$1 billion: Down the Drain.
Charges of fraud in Iraq contracts U.S. authority lost track of millions, auditor reports

A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars' worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general.

The report also says that U.S. civilian authorities in Iraq failed to keep good track of nearly $1 billion in Iraqi money spent for reconstruction projects and can't produce records to show whether they got some services and products they paid for.

Don't Have a Job? Try Prozac.
Bush campaigner's Prozac solution

A campaign worker for President Bush said Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones — or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.

"Why don’t they get new jobs if they’re unhappy — or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

Wal-Mart Invaded by Thong Wearing ...Men?
The AP has some breaking news. Two men were arrested for walking through a Wal-Mart wearing thongs. The report adds that authorities will not prosecute them as the two were "triple dog dared" by a friend which makes the whole incident very understandable. Come on, they were "triple dog dared". No respectable man backs away from a "triple dog dare"

Simpsons to reveal gay character

A character from The Simpsons is to be revealed as gay, sparking a mystery among fans over who it will be.
"We have a show where, to raise money, Springfield legalises gay marriage," producer Al Jean told fans at a comic book convention.

The article speculates that it might be Smithers but that might be too obvious. Not Flanders. Too many things seem to happen to him. The last time they did this his wife passed away. Not Patty and Selma (Homer's sisters-in-law). Just doesn't seem funny.
hhuuummm!! Who could it be?

Federal Court OKs Ban on Sale of Sex Toys

A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a 1998 Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys in the state, ruling the Constitution doesn't include a right to sexual privacy.

In a 2-1 decision overturning a lower court, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (news - web sites) said the state has a right to police the sale of devices that can be sexually stimulating.

In a related but never reported story, Alabama bans zucchinis, cucumbers or any vegetable/device that can be used as a sex toy. Remember, the state can police the sale of devices that can be sexually stimulating. No sexual privacy in this state.

Ali G/Borat Interview Broadwater
Over at One Good Move, a hilarious clip of Borat interviewing and campaigning with James Broadwater who is a candidate for Congress in Mississipi's 2nd Congressional District.

Check it out....and remember if you don't choose Jesus, you will go to hell. According to James Broadwater anyway.

July Surprise
In an earlier post, I had talked about a report in the New Republic claiming that the Bush administration was pressurizing the Pakistanis to arrest or kill a high level Al Qaeda leader during the Democratic National Convention.

And voila...CNN reports that the Pakistani security forces have captured a high-level Al Qaeda operative. The captured operative, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, is said to be involved in the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings.

Rev. Al Sharpton Steals the Show
Holy Cow! If you missed Al Sharpton's speech last night you owe it to yourself to listen (He starts at about 1 hour into the segment) to it. It was amazing. One of the best speeches so far. What was most refreshing about the speech was that he attacked Bush directly. It's going to be hard for Kerry to top Obama, Edwards and now Al Sharpton.

The promise of America is that government does not seek to regulate your behavior in the bedroom, but to guarantee your right to provide food in the kitchen.

...snip..snip...

Mr. President, you said that we have more leverage if both parties got our vote. But we didn't come this far playing political games. It was those that earned our votes that got our votes. We got the civil rights act under a democrat. We got the voting rights act under democrats. We got the right to organize, under democrats. (applause) Mr. President, the reason we are fighting so hard, the reason we took Florida so seriously. is our right to vote wasn't gained because of our age. Our vote was soaked in the blood of martyrs, soaked in the blood of good men. Soaked in the blood four little girls in Birmingham. This vote is sacred to us. This vote can't be bargained away. This vote can't be given away. (applause) (applause)

UPDATE: NYTimes transcript of Al Sharpton's speech

Iraq sets up committee to impose restrictions on news reporting

Iyad Allawi, Iraq's prime minister, has established a media committee to impose restrictions on print and broadcast media, a government official announced yesterday. The step underlines an aggressive new attitude towards press freedoms, in spite of US efforts to nurture independent media.


Ibrahim Janabi, appointed to head the new Higher Media Commission, told the FT the restrictions - known as "red lines" - had yet to be finalised, but would include unwarranted criticism of the prime minister. He singled out last Friday's sermon by Moqtada al-Sadr, a firebrand Shia cleric, who mocked Mr Allawi as America's "tail".

Outlets that broadcast the sermon could be banned, he said.

...snip..snip...

Noting that al-Jazeera broadcast part of Mr Sadr's anti-Allawi sermon, he [Ibrahim Janabi] warned: "If they do it again, we will give them two weeks to correct the policy, and after that we will tell them sorry we need to close your office."

Get Ready for Florida 2004
Florida officials: Some voting records wiped out

A computer crash erased detailed records from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines, raising again the specter of election troubles in Florida, where the new technology was supposed to put an end to such problems.

The crashes occurred in May and November of 2003, erasing information from the September 2002 gubernatorial primaries and other elections, elections officials said Tuesday.

The malfunction was made public after the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a citizen's group, requested all data from the 2002 gubernatorial primary between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride.

Abu Ghraib, Whitewashed

week ago, John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was satisfied that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was keeping his promise to leave no stone unturned to investigate the atrocities of Abu Ghraib prison. A newly released report by the Army's inspector general shows that Mr. Rumsfeld's team may be turning over stones, but it's not looking under them.

The authors of this 300-page whitewash say they found no "systemic" problem - even though there were 94 documented cases of prisoner abuse, including some 40 deaths, 20 of them homicides; even though only four prisons of the 16 they visited had copies of the Geneva Conventions; even though Abu Ghraib was a cesspool with one shower for every 50 inmates; even though the military police were improperly involved in interrogations; even though young people plucked from civilian life were sent to guard prisoners - 50,000 of them in all - with no training.

Never mind any of that. The report pins most of the blame on those depressingly familiar culprits, a few soldiers who behaved badly. It does grudgingly concede that "in some cases, abuse was accompanied by leadership failure at the tactical level," but the report absolves anyone of rank, in keeping with the investigation's spirit. The inspector general's staff did not dig into the abuse cases, but merely listed them. It based its findings on the comical observation that "commanders, leaders and soldiers treated detainees humanely" while investigators from the Pentagon were watching. And it made no attempt to find out who had authorized threatening prisoners with dogs and sexually humiliating hooded men, to name two American practices the Red Cross found to be common. The inspector general's see-no-evil team simply said it couldn't find those "approach techniques" in the Army field manual.

[Emphasis added]

Homeland Security officer charged in tourist beating

A Homeland Security inspector was charged Friday with violating a Chinese tourist's civil rights following an altercation that left the innocent woman's eyes nearly swollen shut and bumps and bruises on her face and head.

The incident occurred late Wednesday at the Rainbow Bridge on the U.S.-Canadian border in Niagara Falls, after Customs and Border Protection officers confiscated marijuana from a male pedestrian.

Officer Robert Rhodes, mistakenly believing the Chinese woman standing nearby was involved, allegedly sprayed her with pepper spray, threw her against a wall, kneed her in the head as she knelt on the ground and struck her head on the ground while holding her hair, according to witnesses.

Via EastSouthWestNorth. He also has some pictures. Feeling safe lately?

Richard Clarke on the 9/11 Commission Report
Honorable Commission, Toothless Report

Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.

Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own. )

What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.

A Monkey Aping Humans?
A young monkey, Natasha, who is a 5 year old macaque has started walking on her hind legs only.

In totally unrelated news, we here in the US, have had a chimp who has been walking on hind hind legs for the last 4, maybe more years. He can now even run but falls off his bike every now and then.

Right Wing Squares
From Media Matters for America. Check it out, its funny.

Eric Alterman Has Similar Comments
In an earlier post I had mentioned that in my opinion Nader was the second GOP ticket on the ballot (at least in Michigan). Over at Altercation, Eric Alterman makes similar remarks and talks of illegal contribution made by Citizens for a Sound Economy to the Nader campaign.
PS: I'm sure we're not the only people who feel this way.

Republican Ex-EPA Chief Criticizes Bush

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - The head of the Environmental Protection Agency for two Republican presidents criticized President Bush's record on Monday, calling it a ``polluter protection'' policy.

Russell E. Train, who headed the EPA from September 1973 to January 1977 - part of the Nixon and Ford administrations - said Bush's record on the environment was so dismal that he would cast his vote for Democrat John Kerry.

"It's almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection," Train said. "I find this deeply disturbing."

Abu Ghraib Abuse Update
In an earlier post, I had blogged about Sy Hersh's speech at the ACLU convention. He said that he had seen a video of a boy being sodomised by US soldiers. BoingBoing has more on those claims. There are also links to documents (Taguba Report) on WAPO website containing sworn testimony from prisoners who claim to have witnessed the abuse.

Two GOP Candidates for President: Bush and Nader.
Over at The Whiskey Bar, Billmon talks about how the Michigan GOP is helping Nader get on the ballot.

I'm all for third party candidates but only as long as they get on the ballot by their own merit. The GOP simply wants him to run because Nader supporters will never vote for Bush in the event that Nader is not on the ballot. There should be laws against this.

Oops
Oops! Did we say Iraq, coz we totally meant Iran.

No Bush Or Dick for Uber Neo-Conservative Fukuyama

Famous academic Francis Fukuyama, one of the founding fathers of the neo-conservative movement that underlies the policies of US President George W. Bush's administration, said on July 13 that he would not vote for the incumbent in the November 2 US Presidential election.

In addition to distancing himself from the current administration, Fukuyama told TIME magazine that his old friend, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should resign.

...snip..snip...

Fukuyama opposed the war.

Fukuyama is still angry at the Bush administration since they refuse to admit to the mistakes they have made. Fukuyama had warned that after the war, Iraq would be dragged into an internal conflict and would export terror to the world.

Iyad Allawi Executed Six Suspected Insurgents
Journalist Paul McGeough says that he interviewed 2 credible witnesses who claim to have witnessed Allawi executing 6 insurgents at the Al-Amariyah complex in Baghdad.

These are indeed very serious allegations. Paul McGeough seems to be a credible journalist who was awarded The Walkley Award for his coverage of the Iraq war last year. Here is a transcript of an interview on ABC. No, not American Broadcasting Corporation but Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A story like this has no legs in US media especially since the witnesses claimed that there were US security personnel present during the incident. Even more surprising was John Negroponte's emailed response...

If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed.

I guess he is right to say that these are rumors before they get proven to be true but when it comes to such serious allegation the US should definitely investigate. Also, this incident is reported to have happened before the hand-over of power to the interim government.

Update: WashingtonTimes has the same story.

Abu Ghraib Abuse Update
Seymour Hersh spoke at the ACLU convention last week. He said that the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at the prison in Iraq. He has seen them and said that the worst was the sound of boys shrieking. He believes that a massive coverup is underway of war crimes for which the government is responsible.
You can watch the convention here. Seymour Hersh begins speaking at about 1hr 8mins.

via The Poor Man. He has more.

Its amazing how the media hasn't said anything about this speech (delivered last week). Maybe they are just tired of Hersh hinting in the direction of more abuses but not presenting any facts or proof? I think it might be time for Hersh to put together all he knows. What is he waiting for?

Constitutional Amendment Barring Same-sex Marriages Blocked

So the good news is that the FMA was blocked today but the bad news is that it lost by just 12 votes. How long before these crazy right wingers get their way? Hopefully never.

I oppose any bill/amendment/law that bans same-sex marriage or even for that matter polygamous marriages, the kind that the mormons used to practice. As long as the people in the relationship are consenting adults, I don't think it's anyone's business.

Whenever I talk about this, people on the other side always say "Well what's next? Marriage between animals and people?". Not really, dumb-ass is my usual answer. We're talking consenting adults not livestock. Here's an interesting, hilarious piece by Jay Bookman related to the beastiality argument used by conservatives.

The next argument is usually that there are civil unions, why encroach upon marriage? The way I look at it, there is marriage as defined by a religion and then there is marriage as defined by the state. The are totally separate. Just because the state legalizes gay marriage it does not mean your Roman Catholic Church is going to have to start marrying gay people. Marriage, as defined by the state, has many benefit such as emergency room visit, etc. Calling it something else, like civil union, just isn't acceptable. Equal but different isn't really equal.

Faux News Memos
Wonkette has a whole bunch of memos from Faux News. Check em out. What a bunch of ass-holes!

Update: Thinking about this later I realized how one really doesn't need these memos or to watch Outfoxed to tell you how Unfair and Unbalanced Faux News really is. Just watch them for a few hours and any sane person would realize that they lean way right.

Republican-Led House Defeats Effort to Curb Patriot Act

The Republican-led House bowed to a White House veto threat Thursday and stood by the USA Patriot Act, defeating an effort to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that helps the government investigate people's reading habits.

The effort to defy Bush and bridle the law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. The amendment appeared on its way to victory as the roll call's normal 15-minute time limit expired, but GOP leaders kept the vote open for about 20 more minutes as they persuaded about 10 Republicans who initially supported the provision to change their votes.

"Shame, shame, shame," Democrats chanted as the minutes passed and votes were switched. The tactic was reminiscent of last year's House passage of the Medicare overhaul measure, when GOP leaders held the vote open for an extra three hours until they got the votes they needed.

These guys are just plain old thugs taking Democracy for a ride.

Bush Under Pressure
George Bush walked away from a media briefing after refusing to answer questions about Enron and the indictment of CEO Ken Lay who was a close adviser and biggest fund raiser for Bush and his father.

If questions about Kenny Boy can rattle Bush, you begin to understand how incompetent this guy really is. Remember the 7 minutes during the 9-11 attacks that he just sat the reading a book with school children while America was under attack?

UPDATE: And check out the Bush-Lay letter at the Smoking Gun. (via Ara Rubyan). There are 8 letter that show correspondence between the two on a first name basis. Not sure how The Smoking Gun got access to them or if they are authentic.

Falluja Pullout Left Haven of Insurgents, Officials Say
The New York Times is finally reporting that the state of affairs in Falluja aren't as rosey as some will have you believe. The NY Times is little late as this was reported by many news organizations way back in May.

Here are a few bullet points

• Falluja is now a safe haven for terrorists and insurgents
• We will have to go in at some point to achieve some semblance of stability in Iraq
• The Falluja brigade, made of Bathists and insurgents, has had no effect on the insurgency in Falluja
• According to the agreement, the US troops can't even return fire when insurgent fire mortars and rockets at them. The only action that they can and have been able to take is dropping huge bombs into a heavily populated areas. 4 so far. Their effects are questionable.
• The decision to leave Falluja was made entirely by civilian leaders probably after the bad media publicity of civilian and US military casualties.
• The mujahedeen shura is now in control of the city according to Abu Karim Barias, the governor of Anbar Province, which includes Falluja

Not such a success story after all.

Crying Wolf Once Too Often
Homeland security chief, Tom Ridge, said today that the Al Qaeda was moving forward with their plans to carry out a large scale attack on US soil. But there was no new specific intelligence and the color coded threat level, currently at yellow (or was it lavender), will remain the same.

I can't speak for anyone else but these terror warnings have no effect on me anymore. This is probably the umpteenth time that they have warned us about an eminent attack. And the most stupid bit is the fact that they tell people to look out for suspicious activity. They expect untrained, inexperienced people to look out for suspicious activity. What exactly is suspicious activity? A middle eastern looking man walking on your street? A bearded guy reading an article about how devious the Bush administration really is?

July Surprise
The New Republic article claims that the Bush administration is pressurizing the Pakistanis to either arrest or kill a top Al-qaeda leader in time for the July Democratic convention. If true, this only adds to stack of despicable actions by the Bush administration. Here's an excerpt...

This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said.

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections." (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Bush, AIDS and the Christian Right

The new CDC regulations, published in the Federal Register, are mandatory for any AIDS-fighting organization that receives federal money for HIV prevention, and they finish the job of gutting effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education that has been a goal of the Bush Administration since it took office. Far from trying to "learn" from the Ugandans, the regs demand that any sex-ed "content" include information on the "lack of effectiveness of condom use." In other words, the Bush Administration wants AIDS-fighting organizations to tell people: Condoms don't work. At the same time, the regs mandate the teaching of the failed policy of abstinence from sex until (heterosexual) marriage.

...snip..snip...

The CDC is the federal government's single funder of HIV-prevention work; its current head, Julie Gerberding, is a Bush appointee, named by Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. The new CDC regulations meticulously define the "content" they censor as including "pamphlets, brochures, fliers, curricula," "audiovisual materials" and "pictorials (for example, posters and similar educational materials using photographs, slides, drawings or paintings)," as well as "advertising" and web-based info. They not only mandate teaching about condoms' purported "lack of effectiveness," they require all such "content" to eliminate anything even vaguely "sexually suggestive" or that might be interpreted as "obscene." That would, for example, forbid teaching how to use a condom correctly by putting it on a dildo--or even on a cucumber.

These people are totally on crack. In today's world abstinence programs aren't realistic at all. Imagine all the sex kids today watch on TV and in movies. Then they have some old fart telling them that abstinence is the only way to prevent HIV and pregnancy (which is wrong by the way). Condoms are 98% safe if used properly. But now kids aren't even going to learn how to use the darn things.
I think, the people at the CDC need to put down their bibles and approach this issue more realistically.

Major Harry Schmidt Gets Slapped on the Wrist...
Major Harry Schmidt was fined $5,672 for the incident on 17 April 2002 when he dropped laser guided bombs on Canadian troops while they were on a training mission. 4 Canadian troops were killed and 8 wounded in the incident and he gets away with just a fine and a reprimand. The reprimand, written by Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, has some strong words but only raises the question that why weren't criminal charges pursed. Here's an excerpt...

In your personal presentation before me on 1 July 2004, I was astounded that you portrayed yourself as a victim of the disciplinary process without expressing heartfelt remorse over the deaths and injuries you caused to the members of the Canadian Forces. In fact, you were obviously angry that the United States Air Force had dared to question your actions during the 17 April 2002 tragedy. Far from providing any defense for your actions, the written materials you presented to me at the hearing only served to illustrate the degree to which you lacked flight discipline as a wingman of COFFEE Flight on 17 April 2002.

Read the reprimand. He should have at least been charged with negligent homicide.

Cheney and His Lies
9-11 commission yesterday said that it had access to the same information as did Cheney regarding the ties between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. The 9-11 commission had said that Iraq and Al-Qaeda did not have a collaborative relationship. The very next day Cheney said that he thought there was a relationship between Iraq and Al-Qaeda and when asked if he had information that the commission had not seen, he said "probably".
And we all remember the most famous quote from Cheney about the alleged meeting between Atta and the Iraqi intelligence officer

We have never been able to confirm that, nor have we been able to knock it down

So why don't we just invade Iraq and put the lives of thousands of American soldiers and Iraqis at risk.
Conclusion: The Bush administration continues to mislead the people.

'Security' Blocks FBI Critic Case

A federal judge threw out a lawsuit Tuesday by a whistle-blower who alleged security lapses in the FBI's translator program, ruling that her claims might expose government secrets that could damage national security.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he was satisfied with claims by Attorney General John Ashcroft and a senior FBI official that the civil lawsuit by Sibel Edmonds could expose intelligence-gathering methods and disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments.

The judge said he couldn't explain further because his explanation itself would expose sensitive secrets.

...snip...snip...

Edmonds said the judge dismissed her lawsuit without hearing evidence from her lawyers, although the government's lawyers met with Walton at least twice privately. She noted that Walton, the judge, was appointed by President Bush.

Wonder if the truth will ever be known? Edmonds is going to appeal the ruling. Also, Ashroft is being sued for classifying previously public documents related to the case. Definitely fishy.

The American Inquisition
Kerry cited in Catholic heresy case

A Catholic lawyer has filed heresy charges against Sen. John Kerry with the Archdiocese of Boston, accusing the Democratic presidential candidate of bringing "most serious scandal to the American public" by receiving Holy Communion as a pro-choice Catholic.

OutFoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
A new documentary about how "Fair and Balanced" Faux News really is. Check it out...