Like the White Bronco Chase....

I have a sense there are going to be a lot of stories that say nothing, but tell us everything:

UPDATEIII: This one's from former CIA agent Larry Johnson:

Aides To Be Indicted, Probe to Continue
by Larry Johnson
Wed Oct 26th, 2005 at 01:44:59 PM EDT

For your background, Richard was the first to tip me last year to the developing Larry Franklin spy scandal, which proved to be right. - LJ
Aides To Be Indicted, Probe to Continue

By Richard Sale, longtime Intelligence Correspondent for UPI

This comes to us courtesy of Pat Lang at turcopolier.typepad.com. I've found Richard to always be on target in my experience. -- Larry Johnson

Two top White House aides are expected to be indicted today on various charges related to the probe of CIA operative Valerie Plame whose classified identity was publicly breached in retaliation after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy enriched uranium from Niger, acording to federal law enforcement and senior U.S. intelligence officials.

If no action is taken today, it will take place on Friday, these sources said.

I. Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Richard Cheney, and chief presidential advisor Karl Rove are expected to be named in indictments this morning by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Others are to be named as well, these sources said. According to U.S. officials close to the case, a bill of indictment has been in existence before October 17 which named five people. Various names have surfaced such as National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, yet only one source would confirm that Hadley was on the list. Hadley could not be reached for comment.

But letters from Fitzgerald, notifying various White House officiials that they are targets of the investigation, went out late last week, a former senior U.S. intelligence official said.

Most press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby, Rove and others to cover up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson's civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.

The civil rights charge is said to include "the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds," one federal law enforcement official said.

Other charges could include possible violations of U.S. espionage laws, including the mishandling of U.S. classified information, these sources said.

That Vice President Cheney is at the center of the controversy comes as no surprise. Last Friday, Fitzgerald investigators were talking to Cheney's attorneys, and detailied questionnaires, designed to pin down in meticulous sequence what Cheney knew, when he knew it, and what he told his aides, were delivered to the White House on Monday, these sources said.

The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter's sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.

Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 in which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expanded authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament nvestigation into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.

They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeriese or their dissiemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.

On the Hill, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), democratic whip, are asking for public hearings to lay bare the forgeries and how their false allegations ended up in President George Bush's State of the Union speech.

UPDATE II:

Prosecutor in leak case seeks indictments against Rove, Libby, lawyers close to case say
Jason Leopold and John Byrne

Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked the grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to indict Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, lawyers close to the investigation tell RAW STORY.

Fitzgerald has also asked the jury to indict Libby on a second charge: knowingly outing a covert operative, the lawyers said. They said the prosecutor believes that Libby violated a 1982 law that made it illegal to unmask an undercover CIA agent.

Libby’s attorney, Joseph A. Tate, did not return a call seeking comment.

Two other officials, who are not employees in the White House, are also expected to face indictments, the lawyers said.

Those close to the investigation said Rove was offered a deal Tuesday to plead guilty to perjury for a reduced charge. Rove’s lawyer was told that Fitzgerald would drop an obstruction of justice charge if his client agreed not to contest allegations of perjury, they said.

Rove declined to plead guilty to the reduced charge, the sources said, indicating through his attorney Robert Luskin that he intended to fight the charges. A call placed to Luskin was not returned.

Those familiar with the case said that Libby did not inform Rove that Plame was covert. As a result, Rove may not be charged with a crime in leaking Plame’s identity, even though he spoke with reporters.

UPDATE:

Leak grand jury meets prosecutor
Wed Oct 26, 2005 10:04 AM ET
By Adam Entous
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity met on Wednesday with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald amid signs the prosecutor was preparing to seek criminal charges.

Fitzgerald, who have interviewed many senior White House figures as he seeks the source of the leak, declined comment as they began the grand jury session at about 9 a.m.

Any charges that are brought by the grand jury could be sealed, preventing a public announcement by the court or the prosecutor until possibly on Thursday or Friday, when the grand jury is scheduled to expire.

The secret grand jury session followed a last-minute flurry of interviews by investigators with CIA operative Valerie Plame's neighbors and a former colleague of top White House adviser Karl Rove.

Plame's identity was leaked after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence on Iraq.

White House officials were anxiously awaiting the outcome of the leak case since any indicted officials were expected to resign immediately. If indictments are brought, Bush was likely to make a public statement to try to reassure Americans that he is committed to honesty and integrity in government.

The White House has refused to answer questions about Vice President Dick Cheney's role in the case.

According to a New York Times report, Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, learned about Plame in a conversation with Cheney on June 12, 2003, weeks before her identity became public in a newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003.

Libby's notes indicate Cheney got his information about Plame from then-CIA Director George Tenet, according to the Times. The White House would neither confirm nor deny the account.

On Wednesday, both Rove and Libby were at the White House senior staff meeting in the morning as usual, a senior official said.

Fitzgerald's investigation has centered on Libby and Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser. Other aides may also be charged, lawyers said.

Leak probe prosecutor arrives at court
Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:36 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald arrived at the courthouse on Wednesday as a federal grand jury considers whether to bring criminal charges over the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity.

Fitzgerald, accompanied by other prosecutors, had no comment as he entered the courthouse.

Lawyers involved in the case said Fitzgerald appeared close to asking the grand jury to approve indictments, with an announcement expected as early as Wednesday, after the grand jury meets.

It's About Time

Little noticed in today's events, so I want to commemorate this:

New York Times Reporter Miller
Is in Talks Over Her Job Status

Move Follows Public Break
With the Newspaper;
Severance Package Discussed
By JOE HAGAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 26, 2005; Page B3

New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun discussing her future employment options with the newspaper, including the possibility of a severance package, a lawyer familiar with the matter, said yesterday.

The discussion about her future comes several days after the public rupture of the relationship between the Times and Ms. Miller, a 28-year veteran of the paper. Both the editor and the publisher of the Times have expressed regret for their unequivocal support for Ms. Miller when she spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the unmasking of a Central Intelligence Agency operative.


The negotiations began with a face-to-face meeting Monday morning between Ms. Miller and the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said the lawyer familiar with the situation. A spokeswoman for the New York Times declined to comment. Ms. Miller didn't return calls.

A Moment of Silence

An Apt Poem

Ozymandius
by: Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

tags technorati : Top 50

Gort42 Holds Feet To The Fire

All I need quote is the end of his piece, and that ought to make you go read it...

Am I the only one who doesn't think it's a coincidence that the top jobs in the government are held by oil men and we're paying almost $3 a gallon for gas?

Cheney Told Libby

Because this will quickly go to archives, I'll reproduce the relevant grafs here:

Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report

By DAVID JOHNSTON, RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.

I'm less focused on the facts here, that Cheney told Libby. That's almost a given anyway. I'm focused on how this document and more importantly, why it, got out.

Who does this protect?

A couple of thoughts:

1) Judith Miller - Perhaps in an attempt to salvage her job (or even get kicked upstairs...could you imagine the ruckus if she tried to return to her desk?), Miller obtained and provided for the editors at the Times a copy of Libby's notes. Plausible, plus it allows Libby to raise the argument that since Cheney talked about Plame's identity, he could assume it was not covert. Plausible.

2) Dick Cheney - Not the most likely suspect for the leak, but there are reasons to believe it might be him. For one thing, the notes trace the leak back to George Tenet, who is already out of the administration (after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, no less!). Thus, Cheney could lay claim that he was not warned by Tenet that Plame was NOC. Which is kind of silly, since Cheney and Tenet are free to discuss anyone in government and it would become incumbent on the VP to discern whether she was NOC or not prior to disclosing it to Libby, in order to warn him not to tell anyone. I mark this one "not likely". Similarly, President Bush himself could have directed the leak of the notes, for similar reasons. Less likely.

Further on in the story, there's this speculation:

The former (senior intelligence) official said he strongly doubted that the White House learned about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Tenet.

My guess? Colin Powell.

3) "Lawyers involved in the case" are cited as the source of the leak, however, that could mean anyone up to Harriet Miers (presumably, as White House Counsel, she is still both a lawyer and involved in the case). However, it is not clear that these are lawyers for the suspects or for the Special Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. However, Fitzgerald has been unusually circumspect in his prosecution of this case, opting to play his cards close to the vest, so it's not very likely he'd allow this to be leaked. But...

If he is establishing the case that Libby and/or Karl Rove were the source of the leak, and, as rumour suggests, he will name at least one unindicted co-conspirator, and he's seen the effectiveness of the right wing whitewash machine in action, it's conceivable that, in order to get out ahead of the story as it unfolds, he let these notes loose in order to lay down some suppressing fire while he prepares his final document. Sort of an executive summary of the substantiation of his charges. Mark this one "possible".

Interesting footnote: Dick Cheney's bloodline can be traced back to the Battle of Hastings and his ancestor, Ralph de Chesney, Sire of Quesnay.

Meaning he's actually....French!

Separated At Birth...

New Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

...or just the evil Power Twins?


DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff
General Zod

(tip of the hat to Gort for the Zod tip)

What Blogging Costs American Business

I guess the subtitle to this article could be "Why Your Boss Is In Your Browser Cookies".

Since you'll need an account to access this full article, I've transcribed it here:

WHAT BLOGS COST AMERICAN BUSINESS
In 2005, Employees Will Waste 551,000 Years Reading Them
October 24, 2005

By Bradley Johnson
LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- Blog this: U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs.

Currently, the time employees spend reading non-work blogs is the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs.

About 35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks -- blog readers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break.

While blogs are becoming an accepted part of the media sphere, and are increasingly being harnessed by marketers -- American Express last week paid a handful of bloggers to discuss small business, following other marketers like General Motors Corp. and Microsoft Corp. into the blogosphere -- they are proving to be competition for traditional media messages and are sapping employees’ time.

Case in point: Gawker Media, blog home of Gawker (media), Wonkette (politics) and Fleshbot (porn). Said Sales Director Christopher Batty: “The Gawker audience is very at-work; it’s an at-work, leisure audience -- a.k.a., people screwing off on the job. “

Bosses accept some screwing off as a cost of doing business; it keeps employees happy and promotes camaraderie. Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, said blogs have become the favored diversion for “office goof-off time,” though he notes it’s hard to segregate blog time since blogs often bounce readers to professional media sites.

But at the end of the day, more blogging means less working. Jonathan Gibs, senior research manager at Nielsen/NetRatings, said at-work blog time probably comes in addition to regular surfing -- meaning more time on the Web but less time on the job.

Expansion of online behavior
“Since for the most part blog readers tend to be the most engaged readers of online content,” he said, “they do not appear, at least for now, to be sacrificing time from their favorite news sites. Instead, it looks like blog usage is in addition to existing online behavior.”

Some blogs do relate to work, but deciding just how relevant they are to the employer is open to debate. For this analysis, Ad Age chose a simple score: Count all business blog traffic, half of tech and media blogs and one-fourth of political/news blogs as directly related to work.

Based on ComScore’s tally of blog categories, this suggests just 25% of blog visits directly connect to the job. Employees this year will spend 4.8 billion work hours absorbing wisdom from other blogs that may enlighten visitors but not amuse the boss.

Wasted time
Hard and detailed data on blogging time is limited, so Ad Age’s analysis is a best-guess extrapolation done by reviewing blog-related surveys and data. By Ad Age estimates:

- Work time spent reading and posting to blogs this year will consume 2.2% of U.S. labor force hours.

- Work time spent at blogs unrelated to work will eat up 1.65% of labor force hours.

- U.S. workers this year will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years (based on a 24-hour day) or 2.3 million work years (based on a typical nearly 40-hour work week) reading blogs unrelated to the job.

There is strong evidence of workday blogging. Server traffic for Blogads, a network of sites that take ads, spikes during business hours, reflecting page views on about 900 blogs. FeedBurner, a blog technology company, also sees a jump in work-time hits.

“Traffic rockets at 8 a.m. EST, peaks at 5 p.m. EST and then slides downward until L.A. leaves the office,” said Blogads founder Henry Copeland. “You see the same thing in the collapse of traffic on weekends. … Bottom line: At work, people can’t watch TV or prop up their feet and read a newspaper, but they sure do read blogs.”

And they create and post to them. Technorati, a blog search engine, now tracks 19.6 million blogs, a number that has doubled about every five months for the past three years. If that growth were to continue, all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009. Imagine the work that won’t get done then.

More On Middle Class Misery

A recurring trope on this blog has been how tough it is for a middle-class family to make ends meet while the rich and powerful have seen their streets paved with gold these past five years.

Well, along comes The Center for American Progress' "Middle Class Squeeze"

Excerpts:

Middle-Class Progress?

Families Work Longer to Pay for Middle-Class Items than a Quarter-Century Ago

by Christian E. Weller Ph.D., Senior Economist
October 20, 2005


I. Summary

Is the typical middle-class family doing better today than they were 25 years ago? The answer is no, according to new measures of economic well-being developed in this report. The combination of stagnant incomes and staggering cost increases for important middle-class items—housing, health care, education and transportation—have left families with less money to save and spend than just a few years ago, and working longer to achieve the same results as in 1980. According to the analysis here:

- In 2005, the average two-earner family needs to work 31.5 weeks to pay for taxes and a range of middle-class items (health care, housing, college, and transportation). That is an increase from 30.2 weeks in March 2001, and from 28.7 weeks in March 1979.

- In 2005, after paying for the items outlined above, the average two-earner family had about $19,542 left to pay for basics—such as clothing, food, and utilities—to save for retirement, to improve their economic well-being, and to spend on any leisure and recreation. That is $951 less than families had in 2000 and $1,702 less than in 1980.

- While families spend less today on taxes than in 2000—the tax cuts were real—those tax cuts do not offset the cost increases of expenditure items, particularly housing, health care, and education.

- Middle-class families have addressed the economic squeeze by working longer hours. This has meant less time to spend with children and higher out-of-pocket expenditures for child care and for food outside the home.

- Over time, middle-class families have also maintained their consumption levels by borrowing more money. Household debt soared to a record 116 percent of disposable income in March 2005. Average debt service burden levels have remained high throughout the current business cycle.

- The economic squeeze tends to be worse for minorities than for whites. Specifically, income declines have been larger for Hispanics than for African-Americans and greater for African-Americans than for whites.

tags technorati : Top 50

A Watershed Week

This ought to be a fun week for progressives like myself. A week when we watch as all the cards in this house-o-cards, shiver, some fall, some remain standing by dint of luck and placement.

First, Agitprop has a prediction contest. No winners except having it on the record that you predicted the precise time and number of Fitzgerald's indictments well ahead of the issuance.

Next, on top of the Tom/DeLay/Scooter Libby/Judith Miller/Iraq/Katrina-Rita-Wilma scandals plaguing the Bush White House, comes this little item about another facet of the turd that is the Religious Right:

Report: Abramoff sought out strategist
Lobbyist asked Reed for White House pull for clients, e-mails say

Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Jack Abramoff, the GOP lobbyist under investigation by federal authorities for fraud, repeatedly sought the help of Bush strategist Ralph Reed to open doors at the White House for his business clients, according to e-mails made public Sunday.

The e-mails show that Abramoff pushed for intervention from Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove on at least three occasions since 2001 to promote business opportunities.

Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition and a nominee in the 2006 race for Georgia's lieutenant governor, wrote back obliging responses, according to the e-mail obtained by Time magazine. The e-mail is being reviewed by investigators, Time reported.

The e-mail shows that, 10 days after Sept. 11, 2001, Abramoff promoted a business venture to rent cruise ships to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house rescue workers off New York City.

(emphasis added)

Gee, Jack...how sweet of you to step in and help us po' ol' Amurikens deal with a tragedy of unbounded nature by sending in some cruise ships...out of your own pocket, perhaps?

But the tell-tale paragraph in this story?

In a third set of e-mails, Reed acknowledges having "weighed in heavily" with the White House on behalf of Abramoff to block Angela Williams from being appointed head of the Interior Department's Office of Insular Affairs.

Who dat, you may well ask?

She's in charge of stuff like this:

The Department of the Interior is pleased to announce that it will be leading TWO Business Opportunities Missions in 2006, one to the territory of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and another to the territory of American Samoa. The Missions are part of the ongoing initiative of the Department of the Interior to foster private sector-led economic development in the U.S.-affiliated insular areas. Like the Conferences and Mission that have already taken place, the purpose of these Missions is to help U.S. businesses take advantage of exciting opportunities in the U.S. territories and in nations in "free association" with the U.S.

By participating in one of these Missions, you would receive high-level briefings from government leaders from each jurisdiction describing their development priorities and the steps they are taking to encourage investment. You would also meet with local business leaders to discuss the business climate and opportunities in the islands. In addition, you would be invited to participate in a series of pre-screened one-on-one meetings with island businesspeople and/or government officials to discuss specific projects.

In other words, she'd compete directly with Abramoff, particular in the south Pacific region!

How do I know this? Let Time Magazine explain:

In December 2001 the lobbyist was eager to prevent Angela Williams from being appointed head of the Interior Department's Office of Insular Affairs, which oversees the government's dealings with the Northern Mariana Islands, an important Abramoff client. Williams is married to former Federal Trade Commissioner Orson Swindle, who was a Vietnam POW with Senator John McCain. The subject header of Abramoff and Reed's e-mail exchange (it is unclear who initiated it) contained a misstatement about Williams that is practically Freudian in what it reveals about their animosity toward McCain: "Were you able to whack McCain's wife yet?" Reed assured Abramoff he had "weighed in heavily" with the White House personnel office to block her appointment but had received no commitment. "Any ideas on how we can make sure she does not get it?" Abramoff asked. "Can you ping Karl on this? I can't believe they just don't get this done?" Reed replied, "I am seeing him tomorrow at the WH and plan to discuss it with him as well." Baron says, "Ralph passed the information on to the White House. He is confident the Administration's decision was based on the merit." As for Rove, White House spokeswoman Erin Healy tells TIME, "It is my understanding that Mr. Rove does not recall any of these incidents."

Williams didn't get the job. She and her husband wrote it off to hard feelings from the bruising 2000 Republican presidential primaries. "I just assumed it was my close friendship with Senator McCain and her being married to me," Swindle tells TIME.

Disgusting little chappie, isn't Reed?

If You Haven't Read Maureen Dowd's Op-Ed Piece From Saturday

Here it is, reproduced in full by Truthout.org

Some lovingly culled exercepts:

Once when I was covering the first Bush White House, I was in The Times' seat in the crowded White House press room, listening to an administration official's background briefing. Judy had moved on from her tempestuous tenure as a Washington editor to be a reporter based in New York, but she showed up at this national security affairs briefing.

At first she leaned against the wall near where I was sitting, but I noticed that she seemed agitated about something. Midway through the briefing, she came over and whispered to me, "I think I should be sitting in the Times seat."

It was such an outrageous move, I could only laugh. I got up and stood in the back of the room, while Judy claimed what she felt was her rightful power perch.

....

She said that she had wanted to write about the Wilson-Plame matter, but that her editor would not allow it. But Managing Editor Jill Abramson, then the Washington bureau chief, denied this, saying that Judy had never broached the subject with her.

It also doesn't seem credible that Judy wouldn't remember a Marvel comics name like "Valerie Flame." Nor does it seem credible that she doesn't know how the name got into her notebook and that, as she wrote, she "did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby."

An Associated Press story yesterday reported that Judy had coughed up the details of an earlier meeting with Mr. Libby only after prosecutors confronted her with a visitor log showing that she had met with him on June 23, 2003. This cagey confusion is what makes people wonder whether her stint in the Alexandria jail was in part a career rehabilitation project. (*ed note* Oops. Busted!)

I love the New York Times. It was the first newspaper I ever read, and continue to read it as often as time permits these days. I was really saddened to see that not only does it takes its archive to a pay-per-view status, but it's now taking its daily columns that route as well. Sad. Really sad.

How Some People Celebrate Hurricanes...

Jesus' General has the inside dish

Oh Yea, We're Winning the Hearts and Minds

Poll shows Iraqis back attacks on UK, US forces
Sat Oct 22, 2005 5:49 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Forty-five percent of Iraqis believe attacks on U.S. and British troops are justified, according to a secret poll said to have been commissioned by British defense leaders and cited by The Sunday Telegraph.

Less than 1 percent of those polled believed that the forces were responsible for any improvement in security, according to poll figures.

Eighty-two percent of those polled said they were "strongly opposed" to the presence of the troops.

The paper said the poll, conducted in August by an Iraqi university research team, was commissioned by the Ministry of Defense.

Britain has more than 8,000 troops stationed in the south of Iraq, and has had 97 soldiers killed, the most recent the victim of a roadside bomb on Tuesday night.

Write Your Own Caption!

Republican Family Values

That this happens in America is incredible. That this happens in the state of Washington is inconceivable: a matricidal maniac is running for County Executive!

Take for example Balter’s description of Janet’s refusal to endorse her own son, an oddly expurgated bit of reporting:

Irons’ mother is an independent who votes for — or in this case against — individual candidates. Angry about a different family matter years ago, she won’t support her son.

A “family matter". How concise.

As tearfully recounted to me by Janet, the “family matter” involved an incident that occurred back during the early 1990’s at her office in the family cable company, when David Jr., during one of his frequent fits of rage, hit his mother, knocking her to the floor… and then ripped the phone off the wall when she attempted to dial 911. Frightened, shocked and in pain, Janet fled in her car, hiding several blocks away, “afraid he was coming again.”

Janet has never again allowed herself to be alone with David Jr. since the day the “family matter” occurred. More than a decade later she remains frightened of her own son, even fretting to me that “something might happen” should he read her account in the papers.

As for David Jr., he never denied to his family that something happened that day… he never straightened the office to hide signs of the struggle, nor picked up the typewriter, papers and other objects he angrily swept off his mother’s desk. However, he did deny to his father and sister that he actually hit his mother, incredibly claiming that she ran into his arm… an account that reads like those laughable accident reports where stunned drivers insist that the tree hit their car.

It gets worse, but let Horse's Ass tell you about it (link in the header). He ought to earn the few moments of your time.

It's Miller Time

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece analyzing the security clearances given to Judith Miller. During the course of that analysis, I wondered how the Times, her employer, could protect her so vehemently given her obvious complicity in a plot to out a CIA operative.

Well, here's the answer:

Times: Miller May Have Misled Editors
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Judith Miller's boss says the New York Times reporter appears to have misled the newspaper about her role in the CIA leak controversy.

In an e-mail memo Friday to the newspaper's staff, Executive Editor Bill Keller said that until Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald subpoenaed Miller in the criminal probe, "I didn't know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end" of leaks aimed at Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson.

"Judy seems to have misled" Times Washington bureau chief Bill Taubman about the extent of her involvement, Keller wrote.

Taubman asked Miller in the fall of 2003 whether she was among the reporters who had gotten leaks about the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.

"Ms. Miller denied it," the newspaper reported in a weekend story.

Miller and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, discussed Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, in three conversations in the weeks before the CIA officer's status was outed by columnist Robert Novak.

(Full Text of the E-mail here)

Now there's a lot of handwringing and buckpassing on Keller's part here, including the implication that he wasn't really up to speed as editor when this was all happening, but the facts seem pretty clear: Judith Miller was protecting the Bush administration ahead of the interests of either her employer or by extension, hers.

I mean, it's one thing to walk up to your editor and say, "I've got a source that I refuse to tell you who is telling me this," and quite another to say "No, I've never received any information from any source about this." The first is doing your job. The second is doing someone else's for them.

Now, I have friends who are long time friends of Miller's (from college) and they swear she's not like this, that she was always conscientious and truthful, yadayadayada....of course, these friends also support the war, and if there's ANY truth to the AIPAC concerns of the tinfoil hat brigade (which I seriously doubt...it sounds like the 21st Century version of the Bilderberg Group), these friends would be at the forefront of the pro-Israel movement in America.

Obviously, something has changed in her in forty years. Why would someone who works at the most respected newspaper in the world do something boneheaded like this? And why is she still working there?

Buh bye, Judy, don't let the door hit you on the way out...

How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

Tip of the hat to Jeralyn @ TalkLeft via Crooks and Liars:

My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?

Which is actually up two hundred dollars since I submitted my blog.

It's all about the links.

Write Your Own Caption!

The Empire Strikes Out

Seems to me you ought to make the defense fit the facts, and not the other way around, but then again, these assholes have gotten away with that over the sheeple of this country for six years, counting the stolen first election:

White House Defense Shaky in CIA Leak Case

By PETE YOST

WASHINGTON (AP) - Even if White House aides leaked a covert CIA officer's identity, they were simply passing along information they'd already heard from the news media, the administration's supporters maintain in a defense that looks increasing shaky as new evidence accumulates.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald now knows that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, met three times with a New York Times reporter before the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, that Libby initiated a call to NBC newsman Tim Russert and that Libby was a confirming source about the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson for a Time magazine reporter.

Presidential political adviser Karl Rove has testified that it's possible Libby was his source before Rove talked to two reporters about the CIA operative.

Where Libby first heard the information still isn't publicly known, but a full three weeks before Plame's name first showed up in print, Libby was telling New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he thought Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, according to Miller's testimony.

While Libby maintains that he didn't know Plame's name until it was published in the news media, the now-public evidence suggests Libby at least was aware that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and that he spread the information.

[snippage to the good stuff]

Until this week, ``the news media did it'' was a standard defense among Republicans trying to protect the Bush administration from the political fallout of Fitzgerald's criminal investigation. Loyalists said that even if White House aides had passed on information, they didn't get it from classified sources and were simply repeating what they heard from journalists.

In grand jury testimony shown to Rove, Libby said he had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson's wife from Russert, according to a person directly familiar with the information.

Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert. The TV network has said Russert told authorities he did not know Wilson's wife's identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it. Russert also says that it was Libby who initiated the contact with him.

(emphasis added)

So Libby's a slam dunk indictee, probably along with Rove, and very likely, Judith Miller will get hit with an obstruction charge, altho that's likely to be more an arm twisting for her truthful and remembered testimony about what transpired than for an actual attempt to obstruct justice.

Who knows, though? Perhaps Fitzgerald has it on good authority that she knew, and agreed not to write her story? That cryptic note about the aspens turning indicates to me a semi-coded message. Sometimes being a writer and actor forces you to consider a logical alterantive to gobbledy goop.

Aspens turning. It's Fall, as Libby clearly references. October. Surprises. Halloween. John Denver had a song, "Starwood in Aspen". Starwood is a hotel chain. "Aspens" is also the name of a hotel near Whistler in Canada (British Columbia, I think). An aspen is a willow tree. Is Miller taller than Libby?

Libby is correct that aspens are connected by the roots. Funny thing is, the trees only live to be 100-150 years old, but the roots can last for thousands of years? Third Reich? Fourth Reich? PNAC?

This is all free association. My suspicion is Libby and Rove will fall on their swords knowing that they've left in place a root system that will allow their reign of terror and criminal behavior to live on, much like a mafia don's does when he goes to prison.

And it fits with the hubris of this administration that they would consider threatening (because that's the way I see this letter: a threat to Miller to not talk, but to not hide any longer) a reporter to keep the larger agenda out of the public eye.

I don't think it will work, but it might. They've gotten away with less bold manoeuvers.

More From My Vacation

Some of these critters were so weird, or so camera friendly, I promised myself I'd give them some air time.

More On Bird Flu: Looks like it's made the leap

Looks like the chickens are coming home to roost....

Bird flu kills Thai man; fear grows in Europe
Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:40 AM ET

By Panarat Thepgumpanat

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Bird flu has taken another human life, officials said on Thursday -- a 48-year-old Thai man who was the 67th person known to have been killed by a virus steadily creeping from Asia into Europe and toward Africa.

In Indonesia, possible clusters of bird flu among members of the same family raised concern the virus had already mutated into a strain that can pass from human to human, which could start a global pandemic that scientists say could kill millions.(emphasis added)

"With the increase of clusters the possibility has to be thoroughly examined that the virus might have changed and could possibly spread from human to human," Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari was quoted as saying by the state news agency.

A father and son are being treated at a Jakarta hospital for symptoms of the virus but the diagnosis has mot been confirmed.

All the human deaths from avian flu have so far been in Asia but the deadly H5N1 strain was detected this month in birds in Russia, Turkey and Romania, worsening fears in Europe and battering sales of eggs and poultry in several countries.

"There has been a drastic drop in sales, I would say 50 percent," said Vojka Asenoski behind the counter of a Belgrade grocery store. "People look at all those pictures on TV, it's no wonder, they behave as if everything is already infected."

France tried to reassure consumers that poultry was safe to eat as a food industry union said chicken consumption had plunged 20 percent because of bird flu fears. In Brussels, the European Union said more tests were needed to determine whether Greece had become the first EU country to be hit by the virus.

Organic Foods Under Attack

Now, I'm not a granola-crunching, macrobiotic-ingesting vegan, not by any stretch, but I do occasionally have an organic meal or two during the week.

No particular reason except that I'm cautious about my health, and as I grow older (47 and counting, and thank god, cuz the alternative means I'd be organic food for some worm or fish), I think more and more about eating healthier and living longer.

Well, Katrina alerted me to this little-noticed bit of underhandedness:

The Organic Trade Association is aggressively lobbying Congress to include an amendment in the Agriculture Appropriations Bill, which would overturn Harvey vs. Johanns, a recent court decision that bars the use of synthetic ingredients in the non-organic portion of food labeled "organic." These are food products that must be made with at least 95% organic material but can have 5% non-organic ingredients.

"We are not disputing that the organic law already allows and should allow for synthetics to be used in products labeled as 'made with organic' (products made with at least 70% organic ingredients) but the industry wants the bonus of being able to carry the coveted "organic" label without shouldering the burden of meeting consumer expectations," says Dr. Urvashi Rangan, Senior Scientist and Policy Analyst at Consumers Union.

"When Consumers Union conducted a nationwide survey in March 2005 of 1,200 US adults online, we found that 85% of respondents do not expect food labeled as "organic" to contain artificial (or synthetic) ingredients," adds Rangan.

"As we approach the third year anniversary of the National Organic Program, it's clear that consumers have grown even more attached to the value of the organic label. An overwhelming number of consumers have registered their opposition to the current attempts to weaken the organic standards. The reaction is nearly as strong as the record number (275,000) of public comments received during the development of the National Organic Program," said Ronnie Cummins, President of the Organic Consumers Association.

Why does this concern me? I mean, 70%, right, still pretty organic.

Well, Consumers Union (the good people who publish Consumer Reports) has a long history of being on top of issues related to consumers and their wealth and health, and what they're saying makes sense:

Why is it necessary for the standards to be lowered? Why can't manufacturers simply improve the content of the non-organic line to either conform to current statndards or, failing that, simply make their non-organic food healthier?

The answer seems exceedingly clear: money. After all, organic products at market fetch a far higher price AND PROFIT MARGIN than mass-produced chemically altered food. Why wouldn't Kraft or Birdseye or any number of food producers want to make more money without spending on the upgrade to conform to current standards?

Here's a list of Congresscritters and Senatoriums who are involved in drafting the legislation to establish organic standards. I urge you to take a few moments and write two, one Representative, one Senator, and let them know how you feel.

Write Your Own Caption!

Yes, it's that time again...

Ice Up The Champagne, Mother!

Tom Delay has had an arrest warrant issued!

Texas Court Issues Warrant for DeLay
By SUZANNE GAMBOA, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

(10-19) 12:14 PDT Austin, Texas (AP) --

A Texas court issued a warrant Wednesday for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to appear for booking, where he is likely to face the fingerprinting and photo mug shot he had hoped to avoid.

Bail was initially set at $10,000 as a routine step before his first court appearance on conspiracy and money laundering charges. Travis County court officials said DeLay was ordered to appear at the Fort Bend County jail for booking.

The warrant was "a matter of routine and bond will be posted," DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin said.

The lawyer declined to say when DeLay would surrender to authorities but said the lawmaker would make his first court appearance Friday morning.

Your One Stop Shop

For Rebutting Right Wing Lies About the Plame Investigation

A Good Time To Take A Break From Politics

So you'll have to endure a show of photos I took on my last vacation :-)

This JUST In...

White House Watch: Cheney resignation rumors fly

Posted 10/18/05
By Paul Bedard

Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"It's certainly an interesting but I still think highly doubtful scenario," said a Bush insider. "And if that should happen," added the official, "there will undoubtedly be those who believe the whole thing was orchestrated – another brilliant Machiavellian move by the VP."

Said another Bush associate of the rumor, "Yes. This is not good." The rumor spread so fast that some Republicans by late morning were already drawing up reasons why Rice couldn't get the job or run for president in 2008.

"Isn't she pro-choice?" asked a key Senate Republican aide. Many White House insiders, however, said the Post story and reports that the investigation was coming to a close had officials instead more focused on who would be dragged into the affair and if top aides would be indicted and forced to resign.

"Folks on the inside and near inside are holding their breath and wondering what's next," said a Bush adviser. But, he added, they aren't focused on the future of the vice president. "Not that, at least not seriously," he said.

Wow. The Vice President resigns and all these nincompoops can consider is whether Rice could run in 2008??????

You Almost Feel Sad For Her....

...until you realize a) she married a fucking crook and b) she's in bed with the Bushies....

Pirro's fundraising a far cry from earlier Clinton foes

By MARC HUMBERT
AP Political Writer

October 18, 2005, 11:35 AM EDT

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Two weeks before she closed the books on her initial drive to finance a run against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jeanine Pirro pleaded for "emergency contributions" because "a poor showing for me in my first quarterly FEC report is simply NOT an option."

On Friday, Pirro's campaign reported to the Federal Election Commission that it raised $438,555 for the three months ending Sept. 30. Clinton reported raising 12 times that, almost $5.3 million.

"The potential for growth is enormous," Pirro told a New York City news conference a few hours before her campaign aides released the fundraising details. At the news conference, Republican Gov. George Pataki had endorsed her.

"Sometimes numbers speak louder than words," said Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson. "These numbers aren't breaking a whisper."

The Clinton camp was quick to note that in 1999 and 2000, as Clinton geared up for her first Senate race, Republicans Rudolph Giuliani and Rick Lazio had no trouble raising money. In the last six months of 1999, Giuliani raised more than $9 million. He dropped out of the race on May 19 in the face of prostate cancer. Lazio, a congressman from Long Island at the time, stepped in and raised almost $5 million between then and the end of June.

Pirro's campaign manager, Brian Donahue, said Pataki's endorsement would help with fundraising.

As if that wasn't bad enough...

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - Jeanine Pirro always says Sen. Hillary Clinton's real goal is the White House. Maybe that's why the Pirro campaign sent a letter to Clinton there - and asked her for money.

"Dear Hillary," begins the fund-raising appeal addressed to Clinton at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington. "You and I have been through a lot over the years."

After the Westchester DA thanks Clinton for previous help - which a spokesman for Clinton said has never existed - the letter hits the former First Lady up for a donation of up to $1,000.

"Hillary, I need to know if I can count on you to stand by my side in my campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton for the U.S. Senate in 2006," it goes on.

"And you and I know the U.S. Senate isn't Hillary's real goal," says the letter, which was forwarded to the senator. "Hillary wants to use New York as a pit stop on the way to the White House."

This from the woman whose campaign began with a moment of silence...





....that lasted 32 seconds while she scrambled for her notes about why Hillary must not be re-elected.

My god, what HAVE Republicans come to???? I respected this woman as a courageous fighter. Turns out, she's just another pussy.

UPDATED: Jim Romenseko Gets It Right

UPDATE: GreatScat has the letter from John Conyers grilling Dick Cheney on why this was allowed to occur.The telling question, to me...

IV. Did journalists maintain their clearances after completing participation in the embed program? Are journalists with a security clearance or other access notified upon the revocation or termination of such clearance or access? When does such revocation or termination occur? Have any journalists who are or have been embedded with forces in Iraq had their security clearances revoked or otherwise terminated?

A tip of the hat, from one former journalist to one who's obviously well-steeped in the craft:

From BILL LYNCH, retired CBS News correspondent: There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller's Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller's revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.

One must assume that Ms. Miller was required to sign a standard and legally binding agreement that she would never divulge classified information to which she became privy, without risk of criminal prosecution. And she apparently plans to adhere to the letter of that self-censorship deal; witness her dilemma at being unable to share classified information with her editors.

In other words, for the sake of a small beat (If WMDs were to be found, which was highly unlikely given the fact that no less than THREE weapons inspectors said there weren't any), she sold her soul, but also likely put herself and her paper in harm's way by being spoon-fed a different beat on Valerie Plame, with the same confidentiality agreement enforced!

The Times should have summarily fired her ass the moment they heard about this arrangement. No editor in his right mind would allow a reporter to have unfettered access to classified information fed to them by a government (and therefore highly suspect) source, without having someone available to fact check the information.

Or as Romenesko puts it:

In an era where the Bush Administration seeks to conceal mountains of government activity under various levels of security classification, why would any self-respecting news organization or individual journalist agree to become part of such a system? Readers would be right to question whether a reporter is operating under a security clearance and, by definition, withholding critical information. Does a newspaper not have the obligation to disclose to its readers when a reporter is not only embedded with a military unit but also officially proscribed in what she may report without running afoul of espionage laws? Was that ever done in Ms. Miller's articles from Iraq?

All this happens on top of the Jason Blair and Ricky Bragg scandals at the Times, so you'd think they'd be extra cautious about letting a reporter go "deep cover" like this, especially one who's journalistic integrity was suspect from the beginning.

My suspicion is Rove calculated this as a sure-fire way to score points. Even if Miller gets outted, the Times ends up with egg on its face and we all know how unloved the New York Times is in certain politicial circles for simply reporting facts.

Facts: such inconvenient things.

This, Eric Alterman at the Center For American Progress, sums up nicely the disgust we should all be feeling towards Miller:

(Washington) Post columnist David Ignatius explained in April 2004 that the media’s “own professionalism” was to blame for them dropping the ball on the phantom WMDs. The reasoning goes like this: “In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own.”

The “rules” to which Ignatius refers are nowhere written down, and I certainly don’t teach them to my journalism students, but he is not that far off in describing the mores of contemporary Washington journalism. The Times continues to stand by the misleading reporting of Judy Miller despite her amazing February 2004 contention in The New York Review of Books: “My job was not to collect information and analyze it independently as an intelligence agency; my job was to tell readers of the New York Times, as best as I could figure out, what people inside the government who had very high security clearances, who were not supposed to talk to me, were saying to one another about what they thought Iraq had and did not have in the area of weapons of mass destruction.”

Note that the reporter’s understanding of what is actually “true” appears nowhere in these descriptions of the meaning of journalistic professionalism. And that is one big reason this administration has been able to lie, repeatedly, with impunity, as it has led this nation down a path toward economic, political, and foreign policy catastrophe. It is hard to imagine that this reticence is what America’s founding fathers had in mind when they gave the press its privileged status in the very first amendment to the Constitution. But that, as Walter Cronkite used to say, is the way it is…

tags technorati : Top 50

Uh oh

Producer price surge biggest in 15 years

By Tim Ahmann
Reuters
Tuesday, October 18, 2005; 8:57 AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. producer prices shot up by an unexpectedly large 1.9 percent last month, the biggest gain in more than 15 years, as energy costs surged in the wake of hurricanes that devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, a government report showed on Tuesday.

However, outside of volatile food and energy costs, prices received by farms, factories and refineries were relatively restrained, advancing just 0.3 percent, the Labor Department said.


Prices for U.S. government bonds and stock futures fell, while the dollar strengthened, as the report kept alive concern in financial markets over inflation and interest-rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

Wall Street economists had expected producer prices to rise just 1.1 percent, with prices outside of food and energy up a tame 0.2 percent.

That's a real gain of 1.9% in the month of September, and is not annualized over a year. The annualized rate, based on September's inflation, is a 22.8% inflation rate.

And that's just at the producer level. You can expect the consumer price level to rise about 3-5% higher than that (meaning for September, it should come in just over 2%).

All this, ahead of the fourth quarter holiday shopping AND home heating season, it does not look good for several sectors of our economy. I expect we may see massive layoffs in several industries, and certainly some weakening in consumption and of course, home buying and equity borrowing.

In other words, we're on the brink of yet another recession in the Bush years.

Talk About Safe Sex!

That's one choked chicken!

The Daily Show Is Not Just Good TV, It's Good Spam!

============== Web Headlines ===================
From the Writers of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

EARTH: HOT OR NOT?

Arctic sea ice has shrunk 30% since 1978, and could disappear
altogether within a hundred years. NASA scientist Dr. Waleed Abdalati explains,
"The most recent estimates suggest that the last time we had an
ice-free arctic was millions of years ago." So when it comes to the skills
you'll need in the future, add "a decent breast stroke."

In the short term, this could actually be good news for fish lovers,
since the warmer arctic waters may wind up increasing the populations of
cod near the North Pole. And, as an added bonus, at the rate the planet
is going, if you like your cod boiled... well, pretty soon, you'll be
in for a real treat.

The warmer temperatures are, however, bad for polar bears, who may find
their habitats threatened. And the rising waters have already proved a
disaster in Santa's Workshop. Sadly, he chose to build in a coastal
area of the North Pole and to hire workers who were only two feet high.

This, by the way, is the most important report to come out of the
national snow and ice data center since their watershed 1978 report, "Don't
Eat the Yellow Snow."

Pensions, Health Care, and The Economy

I ran across this article on Bloomberg.com today:

GM Has Deal With Union to Cut Health-Care Costs, Posts Net Loss
Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp., the world's biggest automaker, said it agreed with the United Auto Workers on ways to reduce health-care expenses as it posted a fourth straight quarterly loss.

The net loss of $1.6 billion, or $2.89 a share, in the third quarter compared with net income a year earlier of $315 million, or 56 cents a share, Detroit-based GM said. The lure of employee- price discounts waned and the rising cost of fuel reduced demand for some of GM's most profitable models. The loss extends GM's longest unprofitable streak in 13 years

Any kind of deal on health care ``would be a significant milestone, as it would mark growing recognition by all constituents in the industry that the healthcare situation cannot persist indefinitely,'' Jonathan Steinmetz, an analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York, said in a note to investors on Oct. 14.

GM and the UAW have been negotiating for months on ways to lower GM's health-care bill. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner identified the issue as a source of ``crisis'' in January and made reducing those costs his primary goal for the year.

GM initially hoped to cut $20 billion from the $61 billion it estimates it will have to pay in coming decades to cover health care and life insurance for UAW workers, retirees and dependents. In an interview last week, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger described cuts that deep as untenable.

What bothered me about this?

Well, turns out that last night I was watching "NOW" on PBS-U (fine show, even finer network). Remember how Delta and Northwest Airlines both filed bankruptcies last month, citing the blooming pension liabilities it had to its retirees?

Well, Delta lost something on the order of $5billion last year. It's unfunded pension liability is around $10 billion.

Northwest came in around half that, as I recall.

GM has a $31 billion unfunded pension liability.

I'll try not to bore you with details of ERISA and how this could happen, suffice it to say that a little accounting magic, and what should have been a funded annuity to ensure that these payments could be made, was not.

And it will be up to the Federal Government (in the form of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation) to make good on these billions, possibly trillions of dollars of payments.

You see, thru the magic of the time-value of money, that $31 billion dollars is not what will have to be paid out. That's what GM would have to deposit now, right now, to make sure all the employees currently in the pension plan would receive the full amounts promised them. Likely, altho I don't have actuarial tables in front of me, and therefore I'm merely guessing, that $31 billion would probably double eveery ten years, and then slowly diminish as the last remaining employee covered by pensions dies off.

And that's presuming GM has switched to 401(k) plans, which are defined contribution (as opposed to a defined benefit plan, like a pension) plans. The unions may not have allowed that to happen.

So what does all this mean?

It means that, between the health care coverage and the pension defaults, corporations are reneging on the social contract they have with their employees: you give us a fair day's work, and we'll take care of you now, and when you retire.

Damnable thing is, corporations have an enormous advantage when it comes to this contract, and now they are starting to abuse that power.

tags technorati : Top 50

Did Anybody Doubt This Was Coming?

In our great crusade against all things Islamic...

U.S., Britain warn Iran over Iraq bomb attacks

LONDON (Reuters) - The United States and its chief ally Britain have warned Iran over its possible involvement in insurgent bomb attacks in Iraq, top officials said on Sunday.

Iran denies meddling in Iraq and says the accusations against it are psychological warfare tied to efforts by Washington and London to report Tehran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions over its nuclear program.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said this month there was evidence that Iran or its Lebanese Hizbollah allies were the source of sophisticated technology used in roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs), that have targeted British soldiers in southern Iraq.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday that Washington had warned Tehran over the issue.

"We have tried to deliver a message ... about this issue of IEDs in southern Iraq," Rice told reporters while in London for talks with Blair. "We have channels with which to do it. But we use them sternly and pretty specifically to deliver messages."

Having failed to obtain security through the subjugation of one, errrr, nexus of the Axis of Evil, we now turn our attention to the next one.

(Aside: Don't Axes have only two ends?)

Iran is slightly more sophisticated than Saddam, of course and a bit more interested in keeping its economy rolling.

But still...even if we pulled every troop out of Iraq and Afghanistan, who are we kidding? We are in no shape to start a war with Iran, especially since in this case, we could never be assured of the complicity of the rest of the Arabic world (which had never forgiven Saddam for invading Kuwait).

This is madness and must be stopped.

I think this one has to count as a *SNARK*

Courtesy of MediaMatters.org

CALLER: I just wanted to make a comment that you really, really, really have to watch what you are watching on TV. I have come upon evidence of homosexuality and lesbian people on programs like HGTV and Animal Planet, where you really don't expect this to be an issue.

WILDMON: Right. You're very perceptive, [caller], because that does happen, even in the most innocent of places. You have to watch out for children's programs today as well because they'll slip it in there as well.

Now, I've watched HGTV quite a bit (always looking for tips for fixing up and gardening around my home), and yea, there are a few programs that seem to have a number of "domestic partner" situations of the same sex.

So what? Gays and lesbians can't own homes together? They don't decorate? Suddenly we're going to assume that any design solution for them involves something that will infect the rest of Americans with some "gay virus" and we'll all end up non-breeding?

And ANIMAL PLANET? Ohmygod, a gay dog! I've always had suspicions about those damn Yorkies with their fluffy little pink bows, and my god, but that Chinese Crested! How, um, effeminate is that bitch?

Who the fuck ARE these idiots on the right?

I added a new favorite link to my blog....

Miss Poppy's Catalog

Gort42 Has More On Santorum

As a resident of Pennsylvania, his knowledge of Senator Caninophiliac is far better than mine.

I did not know about the whole "Terry Schiavo crisis" (scroll down the article) that Santorum concocted to get out of meeting with constituents. Didn't seem to damage his fundraising efforts tho...

The Election That WILL Change America Forever.

From the Newark-Star Ledger's John Farmer:

Bush credibility on line in Iraq vote

If the constitution is defeated, the president's claims of progress will look ridiculous

Friday, October 14, 2005

Wonder how we're really doing in Iraq? You'll know better after this weekend when Iraqis vote yes or no on their new draft constitution.

For months now, we've been asked to take on faith the Bush administration claim that things in Iraq are going according to plan, right on schedule. Never mind the accumulating American casualties and the inability to quell the suicide bombings or secure Iraq borders against the inflow of foreign jihadists. Even as U.S. troops and Iraqi security battalions suppress the insurgency in one place it erupts somewhere else.

Patience with the American effort is wearing thin in Iraq, with electricity and oil production still not back to where they were under Saddam Hussein and reconstruction efforts lagging. Patience here at home is fading as well, which may be even more important.

It seems likely that the Iraqi constitution will pass, the real question is how legitimately will the election prove out to be. The election for a new government back in January, while an indisputable victory for Bush (the master of low expectations, and of course, that's precisely what he set ahead of those elections), proved to be fleeting, as Iraqis still see daily bombings and insurgent attacks not on Americans, but on fellow Iraqis.

Add to that the insurmountable problems involved in the rebuilding and reconstruction efforts that Walker notes, and you can see that this election has a lot of hidden meaning to both the Iraqis and the administration.

For it's not just that the election will determine a constitution, but whether the rule of law will ultimately set roots in Iraq. No constitution can be upheld unless the basic laws that govern men can be respected.

I don't see that happening here, and so I suspect the strategy going forward will be to pass the constitution, declare our work done after a modest period of "adjustment", and get the hell out in time for the midterm elections.

I suspect the insurgents see this the same way. I suspect we'll see more blood after the constitution is passed than before.

Bush has wasted the political capital he earned in the legtimizing of his re-selection. He wasted the goodwill of the entire planet after 9-11. He wasted our budget surplus.

One day he will be gone. Sadly, the tragic legacy of American hegemony will not, and we will pay a dear price for it, as all empires have.

tags technorati : Top 50

Your Media In Action

UPDATE: Newsmax very quietly amended their original story from U2 "teaming up" with Santorum to a much more innocuous tale, still implying a connection between U2 and the Senator. FlipFlop!

Yesterday, Rick Santorum's office issued a press release disguised as a story in Newsmax.com, a thoroughly odious and disreputable organ (literally, a dick) for the right wing of this country, stating that Senator Santorum was going to throw a fundraising concert starring U2.

Fundraiser for Senator Rick Santorum at U2 Concert

On Sunday, October 16, a unique political event will take place.

At a concert of the legendary rock group U2, Senator Rick Santorum will hold a fund-raising event for one night only. (emphasis added)

The thousand-dollar-a-seat fund-raiser has been put together by Sean and Ana Wolfington, and it will take place at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia in support of Santorum's reelection.

U2 front man Bono is no stranger to Washington, D.C. He has come often to the nation's capital to network with politicians on behalf of his many causes.

Santorum met Bono earlier this year, having been introduced by John Kasich, the former congressman from Ohio and host of Fox News Channel's "Heartland."

At least, that's the conclusion one can draw from their article, if one is a thick-headed, dumb Republican hick who's education is limited to memorizing the NASCAR slate for the Talladega 500.

Cleverly worded to understand that the audience it's intended to reach has the IQ of a tree stump, and therefore won't read past the third graf of any article, Newsmax makes it appear that Bono is endorsing Santorum, a notorious caninophiliac.

Which includes Kyra Phillips of CNN, I should add, who was sucking at the teat of her dogfucking master, cooing about how cool it is that he got Bono to appear at his concert, only to have to swallow a load when it turned out, it wasn't a fundraiser.

Naturally, Bono and the organization this tour is supporting, DATA, were quick to issue an ambarassing response...

"It is not uncommon for politicians, from both parties, to organize events at all kinds of music concerts and other entertainment events. If any political fundraising events take place at a U2 concert, it is without the involvement or knowledge of Data, U2 or Bono. U2 concerts are categorically not fundraisers for any politician - they are rock concerts for U2 fans."

Flash ahead now to this morning's New York Post...

October 12, 2005 -- WASHINGTON — Forget the money tree. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is banking on the "Joshua Tree" being even better than the real thing.

Clinton is offering her closest fat-cat friends a chance to boogie down with her and Bono during U2's "Vertigo 2005" tour stop at Washington's MCI Center next Wednesday.

It doesn't cost all the riches, just $2,500 per person, according to an invitation obtained by The Post.

Seats are limited — there's room for only 18 high rollers to sit with the former first lady during the show, the invite says...

Once again, the right wing media trumps truth.

Mediamatters.org has a great article on the Santorum stuff which includes this comparison of the Newsmax article and on-air comments at CNN...

NewsMax
Teaming up with the legendary rock group U2 for a one-night only appearance will be Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.).

The thousand-dollar-a-seat concert has been put together by Sean and Ana Wolfington and will take place at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia in support of Santoum's re-election, reports NewsMax's James Hirsen.

CNN
PHILLIPS: Plus, why is U2's Bono teaming up with a conservative Republican senator?

[...]

VELSHI: He [Bono] and his legendary group U2 are set to perform in Philadelphia on Sunday at a $1,000-a-seat fund-raiser for Senator Rick Santorum's re-election campaign.

NewsMax
So what does the Irish rocker have in common with the conservative senator?

CNN
VELSHI: Now, you might ask what Bono has in common with the proudly conservative senator.

NewsMax
As in the case of Santorum, Bono's religious convictions inform his activities.

CNN
VELSHI: The organizer of the fund-raiser says both have strong religious convictions and are passionate in their beliefs.

tags technorati : Top 50

Evian Flu (thanks, Mudkitty!)

Referencing a story further down the blog, it appears this virus has reached Europe. Europe has quite a few pigs running around on farms. Pigs are the vehicle for the mutation of avian flu viruses into mammalian forms...

Deadly Asian bird flu reaches fringes of Europe
By Jeremy Smith

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A strain of bird flu that can be deadly for humans has spread from Asia to the fringes of Europe, the European Commission said on Thursday, warning countries to prepare for a potential pandemic.

EU Health and Consumer Protection chief Markos Kyprianou said a strain of bird flu found in Turkey had been identified as the same H5N1 virus that killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003 and forced the slaughter of millions of birds.

The European Union's executive was also assuming that bird flu found in Romania was the same virulent strain, he said, though further tests are needed to confirm this.

"The virus found in Turkey is avian flu H5N1 high pathogenic virus," he told a news conference. "It's true that scientists caution us and warn us that there will be a pandemic."

Experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a virus which spreads easily among humans, possibly killing millions of people.

Most frightening quote of this piece...

But scientists say the H5N1 strain is mutating toward a form that could pass between humans.

Now, the good news: it's possible that Tamiflu, while not a preventative, might alleviate and ameliorate the symptoms of this bug enough that people might not die.

See, this flu basically liquifies the tissues of the lungs, which obviously is what kills you, and while prevention and avoidance would be the key to remaining alive in a pandemic, stopping the effects of the bug once it's hit, while not as effective, should lower the death and lasting effects of the virus significantly.

Problem?

Well, two fold: one, Tamiflu is in short supply, although not as desperately short as any vaccine would be at this point, and two, avian flus are quite chimeric, and able to adapt and mutate very quickly.

They already have adapted and become immune to Amantadine (which is not a liqueur) as Asian farmers had long used Amandatine to inject birds in order to maintain agricultural production.

So Tamiflu for that reason alone is available only by prescription in most countries and is in short supply everywhere. Naturally, as the lone line of defense against the avian flu, governments are reluctant to let it be freely distributed (since the Amantadine fiasco would just happen all over again. Have to love free market capitalism!).

But here's the really eerie statistic on the avian flu, that sort of shoot major holes in the free market system:

Confirmed human cases of avian influenza from the H5N1 virus totaled 117 as Oct. 10, including the 60 deaths from the disease, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization. Included were 91 cases and 41 deaths in Vietnam, the country hit hardest by avian flu. The remaining cases were in Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia.

Lemme see...60 divided by 117...that's a mortality rate of 51.28%, in a reasonably small sample in a country where, although medical treatment is not nearly as advanced as most of the developed world, has been battling this disease now for two years, and the word has spread around quite a bit. We can presume that percentage is actually a bit down since the first deaths were reported.

So let's say a 40% mortality rate. The CDC reports that a typical flu outbreak infects anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of Americans (or 15 to 60 million Americans) each year. Of those, roughly 200,000 are sick enough to go to the hospital and 15% of them die.

But these are strains that have, or are mutations of strains that have been around for hundreds of years. Clearly, we're looking, on a conservative basis, at an infection rate of 40% (120,000,000), and at a 40% mortality rate, 48,000,000 deaths.

Conservatively!

And this during an administration that couldn't stop a few levees from killing thousands AND couldn't produce enough flu vaccine last year and had to outsource to England and Canda. We may be looking at 75,000,000 Americans dead this flu season.

Astounding.

Watch Out, John McCain!

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (also know as "Can we get away with a bigger lie?") has changed its name to something ominous for your Presidential run...

Write Your Own Caption!

A tip o' the captain's hat to Miss Cellania for finding this!

A Few Links With Your Eggs?

Miss Cellania is quickly becoming a must-see stop on my daily trips around the Internet.

Today, she has some wonderfully funny links that poke fun at our Fearless Leader, George Dumbya Bush...including this one:

Whitehouse.org

And she's a fox, too...

Dateline 2009: After 8 years of Bush environmental policies...

....hunting becomes an acceptable sport in the United States.

Avian Flu

"It could kill a billion people worldwide, make ghost towns out of parts of major cities, and there is not enough medicine to fight it," ABC News reports. It is the avian flu, and if it were to reach U.S. shores, the nation's top health experts say it "would make the scenes of Katrina pale in comparison." According to Shelley Hearne, director of the nonprofit Trust for America's Health, it "would be like having a Category 5 viral hurricane hit every single state simultaneously." Moreover, say U.S. and United Nations health experts, it is no longer a question of whether the avian flu pandemic will hit, but when, and how severely. "On behalf of the [World Health Organization], I can tell you that there will be" such an outbreak, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt said last week. "The only question is the virulence and rapidity of transmission from human to human." Unfortunately, notwithstanding the potential catastrophic impact of such a pandemic, nor the high likelihood of its spread, the Bush administration has left Americans dangerously unprepared for a deadly outbreak.

A DANGEROUS NEW STRAIN: Sixty-five people have been killed by the avian flu thus far. All were infected directly by birds, scientists say, though "every infected person represents one step closer to the tipping point," when the disease can be spread efficiently from human to human. "Right now in human beings, it kills 55 percent of the people it infects," says Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow on global health policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. "That makes it the most lethal flu we know of that has ever been on planet Earth affecting human beings." Each year, Garrett says, "different flus come, but your immune system says, 'Ah, I've seen that guy before. No problem. Crank out some antibodies, and I might not feel great for a couple of days, but I'll recover.'" Yet the current constellation has apparently never been seen in our species, so "absolutely nobody watching this has any natural immunity to this form of flu." Alarmingly, scientists announced on Thursday that the last massive flu pandemic in 1918 was "also a bird flu that jumped directly to humans." That strain of "Spanish flu" killed 50 million people worldwide.

KATRINA FAILURES DWARFED BY LACK OF PANDEMIC FLU PREPARATION: Last week, the New York Times published details of the Bush administration's draft plan to deal with a domestic pandemic flu outbreak. It shows "that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history." The plan details how a large outbreak originating in Asia would likely reach U.S. shores within "a few months or even weeks," and that if such an outbreak occurred, "hospitals would become overwhelmed, riots would engulf vaccination clinics, and even power and food would be in short supply." The draft's "conservative estimate" predicts as many as 200,000 Americans will die within a few months, and that a vaccine will not be available until half a year after the first outbreak, and then only in limited supply. "I imagine that not a lot of poor people will get vaccinated," Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations says. "If you think about New Orleans, this is a similar situation."

YET AGAIN, BUSH HAS LET U.S. FALL BEHIND REST OF WORLD: There is currently no vaccine to prevent the spread of avian flu, though there is one medicine to treat it. "Called Tamiflu, it is made by the Roche pharmaceutical company in Switzerland," and is now under huge demand. According to Secretary Leavitt, the objective is to stockpile 20 million doses of Tamiflu, though health experts believe the United States should optimally have enough doses for at least half the population, approximately 150 million people. Only 2 million are currently on hand. And though Leavitt claims that "no other country is in a better position," officials in Australia have 3.5 million doses, while Great Britain will soon have enough to cover a quarter of their population. The medicine is being made available on a first-come, first-served waiting list, and the United States is "nowhere near the top." When asked why the United States did not place its orders for Tamiflu sooner, Leavitt replied, "I can't answer that. I don't know the answer to that." Even Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) says the current Tamiflu stockpile could spell disaster. "That's totally inadequate. Totally inadequate today."

I may as well jump on this bandwagon, since I just got my (non-avian) flu shot this morning.

Well, *if* (and it's likely) this virus does make a pandemic leap to humans, it will be about as devastating on a global scale as the tsunami was in Southeast Asia.

Why?

Avian flus are usually far more devastating once they've made the leap over, as mammals (including humans) have not built up tolerances to the various mutations these viruses undergo.

The Council on Foreign Relations devoted its most recent issue of the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs, to what it called the coming global epidemic, a pandemic.

"Each year different flus come, but your immune system says, 'Ah, I've seen that guy before. No problem. Crank out some antibodies, and I might not feel great for a couple of days, but I'll recover,'" Garrett says. "Now what's scaring us is that this constellation of H number 5 and N number 1, to our knowledge, has never in history been in our species. So absolutely nobody watching this has any natural immunity to this form of flu."

Or, to quote Robert Webster of St. Jude's Children's Hospital, "'This virus right from scratch is probably the worst influenza virus, in terms of being highly pathogenic, that I've ever seen or worked with,' Webster says. Not only is it frighteningly lethal to chickens, which can die within hours of exposure, swollen and hemorrhaging, but it kills mammals from lab mice to tigers with similar efficiency. Here and there people have come down with it too, catching it from infected poultry. Half the known cases have died."

How does it make the leap from birds to humans?

Believe it or not: pigs. Pigs can carry both the type A virus (most avian flus) and type B virus (mammalian). Once the two strains meet, they can actually exchange DNA with each other (yes, this is called "sex").

And of course, in Southeast Asia, pigs and birds mingle with a frequency that would alarm any antimiscegenist!

So what's America's first line of defense? Is it as bad as former FEMA director, Michael Brown?

Uh huh.

POINT MAN FOR PANDEMIC FLU FEARED TO BE ANOTHER MICHAEL BROWN: If the avian flu does reach the United States, the HHS official overseeing the response will be Stewart Simonson, Michael Leavitt's assistant secretary for public health emergency preparedness. Simonson's resume is "disturbingly reminiscent" of that of disgraced former FEMA chief Michael Brown. Though Simonson is "now the point man for just about every health emergency that may hit our shores, ranging from anthrax attacks to an avian flu pandemic," he has no background in medicine, public health, or bioterrorism preparedness. His chief accomplishment seems to be his position from 1995-1999 as legal counsel to former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, who was tapped as President Bush's first Health and Human Services secretary. (Simonson reportedly specialized in "crime and prison policy" under Thompson.) A fact sheet released by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) notes that at a House Government Reform hearing on July 14, 2005, Simonson "claimed he had sufficient funds to purchase influenza vaccine and antiviral medication for the nation. The next day, his office submitted a funding request to Congress seeking an additional $150 million for flu vaccine and antiviral medication."

(emphasis added)

Or closing the barn door after the chickens have made the pig sick.

Why does Bush hate Americans so?

tags technorati : Top 50

Whining Little Bastards

Snow Urges China Action on Yuan
By HANS GREIMEL
Associated Press Writer

TOKYO - U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow on Tuesday urged China to adopt a more flexible, market-driven currency while applauding the recent upswing in Japan's economy.
Snow wrapped up a visit to Japan Tuesday before heading on to Shanghai. The trip comes amid ballooning American trade deficits and increased trade tensions with the two Asian export powers.

Chinese officials said the currency issue would be discussed during a visit to Beijing this week by Snow and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan - but they gave no sign Beijing would move faster in loosening its controls on the yuan.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan, speaking in a regular press briefing, urged the U.S. side to "heed fully the Chinese position on exchange-rate reform."

While in Tokyo, Snow applauded China's step to cut the yuan's link to the U.S. dollar but said more action is needed.

"We are anxious to see the Chinese fulfill the commitment they made to allow market forces to play a larger role in setting their currency's value over time," Snow said during a press conference at the U.S. Embassy. "They've gotten on the path that allows them to do so and we'd like to see China continue on that path."

In July, China halted its decade-long practice of pegging the yuan's value to the U.S. dollar, choosing instead to let the yuan trade in a narrow band against a basket of currencies of its major trading partners. At the same time, China raised the value of the yuan by 2.1 percent against the dollar.

But since then, the yuan has gained only about 0.3 percent against the dollar.

American manufacturers contend the yuan is now undervalued by as much as 40 percent, making Chinese goods cheaper in the United States and American products more expensive in China. U.S. manufacturers contend that is a major reason for the huge trade gap between the two nations.

So free trade is fine so long as it advantages us, but for another country to take advantage of its resources, not so good, huh?

The Poll Results

Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Pox News wins. Avery Davis, come claim your prize! Email me at the link in my Blogger Profile, and I'll arrange delivery.

You too, Nonny Mouse.

Coyote Ugly

ZURICH (Reuters) - The United States proposed on Monday deep cuts in farm subsidies and the future elimination of agricultural tariffs in a bid to unblock world trade talks and meet an end-year deadline for a deal.

When I was a bachelor hanging out in lockerrooms after playing football or basketball or hockey or baseball or darts, we had a saying where, if we woke up next to someone we met in a bar the night before that we had to do a double take on, we wouldn't say she was a fox, but a coyote.

Meaning she was so repulsive (could be physically, but usually it was personality-wise), we'd chew our arm off rather than wake her up and so have to talk to her.

I'm beginning to get the impression that the Bush administration is undergoing precisely the same "chew my foot off rather than stay shackled to these guys" feeling with the red state voters who they counted on to elect them twice.

First came the Roberts nomination. Next, Harriett Miers.

In both of those cases, Bush had yeoman work to soothe and assuage the red-meat conservatives who backed him. With Roberts, he could dangle the O'Connor seat. He does not have that option with Miers.

He's overspent his political capital, and now he intends to screw farmers, particularly larger corporate farmers, by taking away their pricing floor. Farmers in red states, mostly.

Writing in the Financial Times on Monday, (US Trade Representative Rob) Portman said the United States wanted steep tariff cuts during the next five years, starting from 55 percent up to 90 percent in the highest tariffs in rich countries.

In a second stage, tariffs should be reduced to zero, he said in an article.

Canada's international trade minister, Jim Peterson, welcomed the U.S. move as a potential way to break the WTO deadlock.

"The initiative by Mr. Portman is just what we needed," he told reporters in Zurich. We are encouraged by what we see, but we will wait to see the details," he said.

And for what?

Apparently, for the *promise* that other tariffs would come under negotiation.

Now, what industries is the US so lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of trade that it needs help getting its goods to market?

Although China is a WTO member, it already enjoys Most Favored Nation status, which means its markets are about as open as they're going to get. India, while not MFN, has been a WTO member since 1995. (Yea. World trade is even more mind-numbing than understanding the tax code.)

Look, I'm all for more trade with more countries, but something smells really fishy here when the Bushies are willing to dismantle farm subsidies, one of the few consistent pork barrell items that Senators and Congressmen can reliably bring home in small agricultural states.

The German Election Wraps Up

Merkel to be Germany's next chancellor

The question of who will lead Germany's next government appears to have been resolved. Sources from current Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats and Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats say an agreement has been reached that will make Merkel Germany's first woman chancellor. The deal is said to have been reached during Sunday evening's meeting between Schröder and Merkel in Berlin. They're meeting again this hour, along with SPD leader Franz Müntefering and Edmund Stoiber of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU. Both Schröder and Merkel claimed to have won a mandate to lead the country after last month's inconclusive election, in which the CDU won four more seats than the SPD.

Now, if you recall the 2000 US elections, the Democrat graciously conceded defeat to the fasc-- er, I mean, right winger and look what we have six years later.

Normally, in a situation such as this in Germany, one presumes that some tit-for-tat occurs, and that Schroeder would have gotten some concrete concessions (perhaps just a cover-all pardon? There's been some hanky panky in his government, probably no worse than any other government and CERTAINLY no worse than the corrupt crooks running the US now). Those concessions usually have to do with some power that the new Chancellor sets aside in the agreement. Think of it as a pork barrel agreement.

My instincts say, however, that Schroeder folded.

I wonder where Karl Rove has been these past few weeks?