Fact-esque

Bush Admin Tries to Kill Solar Research

In yet another Waning Days move, the Bush Admin is trying to keep any competition to the oil companies' storied Glory Days of High Profits crippled and/or maimed. Their latest target is the solar industry which was set (like light rail) for a resurgence due to energy corporations' and speculators' greed. We can't have that, so the Bushies have stopped all solar research for the foreseeable future (Bush's Last Days).

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

Yet another Orwellian BushExcuse: now he's worried about the environment after years of ho-hum-who-cares. We must study the environmental impact of...solar power.

The environmental impact of solar power??? Is he kidding? Maybe, but he's doing it anyway.

[T]he decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

(emphasis added)

Well, duh. Why else would an oil president do something this stupid? Do I have to explain everything?

Bush in Iowa Promises...Nothing

His Eminence, the Emperor of the West, King of Iraq, and Scourge of New Orleans returned from his largely pointless and symbolic PR trip to Europe in order to make a largely pointless and symbolic PR tour of an Iowa stricken by floods. He had nothing to offer the victims but a warning:

“I’m sorry we’re going through this,” the president said, against the backdrop of the swollen Iowa River, in a lovely middle-class neighborhood called Parkview Terrace near the University of Iowa, where homes were so submerged it looked as if they were accessible only by boat. “Tell people that oftentimes you get dealt a hand you didn’t expect to have to play, and the question is not whether you’re going to get dealt the hand; the question is how do you play it.”

Perhaps he's learned from Katrina not to make promises he doesn't intend to keep but I doubt it. Perhaps we've learned from 7 years with him how to read between the lines but I doubt that, too. The underlying message is clear enough from a distance. Whether Iowans in the middle of a catastrophe will hear it is another question.

McCain, who is in no position to do what Bush could do but won't, was much freer, promising Iowa and the rest of the flooded states what Bush practically said outright that they'd better not expect: help.

“I know that I speak for all Americans,” Mr. McCain said. “We’ll do everything necessary to try and rebuild their lives.”

Sure we will. Um, how? We're up to our asses in debt over the Second Gulf War, the National Guard is unavailable because so many units are providing support for the war, and Bush is determined to veto any bill that contains expenses for anything other than the war. So who's going to help Iowa? The tooth fairy?

Bush as much as told them that what they do about the disaster is up to them, taking himself and the federal govt out of the equation. Not surptrisingly, two of Iowa's Democrats were on hand to praise him to the skies just for showing up.

An estimated 35,000 people have been displaced by the floods, and 24 have been killed, mostly in Iowa, said Mr. Paulison, who described the disaster as the biggest his agency has handled since Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Bush’s tour took him to the hard-hit areas of Iowa City and Cedar Rapids; he was joined by two Democratic members of Iowa’s Congressional delegation, Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Dave Loebsack, a freshman who had only kind words for the president.

“I think he has a very good sense when he’s on the ground with people of what they’re going through,” Mr. Loebsack said.

(emphasis added)

Probably true. The problem is that even if he understands their pain he doesn't care about it and won't lift a finger to relieve it. But nice Dem pandering, Dave. That may get you a spot at the next DLC dinner.

With representation like this, Iowans would be well advised lock up the silver and apply to Britain for foreign aid.

KBR Corruption, As In "More of"

Here we go again.

The Washington Post is reporting that Dick Cheney's Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown Root, is in trouble again, this time for skimping on materials and workmanship when they were awarded a contract to make repairs at a Navy base after a hurricane.

La plus ca change, etc.

Efforts by defense contractor KBR to repair hurricane-damaged Navy facilities were deemed shoddy and substandard, and one technical adviser alleged that the federal government "certainly paid twice" for many KBR projects because of "design and workmanship deficiencies," the Pentagon's inspector general reported in an audit released yesterday.

***

After Hurricane Ivan struck the Gulf Coast that September, and Hurricane Katrina a year later, KBR was given a number of tasks. They included removing water-damaged carpet and drywall; applying temporary roofing; removing debris; and building trailer parks for displaced families at naval air stations in Pensacola, Fla., and Gulfport, Miss., the Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi and other facilities in the region.

The inspector general reported that its audit of KBR's work found:

· The Navy entered into an illegal "cost-plus-percentage-of-cost" contract with the company. Higher costs meant more profit for KBR, which rewarded the company for "inefficiency and non-economical performance," the report said.

· KBR paid $4.1 million for services and meals that should have cost $1.7 million, and it awarded sole-source or limited-competition subcontracts that overpaid hourly rates to roofers.

· The company was paid nearly all contract amounts despite "marginal-to-average performance."

The inspector general recommended that the Navy try to recoup about $8.4 million in "excessive" equipment lease payments and material profits, and another $1.4 million for more than 110,000 meals that were paid for and thrown away over a 34-day period.

After Charles Smith's experience, I suppose I can expect to read in a few weeks that this inspector general has been transferred to Guam as Latrine Inspector.

The disgusting part of this is that it's standard Halliburton/KBR. It's hard to think of a single govt contract they've won where the exact same charges weren't made. KBR cuts unacceptable corners because it can - it's protected by our thoroughly corrupt Vice President. The contracts - lucrative, no-bid, no accountability - just keep piling up and KBR keeps turning in indifferent or downright pathetically shoddy work because it saves them $$$ and they know there will still be another contract because Cheney will see to it.

An arrogant, corrupt piece o' work, Li'l Dick.

Judge Rules WH Admin Office Can Withhold Emails

'Member all those internal White House emails that mysteriously disappeared when Congress started asking for them? The ones about Libby, Plame, Wilson, the lead-up to the Second Gulf War, the fired US attorneys, and the "investigation" into the Plame leak? There were, what? 5000 of them altogether? And the WH's excuse, the political equivalent of "the dog ate my homework"?

"We lost them."

Well, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (a noble name if somewhat naive) sued in Federal court and the judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, decided against them.

The White House Office of Administration is not required to turn over records about a trove of possibly missing e-mails, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found the agency does not have "substantial independent authority" so it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The decision means the White House does not have to disclose documents relating to its troubled e-mail system.

Actually, that's not exactly true. Kollar-Kotelly's decision was that the Office of Administration doesn't have to turn them over because it doesn't have the authority. The next question is, who does? and the answer is obvious.

Bush. Or Cheney.

What CREW needs to do is re-group and sue again, this time naming the people who do have the authority to release them. Instead, they're going to appeal the decision. Frankly, I doubt that Kollar-Kotelly's judgment is wrong. I doubt an appeals court will think it's wrong. She's right on the law, at least as I understand it, and they'd be wasting their time if they went ahead and started banging against that wall.

Bite the bullet, CREW. Sue the Emperor. The whole set-up is bogus. Bush wants to avoid handing nover evidence of his crooked deals, manipulations, and lies so he claims the computer system is fucked up.

In the White House?! Emails are the simplest computer programs around. They are the earliest and most developed. Even Microsoft's quirky, screwed-up Outlook works...most of the time. They paid huge money for an internal system and it lost "millions of emails"? Really? Who designed it, Elmer Fudd?

OK, know your real target now? Sic 'em, CREW.

Lawyers Use Recent SCOTUS Decision to Challenge Military Trials

In a post Thursday I wrote;

That's all well and good but it only applies to appeals. What about the kangaroo-court nature of the original military trials? They're just as phony, just as rigged as the ones the Court struck down for being phony and rigged.

The same question occurred to lawyers of the detainees, and they're now getting ready to use the recent Supreme Court decision to restore habeus to the appeals process as an argument for restoring it in the military commissions trials.

A day after the Supreme Court’s ruling granting detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal court, military defense lawyers said they planned to use the decision to mount new attacks on the government’s war crimes prosecutions that could stall or stop trials.

It should be noted that the SCOTUS decision by itself wasn't what motivated them to do this but a statement by the Mukasey Justice Dept that it saw no reason to change what it was doing.

The new attack on the military commission system at Guantánamo will directly challenge a public declaration by the Justice Department after the ruling Thursday. The department said that detainees have numerous legal protections and that “military commission trials will therefore continue to go forward.”

More or less what we expected a Bush legal dept to say: "We don't care what the SCOTUS says. Fuck em. We work for Emperor Bush and we do what he tells us to do because the law is whatever he says it is, not those liberal pansies in black robes." And I'm sure Bush's dismissive statement was another clear sign that once again, despite the "stinging rebukes" of the highlest court in the land, he, The Emperor, didn't intend to re-consider much less change anything he was doing even though the decision caused a number of Constitutional experts to conclude the military trials were no longer feasible.

“It is an open question whether the military commissions, as they currently exist, satisfy the requirements of the Constitution,” said Michael C. Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University.

The military lawyers said they would use the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling to argue that if detainees have habeas rights they are also entitled to other constitutional protections. They say the Constitution would bar the planned trials, asserting that legal procedures at Guantánamo violate basic legal protections. The lawyers cited commission rules that permit hearsay and evidence derived by coercion as examples of commission procedures that they argued would not be permitted by the Constitution.

“It no longer makes sense for the government to pursue these cases through military commissions,” said Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer, who said he would quickly press a federal court challenge on behalf of his client, Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden. Mr. Hamdan is scheduled to be the first detainee to face a trial, now set for July 21.

The contempt for the law shown by the Bush/Cheney Administration from top to bottom for the past 8 years has poisoned not just the legal system but the way ordinary people feel about the law. The sooner we can reverse some of the most egregious and obvious destruction to the Constitution, the faster we can begin to get some respect for the law back into people's consciousness.

This isn't about just the detainees any more - if it ever was - these lawyers are fighting for all of us.

Unemployment Benefits Extension Stalls in the House

Remember when Bush didn't veto anything? Remember when some wags wondered if he even knew what a veto was? Well, he has made up for his reluctance to buck a GOP Congress by threatening to veto every single bill the Democrats have proposed, meanwhile blaming them for their supposed "inaction". Today the usual veto threat once more forced what should have been an easy passage into a squeaker.

A bill to extend unemployment benefits for workers whose aid is running out stalled in the House on Wednesday afternoon, as a majority of lawmakers endorsed the idea but not by a big enough margin.

The tally was 279 to 144 in favor, but the margin was just short of the two-thirds necessary to bring the measure to the floor under an expedited procedure that the Democrats sought to use. Nor would the margin be enough to override President Bush’s promised veto, should the package ever get to his desk.

***

Forty-nine Republicans broke with the president and sided with 230 Democrats, who were trying to capitalize on widespread economic uncertainty to gain extension of the unemployment aid. All 144 “no” votes were cast by Republicans; had three of them gone the other way, the necessary two-thirds majority would have been reached.

The White House had already announced its opposition to what it said was a flawed and unnecessary bill because unemployment was not that high, even given the recent spike in the figures for May. The White House had also complained that the bill would be “fiscally irresponsible” by extending benefits to all states, regardless of their jobless rates.

(emphasis added)

Mr Silver-Spoon-in-Mouth thinks unemployment isn't high enough for people to need help? Makes one wonder what the magic number would be? It's been getting worse for 5 straight months. What does he need to see happen before this most profligate president in history thinks some of his acres of (borrowed) war money can be spared to help, you know, us?

But the real problem isn't Bush's veto, it's why Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid aren't just passing the bills and letting Bush veto them, preferably on television? Why the need for 2/3 on a mere threat? Call his fucking bluff. Make him veto unemployment money. this will:

1. Make it clear who's the bottleneck here.
2. Take away the GOP TP that the Democrats are running a "Do Nothing" Congress.

But no. That might take away from what little is left of Bush's reputation, remove the Pubs' best lines, and brighten the Dems' own reputation. Can't have that. Golly. Somebody might catch on that they could've done it months ago and wonder why they didn't. And that would lead to questions about how maybe, you know, they wanted Bush to win.

Their mistake (if such it was) was this:

On May 22, the Senate voted by 75 to 22 in favor of extended unemployment benefits, as well as an expansion of veterans’ benefits, with 25 Republicans voting in the affirmative. But that measure, unlike the one voted upon in the House on Wednesday, was part of a bill to finance the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nicely co-ordinated. If the BD's win in the House, they block it in the senate. If they block in the Senate, it passes in the House.

This isn't political kabuki, it's a minstrel show.

Articles of Impeachment Sent to Judiciary Committee

Where the Democratic leadership hopes it will stay buried. Don't let them get away with it.

Write to Conyers and ask him to schedule hearings on Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment. If you need ideas for arguments, my letter is posted here, fwiw.

Let's not waste the golden opportunity Dennis handed up on a silver platter to send a message to the Democrats that there are lines they can't cross.

Send your conyer letters to me at mick.arran@ gmail.com and I will gather them and freprint them at The Bush/Cheney Impeachment Papers blog where, together, they will amount to a powerful incentive for Democrats to start acting like Democrats instead of Republicans in tight shoes.

Rep John Conyers, Chair, House Judiciary Committee

2138 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 p/202-225-3951

MSNBC Under Attack for Being Too Liberal

It what has to be considered a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, right-wing operatives, conscienceless campaign hacks like Terry McAuliffe, and - of course - President Bush are calling MSNBC all kinds of names because it carries Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.

"They're complaining about Chris Matthews?!!"

I know, huh?

MSNBC, which bills itself as "the place for politics," is being pummeled by political practitioners.

"It's an organ of the Democratic National Committee," says Steve Schmidt, a senior strategist for John McCain's campaign. "It's a partisan advocacy organization that exists for the purpose of attacking John McCain."

Ed Gillespie, President Bush's counselor, says there is an "increasing blurring" of the line between NBC News and MSNBC's "blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann."

Terry McAuliffe, chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, says Matthews has been "in the tank" for Barack Obama "from Day One" and is practically "the Obama campaign chair."

Why are operatives from across the political spectrum suddenly beating up on the third-place cable channel?

After years of blather, lies, innuendo and intimidation, trivialities, rumor-mongering and gossipy liberal-trashing, the RWNM (yes, I include McAuliffe in that group - he belongs there) has decided to go after the only even mildly progressive voice on cable tv. Excuse me? Do the names "Rush Limbaugh" and "Bill O'Reilly" mean anything to you, Terry? Ed G?

The word that describes this is "gall".

To answer the question "why" is easy enough: BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE LISTENING NOW.

When Keith was a lone voice inveighing against a popular president's rape of the Constitution, nobody bothered to attack him because they didn't think anybody was listening to him. They had all the other pundits (anybody they didn't have was frozen out by their tame producers and their toady bookers) and anyway Keith was a probably-non-replicatable anomaly. There weren't going to be any more of him. Nothing to be afraid of there.

But then a strange thing happened. Keith's numbers began to grow as Bush's obstinate war-mongering alienated so many people his approval rating sank to all-time lows - lower than Richard Nixon's at the height of Watergate. As Bush sank, so sank accolytes O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, et al. The last time I saw the Neilsons, Olbermann's show had beaten O'Reilly's by a factor of almost 3.

Keith's head is on the chopping block primarily because people are finally watching - and listening - to him, and whenever he skewers the president with those "Special Comments" we progressives have been treasuring for so long his numbers go through the roof.

Chris is a slightly different story. Matthews' and his Hardball have been reliable softballs for Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and the entire gang of Bush Liars, Con-Artists, and Weasels for Georgie's entire presidency. He gave them lots of media time and rarely challenged anything they said no matter how outrageous it was or how untrue he knew it to be. He was One of Them.

But Chris can read the numbers, too, and he knows Bush and the neocon ideologues are through, their day as over as the dinosaurs'. So now he has begun to challenge them when they cross the line into unbelievable. has begun - only on occasion, but still - to act like an actual reporter.

Better late than never, I suppose, but all it means is that all the rats are abandoning the sinking Bush ship, media gulls as well as staffers eager to divorce themselves from the stink of Bush's failure.

Supreme Court Decides Cases in Favor of Workers

I know. You're shocked. So was I. But it's true: The Bush SCOTUS has just decided two cases in favor of workers and against corporations.

Maybe Fat Tony was asleep or absent that day.

In the first decision, the court said the nation's oldest civil rights law, passed just after the Civil War, not only gave blacks the same rights as whites to make contracts, but it protected them from being fired for voicing complaints about the mistreatment of other black employees.

The 7-2 ruling clears the way for a former assistant manager at a Cracker Barrel restaurant south of Chicago to take his lawsuit to a jury. He alleged that he was fired after complaining about a white supervisor who made racist comments and about the firing of a black food service worker.

In the second decision, the court said older federal employees who were punished after complaining of age bias could sue the government for retaliation. Government lawyers had argued that these workers were protected by the civil service system and had no right to sue.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. disagreed, and spoke for a 6-3 majority in clearing the way for federal employees to sue if they were victims of on-the-job retaliation. The decision revives a suit filed by a 45-year-old postal clerk from Puerto Rico.

Nedless to say, the corporatocracy is screaming bloody murder, feeling betrayed. After all, they've been able to count on a string of wins for a decade.

The expansion of employee rights stands in contrast to a series of pro-business rulings by the high court last year that limited the rights of workers.

***

Last year, the court was criticized by liberals for ignoring those realities when it threw out a pay-discrimination suit from Lilly Ledbetter, a female manager from Alabama who had been paid far less than men in the same job. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that she had failed to cite recent acts of bias as required by the text of the law.

Robin S. Conrad, a lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the reaction to that ruling might explain Tuesday's decisions. "I think the court was stung by the reaction to Ledbetter," she said.

She added that Tuesday's ruling could encourage suits against companies based on the 19th century law because it lacked the same time limits for filing complaints and might lead to larger damage awards.

Karen Harned of the National Federation of Independent Business agreed, calling the decisions "extremely disappointing for the small-business community. Retaliation claims will be a boon for trial lawyers."

Yeah, I bet. Conrad's reaction blaming the angry response after the Ledbetter case may be accurate. Certainly it's hard to believe that Alito, O'Connor, Scalia & Thomas, et al, have suddenly become advocates for labor rights after years of criticizing and belittling them. If so, the pendulum may indeed be swinging and they are feeling it swing away from them. After all, they were never before disturbed enough by firestorms of protests against any of their other terrible decisions to follow them with change-ups.

Remember the outrage after they went against everything they had heretofore claimed to believe about states' rights in order to hand the 2000 election to Bush on a platter? Didn't faze these guys at all.

Whatever the reason for the turnaround (and the one reason we can be sure didn't contribute was, you know, the law), this was a victory for workers, especially the whistleblowers and the older workers corporations like to get rid of because they make more money than a young sprat just out of college.

Which is certainly the reason for the cries of pain. Harned's bitterness has nothing to do with trial lawyers. What it has to do with is corporations no longer having a green light to fire older workers and whistleblowers without fear of (financial) consequences. That's what's rubbing her ass the wrong way, not "frivolous lawsuits".

Suck it up, corpo's. You've had it all your own way so long that even Bush's tame SCOTUS knows everything's out of balance. There will be more blows to come.

I Will Root No More Forever

Looks like Brooks is still angling for those Nationals seats he was whining about last month.

Today:

And yet we are the playthings of fate and lead lives filled with strange twists, and I (for it is time to throw off the artfully constructed mask) now find myself contemplating the uncontemplatable: that I will switch my allegiance from the beloved Mets to the new team of my adopted town. I will become a fan of the Washington Nationals.

Good for Bobo. I'm sure the decision was agonizing in a private way that has no business on the NYT op-ed page. But what if the column is a message from Brooks to the Republican leadership about party loyalty? I keep hearing about how he's such a moderate and how he really can write. Could all that be true?

For some people, the love of a team is like the love of one's nation. The team is the embodiment of the place we are from, our community and volk.

Bobo grew up in New York, as far as I can tell from his schmalzty opening paragraph. That would make him a native urban Blue Stater. He's since become the foremost faux-sociologist representing for a whitewashed suburban America that only exists in his books and columns, so obviously he doesn't pick his politics by his zipcode. (And what's with "volk?" Does Berlin have a team or a party he's interested in?)

For other people, the love of a team is primarily a psychological connection. It is a bond forged during a lifelong string of shared emotions - the way I felt when Tommie Agee made that diving catch in 1969, the way I have suffered through the disappointment of Mo Vaughn.

First of all, Mo Vaughn wasn't a disappointment to anyone who was paying attention. If you want disappointment, look to Wilson, Pulsipher and Isringhausen. But this explanation is probably getting closer to why Brooks shills for the GOP. He pimps the superficial values (political and moral) of his chosen party with the honesty of someone who gets all their baseball acumen from the front office press releases of their favorite team. That leaves his readers wondering what happened when reality strikes and turns something like "Mo is great!" into "Mo has the mobility of a sandbag."

Finally, a love for a team can be a philosophical love, a love for the Platonic ideal the team embodies. For teams not only play; they come to represent creeds, a way of living in the world.

snip

The Mets ideal is: God smiles upon his darlings. The history of the Mets teaches that miracles happen and the universe is a happy place. If this is the nature of my love, then I can only love the team so long as it still embodies this ideal.

My own love is mostly of this third type, and I have endured this spiritual crisis because the Mets, with all their big-money signings, have come to seem less like darlings. Perhaps the young players José Reyes and David Wright will rekindle the flame, but I go into the season adrift and uncertain, tempted by my lowdown cheating heart, caught between a lifetime love and an enticing new fling.

Poor Bobo. He didn't leave his team. His team left him. Now if he had the courage to write a column about how the radical Right has led his party to do the same, he'd be on to something.