SEE NO EVIL
More heartening economic news:
Republican budget writers say they may have found a way to cut the federal deficit even if they borrow hundreds of billions more to overhaul the Social Security system: Don’t count all that new borrowing.
***Any accounting mechanism that obscures or minimizes those costs is sure to be controversial. John [...]

Read Full Post »

THE END IS NEAR
Scary economic news via Dr. Black:
Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.
But you should hear what he’s saying in private.
Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last week, including a group at Fidelity.
His prediction: America has no [...]

Read Full Post »

THE RULE OF LAW
Times op-ed from Ronnie Earle, the Texas DA investigating Tom DeLay:
The thinly veiled personal attacks on me by Mr. DeLay’s supporters in this case are no different from those in the cases of any of the 15 elected officials this office has prosecuted in my 27-year tenure. Most of these officials - [...]

Read Full Post »

OUR LEADER

Clear Channel put up two of these billboards in Orlando. If this doesn’t give you the creeps, I don’t know what will. This is a cult of personality, and if it doesn’t remind you of you-know-who, you’re not paying attention.

Read Full Post »

STRANGE
You think you’re having a stressful week?
A PREGNANT British cow took a plunge into a neighbor’s chilly pool in southern England, wading around for four hours before being rescued, firefighters said.
A total of 10 cows,had broken out of their field through a hedge and wandered into a private garden near Andover, Hampshire.
“The homeowner, who is [...]

Read Full Post »

WARNING
Blogger’s a little screwy this morning. Posting may be erratic.

Read Full Post »

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
“Quittin’ Time,” Mary Chapin Carpenter, Party Doll:
Hey baby, tell me what we’re gonna do/ It’s getting crazy and I need some help from you/ We were so connected that you were a part of me/ Now I feel an emptiness right to the heart of me/ But you pretend and I pretend/ [...]

Read Full Post »

LUNCHTIME THREAD
It’s not fair that y’all know so much about me and I know so little about you. So stop shirking your duty and hit those comments.
What books are you reading lately - and why?

Read Full Post »

WHY IRAQ IS ARABIC FOR VIETNAM
Can you say “quagmire“?
But over the past week, a closer assessment of the forces needed for the Fallujah recovery effort and future offensive operations revealed a gap in desired troop strength, at least over the next two or three months, according to several officers familiar with the issue.
The officers [...]

Read Full Post »

TOLD YA
See my previous post, in which I stated this accelerated government outsourcing has nothing to do with savings or efficiency:
In the face of a White House veto threat, members of Congress agreed late Friday to drop efforts to place new limits on the Bush administration’s initiative to put federal jobs up for competition from [...]

Read Full Post »

AMEN TO THAT
Max reminds us that Greenspan calling for fiscal responsibility is like Hannibal Lector preaching the joys of a vegan lifestyle.

Read Full Post »

CONTROL
Via Josh, the Boston Globe has an in-depth look at the GOP’s distortion of the legislative process:
In the current Republican-led Congress, according to statistics offered by both parties, the percentage of nonappropriations bills open to revision has dropped to 15 percent. “The Rules Committee has become the ‘break the rules’ committee,” said Representative James McGovern, [...]

Read Full Post »

THE CEO PRESIDENT
Great Salon article on how badly the outsourcing of government has gone:
Recently, the government tried to contract out security jobs at an Agriculture Department research center. It refused to set up a formal competition by bidders that would have ensured that the same quality work or better could be performed by private contractors [...]

Read Full Post »

WAR IS HELL
Powerful piece by Frank Pierson (author of “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Cool Hand Luke”) on his own memories of war:
That war is hell is a challenge — the highest and most difficult challenge is to behave well in the face of everything that drives us toward revenge, retribution, toward the worst in ourselves. [...]

Read Full Post »

THE RIGHT QUESTION
I might still be dreaming, because I could swear the WashPo had this on the editorial page today:
After the scandal over abuse at Abu Ghraib erupted, Mr. Gonzales tried to distance himself from the torture memo, though what is known indicates that he played a central role in its formulation. Like Mr. Bush [...]

Read Full Post »

STILL COUNTING
It’s still not quite over:
A top-ranking official with Democratic Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign told North County News last week that although unlikely, there is a recount effort being waged that could unseat Republican President George W. Bush.
“We have 17,000 lawyers working on this, and the grassroots accountability couldn’t be any higher -no (irregularity) [...]

Read Full Post »

‘SOMETHING WAS NOT RIGHT’
Kevin Sites is the cameraman who shot that footage of the Marine shooting a wounded man in Fallujah. Since then, he’s become the target of death threats, described as an anti-war radical… you know, the usual smears.
Here’s his side of the story:
I can’t know what was in the mind of that Marine. [...]

Read Full Post »

BAD DOG!
Don’t you hate it when they piddle on the rug?
President Bush has reprimanded Tony Blair for sounding the alarm over global warming and pressing for international action to combat it, senior Washington sources say.
They report that the White House has objected to the Prime Minister placing the issue at the top of the agenda [...]

Read Full Post »

GO KEITH
Lots o’good stuff from Keith Olbermann, and I’m just too fried to plough through it all. How about you just go read it instead? Oh, okay, here’s just a taste:
Meantime, The Oakland Tribune not only devoted seventeen paragraphs Friday to the UC Berkeley study on the voting curiosities in Florida, but actually expended considerable [...]

Read Full Post »

GROUNDHOG DAY
You ever have one of those moments when you feel like it’s all happened before?
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shared information with reporters Wednesday about Iran’s nuclear program that was classified and based on an unvetted, single source who provided information that two U.S. officials said yesterday was highly significant if true but [...]

Read Full Post »

THE RICH GET RICH AND THE POOR GET POORER
Bob Somerby, as usual, gets it:
According to [David Cay] Johnston, the top fifth pay 19 percent of their income; the poorest fifth pay 18 percent. Bush’s reaction to this? What else? Let’s take less tax from the rich!
Michael Lind’s Made in Texas tries to explain the origins [...]

Read Full Post »

NOW THAT IT DOESN’T MATTER
The mainstream press finally gets around to covering Russ Baker’s scoop - that Bush was talking about invading Iraq back in 1999.
According to Baker’s report, Herskowitz said that Bush felt frustrated with his image as an “underachiever” compared to his father, that he had “failed” to complete his National Guard requirement [...]

Read Full Post »

A FREE PRESS
Okay, I said I’d write about Krugman’s talk the other night.
What made it interesting was that the evening was sponsored by the Philadelphia Inquirer as an event for the Association of Opinion Page Editors (AOPE), which was holding its annual convention in Philadelphia. So he geared a lot of what he said to [...]

Read Full Post »

BRANDING
Go check out the great suggested Democratic Party ads over at Oliver Willis’s place. This is just one:

Read Full Post »

JOEMENTUM
The rumor mill has Sen. Joe Lieberman as the next head of Homeland Security.

Read Full Post »

This time, the Repugs are making sure any moderates within their own party fall into lockstep:
But on Wednesday, Senate Republicans voted to change the committee assignments. Under the change, the Republican leader will be able to name his own choices to the first two vacancies on any committee. The rest would be filled as they [...]

Read Full Post »

WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
He can be so erratic, twisting lyrics into unbearable knots. Yet Bruce Cockburn is still one of my favorite songwriters, and “Pacing the Cage” one of my favorite songs:
Sunset is an angel weeping Holding out a bloody sword No matter how I squint, I cannot Make out what it’s pointing toward Sometimes [...]

Read Full Post »

God said a fire, not a flood next time. - “Well Well Well,” The Seekers.
Yet another story I’ve been meaning to write about, but someone over at Kos beat me to it. It’s about the gruesome fact that we’re using napalm in Iraq.
The U.S. military denied its use, sliding through on a technicality. They say [...]

Read Full Post »

SNEAK ATTACK
I missed it, but apparently there was a big rumble on C-SPAN2 today. The Repugs tried to slip a last-minute provision into the omnibus spending bill that would allow certain chairs of some Senate committees to have access to anyone’s IRS returns without a court order. (i.e. Ronnie Earle, who’s investigating Tom DeLay.)
The Democrats [...]

Read Full Post »

MISSING THE POINT
David Brooks writes an entire column today about Tom DeLay without mentioning an important fact: his PAC has spread generous amounts of money far and wide to House Republicans. He neglects to point this out, instead saying House members voted to protect him against the consequences of indictment because they like him, they [...]

Read Full Post »