i didn't know this

The Post says inside that Pentagon officials seem to have lied to the 9/11 commission about whether fighter planes scrambled in time to chase any of the hijacked planes. (They didn't: The military didn't even know about Flight 93 until after it crashed.) Some commission staff members were so ticked off about the whole thing they wanted to refer it to the Justice Department for potential prosecutions. "We to this day don't know why [the military] told us what they told us," said the Republican chair of the commission. "It was just so far from the truth."

Letter Of The Day

It’s shocking that another taxpayer-funded director would get caught funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into his wallet. But, according to Clark Kauffman’s July 23 article, “Anti-Drug Charity Gave $315,732 to Its Boss,” that’s exactly what is happening.
Rock In Prevention (RIP), a taxpayer-funded, nonprofit organization, gave its director, Pat McManus, more than $315,000, $123,000 of which was salary; the remaining $192,000 McManus used to pay his own for-profit company for CDs produced for RIP last year.

RIP would be worth every penny — even the inflated salary — if it worked to keep kids off drugs. But a federal study more than five years ago failed to find any scientific data to back up RIP’s claims and also resulted in the federal funding being pulled from the organization.

Since then, the state has been the largest supporter of RIP. The largest private donor to RIP has been Don Lamberti, founder of Casey’s General Stores and father of state Senate Republican co-president Jeff Lamberti of Ankeny. It is no surprise that Lamberti pushed the state Legislature to give $600,000 to RIP. It is his father’s favorite charity.

Lamberti’s actions allowed RIP to avoid the usual state grant-application process — which likely would have provided the state with the information to make a more informed decision about its investment. Thirty-nine percent of the entire annual budget of Rock In Prevention was spent on one person. The Register knew this, why didn’t Lamberti?
— Ben Foecke, Des Moines.
attribution

it's magic i tell ya

HERE

ahhhhh, so now we know why rice left abruptly

Rice had been scheduled to travel on from Israel to Beirut, but after the bombing the Lebanese prime minister told her not to bother coming.

--source

the massacre of Qana

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called on Sunday for an international investigation into an Israeli air strike in the village of Qana that killed at least 40 Lebanese civilians, including 23 children.

--source

i hope what happened in Qana is investigated by the UN.

go figure

the timing of this just seems weird:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is abruptly breaking off her diplomatic mission in the Mideast and returning to Washington after Israel's deadly attack on a Lebanese village, a U.S. official said Sunday. Rice, who planned to head back to the United States on Monday morning, had hoped to leave the region after concrete progress on ending the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon. But her work was hampered severely by Israel's missile strike early Sunday that killed more than 50 people, including many children.

--source

and then this:

JERUSALEM, July 31 (Reuters) - Israel has agreed to suspend its aerial bombardment of southern Lebanon for 48 hours, starting immediately, to allow for an investigation into Sunday's bombing that killed 54 civilians, a U.S. State Department official said on Monday.

--source

what's going on?

my daily meds

1 bactrim
2 epivir
2 viramune
2 ziagen
3 neurontin
45 methadone
9 senna
1 zyprexa
1 xanax

talk about a mouthful, no wonder i run a blog called fields of poopy.

Quote of the Day

"Clearly, the Republican Party is the party of common sense. After all, if you give a few hundred dollars a month to the poorest of the working poor, it's only fair that you also give several million dollars to the richest of the idle rich."

--Kevin Drumm

on the bill that saw a miniscule increase in the minimum wage that also included estate tax cuts

remember the nazis did this in the 1930's

FRANKFORT, Ky. — A field representative for Gov. Ernie Fletcher said in a memo to him in May 2004 that the replacement of Democrats in state civil service jobs was progressing, according to documents filed by prosecutors yesterday.

"Constituents are ready to fill vacant merit positions and replace Democrats in both merit and non-merit positions," according to the report to Fletcher that Attorney General Greg Stumbo filed yesterday in Franklin District Court.

--story

extrication by party affiliation. nazi-ness has arrived.

from the "well DUH" files

Unable to agree on major lobbying and ethics legislation, Senate and House leaders have made plans to adopt vastly scaled-back versions of the measures as part of their rules so that lawmakers can claim that they responded to recent congressional scandals.

Congress promised fast action on lobbying reforms in January, but the two chambers cannot agree over a number of provisions, including one in the House bill that would rein in independent organizations that have spent millions of dollars, mostly on behalf of Democrats, to sway federal elections. House Republicans are insisting that the groups, nicknamed 527s, be curtailed, but Democratic senators and a handful of Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose the change as part of the lobbying bill.

--story

like we don't need arabic linguists

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. - A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified.

Bleu Copas, 30, told The Associated Press he is gay, but said he was "outed" by a stream of anonymous e-mails to his superiors in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C.

"I knew the policy going in," Copas said in an interview on the campus of East Tennessee State University, where he is pursuing a master's degree in counseling and working as a student adviser. "I knew it was going to be difficult."

An eight-month Army investigation culminated in Copas' honorable discharge on Jan. 30 — less than four years after he enlisted, he said, out of a post-Sept. 11 sense of duty to his country.

Copas now carries the discharge papers, which mention his awards and citations, so he can document his military service for prospective employers. But the papers also give the reason for his dismissal.

He plans to appeal to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.

--source

the latest numbers

RACE AR-GOV	POLL Rasmussen	DATE July 27	RESULTS Beebe (D) 47%, Huchinson (R) 40%
CT-GOV	Rasmussen	July 27	Rell (R) 56%, Malloy (D) 31%
CT-GOV	Rasmussen	July 27	Rell (R) 54%, DeStefano (D)32%
VA-05	Survey USA	July 27	Goode (R) 59%, Weed (D) 35%
MI-GOV	EPIC-MRA	July 27	Granholm 47%, DeVos 44%
VA-SEN	Zogby (tel.)	July 27	Allen 47%, Webb 37%
VA-SEN	Zogby (int.)	July 27	Allen 52%, Webb 41%
Congress	NPR	July 27	Incumbents 29%, Challengers 46%
Congress	NYT/CBS	July 26	Democrats 45%, GOP 35%
Congress	WSJ/NBC	July 26	Democrats 48%, GOP 38%
Congress	NYT/CBS	July 26	Approve 28%, Disapprove 58%
Bush	NYT/CBS	July 26	Approve 36%, Disapprove 55%
MI-SEN	Str. Vision (R)	July 26	Stabenow 53%, Butler 33%
MI-SEN	Str. Vision (R)	July 26	Stabenow 52%, Bouchard 36%
MI-SEN	Str. Vision (R)	July 26	Bouchard 43%, Butler 37%
MI-GOV	Str. Vision (R)	July 26	DeVos 48%, Granholm 44%
Nation	WSJ/ABC	July 26	Right direction 27%, Wrong track 60%
Congress	WSJ/ABC	July 26	Approve 25%, Disapprove 60%
Bush	WSJ/ABC	July 26	Approve 39%, Disapprove 56%
NV-GOV	HRA (D)	July 26	GOP Prim: Gibbons 36%, Beers 28%, Hunt 14%
NV-GOV	HRA (D)	July 26	Dem Primary: Titus 42%, Gibson 29%
Bush	ARG	July 26	Approve 35%, Disapprove 59%
FL-SEN	Miami Herald	July 26	Nelson (D) 57%, Harris (R) 29%
FL-GOV	Quinnipiac	July 26	Dem Primary: Davis 47%, Smith 19%
FL-GOV	Quinnipiac	July 26	GOP Primary: Crist 55%, Gallagher 32%
KY-04	SurveyUSA	July 25	Lucas (D) 50%, Davis (R) 41%
AZ-SEN	Rocky Mountain	July 25	Kyl (R) 45%, Pederson (D) 27%

--thanks to TPM

Quote of the Day

"Many left-wing bloggers are struggling to survive financially and would love to begin earning salaries as political operatives. "

--source

this is something very disturbing

Lebanon is investigating reports from doctors that Israel has used weapons in its 15-day-old bombardment of southern Lebanon that have caused wounds they have never seen before.

"We are sending off samples tomorrow, but we have no confirmation yet that illegal weapons have been used," Health Minister Mohammed Khalife said.

The Israeli army said it had used only conventional weapons and ammunition in attacks aimed at Hizbollah guerrillas and nothing contravening international law.

Blackened bodies have been showing up at hospitals in southern Lebanon two weeks into the war between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas that has seen at least 418 people, mostly civilians, killed in Lebanon and at least 42 Israelis.

--source

if, and i mean IF, israel is so dumb as to be using chemical weapons, then i hope the hague war crimes tribunal will get involved and prosecute those responsible to the fullest extent possible.

FARPOINT.FACTOID

Since DHS was created in 2003, there have been "significant overcharges, wasteful spending or mismanagement" on contracts worth a total of $34 billion.

--SOURCE

FEMA getting the job done?

BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. — For nearly a year now, the ubiquitous FEMA trailer has sheltered tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. But there is growing concern that even as it staved off the elements, it was exposing its inhabitants to a toxic gas that could pose both immediate and long-term health risks.

The gas is formaldehyde, the airborne form of a chemical used in a wide variety of products, including composite wood and plywood panels in the thousands of travel trailers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency purchased after Katrina to house hurricane victims. It also is considered a human carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

--MSNBC

USA today ...

... flags an in-house poll of Americans showing most respondents blaming Hezbollah for the fighting, but half also said Israel's response has "gone too far." Two-thirds said the White House doesn't have a clear Mideast policy.

--source

taking a page out of the west wing playbook?

BEIRUT, July 24 -- On an unannounced trip to ravaged Beirut, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice outlined a plan Monday to deploy an international force, possibly led by NATO, in a buffer zone just inside Lebanon for 60 to 90 days, after which it would expand its mission to help the Lebanese army regain control of the south, Lebanese and U.S. officials said.

--source
and it didn't end good for then, did it?

ahhhh SO

the ABA says bush is a "threat to the Constitution and to the rule of law" in his signing statements.

--story

pulling on the reigns of george bush jr.

much needed reigns. i hope that with the control of congress changing this fall, that we finally get to see some congressional guts and pull at the reigns on george bush's presidency.

George W. Bush did not invent the document known as the presidential signing statement; he inherited it. Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, and even James Monroe, in 1830, authored the statements, which spell out the president's sometimes controversial interpretation of the very law he's signing. But no president has used signing statements quite like Bush. Although the president has not issued more statements in total than any other president, he has challenged more than 750 laws in more than 100 signing statements.

And he has used them to, in effect, challenge parts of laws, and challenge them more aggressively, than any president before him. Bush's liberal use of those statements first attracted attention in December 2005, when he signed a torture ban—but then added a statement reserving the right not to enforce the ban, alongside his signature. Since then, Congress has held a hearing to investigate Bush's use of the statements, a bipartisan advocacy group has condemned their use, and Democratic Rep. Barney Frank has introduced a bill that would allow Congress to override content in them that contradicts signed legislation.Now, U.S. News has learned, an American Bar Association task force is set to suggest even stronger action. In a report to be released Monday, the task force will recommend that Congress pass legislation providing for some sort of judicial review of the signing statements. Some task force members want to simply give Congress the right to sue over the signing statements; other task force members will not characterize what sort of judicial review might ultimately emerge.

--source

the "well DUH" Story of the Day

Republican lawmakers losing positive tone on course of war

story HERE

imagine if iran was doing what the U.S. did?

from today's papers:

The NYT off-leads news that the U.S. is expediting a shipment of bombs to Israel, authorized as part of a 2005 arms package. Israel requested the precision-guided bombs a few days ago; an anonymous U.S. official says that weapons were rushed because of Israel's ally status.

the bush administration would be hypocrites to denounce iran if they shipped arms to hezbollah.

something to laugh about

HERE

wanna see what israwl is doing to beirut?

HERE

of 1,002 U.S. adults surveyed

With midterm elections less than four months away, the poll also asked respondents whether they would choose a Democratic or Republican candidate "if the election for Congress were held today." Forty-four percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the Democratic candidate, up from 41% in April, while 31% said they would vote for the Republican candidate, down from 37% in April.

from eschaton

what's up with tv tonite?

all three networks, and even fox, have contest shows on. i dont like watching amateurs. especially amateurs who got paid handsomely. i'm almost sure they all got paid. stands to reason they would have gotten paid. but the line up is certainly nothing i want to watch.

why this administration will never be able to get out of war

from today's papers:

The NYT and LAT front, and the Post stuffs, the latest from Iraq, where the U.N. announced about 100 civilians were killed per day last month, a much higher rate than earlier in the year. The U.N. got the numbers for the Iraqi health ministry and Baghdad's morgue. Nearly 60 people died yesterday when a suicide bomber hit day laborers in Kufa, a Shiite holy city. The bomb exploded across the street from cleric Moqtada Sadr's main mosque.

The LAT's conclusion: "IN IRAQ, CIVIL WAR ALL BUT DECLARED."

Or as visiting Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told the NYT while hanging in the Green Zone, "The situation seems far more stable than when I was here two or three years ago. The security seems better, people are more relaxed."

how do you define fascism?

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors Americans' international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.

The department's Office of Professional Responsibility announced earlier this year it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some telephone calls and e-mail without court approval.

At the time, the office said it could not obtain security clearance to examine the classified program.

Under sharp questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that Bush would not grant the access needed to allow the probe to move forward.

--story

the TPM grand ole docket

keeping tabs on the court cases of criminals related to GOP shenanigans.

HERE

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

article of the day

josh marshall, of TPM, hits the nail on the head with this one:

Describing those held at Guantanamo as "detainees" or "enemy combatants" is not accurate.

The Supreme Court's Hamdan decision declared them to be prisoners of war, entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, until such time as a properly constituted tribunal concludes otherwise. The thrust of the Court's decision was that the military commissions set up by the Administration did not include the basic procedural safeguards necessary to qualify as a properly constituted tribunal.

As a matter of law now, the United States is holding prisoners of war at Guatanamo Bay. That's a fact, which is obscured when journalists continue to use language first put forth by the Administration specifically to avoid the strictures of the Geneva Conventions.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_07_02.php#008968

all things poop

here

this is why i hate the bush administration

The NYT fronts an interview with a man—a fundamentalist Muslim—who was taken off the streets of Tanzania three years ago and "rendered" to a secret U.S. jail in Afghanistan where he says guards "suspended me by my arms and attached my feet to the floor. They beat me and threw cold water on me, spat at me and sometimes gave me dirty water to drink." He was held at a "dark prison" and his recollections jibe with what of others who've been held there. "The American man told me I would die there," he said. Sixteen months after he was taken he was released without charges or an explanation.

--today's papers for the links

Letter of the Day

President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are hell-bent on doing any darn thing they please at any time for any purpose they specify.

They just sit back and gleefully watch U.S. citizens squirm at the fast erosion of our constitutional liberties because they are convinced we will swallow their hollow reasoning that everything they do is done because they are protecting us from terrorists.

My 80 years of personal freedoms are sinking fast into some secret black hole dug by you know who — and it isn’t the terrorists.
— Robert B. Sanderson, West Des Moines.

attribution

Letter of the WeeQ

Last year in the United States, heart disease caused 696,947 deaths, cancer 557,271, tobacco 435,000, medical errors 250,000, alcohol 85,000, air pollution 60,000, firearms 29,000 and terrorists 0.

You are in more danger from lightning, sharks, mosquitoes or falling airplane parts than from terrorists. For any significant terrorism in the United States, you have to go back to 9/11.

Terrorism is being used as a boogie man by the far right to scare people into giving up their constitutional rights and freedom. There was no al-Qaida in Iraq before the war. Even now, according to the Pentagon, only 5 percent of the resistance in Iraq are foreign jihadists.

That means 95 percent of the resistance consists of Iraqi citizens who feel they are fighting to expel a foreign invader. How can President George Bush claim that his war is to bring freedom when the current U.S. government provides aid to about 43 dictatorships worldwide, including Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 terrorists originated?
— Jay Miller, Hills.

attribution

Letter of the Day

from the young contributors board on the des moines register:

One has to wonder what offended the Bush administration so much about the recent report on efforts to track the financing of terrorists.

The administration has been clear that they are correctly trying to disrupt the financial activities of terrorists.

It would take a terrorist with a very limited view of American competence to assume the federal government is not monitoring certain financial transactions.

Meanwhile, the Brussels-based banking consortium assisting in the program, Swift, shows no sign of withdrawing its cooperation. Upon consideration, one almost has to wonder what "offends" the vice president so much.

It seems the administration is so used to embarrassing leaks, such as secret prisons in Eastern Europe or domestic eavesdropping without a warrant, that it is uncomfortable with a leak that shows some degree of competence.
— Zach Steele, Iowa City

110ne17.jpg

110ne17.jpg,
originally uploaded by leQ.

my house after it was painted.

the poop machine

HERE

what is :LEQ?

The TASA Standard defines trailer volume (and the upper volume limit) with a with a number that is derived using a measurement technique called: "LEQ(m)."

says so right here.

110NE17

110NE17,
originally uploaded by leQ.

before the paint job.

stuff to make you vomit

The incoming Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., was awarded an $18.7 million cash bonus for half a year of work as the chief executive of the Goldman Sachs Group, the company said yesterday.

--source