only in missouri

where they compete for toothlessness with kentucky. from today's papers:

Beyond the war, death penalty news makes it to the NYT front, with Missouri officials unable to find an anesthesiologist willing to assist with executions. A federal judge had ordered the state to hire a board-certified anesthesiologist after the doctor who had been giving out the drugs for lethal injections said in a deposition that he, um, improvised in the process. Apparently, the state proposed the job to 298 anesthesiologists, and they all said no.

Maybe they could just stick with the same guy. Sure, he says his dyslexia has led him to mix up phone numbers and cable bill account numbers, and that "it's not unusual for me to make mistakes." But as the NYT points out: "He indicated in his testimony, however, that he had made no mistakes in his death chamber work and that the mistakes elsewhere were 'not medically crucial.'"

ahhh, so the army WAS in doctrinating the criminally inclined

A frontpage NYT piece profiles the GI now-accused of raping an Iraqi girl and killing her along with her family. He was a high school dropout with three misdemeanors and was accepted into the Army just as the military, desperate for recruits, began issuing more "moral waivers."

--today's papers

only in a bush world would rapists escape responsibility

There is a growing likelihood that no one will be indicted in the case of the teenage girl who was serially raped on an Israel Air Force base in the south, since the Military Police have failed to turn up any evidence that the servicemen who had sex with her knew she was under the age of consent.

Military Police unlikely to press charges in IAF teen rape case - Haaretz - Israel News

Blogged with Flock

Quote of the Day

. "The Iraq reconstruction is winding down," said an Army spokesman. "There is no need for new contracts to replace the existing" ones.
--attribution

you can tell where the republican senators are from

by taking a look at the potential terrorist target database.

pulled from today's papers

We're moving along in a positive direction in many, many areas," said the U.S military's top spokesman in Baghdad. Or, as Iraq's national security adviser put it to Al-Jazeera, "We are at the gates of civil war.

--source

it would piss me off too

this is the nazi military rumsfeld is building.

Andy Rowe thought he had life after the Army pretty well figured out before he came home from eight months in Afghanistan in November 2003.

An Army reservist since high school, Rowe, 27, planned to serve out the remaining four months of his military obligation in the inactive Reserve, get his honorable discharge and then use his GI Bill education benefits to go to college, just as his father did more than 30 years ago.

But Rowe soon realized that, despite his time in a combat zone, he didn't qualify for those education benefits unless he remained in the Reserves or Guard.

It's the same for tens of thousands of National Guard and Army Reserve troops mobilized since 9/11 — the largest deployment of reservists since World War II.

When military benefits were updated in 1984 through a law called the Montgomery GI Bill, members of Congress and even the military did not envision reservists being called into active duty as frequently as they are today. The law did not extend full college benefits to citizen soldiers and terminated them once they left the Guard or Reserve.

But since 2001, more than 500,000 reservists and Guard troops have been deployed for homeland security duties or sent to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet when they get home, they don't get the same benefits as those who were active-duty service members.

"Looking at how the Reserve forces are being used now, it really upset me," said Rowe, called up from the inactive Reserves to serve in Afghanistan.
--story

thank you george bush junior

Afghanistan is reverting to the Taliban. Iraq is beyond the point of no return. North Korea is acting with impunity. Iran controls its own destiny.

--TPM

when bush speaks of foreign policy, he largely imagines one.

Letter of the Day

I read the review of “The 10 Rules of Sam Walton: Success Secrets for Remarkable Results,” by Michael Bergdahl (“From Iowa to Wal-Mart, Sam Walton Lived by Rules,” June 26 book review) with great sardonic feeling.

Bergdahl wants us to admire Walton for his 10 rules, but Walton and his heirs basically fail in following his rule to “share success with those who have helped you.”

Walton’s legacy is to shift the burden of supporting society to middle-class taxpayers by paying millions of his employees and suppliers as little as possible and forcing tens of thousands of small businesses out of competition.

He coerced local governments to give him economic incentives and tax breaks. At the same time, he got taxpayers to relieve him of his obligation to pay a living wage so that so many of his employees wouldn’t have to go on welfare or public health care.

Compare Walton’s legacy of giving the great bulk of his $80 billion estate to only his small family, with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have pledged nearly $40 billion each (with more to come) for the health-care and education needs of the disadvantaged — the group Walton exploited.

Hurray for Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in setting an example of philanthropy totally different from the example set by the Walton family.
— George Thrailkill, Adel.

attribution

Letter of the Day

I thought “cut and run” was a description of the current administration: cut taxes while you run up a huge national debt.

— Stan Beyerman, Des Moines.

attribution