted a supervisor.

The supervisor showed up at the weigh station about one hour later but rejected Prieto’s willingness to show her income documents he said proved the cash belonged to him.

Seizing money was routine, one of the two officers told Prieto, and Gary Apodaca, a Drug Enforcement Administration task force officer, told him he’d probably get his cash back “in a year from now.”

Houston Chronicle

Officers took the money and turned it over to the DEA. DEA agents photographed and fingerprinted Prieto over his objections, then released him without charging him with anything.

Border Patrol agents searched his truck with drug-sniffing dogs, but found no evidence of illegal substances, the ACLU said.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated Prieto's right to be free of unlawful search and seizure by taking his money without probable cause and by fingerprinting and photographing him.

"Mere possession of approximately $23,700 does not establish probable cause for a search or seizure," the lawsuit said.

It said Prieto pulled into the weigh station about 10:30 a.m. Aug. 8 and was let go about 4 p.m.

DEA agents told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he'd have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.

The ACLU's New Mexico executive director, Peter Simonson, said Prieto needs his money now to pay bills and maintain his truck. The lawsuit said Prieto does not like banks and customarily carries his savings as cash.

"The government took Mr. Prieto's money as surely as if he had been robbed on a street corner at night," Simonson said. "In fact, being robbed might have been better. At least then the police would have treated him as the victim of a crime instead of as a perpetrator."

Gee, Gidge. How about I just throw up a road block and take all cash exceeding whatever I feel reasonable from anyone who doesn't look like me? That should let me hit my budget for the year, no prob.

Or how about you kiss my ass. Dumbshit Republican judges who've stretched the law to allow this crap. If this isn't an unconstitutional taking, then what in the hell is?

There's more...

Goodbye, Karl-O.

And I'd beware of James Baker if he's sitting in the rear seat directly behind you.

I heard about the Rove “resignation” yesterday at around a quarter to seven a.m., and knew there would be a frenzy for much of the day, creating a total vacuum effect—drawing all the air out of the room as far as political analysis goes for the day.

I went through all the permutations—“Was he pushed?”, “Who's he gonna be working for?”, “Did one of the investigations evidentiary 'luminol' sprays turn up 'blood' he thought had been long-bleached away?” Found that I had to step away for a minute and look at the strange—in it's timing and tone—announcement, holistically, to get a true grasp of what it meant.

Think I got it, too.

The clunkiness, mixed-messages for leaving, and odd sudden-ness leads me to believe that while Rove may have had leaving in mind as an idea, forces with more ooomph than him, most certainly handed him the golden parachute, while also giving him a base-of-the-palm "nudge" out of the plane. If you trot out the euphemistic "I want to spend more time with my family.”, and then, just as quickly switch to "There was a Labor Day 'go now—or ride it out' deadline.”, all while the party is openly seething at your fealty to one man, while costing it Congressional control, and even seeing a state the GOP controlled as recently as last November have it's Republican party nearly broke , well...it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that maybe—just maybe some pissed-off people of influence pushed your wattled ass on out.

I see the long-ignored, Old School “Dons” like James Baker's hands all over this thing. That embarrassment of the Maryland GOP—where if you think about it, many GOP Beltway insiders actually live—being Samuel L. Jackson-in-“Jungle Fever”-broke, 16 months out of a huge election season is a borderline killing offense for a party supposedly fighting its way back to relevance. And Rove—lightning rod, nexus of hate and Bush fatigue, and reverse fund-raising tool for a super-majority crazed Democratic party out to put a boot on the GOP's neck come the next cycle, is as toxic for Republican candidates as his patron is.

There's going to be quite a bit of earth-salting, to purge what this short-sighted crew has done. You see it already in the re-emergence of tongue-clucking "Man...you fucked us up!” wingers like Gingrich and Armey on the public scene. Those guys are foresworn to the old "Dons"—not Rove, and for all their faults, are far more zealous on the idea of boosting the party as opposed to celebrating the “Cult of Personality” that Rove was so wedded to in his boy Bushie.

Rove had no intention, or clue of how to help the party proper regain its power, because that was never his game. He was the Blitzkrieg. The late 80's Tyson, with a cyclone of stunning, fearsome punches in the opening rounds.

Air Coryell.

Throwin', throwin', throwin—but in the end...no real ground game to keep things going.

And as his patron—Prexydent Mushferbrains, is mired with numbers that O.J. at a Klan rally could best—numbers that Rove can't turn around—and has a now dead legislative agenda for the remainder of his term/our sentence, there was no reason to fight for him any more.

What positives could he possibly bring at this point in the game?

None. In fact—he could only hurt Bush and the party in hanging around till the end. The law of averages was working against him. With the numerous investigations swirling about, sooner or later—in spite of the draconian levels of cover-up/record destruction/hiding behind privilege—one of those boils was gonna pop. At some point, after a long period of things going one way exclusively, you will get a “Sox in '04” moment. So, with Rove's being at the nexus of almost all of the probes, the best thing to do was to cut bait, lest that “Sox in '04” moment take the whole party down—because of their knee-jerk need to defend the President, the party's standard-bearer for the last six years. A helluva sacrifice when you think about it—because his ability to “rat-fuck” electorally from the White House is much more devastating from within than what it is from without. Executive Privilege is one bomb-ass perk—especially when you have use every exploitable element of the government at your fingertips. But they don't care about that anymore. The Republicans are right now, a wounded animal just trying to quietly limp back home where it can rest awhile and heal. Rove's lingering around is like a spotlight and klaxon trailing the beast's every wincing step through the forest.

“Woo-hooooo! Here I am! Come n' git me!”

These people are cutting their losses. '08's gonna be an absolute pig-fuck for 'em, and they know it. So someone's gotta pay. Desperate times and all that, dontcha'know? They're ragging Bush openly, and don't fear Rove anymore, as his “genius” has exposed him as much more “Archies-esque” than the “Beatles” he would have you think him to be.

And I seriously doubt he'll openly operate as the next GOP "Chosen One's” brain during the campaign season. They're running away from Bush. Having the man most closely allied with that which is anathema is pretty stupid politics, considering the jam the wingnuts are in. This is the guy who when Bush heard the voices in his head saying “Invade Iraq” let him listen to them, instead of strapping him down and force feeding him Paxil and Haldol—bottles and fucking all.

That's not the dude—who would also be under investigation for his various misdeeds— that any sane motherfucker would want within a light year of his campaign. (My caveat here, being the phrase, “sane motherfucker”—after all, this is the GOP we're talking about.)

So, it's bye-bye Karl-O...and off to repose in ol' Texas, where the babies are of course, bigger, and more succulent than the little, Eastern seaboard variety you sadly got so used to noshing on.

Enjoy your “resignation”, br'uh. Your self-decided “walk-away”. (Note how no one's wildly yelling "Come back, Shane!” as you go. )You've worked hard. But a word to the wise...

Stay off massage tables, out of elevators, revolving doors, out of bed with your wife and your buddy Jeff Gannon, and off hard, granite courthouse steps.

And I reiterate...don't sit in front of James Baker on the passenger side of the ol' Navigator either. It never ends well.

There's more...

“I Hear The Karmic Train a' Runnin'...”

“It's rollin' round the bend, and backed up after catchin' me, and it's mowin' me down again.”

It has gotten as predictable as Lenny and Squiggy blundering in after Laverne casually says the word, "Idiots".

As regular as Old Faithful...or Uncle Nate after his mid-day Metamucil Colada

What's that? Why, its the oft-mentioned here, long-dormant, Non-Friends of Rudy rising from their slumber with the studded-gloved cock-punches, that's what.

Let's go back...to the ancient days of, ohhhhh, 'bout a month ago—Friday the 13th to be precise (How apt!), when we said...

9-11. The Firefighters. Video and the Internet. The three Weird Sisters from Macbeth, brewing up a vile potion of campaign doom.

_____________________________________

As even the greenest of students of military history can attest, hell, even a casual observer who's only seen war play out as it has in the Iraq debacle will tell you, you can only fight a war on so many fronts. Rudy's got more directions to fend off attacks from than there are on a Goddamned compass. As stated in the original post, his own home (NY) can kill him.

The first teary ad from a widowed survivor of a "pile" worker who didn't get a respirator mask because Rudy found them to be an off-putting public image.

The fateful day 343 NY Firefighters (The same number as was lost in the hell of September 11th) show up at a fundraiser, or speech venue in New York, clad in Black--clutching candles in deathly silent vigil.

Double-damn.

Sooooooo...who does the creepy little martinet decide to pop dumb shit about this past week? You guessed it—the guys—the cops, firemen and emergency workers I saw from the corner of my eye, crawling over that awful pile of death and pulverized memories as I hurried down Broadway for days on end after September 11th. He let this slither from between his reptilian lips:

Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, Giuliani said: "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. ... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Battalion Chief John McDonnell, head of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York, said: "I have a real problem with that statement. I think he's really grasping and trying to justify his previous attempts to portray himself as the hero of 9-11."

Michael Palladino, head of the Detectives Endowment Association, the union of NYPD detectives, told the Associated Press that the mayor's record can't compare to those who spent 12 months sifting through toxic debris for evidence and human remains.

"As a result of their hard work, many are sick and injured. The mayor, although he did a fine job with 9/11, I don't think he rises to the level of being an equal with those men and women who were involved in the rescue, recovery and cleanup," Palladino said.

Let me say this...as a New Yorker, whose wife worked in Two World Trade up until September 11th, 2001...

...whose wife missed being in the building by 15 minutes that morning because she was delayed by voting, and heard the roar of the too-low turbines, and felt the heat of the explosion burn her neck as she called upstairs to tell her co-workers the "GET OUT!", just as WTC 2 was hit.

Let me say this as the husband who assumed she'd perished until about 1 p.m. that afternoon, because telephone service was down and I couldn't hear from her.

Who along with his wife, lost three friends in the disaster that day.

I remember the day all too well. primarily because I pretty much had a nervous breakdown when I saw WTC2 fall from the screen, thinking my wife was in it. The days afterward are etched into my mind because I worked 11 blocks north of it, and remember that dank stink of torn-open earth and yes...death.

It is however, NOT Rudy's being down there "every day" that I recall. I remember the firemen, and cops and volunteers sitting on curbsides on Houston, and Franklin, and the North side of Canal Streets, pouring spring water over their heads and into their eyes to clean out the debris, and bits of 3,000-odd people that had settled there after tearing through that mess, looking to save..."sigh!"...find someone. My friend D______, from the volunteer ambulance corp, who called me, I remember him begging to use my company gym's shower after a horrific day, where he and his fellow pile-climbers stumbled across...indescribably awful human remains. He didn't want to wait until he got home to wash off, and the large alcohol wipes supplied at Ground Zero just weren't cutting it. He and I drank that night at Fanelli's Bar.We drank a lot—and D______ doesn't really drink, which told me that he'd seen something that he desperately wanted to forget that day. Not surprisingly, he didn't go back down there the next day. Or that Saturday, or Sunday. Monday? Yes. He was back. D______ didn't drink much until that night we hung out. But he does all the time, now. At least, the last time I saw him.

We really don't hang much any more.

I can remember seeing the smoke coming from that pit, from my job's 8th floor window...and the lights blazing into the night, and that putrid stink for weeks on end. That stink rode the night breeze into Downtown Brooklyn, slumping your shoulders as you walked up Tillary St. because you stupidly hoped a river's distance bought you escape.

Those things...I remember. And what pray-tell do I remember of Rudy in those days? I remember his so-called heroic walk amongst the people. How clean he was in comparison to the other folks stumbling around, ash-whitened, and in clouds of dust, like large, just-shaken powder puffs. And I remember the photo-ops—Rudy in his nifty, mint condition NYPD windbreaker and hat, and of course, a particle mask. Still in his mincing, hunch-backed walk—on the periphery of the just-collapsed hell, where he could get the pile as a nicely balanced photo backdrop. And of course, all the press conferences at the Plan B emergency location, because the Plan A location was stupidly located in a terrorist target—7 WTC. Those press conferences with a faux-concerned Bernie Kerik at his side?—I remember those—with BK evidently day-dreaming of what position he was gonna bang Judith Regan in at his opportunistic, 9-11-perk fuck-pad.

Too many people in NY remember Rudy for his self-aggrandizing, posturing, and "Me! Me! Me! bullshit in the wake of 9-11—in particular his frowned-upon grab at the "mayoralty-for-life" in spite of his term being at end, and someone else being in line for the job.

And the cheap "I was there!", statement this week, trying to desperately enhance his shady-assed bona fides about that deadly day, blew up in his face, as he was forced to do "tha back down" in the face of criticism like this:

"That's insulting and disgraceful. He's a liar. I was down there on my hands and knees looking for my son."

-- Fire Captain and Giuliani foe James Riches, whose firefighter son died on 9/11, lashing out at Rudy for saying that he was at Ground Zero "as often, if not more, than most of the workers.

Not the people to lay fast-and-loose with about what happened that day. Most certainly, not the ones to pull cheap, piggy-back bullshit with, either. 'Cause when you do, and you get busted on it...you have to run “Tha Back Down”:

“I think I could have said it better,” he told nationally syndicated radio host Mike Gallagher. “You know, what I was saying was, ‘I’m there with you.’” […]

“What I was trying to say yesterday is that I empathize with them, because I feel like I have that same risk,” he said.

“There were people there less than me, people on my staff, who already have had serious health consequences, and they weren’t there as often as I was,” Giuliani said, “but I wasn’t trying to suggest a competition of any kind, which is the way it come across.”

This just in...4 out of 5 common simpletons agree that digging clear through to China has to this day, never gotten anyone out of a fucking hole, Rudy. But above and beyond the jaw-dropping stupidity of the comment (or manifestation of a narcissistic personality disorder as commenter LovenandLight has suggested), is its exposure yet again of his having all the integrity of a crackhead with a key to a DEA evidence locker.

You already knew that, though. So, you take a breath...and just when you thought it was safe to go back on the campaign trail..."FWHHHHHHTTTT!", it's another curaré dart in the neck for Rudy... from a very familiar source

GROUP NEWS BLOG—JULY 5TH, 2007

Within the vast sea of faux-moderate hackery that is New York's press, there are several, scattered, vessel-crushing vortexes--whirlpools of naked, honest dislike for Giuliani.

__________________________________

People like former Times Op-Ed page editor Gail Collins, Op-Ed regular Bob Herbert, the Pulitzer-winning Jim Dwyer, and The Village Voice's NY mole extraordinaire (and Journalism mentor for our Steve) Wayne Barrett, just to name a few.

Who dug up this fresh ugliness late last week:

Via TPM: So, why is it, exactly, that Giuliani picked the WTC site? The mayor personally established a specific standard: he had to be able to walk to the command center from his office. ("I've never seen in my life 'walking distance' as some kind of a standard for crisis management," said Lou Anemone, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the NYPD. "But you don't want to confuse Giuliani with the facts.")

There is, however, an explanation for the walking-distance standard.

Barrett:The 7 WTC site was the brainchild of Bill Diamond, a prominent Manhattan Republican that Giuliani had installed at the city agency handling rentals. When Diamond held a similar post in the Reagan administration a few years earlier, his office had selected the same building to house nine federal agencies. Diamond's GOP-wired broker steered Hauer to the building, which was owned by a major Giuliani donor and fundraiser. When Hauer signed onto it, he was locked in by the limitations Giuliani had imposed on the search and the sites Diamond offered him. The mayor was so personally focused on the siting and construction of the bunker that the city administrator who oversaw it testified in a subsequent lawsuit that "very senior officials," specifically including Giuliani, "were involved," which he said was a major difference between this and other projects.

Giuliani's office had a humidor for cigars and mementos from City Hall, including a fire horn, police hats and fire hats, as well as monogrammed towels in his bathroom. His suite was bulletproofed and he visited it often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced. He had his own elevator.

Oh yeah. Cronyism. Graft. Cigar humidors and monogrammed towels. (!) And yes, just like his boy Bernie, exploiting government largesse to nab a cushy downtown fuck-pad for the Goumada. Read the whole sordid thing. Wayne, as predicted, takes Rudy's 9-11 persona apart like an old G.I. Joe doll tossed into a roaring wheat thresher.

This is the price you pay when you aspire to "greatness" while being an utter shit to everyone whose path you've crossed in life. There are no Alberto Gonzales-types who can, or will cover up your past misdeeds. No glad-handers or hardcore true believers from home to back you up alá George Bush and the Texas Mafia. Home, a.k.a. New York...is where the hate is.

You see, Rudy—unlike Bush, who can play the affable back-slapper card—just isn't and has never been the kind of guy you wanna sit and have a beer with.

He's the annoying jerk who makes you wanna smash a Schlitz bottle on the side of the bar and grind the damn thing hard into his squinched face.

Which is what his enemies are doing to him right now...one by one.

And it's only August of '07.

Say it again...with Dave Chappelle and Atrios—in harmony this time, children:

"Jiffy Pop, bitches!"

*Props to brat for the inspiration for the post's accompanying graphic

“Yeah, the karmic train is just flattening Rudy. I can't wait for it to back up and do it again.”
brat | 08.10.07 - 5:28 pm

There's more...

“Hey Dubya! Nixon Called! He Says You're A Crook!”

“You know, just when I think you're the shallowest man I know, you somehow manage to drain a little bit more out of the pool.”—Seinfeld, Episode #59, “The Implant”

As bad as things are right now—with the willful debacle that is Iraq, with the warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens, and the general perversion of the Justice Department—beyond all of that subterranean, Nixon-on-steroids level evil, if you can believe it, a new nadir has been reached by the Bush administration in the last week.

Seriously. We know that we've surpassed Watergate's levels of chicanery a long time ago. What took place this past week involving the cover-up of the cover-up of Army Corporal Pat Tillman's "friendly fire" death, via the citing of "Executive Privilege”, goes miles past being merely impeachment-worthy.

It's worthy of any evil—any imaginable evil you can wish upon its perpetrators. Get out your garlic and Holy Water:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The White House has refused to give Congress documents about the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman, with White House counsel Fred Fielding saying that certain papers relating to discussion of the friendly-fire shooting "implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests."

Get your wooden stake too:

“Two influential lawmakers investigating how and when the Bush administration learned the circumstances of Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death and how those details were disclosed accused the White House and Pentagon on Friday of withholding key documents and renewed their demand for the material.

The White House and Defense Department have turned over nearly 10,000 pages of papers mostly press clippings but the White House cited "executive branch confidentiality interests" in refusing to provide other documents.”

_________________________________________________

“Although Pentagon investigators determined quickly that he was killed by his own troops, five weeks passed before the circumstances of his death were made public. During that time, the Army claimed he was killed by enemy fire.
Tillman's family and others have said they believe the erroneous information peddled by the Pentagon was part of a deliberate cover-up that may have reached all the way to President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. The committee said Friday it had scheduled a second hearing on Tillman's death for Aug. 1, this time to probe what senior Pentagon officials knew and when.”

And pray that someone can use whatever weapons they have at their disposal to defeat the beasts:

On Friday, July 13, Chairman Waxman and Ranking Minority Member Tom Davis sent letters to the White House and the Department of Defense objecting to the withholding of documents related to the death of Corporal Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004. Chairman Waxman also wrote the Republican National Committee to request communications about Corporal Tillman’s death by White House officials using e-mail accounts controlled by the RNC.

• The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld
Former Secretary of Defense
• Gen. Richard B. Myers (Retired)
Former Chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Gen. John P. Abizaid (Retired)
Former Commander, U.S. Central Command
• Gen. Bryan Douglas Brown (Retired)
Former Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command
• Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger, Jr. (Retired)
Former Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command
• Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Commander, Joint Special Operations Command

Because that's what we're dealing with here—beasts.

When I think of Watergate, and I do quite often with the myriad scandals this administration is mired in this Summer, I remember how evil, and republic-threatening it seemed at the time. There was a break-in at opposition headquarters, an illegal campaign slush-fund, and a failed attempt to subvert the Justice Department.

It all seems so very small when you look at what's going on now. Leaking CIA agents, a patently illegal war, successful subverting of the Justice Department, and so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo.

This situation with the declaring of “Executive Privilege” in the Pat Tillman incident, though....if you really look at it, trumps almost anything in Watergate's sordid mudpile of misdeeds.

Tillman was killed in Afghanistan is the Spring of '04 after having walked away from his lucrative NFL career and contract to sign up with the Army to fight in the single sane prong of the so-called "War on Terror”. He was killed in a "friendly fire" incident while on patrol, and that fact was known to his superiors almost immediately, but for five weeks the military and the government spun his death as coming at the hands of faceless Taliban attackers—ostensibly to put a good gloss on the unfortunate mishap, and rather obviously, to rally folks 'round the flag via the lionizing of a "tragic" hero.

His uniform was burned and his body armor was destroyed almost immediately after his death to cover up the nature of how he died. Military superiors ordered witnesses to lie about how Tillman died, under threat of official punishment. But eventually, it got out those many weeks later about just what happened in that deadly mountain pass—as did the tale of the low-level portion of the cover-up.

It's the high-level—no, let me get it right.—highest, pinnacle, desperately hidden levels of the cover -up that has brought this administration down to common decency levels that would damn near make a Manson blush. It is APPARENT...BRUTALLY APPARENT that the order to turn Tillman's death into a P.R. football (pun not intended) came from the very highest levels of the government. The order to lie to the family, lie to the country and world, and even create a "manufactured narrative" came...from the very top echelons of U.S. government. And we know this because White House Counsel Fred Fielding has cited "Executive Privilege" as the reason for blocking the release of information pertaining to the government's immediate handling of Cpl. Tillman's death.

Ask yourself WHY? Why would they stonewall the release of those documents?

What could there possibly be to cover up?

We know lies were told. One could almost understand the need to manage the P.R. on the death delicately. Some massaging of the facts can almost be excused to put a better face on the then nascent war effort. But this wasn't just "massaging". It was a whole-cloth, made-up, LIE. What was the need for that? And since we know what actually happened, and already know the fact that lies were told—what else could there possibly be to cover up?

Here's what: The exposure OF THE FACT that for all the mealy-mouthed, wet-eyed platitudes about support for American troops, this government—IN THE HIGHEST ECHELONS OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH DO NOT GIVE SO MUCH AS A RAT'S ASS ABOUT IT'S FIGHTING FORCES. PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

The troops are literally pawns in Bush's hands. Chips to gamble. Non-entities. And this government not only considers them to be such, but evidently discusses them as such in privileged communications.

Living, breathing people. With families, who if you're not going to give them the unvarnished, soul-wounding truth, deserve at the least, common, human respect. And these documents that this government will not release, I'm sure detail the callousness and craven levels of manipulation used to further the administration's goals. They don't want it to get out that they are willing to absolutely wipe their asses with those of us who make the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. Because once that depth of their utter unfeeling and cheap skullduggery becomes fully known, there is no reason for anyone to believe a single word they'd say on anything.

Nothing on Nixon's tapes is as ugly as that. For all his personal hatred, and recorded dirty-tricks-ism, and paranoia, there is nothing in those tapes or "expletive deleted" documents that is as raw a "fuck you" as what those Tillman documents would inadvertently expose. That they ("they" meaning the administration, safe in Washington D.C. with access to fallout bunkers and all manner perks you the citizens will NEVER have) will use, and manipulate, and lie about you (the public/non-connected populace) in any way they deem fit, so long as it aids in the implementation of whatever the plan/policy-of-the-day is.

It is so close to a “Manchurian Candidate” type of hierarchical structure that it would make the blood run cold of anyone who ever found out about it. Which is why they don't want anyone to find out about it.

It is in a word, criminal.

And people at the very least see their careers end over self-serving lying like this.

"YPSILANTI, Mich., July 16 — Six months after a female student was raped and killed in her dormitory room, Eastern Michigan University said today that it had fired three administrators, including its president, who are accused of covering up the fact that a crime had been committed.

The president, John A. Fallon III, was ousted exactly two years into his five-year contract with the university. The board of regents also dismissed the vice president for student affairs, James Vick, and the campus police chief, Cindy Hall, and reprimanded the general counsel, Kenneth McKanders.

The actions follow lengthy reports by the Department of Education and investigators at a local law firm that said school officials had violated federal law by not disclosing campus security information after waiting more than two months to tell other students that Laura Dickinson, 22, had been killed. The university had insisted that foul play was not suspected, even as the authorities investigated several suspects, and it revealed the true circumstances of Ms. Dickinson’s Dec. 12 death only after another student was arrested in February.

A high-profile death. A self-serving lie and cover/up. Utter disregard of the family and public. Putting spin and damage control ahead of truth and simple humanity. The same Goddamned ingredients—except in the Eastern Michigan case, the truth eventually came out. In the Tillman case, the government is actively blocking the truth's coming out. The revulsion people feel upon hearing about the University's evil ass-covering, should be equally imparted to the Bush administration for its EQUAL level of duplicity.

This is a big deal.

Contact your local Congressperson and tell that person that YOU WILL NOT TOLERATE the Administration's stonewalling the facts on this cover-up, NO MATTER HOW HIGH UP IT GOES.

Here's the House of Representatives switchboard number: 202-225-3121, and here's how to reach them by e-mail

And get on the Senate's ass as well. Here's their switchboard number: 202-224-3121, and e-mail contact info.

They are playing with the death of a U.S. Army soldier. They said "fuck you” to his family, and threatened anyone who told the truth with punishment. His life meant nothing to them—his demise was a P.R. element to be twisted, puffed full of air, and then floated before our eyes to distract and manipulate.

These are not regular people we're dealing with. They are devils. Beasts. Literal Death-Eaters .

And they make Nixon, bad as he was—look like a fucking piker.

Take. Them. Down.

There's more...

More Mercenaries than Troops

OK, Timeout!

There are now more Merc's in Iraq than U.S. Troops.

The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq — a mission criticized as being undermanned.

"These numbers are big," said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written on military contracting. "They illustrate better than anything that we went in without enough troops. This is not the coalition of the willing. It's the coalition of the billing."
-- latimes.com

This is just ridiculous. Thank God we took back congress, that was the only reason that we know this now. Congress ordered CENTCOM to conduct a survey of the merc's. This is the result. We are wasting BILLIONS on this assinine shit.

Lets remember that under the Geneva convention (although rendered quaint according to Cheney) A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.

They are accountable to no one. Who has to clean up the mess? Our troops. There have been numerous incidents where these guns for hire have caused irreversible harm. You want to know one of the many reasons we have already lost this war? This is a big one.

Contractors: 180,000
U.S. troops: 160,000

180,000 people running around Iraq with no legal restrictions, astronomical paychecks (from your money), with top of the line military hardware, and no clear mission. Yeah, thats a great idea....

This has to stop. This has to stop

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