Tag: Bush

This is not going to end well for CBS

Seth Anderson0 comment

Dan Rather’s lawsuit against his former employers, CBS News, for firing him because of discussion over George W. Bush’s lack of National Guard service is continuing.

One Eye to Rule Them

The New York Times reports:

Dan Rather won significant victories Tuesday in his suit against his former network, CBS. He won access to more than 3,000 documents that his lawyer said were expected to reveal evidence that CBS had tried to influence the outcome of a panel that investigated his much-debated “60 Minutes” report about former President George W. Bush’s military record.

Mr. Rather also won an appeal to restore a fraud charge against CBS that had been dismissed. Martin Gold, the lawyer representing the former anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” called it “a very successful day for us; we got everything.”

Mr. Rather called it a “good day” for his side and — referring to the name for the CBS headquarters — “a bad day for Black Rock.”

[Click to continue reading Rather Wins a Round in Lawsuit Against CBS – NYTimes.com]

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters adds:

You’ll recall that late last year we learned, via Rather’s lawsuit, that internal memos indicated that CBS when first facing the right-wing firestorm over its 60 Minutes report about Bush’s National Guard years, considered appointing Matt Drudge to sit on an “independent” fact-finding board to investigate the scandal. (A board which Bush refused to answers questions about his Guard service from.)

In fact, we learned that CBS was in full panic mode and was willing to take whatever step necessary to placate the right-wing fanatics frothing about Memogate. The picture painted by the CBS memos and documents already reviewed by Rather suggest a craven news organization that was less interested in uncovering the truth about the disputed memos, and more interested in appeasing Rush Limbaugh. It wanted to “mollify the right,” as one internal CBS memo put it.

As I said, my guess is that with Rather and his lawyers about to dive into a new batch of documents, that portrait will only become more vivid.

And here’s the kicker for the former Tiffany Network: Rather has vowed to never settle the case out of court.

[Click to continue reading This is not going to end well for CBS | Media Matters for America]

Like I’ve said1 before, I wish Dan Rather well in this lawsuit, and not just because he once lived in the same apartment as me2. The shrill right-wingers who seemingly control CBS should be deported, at the least.

Footnotes:
  1. in those URLs above, and probably in others I’m too lazy to find right now [↩]
  2. at different times obviously, an apartment located on Rio Grande near West Martin Luther King Boulevard, near UT-Austin campus, according to my landlord at the time. [↩]

Rumsfeld the Manipulator

Seth Anderson0 comment

Donald Rumsfeld was never a pious man, but, evil as he is, Rummy realized the easy way to manipulate George Bush was simply to cite biblical verse. So Rummy did. Bush considered himself some sort of medieval Crusador, so slurped up the rhetoric, and asked for more.

Two Sides to Every Midnight Tale

This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. The piece is not the work of a partisan but the Texan journalist Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain,” the 2007 Bush biography that had the blessing (and cooperation) of the former president and his top brass. It draws on interviews with more than a dozen high-level Bush loyalists.

Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy.

[Click to read more Frank Rich – Obama Can’t Turn the Page on Bush – NYTimes.com]

Getchyer Kitschhere

Like this one:

dated April 3, 2003, two weeks into the invasion, just as Shock and Awe hit its first potholes. Two days earlier, on April 1, a panicky Pentagon had begun spreading its hyped, fictional account of the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch to distract from troubling news of setbacks. On April 2, Gen. Joseph Hoar, the commander in chief of the United States Central Command from 1991-94, had declared on the Times Op-Ed page that Rumsfeld had sent too few troops to Iraq. And so the Worldwide Intelligence Update for April 3 bullied Bush with Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Including, as it happened, into a quagmire.)

What’s up with that? As Draper writes, Rumsfeld is not known for ostentatious displays of piety. He was cynically playing the religious angle to seduce and manipulate a president who frequently quoted the Bible. But the secretary’s actions were not just oily; he was also taking a risk with national security. If these official daily collages of Crusade-like messaging and war imagery had been leaked, they would have reinforced the Muslim world’s apocalyptic fear that America was waging a religious war. As one alarmed Pentagon hand told Draper, the fallout “would be as bad as Abu Ghraib.”

Cynical, and evil.

Reading Around on May 11th through May 12th

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A few interesting links collected May 11th through May 12th:

  • Du laisser-faire à la loi : ce que font les autres pays pour lutter contre le piratage – Politique – Le Monde.fr – French newspaper Le Monde republished a photo of mine. Wonder what the article is about?
    FlickR/swanksalot
    Les eurodéputés ont pris le contre-pied du projet de loi français en confirmant, mercredi 6 mai, leur opposition à toute coupure de l'accès internet décidée par une autorité administrative.
  • Jesse Ventura: You Give Me a Water Board, Dick Cheney and One Hour, and I'll Have Him Confess to the Sharon Tate Murders | Video Cafe – I'm bothered over Guantanamo because it seems we have created our own Hanoi Hilton. We can live with that? I have a problem. I will criticize President Obama on this level; it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law. (KING: You were a Navy SEAL.)
    That's right. I was water boarded, so I know — at SERE School, Survival Escape Resistance Evasion. It was a required school you had to go to prior to going into the combat zone, which in my era was Vietnam. All of us had to go there. We were all, in essence — every one of us was water boarded. It is torture.

    It's drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning. It is no good, because you — I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.

  • Burning and Dodging with Adjustment Layers – "Burning & Dodging With Adjustment Layers And Masks"

    a useful little tutorial

Reading Around on May 8th through May 11th

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A few interesting links collected May 8th through May 11th:

  • TidBITS Opinion: SFMOMA’s ArtScope Offers New Way To Browse Museum Collections – “The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s ArtScope is a great example of an innovative approach to bringing a museum’s collection to the Web. ArtScope is a visual browsing tool comprised of a thumbnail grid displaying 3,500 works from the SFMOMA’s permanent collection. The grid is zoomable, displaying a lens which can be moved over it to magnify certain areas, enabling users to view hundreds of artworks simultaneously, or just one at a time in close detail.”
  • Death Star & Star Wars Spacecraft Fly Around San Francisco – If you haven’t already seen this…

    “Speaking of great Star Wars videos, Michael Horn made this absolutely amazing video on Current featuring the Death Star and various Star Wars spacecraft flying around San Francisco during Imperial Fleet Week”

  • The Official George W. Bush Presidential Librarium – Completion of the George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas may be stalled indefinitely, due to an apparent lack of funding, public support, and basic legality. Make no mistake, the public’s desire to endlessly relive Bush’s greatest achievements may go unanswered for years to come—and his legacy remain (like America) in limbo.

    All hope is not lost. We at Origen & Golan Architects are proud to unveil the plans for the George W. Bush Presidential Librarium! Themed attractions provide more entertainment than a library, and more accurately represent Bush’s remarkable legacy—start by exploring The Stax, Supreme Food Court, Book BBQ, and the ever-popular Golden Parachutes. We ask for your support in promoting the Librarium among your colleagues. We cannot blink.

Amazon’s top 100 Jazz albums of all time

Stanford A Drug Informer and Bush Ally

Seth Anderson0 comment

Somehow the allegation that an 2006 SEC investigation into Sir Allen Stanford was dropped at the request of the Bush Administration because Stanford was too well connected, and a drug informant, does not surprise me. Rules are different for the very rich, no matter how they got their money. The Bush team was always more interested in loyalty than law-abiding anyway, and Stanford, being a fifth generation Texan, was a Bush Ranger1.

Sir Allen Stanford, who is accused of bank fraud, is the subject of an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama.

Sources told Panorama that if he was a paid anti-drug agency informer, that could explain why a 2006 probe into his financial dealings was quietly dropped.

…

On 17 February of this year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Sir Allen of running a multi-billion dollar Ponzi fraud – when cash from new depositors is used to pay dividends to old depositors – civil charges he has denied.

Two and a half months after the SEC filing, the Texan has not yet faced criminal charges.

He was initially investigated by the SEC for running a possible Ponzi fraud in the summer of 2006, but by the winter of that year the inquiry was stopped.

Panorama understands that the decision was taken because of a request by another government agency.

Panorama is aware of strong evidence that Sir Allen was a confidential agent of the DEA as far back as 1999 – the year he made out the $3.1m cheque to the DEA.

[From BBC NEWS | UK | Stanford drug informer role claim]

Stanford got his knighthood from Antigua and Barbuda, yet insists upon being called Sir Allen, by the way. A bit of a douche-bag, in other words.

Among several framed certificates hung on a wall is one with the gold seal of Antigua and Barbuda pronouncing Stanford Knight Commander, which allowed him to use the title Sir Allen Stanford, and a letter on White House stationery dated Jan. 25, 2006, signed by then-President George W. Bush.

If I’m not mistaken2, when Bush the Smarter3 was in the CIA, there were allegations of CIA drug smuggling, using the body bags of American GIs returning from Southeast Asia. Also using various drug lords in the Golden Triangle as fronts to pay various military operations supported by the US. Wonder if that’s how Stanford and Bush met?

Footnotes:
  1. I’m assuming [↩]
  2. too lazy to look right now [↩]
  3. aka George Herbert Walker Bush [↩]

Waterboarding is Torture part the 99th

Seth Anderson0 comment

In Dan Froomkin’s roundup of torture news, he points to this op-ed by Joseph Margulies:

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Joseph Margulies, a lawyer representing detainee Abu Zubaydah, reminds us “that there was a human being strapped to that board. His name is Zayn al Abidin Mohamed Hussein, known to the world as Abu Zubaydah….

“They tormented a clerk….[and] Abu Zubaydah paid with his mind….

“Today, he suffers blinding headaches and has permanent brain damage. He has an excruciating sensitivity to sounds, hearing what others do not. The slightest noise drives him nearly insane. In the last two years alone, he has experienced about 200 seizures.

“But physical pain is a passing thing. The enduring torment is the taunting reminder that darkness encroaches. Already, he cannot picture his mother’s face or recall his father’s name. Gradually, his past, like his future, eludes him.”

[From White House Watch – Torture Watch ]

Take Your Stand

More disgusting details from Mr. Margulies:

First, they beat [Abu Zubaydah]. As authorized by the Justice Department and confirmed by the Red Cross, they wrapped a collar around his neck and smashed him over and over against a wall. They forced his body into a tiny, pitch-dark box and left him for hours. They stripped him naked and suspended him from hooks in the ceiling. They kept him awake for days.

And they strapped him to an inverted board and poured water over his covered nose and mouth to “produce the sensation of suffocation and incipient panic.” Eighty-three times. I leave it to others to debate whether we should call this torture. I am content with the self-evident truth that it was wrong.

Second, his treatment was motivated by the bane of our post-9/11 world: rotten intel. The beat him because they believed he was evil. Not long after his arrest, President Bush described him as “one of the top three leaders” in Al Qaeda and “Al Qaeda’s chief of operations.” In fact, the CIA brass at Langley, Va., ordered his interrogators to keep at it long after the latter warned that he had been wrung dry.

But Abu Zubaydah, we now understand, was nothing like what the president believed. He was never Al Qaeda. The journalist Ron Suskind was the first to ask the right questions. In his 2006 book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” he described Abu Zubaydah as a minor logistics man, a travel agent.

Later and more detailed reporting in the Washington Post, quoting Justice Department officials, said he provided “above-ground support. … To make him the mastermind of anything is ridiculous.” More recently, the New York Times, relying on current and former intelligence officers, said the initial assessment was “highly inflated” and reflected “a profound misunderstanding” of Abu Zubaydah. Far from a leader, he was “a personnel clerk.”

I don’t care if the agents on the ground were just following orders from the lawless Bush Adminstration, they should be prosecuted for war crimes too. Torture is torture, and I am sickened and dismayed reading how agents of my government abused other humans in my name.

Torture planning began in 2001

Seth Anderson0 comment

and then, there is this factoid, as noted by Mark Benjamin

No Masturbation Jokes

The Senate Armed Services Committee has just released an exhaustive review of torture under the Bush administration that, among other revelations, torpedoes the notion that the administration only chose torture as a last resort. Bush officials have long argued that they turned to coercive interrogations in 2002 only after captured al-Qaida suspects wouldn’t talk, but the report shows the administration set the wheels in motion soon after 9/11. The Bush White House began planning for torture in December 2001, set up a program to develop the interrogation techniques by the next month, and the military and the CIA began training interrogators in coercive practices in early 2002, before they had any high-value al-Qaida suspects or any trouble eliciting information from detainees.

As the report puts it, “The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.” The report undercuts the Obama administration’s case for leniency against the CIA, since the agency was pursuing abusive techniques even before Department of Justice lawyers had issued their supposed legal justification for the techniques in August 2002. The report also shows that the administration appears to have attempted to use the abusive techniques to shore up its case for war in Iraq. Interrogators employed the techniques, which are notorious for producing bad intelligence, to get detainees to make statements linking Iraq and al-Qaida.

[From Torture planning began in 2001, Senate report reveals | Salon News]

(my emphasis)

Torture first, then torture the law until it allows you to justify torture. Fucking sadists.

Torture is an actionable crime

swanksalot0 comment

Dan Froomkin emphasizes the point that despite Bush administration claims to contrary, no terrorist plots were foiled by torturing anyone.

Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the Bush administration’s argument for torture.

That’s why Sunday’s front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists.

Finn and Warrick reported that “not a single significant plot was foiled” as a result of Zubaida’s brutal treatment — and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions “triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms.”

Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction of the White House. Then he was President George W. Bush’s Exhibit A in defense of the “enhanced interrogation” procedures that constituted torture. And he continues to be held up as a justification for torture by its most ardent defenders.

But as author Ron Suskind reported almost three years ago — and as The Post now confirms — almost all the key assertions the Bush administration made about Zubaida were wrong.

Zubaida wasn’t a major al Qaeda figure. He wasn’t holding back critical information. His torture didn’t produce valuable intelligence — and it certainly didn’t save lives.

[Click to continue reading White House Watch – Bush’s Torture Rationale Debunked ]

In a just world, thugs like John Yoo, Albert Gonzales, Douglas J. Feith and Dick Cheney would do hard time in a federal prison. Instead, Rethuglicans are chuckling to themselves at their golf junkets.

Call Anywhere - TRI-X 400

and you gotta love this assertion:

While the officials named in the complaint have not addressed these specific accusations, Mr. Yoo defended his work in an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal on March 7, warning that the Obama administration risked harming national security if it punished lawyers like himself.

“If the administration chooses to seriously pursue those officials who were charged with preparing for the unthinkable, today’s intelligence and military officials will no doubt hesitate to fully prepare for those contingencies in the future,” Mr. Yoo wrote.

[click to continue reading Spanish Court Weighs Inquiry on Torture for 6 Bush-Era Officials – NYTimes.com]

In other words, “you sure have a nice democracy here, would hate to see anything happen to it, kid.” / faux mafia voice.

Reading Around on February 16th through February 17th

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A few interesting links collected February 16th through February 17th:

  • Kotori Magazine – The Master of Low Expectations: 666 Reasons Sentient Citizens are Still Celebrating the Long Overdue Departure of George W. Bush – 666 Reasons Sentient Citizens are Still Celebrating the Long Overdue Departure of George W. Bush

  • Talking Points Memo | Study Harder – In the late 1930s, of course, Great Britain didn’t have a Labour government with a principled Tory minority. It had conservative Tory government with a Labour minority. And Churchill was on the outs with both, although on some fronts he was beginning to make common cause with some Labourites on his key issue, which was foreign policy. When Churchill eventually came to power it was in a national coalition government for the purposes of fighting the war. And when he eventually went to the voters as head of the Tory party toward the end of the war they got crushed by Labour in a landslide.

    I say all this as a big Churchill fan. But, I mean, not only is Eric Cantor no Winston Churchill, I’m not even sure he’s read a book about Winston Churchill.

Reading Around on February 15th

swanksalot1 Comment

Some additional reading February 15th from 09:57 to 21:10:

  • Having It Both Ways: Republicans Take Credit for ‘Pork’ – In Stimulus Bill They Opposed | Crooks and Liars – Rep. John Mica was gushing after the House of Representatives voted Friday to pass the big stimulus plan.

    “I applaud President Obama’s recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future,” the Florida Republican beamed in a press release.

    Yet Mica had just joined every other GOP House member in voting against the $787.2 billion economic recovery plan.

  • Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.” – Facebook’s terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore.

    Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

  • Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Michael Isikoff: Yoo Disbarment Proceedings Now Visible on the Horizon – Torture Report Could Be Trouble For Bush Lawyers: An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials. H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department’s ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos “was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys.” According to two knowledgeable sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials—Jay Bybee and John Yoo—as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said.
  • Gutless Wonders: Specter Admits GOP’s Political Calculus On Stimulus Bill | Crooks and Liars – DCCC head Chris Van Hollen puts it into perspective (if only the media would actually frame it this way):

    “Americans will hold House Republicans accountable for just saying no to saving and creating three to four million jobs and the largest tax cut in American history.

    “House Republicans are fast becoming party of No-bama. Americans will hold Republicans accountable for being the party of no – no to President Obama’s economic recovery, no to children’s health care, and no to equal pay for women doing equal work.”

  • Talking Points Memo | The Big Disconnect – But there’s a very big problem with this strategy above and beyond the absurdity of the argument. “Congress” may be really unpopular. And the Democrats now control Congress. But politics is a zero sum game. At the end of the day, in almost every case, you’ve got to pick a Republican or a Democrat when you vote. And if you look at the numbers, congressional Democrats are pretty popular. And congressional Republicans are extremely unpopular. If you look at the number, the Dems are at about 50% or higher in most recent polls, while the GOP is down in the 30s.

    The city remains wired for the GOP. Not that it’s done them a great deal of good of late. But it remains a key part of understanding every part of what is happening today.

  • Google Jumps Into Organizing Smart Meter Energy Data « Earth2Tech – “Just as Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt hinted over the past few months, Google is moving from managing the world’s information to managing your personal energy data. On Monday night Google tells us it is developing an online tool called “PowerMeter” that will allow users to monitor their home energy consumption. For now Google is testing the web-based software with Google employees, but the search engine giant is looking to partner with utilities and smart energy device makers and will eventually roll out the tool to consumers.”
  • Energy Information – “Google PowerMeter, now in prototype, will receive information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provide anyone who signs up access to her home electricity consumption right on her iGoogle homepage. The graph below shows how someone could use this information to figure out how much energy is used by different household activites.”

    Oooh, I want one of these so-called smartmeters

  • MyDD :: The Beltway Games Don’t Really Matter – “Perhaps more than ever, there is a real divide between what the chattering class inside the Beltway is saying and what the people of this country are saying. We saw the beginnings of this during the campaign, when despite the fact that John McCain was deemed to be winning the news cycles — indeed, his campaign seemed to care more about winning “Hardball” than it did about reaching 270 electoral votes — Barack Obama nevertheless continued to lead in the polls, both nationwide and in the key states. Now we’re seeing it again, as the establishment media focuses on the less meaningful back and forth while at the same time overlooking the larger picture being grasped by the public — that is that President Obama is succeeding, in terms of both moving forward his policy agenda and bringing two-thirds of the country along with him in his effort.”

Reading Around on January 31st

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Some additional reading January 31st from 08:49 to 22:46:

  • When I was seventeen, it was a very good year – Cristgau usually has tastes similar to mine, 1984 was no exception (though at the time, there was a lot more thrash metal on my playlist; I hadn’t discovered mind-and-ear expanding drugs yet). Plus I only turned 17 in 1986.

  • Harper’s Index: A retrospective of the Bush era (Harper’s Magazine) – Percentage of the amendments in the Bill of Rights that are violated by the USA PATRIOT Act, according to the ACLU: 50

    Minimum number of laws that Bush signing statements have exempted his administration from following: 1,069
    …
    Number of vehicles in the motorcade that transports Bush to his regular bike ride in Maryland: 6

    Estimated total miles he has ridden his bike as president: 5,400

    Portion of his presidency he has spent at or en route to vacation spots: 1/3

Reading Around on January 26th

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Some additional reading January 26th from 10:22 to 22:31:

  • The Washington Monthly – This Explains a Lot– “On the one hand, the Bush administration released some detainees who apparently turned out to be pretty dangerous. On the other, the Bush administration refused to release other detainees who weren’t dangerous at all, and were actually U.S. allies.How could this happen? In light of these revelations about the lack of files, it starts to make a lot more sense.But to put this in an even larger context, consider just how big a mess Bush has left for Obama here. The previous administration a) tortured detainees, making it harder to prosecute dangerous terrorists; b) released bad guys while detaining good guys; and c) neglected to keep comprehensive files on possible terrorists who’ve been in U.S. custody for several years. As if the fiasco at Gitmo weren’t hard enough to clean up.”
  • The three primary roles your local website should play | yelvington.com– “Journalists tend to gravitate to only one of these roles: the town crier, the quaint colonial-era village character who walks around ringing a bell telling you what’s happening. It comes naturally. This is why 24×7 coverage teams and the “continuous news desk” concept take root so quickly when newsrooms suddenly awaken to the urgency of taking the Internet seriously.
  • But the other roles aren’t secondary. They’re coequal, and they’re grossly neglected by most local news websites.Moreover, they consistently surface in qualitative research as poorly met needs. The language people use is a little different, but recognizable: “Help me connect with people.” “Help me get answers I need.” “Help me find people like me.” “Help me pursue my interests.”
  • drop.io: simple private file sharing, free internet file sharing – Hmm, seems useful
    “Use drop.io to create drops and privately share your files by web, email, phone, fax, and more. Drops are protected from search engines so you can conveniently share what you want, how you want, with whom you want.”
  • Undercover Black Man: Bad news for David Milch fans– “Now I hear that HBO has pulled the plug on Milch’s latest project, a New York City cop drama set in the 1970s called “Last of the Ninth.”They filmed a pilot episode… with British actor Ray Winstone (pictured) as one of the leads. Evidently HBO was not digging it.That’s a show I wanted to see. Since the ’90s, Milch has talked about creating a series based on Bill Clark’s early career in the NYPD.

    Clark spent two years undercover as a white radical. He hung out with Black Panthers (including Tupac’s mama).”

  • Food Is A Weapon
  • Mirror, Mirror on the Wall – Errol Morris Blog – NYTimes.com– Awesome! “Photographs make this somewhat more difficult. They are a partial record of who we were and how we imagined ourselves. …The traveling pool of press photographers that follows presidents includes representatives from three wire services — AP (The Associated Press), AFP (Agence France-Presse) and Thomson Reuters. During the last week of the Bush administration, I asked the head photo editors of these news services — Vincent Amalvy (AFP), Santiago Lyon (AP) and Jim Bourg (Reuters) — to pick the photographs of the president that they believe captured the character of the man and of his administration. …. It is interesting that these pictures are different. They may be of the same scene, but they have different content. They speak in a different way.(The photos are reproduced here with their original captions, unedited.)”
  • Tijuana Bibles– “If you are offended by depictions of sodomy, bestiality, “alternative sexual practices,” racial and ethnic stereotypes, or just about anything else, you should leave now.Tijuana Bibles were pornographic tracts popular in America before the advent of mass-market full-color glossy wank-fodder such as Playboy. A typical bible consisted of eight stapled comic-strip frames portraying characters and celebrities (eg. John Dillinger, Popeye, Disney characters) in wildly sodomistic situations. Many could be considered grossly racist, sexist, and otherwise wholly “politically incorrect.” Browser discretion is advised.”

Parting Gift to Oil Companies

Seth Anderson0 comment

Speaking of last minute jabs to the eye, Bush has a parting gift to his buddies at Exxon and elsewhere

Strapped On

The Bush administration, in one of its final acts, is proposing to let oil companies drill for oil and natural gas in half a dozen areas of the outer continental shelf that had been previously been off limits to drilling, a move that will reopen the debate over offshore drilling for President-elect Barack Obama.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the director of the federal agency that manages the nation’s offshore oil and gas reserves said his agency would formally open a 60-day public comment period Friday on whether to allow leasing for oil and natural gas in all of some portion of 12 areas of the shelf, including four areas off Alaska, two off the Pacific coast, three areas in the Gulf of Mexico and three more along the Atlantic coast.

Six of the sites — those located off California, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and along the Atlantic seaboard — had previously been off limits to development under a quarter-century old federal moratorium that congressional Democrats allowed to expire last fall amid intense voter anger over high gas prices.

While none of the sales would occur before 2011, the proposal puts some pressure on Mr. Obama’s administration to decide what additional areas of the outer continental shelf, if any, should be open to oil and gas production

[From Bush Administration Proposes Letting Oil Companies Drill Offshore – WSJ.com]

There’s not even a joke appropriate for these clowns

FDA: Quality is job number 2

Seth Anderson0 comment

Quality Meats

Bush’s servants in the FDA gave the public one last jab in the eye: ignoring the wishes of the citizens in regards to labeling food.

Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, today said that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) blatantly ignored consumers’ right to choose what they eat after the FDA announced that it will not require labeling on meat or fish from genetically engineered animals.

The Bush administration, which is in charge of the FDA for just two more working days, today announced Final Guidance on Regulation of Genetically Engineered Animals. The FDA Guidance states that FDA will require such animals to go through a mandatory safety approval process, a decision Consumers Union supports. However FDA will not require any labeling.

A recent Consumers Union poll found that 95 percent of consumers favor labeling of meat and milk from genetically engineered animals.

Genetically engineered animals may contain genetic material from entirely different species, even humans. For example, last week an FDA advisory committee reviewed the safety of a goat engineered with human genes so that it would produce a human blood thinner in the goat’s milk. “This animal is intended for use in drug production, but what if FDA found that it is also safe for use as food? Without labeling, consumers would have no way to know this meat was in their butcher shop,” said Michael Hansen, PhD, a senior scientist at Consumers Union. Products under development for supermarket distribution include pork where mouse genes have been put into pigs to help them metabolize phosphorous more efficiently, and salmon that has been engineered with genes from other fish to make them grow twice as fast as normal.

…

Halloran said, “This one-minute-to-midnight regulation is a final favor to industry delivered as the current FDA Administrator goes out the door.” FDA Commissioner Von Eschenbach’s resignation is effective January 20. “We hope the new Obama administration will reverse this ill-considered guidance and require labeling of genetically engineered meat and milk products as soon as possible after it takes office next week.”

[From FDA: No labeling of genetically engineered food]

If genetic modification is so great, why not label the items proudly? Why hide the facts? The obvious reason is that forcing truth-in-packaging would be the death sentence to frankenfoods.

Forest Service To Allow Destruction of Pristine Land

Seth Anderson0 comment

Yayy, more asphalt, less trees. Oh well, Obama can reverse this policy after the inauguration and all the trees will miraculously return, pushing through the paved roads, regenerating from their stumps.

Rain Forest Path - Alaska

The Bush administration appears poised to push through a change in U.S. Forest Service agreements that would make it far easier for mountain forests to be converted to housing subdivisions.

Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who heads the Forest Service, last week signaled his intent to formalize the controversial change before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. As a candidate, Obama campaigned against the measure in Montana, where local governments have complained of being blindsided by Rey’s negotiating the policy shift behind closed doors with the nation’s largest private landowner.

The shift is technical but has large implications. It would allow Plum Creek Timber to pave roads through Forest Service land. For decades, such roads were little more than trails used by logging trucks to reach timber stands.

[From Forest Service Is Set to Allow the Paving of Logging Roads, Aiding Developer – washingtonpost.com]

Assholes. Destroying hunting and fishing land can’t make Western Republicans very happy either.

Obama sharply criticized Rey’s efforts during the presidential campaign, seizing on concerns that a landscape dotted with luxury homes would be less hospitable to Montanans accustomed to easy access to timberlands.

“At a time when Montana’s sportsmen are finding it increasingly hard to access lands, it is outrageous that the Bush administration would exacerbate the problem by encouraging prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off,” Obama said.