Death And Destruction
Iraq? Iran? Shia? Sunni? Al Qaeda? The U.S. Military?
No.
Bud Light, Doritos, Coca Cola, careerbuilder.com, King Pharmaceuticals, General Motors, Panasonic, and E*Trade.
Quiddity watched the SuperBowl ads so you didn’t have to. See the depressing summary.
UPDATE: Quiddity also links to a NYT article Super Bowl Ads of Cartoonish Violence, Perhaps Reflecting Toll of War.
Fasten Your Seatbelts
by digby
Matt Ortega, posting at FDL writes:
From NBC Investigative Reporter Lisa Myers’ report on MSNBC, entitled “Did Iraq contractor fleece American taxpayers?” The answer is, well, I’ll let you figure it out. (Also, appended at the bottom of her report is a statement from Parsons CEO Jim McNulty.)
WASHINGTON – New revelations have emerged about how tens of millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted in Iraq. A new report by government watchdogs singles out a big American contractor — Parsons — for shoddy work. Investigators charge that Parsons managed to turn a flagship project to help train Iraqi police into a hall of horrors using taxpayer money.
The Baghdad Police Academy was supposed to be a showcase to train Iraqi police — key to the U.S. strategy.
Yeah, and how did that work out?
Instead, Wednesday’s report says the American construction company turned it into a disaster from the start: incomplete and substandard designs, shoddy construction and no real quality control.
“This is the worst project that my inspectors have visited,” says Stuart Bowen, inspector general for Iraq.
Chairman Waxman Invites Witnesses for Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Hearing
Rep. Waxman has requested the testimony of three key witnesses regarding Iraq reconstruction efforts at an Oversight Committee hearing on waste, fraud, and abuse, to be held the week of February 6th.
L. Paul Bremer, former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, has been requested to testify regarding reconstruction activities during his tenure at the CPA, as well as an audit report from January 2005 that concluded that more than $8.8 billion in cash under CPA’s control was disbursed without adequate financial controls or accountability.
Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has been requested to testify regarding the audits and field inspections conducted by his office related to reconstruction activities in Iraq.
Timothy Carney, Coordinator for Iraqi Transitional Assistance, has been requested to testify regarding the newly created position of Coordinator, his role in assisting the Iraqi government with reconstruction efforts, and his prior service in Iraq.
Between this and Monsignor Tim Russert on the stand (hopefully) February 6th promises to be a very exciting day.
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CFB’s
by digby
Memo to reporters: when George Will, Chris Matthews and other pundits complain that Clinton’s major problem is being too “strident” it’s a similar type of slur as saying Obama is “articulate.” This is a dogwhistle term; in this case it means “castrating feminist bitch.”
I’ve never heard any of them ever complain that tub-thumping, preaching Republicans, male or female, are “strident” even though they most certainly are if you look at the literal meaning of the word:
stri·dent
1.making or having a harsh sound; grating; creaking: strident insects; strident hinges.
2. having a shrill, irritating quality or character: a strident tone in his writings.
For some reason it’s only liberal women who evoke this word among the chatterers.
You’d think that Hillary Clinton, of all people, would have put that stereotyping to rest, considering her painfully public marital problems and centrist-ish policy positions. But no. She’s the top Dem-Fem and therefore any passion or strength sounds “harsh” and “grating” to the delicate ears of the beltway mavens.
Poor lil fellas; it sure doesn’t take much to make their little minds shrivel, does it?
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A Fourth Branch?
by digby
We have all discussed the unprecedented power of Dick Cheney in this administration ad nauseum, but this post from David Kurtz at TPM introduced a whole new element I hadn’t been aware of.
I assumed that Cheney believed the power of the Vice President (such as it is) derived from the executive branch. Apparently, however, he believes the office of the Vice President has power of its own that derives from both the legislative and executive branch:
I’ve gone from being open to the idea of an Imperial Vice Presidency to being convinced that historians will debate whether something approaching a Cheney-led coup d’etat has occurred, in which some of the powers of the Executive were extra-constitutionally usurped by the Office of the Vice President.
Last week, in trying to break the lock on who actually works in the OVP–which the Vice President refuses to reveal–the guys at Muckraker stumbled across this entry from a government directory known as the “Plum Book”:
The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title 3 of the United States Code).
It appears that Cheney’s office submitted this entry in lieu of a list of its employees, as federal agencies must do. It sounds like something Cheney’s current chief of staff, David Addington, might have written. Cheney and Addington have been the among the most powerful proponents of the theory of a “unitary executive,” but there are indications that they have also advanced, though less publicly, a theory of a constitutionally distinct and independent vice presidency.
WTF?
I had always known that Cheney was running the show, but I assumed he did it purely by using the power of the executive branch and manipulation of the presdient. I had no idea that he might have secretly carved out a previously unenumerated institution that derives its power from both the legislative and executive branches. What in the hell has really been going on in this administration?
Larry Wilkerson called it a “cabal” around Dick Cheney. But it seems to have been more than that. They created a shadow government and developed a constitutional theory to support it.
The undemocratic streak in the Republican Party continues apace. Each time they get power, they seek ways to weaken the nation’s understanding of what is acceptable in our democracy and what our constitution provides. (And keep in mind that it is entirely self-serving — they will turn all of that around without a moment’s thought when it suits them to challenge the opposition.)
The Libby trial has provided an excellent opening to look into this issue. Kurtz writes:
A hearing on the constitutional role of the vice president might be an excellent place to start. From all indications, Cheney has amassed considerable power due to his experience and savvy vis-a-vis the President’s relative lack thereof. But that is a separate issue from the constitutional role of the OVP, and whether, or in what ways, various statutory regimens, particularly in the national security arena, apply to the OVP.
By custom and tradition, the Vice President’s role had been circumscribed by how little express power and authority the Constitution granted the position. Hence, all the jokes over the years about the vice presidency. But in a move that is decidedly anti-conservative, in the conventional sense, Cheney moved to fill the void. I fear that what we will eventually find are structural flaws that were deliberately exploited by the OVP, which in turn further undermined constitutional and statutory structures.
This is important and the congress should not let it pass unexamined. The nation needs to know if some precedent has been set for making a vice-president a power center outside the commonly understood three branches of government.
It’s something out of a political thriller, I know, and it’s hard to wrap your arms around. But there is a part of me that wonders if it wasn’t a plan. It never seemed likely to me that the big money boys of the GOP would trust their fortunes to the blithering fool they set forth as president. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if some conversations before the fact took place.
Kurtz also wonders how, if this is true, Cheney deals with the supremely arrogant decider. It’s not hard for me to imagine at all. Arrogant morons are very easy to manipulate. You just tell them what to think and then tell them they thought of it.
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Getting It Right
by digby
John Edwards was clear and concise today about Iran on Meet The Press, saying explicitly that a military strike would strengthen Ahmadinejad and would be a mistake. When Russert pressed him about whether we could ultimately “let” Iran get a nuclear weapons, he said it would be a bad thing, but that there were many, many steps to take before we get to that — and that he just didn’t know at this point.
That seems to me to be a decent way of framing it. He’s not “taking any options off the table” but he is saying that a military strike would be counter productive and there’s plenty of time to deal with this problem, which leaves some room to maneuver. (The real problem is rebuilding any trust in the United States’ intentions in the mideast and around the world, and that’s something else entirely.)
I think it’s been hard for Democrats to grasp just how unpopular and discredited George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are with the American people and the world. (It’s understandable since they were inexplicably held up on a pedestal for years by the press.) But they have fallen now and there is no benefit to backing their crazy schemes.
Edwards was good on Iran today and good for him.
(He was not so good on gay marriage, however, for reasons I just can’t fathom. He’s not fooling anyobody on either side of the fence. Might as well take a stand.)
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Saturday Night At The Movies
The Other Half Of The Sky
By Dennis Hartley
With Nancy P in da house and Hillary in the race, I’m actually thinking 2007 could be the year my depression finally breaks (started back around, oh, November of 2000). I think it’s a good time to screen some female empowerment films!
My personal favorite on the theme is an outstanding and overlooked drama from 1995 that was originally presented as a three-part miniseries in the UK, The Politician’s Wife. Juliet Stevenson delivers a tour-de-force performance as Flora, the staunchly supportive wife of Duncan Matlock, an ambitious rising star in England’s conservative Tory party.
A scandal erupts when Duncan is caught with his pants down by the notorious British tabloid press. His fling with an “escort” girl (Minnie Driver) quickly becomes fertile ground for muckraking, as he happens to be the Minister of Family (oops). At first, Flora suffers in silence, desperately wanting to believe her husband’s assurance that it was only a regrettable one night stand. She caves to pressure from Duncan’s handlers (including her own father) to keep a brave face in public, “for the sake of the party”.
But when a conscience-stricken member of the Minister’s inner circle slips Flora some irrefutable evidence proving that the “fling” was in fact a torrid year-long affair, her pain turns to bitterness and anger. Fueled by the deep sense of betrayal and growing awareness of Duncan’s wanton abuse of his powers, she hatches a clever and methodical scheme to subvert his political capital (i.e. to drain his precious bodily fluids, figuratively speaking).
The beauty of Paula Milne’s script lies in the subtle execution of Flora’s revenge. Avoiding the usual “Hell hath no fury” clichés, Milne’s protagonist (not unlike Livia in I, Claudius) finds her empowerment through an assimilated understanding of what makes the members of this particular boy’s club tick; she is then able to orchestrate events in such a manner that they all end up falling on their own swords (keep your friends close, but your enemies closer). Intelligently written, splendidly acted, and not to be missed.
Regular Digby readers have likely screened my next pick many times, but it wouldn’t hurt to brush up on our cheerleading skills and see The Contender
Encore! A Woman Called Golda, First Monday in October
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Real America
by digby
In contrast to the hysterical, rock star reaction Bush received at the NY Stock Exchange:
On Tuesday, President Bush popped in for a surprise visit to the Sterling Family Restaurant, a homey diner in Peoria, Ill. It’s a scene that has been played out many times before by this White House and others: a president mingling among regular Americans, who, no matter what they might think of his policies, are usually humbled and shocked to see the leader of the free world standing 10 feet in front of them.
But on Tuesday, the surprise was on Bush. In town to deliver remarks on the economy, the president walked into the diner, where he was greeted with what can only be described as a sedate reception. No one rushed to shake his hand. There were no audible gasps or yelps of excitement that usually accompany visits like this. Last summer, a woman nearly fainted when Bush made an unscheduled visit for some donut holes at the legendary Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant in Chicago. In Peoria this week, many patrons found their pancakes more interesting. Except for the click of news cameras and the clang of a dish from the kitchen, the quiet was deafening.
“Sorry to interrupt you,” Bush said to a group of women, who were sitting in a booth with their young kids. “How’s the service?” As Bush signed a few autographs and shook hands, a man sitting at the counter lit a cigarette and asked for more coffee. Another woman, eyeing Bush and his entourage, sighed heavily and went back to her paper. She was reading the obituaries. “Sorry to interrupt your breakfast,” a White House aide told her. “No problem,” she huffed, in a not-so-friendly way. “Life goes on, I guess.”
No wonder he was so thrilled the next day when the frat-rat traders fell to their knees in worshipful rapture.
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Impressive And Gratifying
by digby
I don’t know how many of you saw the giddy reception that President Bush received on the floor of the NY stock exchange last week, but it was one for the books. It was captured best by CNN, which carried it live. Their Wall Street reporter came pretty close to climaxing on live television:
PHILLIPS: Well, normally, Susan Lisovicz is the most exciting thing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, but she has a little competition today — Susan.
SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, in the 214 years of the New York Stock Exchange, the world’s biggest exchange has seen a lot of famous people — world leaders, CEOs, athletes — but only one sitting president of the United States came during trading hours. That was Ronald Reagan in 1985.
That is changing at this moment. President George W. Bush, we believe, has just entered the building, and he may pass right behind me. Of course, the president of the United States using Wall Street as his stage to talk about his economic policy, and there’s a lot to talk about that is quite favorable to the Bush administration.
We’ve had 7.2 million jobs created since 2003. The jobless rate historically low, 4.5 percent. We just got the first look at the fourth quarter GDP coming in better than expected at 3.5 percent.
Of course, the stock market itself has been hitting record after record. We’ve been talking about it for the last couple months. Gas prices have been getting lower. And certainly, that is something that the president wants to talk about, Kyra.
And I can tell you that I think the reception that he will get here on Wall Street will be a little bit more enthusiastic than perhaps the reception he gets with the new Democratic majority in Congress.
The president saying today and, certainly, leading up to this visit, that he will certainly try his best to make sure that there are no tax increases. That is something that investors favor. They also like the fact that President Bush has been a proponent of more liberal trade policies. That is something that he’s talked about earlier this week when he visited the headquarters of Caterpillar in Peoria — East Peoria, Illinois…
PHILLIPS: We can actually see a wide shot now of all the reporters. Has everything just come to a standstill as everybody awaits the president?
LISOVICZ: That is a very good point. This is a — the world’s biggest stock market, Kyra, and for the last 30 minutes, trading has just about come to a halt. It’s extremely quiet. People are very excited.
I can see traders holding baseballs, baseballs in their hands for the president to sign. They’re just very excited about the president coming here. This is a very rare occasion, and it’s a historic moment.
And the one thing about this is there are people on this trading floor, there are people and they’re excited about someone.
PHILLIPS: Like the guys right there next to you.
LISOVICZ: Exactly. I know…
PHILLIPS: Can you talk to them? Ask these guys, are these some of the traders to your left, Susan?
LISOVICZ: Yes. How do you feel about the president of the United States?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m excited to see him. I’m excited to see him. The president of the United States, one of the greatest presidents we have…
LISOVICZ: OK, Kyra, I’m hearing a lot of applause right now, a lot of — a lot of people cheering. And I don’t know if you can see me anymore…
PHILLIPS: Actually, I can see the president right now, Susan. He’s actually — and I’m not quite sure where you are in proximity — in…
LISOVICZ:…It’s a very — it’s a very big buildup to a very big visit, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, I can imagine. And I’ll give you an idea of what’s going on right now. Everybody is flocked around him, Susan. He’s shaking hands with all the various traders. And you can see the Secret Service is, of course, all around him, and kind of working him through the crowd.
…And you mentioned the last president to come visit the New York Stock Exchange — there’s only been two, right? Ronald Reagan, and now president Bush.
LISOVICZ: That’s correct.
PHILLIPS: What kind of effect did Reagan have when he came to visit? Is this — do you think this is more of a P.R. move, or does this really affect things economically, trading wise, investor wise? I mean, what type of effect do you think this has truly outside of a P.R. move?
LISOVICZ: President Reagan was here in 1985 during trading hours. Kyra, he actually came again in ’92 with Mikhail Gorbachev, but he came to talk about his economic policy. And he’s absolutely beloved on Wall Street, as you can imagine.
And it’s almost stating the obvious that — that this is his audience. This is a conservative crowd. This is the kind of community where less government intervention is something that is applauded. Lower taxes, that’s something that investors like. More trade policies, that’s something investors like. They want to see it translate to the bottom line…
PHILLIPS: Can you see him?
LISOVICZ: I see — I see the — yes, I do see him. I see his gray head. I’m getting pushed back, but I’m…
PHILLIPS: What do you want to know from the president, Susan?
LISOVICZ: I would like to know what he thinks he can achieve with the majority — with the Congress he can no longer count on to support him in terms of some of the policies he’s proposing.
I don’t know if you can hear that, Kyra. There’s a chant of “Bush, Bush, Bush”, and here he comes.
PHILLIPS: All right. We’re going to let you try and get the moment, Susan. Go ahead.
LISOVICZ: He’s about 15 feet away, and he’s shaking hands. He looks like he’s in good spirits. And he has plenty of people who are trying to expedite his walk. Almost like a gauntlet, but it’s a very friendly gauntlet.
PHILLIPS: I can imagine. It’s a tough time right now. Everything has been centered on Iraq and the Iraq strategy and what is he going to do as he appoints his new head for the military commands in Iraq and Afghanistan and that region. He always seems…
LISOVICZ: Five feet away, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: OK. Go for it, Susan.
LISOVICZ: President Bush, welcome to Wall Street. Welcome to Wall Street.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good to be here, thanks.
LISOVICZ: What do you think of the reception here?
BUSH: I’m impressed and grateful.
I’ll bet.
If you can believe it, it goes on like that for ten more minutes at least. Read the transcript if you want to see the complete giggly insanity, (but you have to see the video to get the full effect.)
I was reminded of this apalling display this morning when I read Rick Perlstein’s review of Terry McAuliffe’s new book in today’s NY Times.
McAuliffe taught Democrats that to win they had to learn to play with the billionaires. But there were, as the economists say, “opportunity costs.” In 400 pages of blow-by-blow, one momentous event passes with barely a whisper: the 2002 elections. Some hoped that President Bush’s ties to Enron would make 2002 a Democratic year. Instead, Democrats lost the Senate. As the televised face of the party, McAuliffe got in some hard punches on Enron, but Republicans replied that he himself had made an $18 million profit from a mere $100,000 investment in the controversial communications company Global Crossing.
Sour grapes, McAuliffe insists, quoting his comeback to Sean Hannity: “What are you, jealous or something? … It was a great company.”
…You might say the more proximate wrongdoing was going on TV in an election year in which corporate greed was the Democrats’ best issue and saying a company that had only not quite swindled millions of pensioners and individual investors was “great” — and then being so un-self-aware as to brag about it in your memoir.
That group on the stock exchange floor is Bush’s real base and he’s been tremendously successful for them. But their loyalty has less to do with sheer self-interest than people think. That little display on the floor of the stock exchange shows how out of touch with reality those moneyed interests have become. The stock market may have finally recovered, and perhaps these guys aren’t paying the high taxes they might be, but the world is going to hell in a handbasket and this simpleton of a president is spending the country into oblivion on crazy wars that could cause more long term damage to American business than any tax or regulation ever could. Talk about being unable to see the forest for the trees.
This is a tribal identification as strong as southern evangelicals or Berkeley liberals, and no matter how much Terry McAuliffe wines and dines these folks, they do not identify with working people and an activist government. It’s fine with me to take their money, but a big mistake to fail to calculate the costs of depending too strongly on it.
Perlstein points out that the two great Democratic populists, FDR and LBJ, may have travelled easily in moneyed circles, but they used their power to influence business not the other way around.
McAuliffe says in his book:
“People ask me all the time what the trick to fund-raising is. They always want to hear that there is some secret. But it’s simple enough, and I’ll spell it out in black and white: As a fund-raiser you’re selling belief. You’re selling vision. You’re selling hope. You’re selling dreams.”
Perlstein says: The question is: what dreams, and whose?
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Stop It Now
by digby
Deciding what to do next about Iraq is hard — on the merits, and in the politics. It’s hard on the merits because whatever comes next, from “surge” to “get out now” and everything in between, will involve suffering, misery, and dishonor. It’s just a question of by whom and for how long. On a balance-of-misery basis, my own view changed last year from “we can’t afford to leave” to “we can’t afford to stay.” And the whole issue is hard in its politics because even Democrats too young to remember Vietnam know that future Karl Roves will dog them for decades with accusations of “cut-and-run” and “betraying” troops unless they can get Republicans to stand with them on limiting funding and forcing the policy to change.
By comparison, Iran is easy: on the merits, in the politics. War with Iran would be a catastrophe that would make us look back fondly on the minor inconvenience of being bogged down in Iraq. While the Congress flounders about what, exactly, it can do about Iraq, it can do something useful, while it still matters, in making clear that it will authorize no money and provide no endorsement for military action against Iran.
As they say, read the whole thing.
It may be just this possibility that has the administration carrying on so about how Iranians are behind the killing of Americans even though it is an absurdity. They would like to create the conditions where they can say that anyone failing to back action in Iran is failing to protect the troops.
In a sane world, the congress would move very quickly on this before that notion jells. But it won’t, because they believe they must allow the president to have all “options on the table,” — a “duty” which Republicans repeatedly failed to fulfill when Clinton was in office and which an earlier group of Democrats understood to be nonsense. Still, that seems to be where they are, at least with respect to Iran. Not only are they not prepared to stop it, they are either silent on the issue or actively supporting the premise upon which the president’s argument is built.
Still, we must at least begin to make this case and this James Fallows article is an excellent first step. I particularly liked this part, because it is absolutely true and shows the seriousness of the danger we are in:
If we could trust the Administration’s ability to judge America’s rational self-interest, there would be no need to constrain its threatening gestures toward Iran. Everyone would understand that this was part of the negotiation process; no one would worry that the Administration would finally take a step as self-destructive as beginning or inviting a war.
But no one can any longer trust the Administration to recognize and defend America’s rational self-interest — not when the President says he will carry out a policy even if opposed by everyone except his wife and dog, not when the Vice President refuses to concede any mistake or misjudgment in the handling of Iraq.
We are dealing with an administration that handled the overriding message of the mid-term election by doing exactly the opposite and escalating the war. They are not responsive to anything, not even political considerations. They are obsessed with their own legacy and if that means selling their own party down the river, they will do that too. There is nothing to stop them.
Fallows continues:
According to the constitutional chain of command, those two men literally have the power to order a strike that would be disastrous for their nation. The Congress has no official way to prevent them from doing so — it is interesting, and alarming, to think that in practice the safety valve might be the professional military, trained to revere the chain of command but faced with what its members would recognize as ruinous instructions.
Seymour Hersh said a year ago that it took the generals everything they had to keep a tactical first strike of Iran “off the table.” I’m not holding my breath that they can or will stop this.
Here’s Hersh from April 2006:
There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”
As Bush and Cheney get more and more unpopular, their legacy becomes more and more predicated on the fact that they did the unpopular thing for the greater good. The more unpopular they get the more they have to prove.
Update: Matt Stoller makes the case that out of all the presidential candidates, Wes Clark is the one leading on this issue. (Bill Richardson too.)
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Fool Me Once
by digby
May 24, 2002
Rumsfeld: No Plans to Invade Iraq
The United States has no plans to invade Iraq or any other country, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday, but he refused to discuss the Bush administration’s thinking about how to deal with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
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February 2, 2007
Gates: We’re “Not Planning” To Attack Iran
With respect to Iran, first of all, the president has made clear; the secretary of State has made clear; I’ve made clear — nobody is planning — we are not planning for a war with Iran.
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