THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

In a race that includes a former First Lady of the United States and a multimillionaire Republican senator rumored to share up to eight residences with his wife, the black guy from Chicago is unforgivably elitist.

// posted by montag @ 6:55 PM 0 Comments

Mr. McCain’s health care plan would shift the emphasis from insurance provided by employers to insurance bought by individuals, to foster competition and drive down prices. To do so he is calling for eliminating the tax breaks that currently encourage employers to provide health insurance for their workers, and replacing them with $5,000 tax credits for families to buy their own insurance.

His proposal to move away from employer-based coverage was similar to one that President Bush pushed for last year, to little effect.

// posted by montag @ 6:51 AM 0 Comments

A kilogram of the best Afghan heroin is worth £600 in Afghanistan. It is worth twice as much at the bazaar in Tajikistan. But rather than take cash, they take weapon parts, because they double their value in Afghanistan. An AK-47 assault rifle costs £50 at the bazaar. It is worth up to £100 in northern Afghanistan, and even more in the south and east where demand for guns is higher, because of the fighting.

The Taliban go-between said fighters in Helmand expect to get six AK-47s for 1kg of good quality heroin, a similar number of rocket-propelled grenades or a dozen boxes of ammunition.

// posted by montag @ 6:14 PM 0 Comments

Davis told Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, who presided over the hearing, that top Pentagon officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, made it clear to him that charging some of the highest-profile detainees before elections this year could have "strategic political value."

Davis said he wants to wait until the cases -- and the military commissions system -- have a more solid legal footing. He also said that Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, who announced his retirement in February, once bristled at the suggestion that some defendants could be acquitted, an outcome that Davis said would give the process added legitimacy.

"He said, 'We can't have acquittals,' " Davis said under questioning from Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the military counsel who represents Hamdan. " 'We've been holding these guys for years. How can we explain acquittals? We have to have convictions.' "

Davis also decried as unethical a decision by top military officials to allow the use of evidence obtained by coercive interrogation techniques. He said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the top military official overseeing the commissions process, was improperly willing to use evidence derived from waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. "To allow or direct a prosecutor to come into the courtroom and offer evidence they felt was torture, it puts a prosecutor in an ethical bind," Davis testified. But he said Hartmann replied that "everything was fair game -- let the judge sort it out."

// posted by montag @ 6:49 AM 0 Comments

Commodity-index funds control a record 4.51 billion bushels of corn, wheat and soybeans through Chicago Board of Trade futures, equal to half the amount held in U.S. silos on March 1. The holdings jumped 29 percent in the past year as investors bought grain contracts seeking better returns than stocks or bonds. The buying sent crop prices and volatility to records and boosted the cost for growers and processors to manage risk.

Niemeyer, who farms 2,200 acres in Auburn, Illinois, won't use futures to protect the value of the crop he will harvest in October. With corn at $5.9075 a bushel, up from $3.88 last year, he says the contracts are too costly and risky. Investors want corn so much that last month they paid 55 cents a bushel more than grain handlers, the biggest premium since 1999.

``It's the best of times for somebody speculating on grain prices, but it's not the best of times for farmers,'' said Niemeyer, 59. ``The demand for futures exceeds the demand for cash grains.''

// posted by montag @ 7:23 PM 0 Comments

Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized Barack Obama on Monday for opposing proposals to suspend federal gas taxes this summer, a plan she and Republican John McCain have endorsed.

// posted by montag @ 6:34 PM 0 Comments

After Giuliani, Thompson and Romney all flubbed their chances, we can see why the White House turned to its fourth draft choice, John McCain, as the only viable alternative to Huckabee, who actually might have shaken up their establishment and even, if elected, withdrawn from Iraq. But the rest of America is not so constrained in its choice for President. We want a hard-working, knowledgeable, engaged, caring, and reasonable President. Based on his long record in Washington, McCain does not appear to be that person.

// posted by montag @ 6:23 PM 0 Comments

The audit released Sunday by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, provides the latest snapshot of an uneven reconstruction effort that has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $100 billion. It also comes as several lawmakers have said they want the Iraqis to pick up more of the cost of reconstruction.

The special IG's review of 47,321 reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars found that at least 855 contracts were terminated by U.S. officials before their completion, primarily because of unforeseen factors such as violence and excessive costs. About 112 of those agreements were ended specifically because of the contractors' actual or anticipated poor performance.

// posted by montag @ 6:51 AM 0 Comments

Did you, for example, ever know a single fact about Joe Biden’s health care plan? Anything at all? But let me guess, you know Barack Obama’s bowling score. We are choosing a president, the next leader of the free world. We are not buying soap, and we are not choosing a court clerk with primarily administrative duties.

// posted by montag @ 6:37 PM 0 Comments

The centerpiece of Mr. McCain’s economic plan is a series of tax cuts that would largely benefit corporations and the wealthy. He is calling for cutting corporate taxes by $100 billion a year. Eliminating the alternative minimum tax, which was created to apply to wealthy taxpayers but now also affects some in the middle class, would reduce revenues by $60 billion annually. He also would double the exemption that can be claimed for dependents, which would cost the government $65 billion.

On the expenditure side, Mr. McCain has called not only for continuing an open-ended deployment of troops in Iraq[$2.3Billion per week], but also for spending $15 billion annually to expand the Army and the Marine Corps and to improve health care for veterans, among other programs.[But no GI Bill-ed.]

Mr. McCain’s advisers have said the new tax cuts would be paid for by eliminating earmarks and making large spending cuts, but they have not identified specifics. And they have spoken vaguely about making entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare less costly for the government. Mr. McCain’s chief economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said the campaign had simply presented its vision of what the tax code should look like and noted that some of the proposals would be phased in.

Mr. McCain said he would push ahead with his tax cuts even if Congress did not approve his spending cuts.

// posted by montag @ 1:06 PM 0 Comments

Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.

But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.

Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates.

The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control. The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole — rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes — but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.

Last summer, just before starting to use his wife’s plane, Mr. McCain was quoted in a newspaper report as saying that he did not plan to tap her substantial wealth to keep his bid for the Republican presidential nomination going.

“I have never thought about it,” Mr. McCain was quoted by The Arizona Republic as saying at a July appearance. “I would never do such a thing, so I wouldn’t know what the legalities are.”

// posted by montag @ 12:32 PM 0 Comments

While the Geneva Conventions prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity,” a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding which interrogation methods would violate that standard, and is reserving the right to make case-by-case judgments.

“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.

“I certainly don’t want to suggest that if there’s a good purpose you can head off and humiliate and degrade someone,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was describing some legal judgments that remain classified.

“The fact that you are doing something for a legitimate security purpose would be relevant, but there are things that a reasonable observer would deem to be outrageous,” he said.

At the same time, the official said, “there are certainly things that can be insulting that would not raise to the level of an outrage on personal dignity.”

// posted by montag @ 10:15 PM 0 Comments

The United States has gathered its most detailed evidence so far of Iranian involvement in training and arming fighters in Iraq, officials say, but significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement and the threat it poses to American and Iraqi forces.

Some intelligence and administration officials said Iran seemed to have carefully calibrated its involvement in Iraq over the last year, in contrast to what President Bush and other American officials have publicly portrayed as an intensified Iranian role.

It remains difficult to draw firm conclusions about the ebb and flow of Iranian arms into Iraq, and the Bush administration has not produced its most recent evidence.

// posted by montag @ 12:12 PM 0 Comments

But McCain has topped both candidates, missing a staggering 58 percent of his votes during the 110th Congress, according to the Washington Post’s congressional votes database.

To put this in perspective, McCain has now missed more votes than Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in December 2006 and was unable to return to the Senate until fall of last year. McCain has now missed nine votes more than Johnson.

// posted by montag @ 6:09 PM 0 Comments

McCain's concerns -- about budget deficits, unanticipated defense costs, an Iraq war that would be longer and more costly than advertised -- have proved eerily prescient, usually a plus for politicians who are quick to say they were right when others were wrong. Yet McCain appears determined to leave such predictions behind.

// posted by montag @ 7:17 AM 0 Comments

A project heralded as the dawning of an innovative, low-cost era in Navy shipbuilding has turned into a case study of how not to build a combat ship. The bill for the ship, being built by Lockheed Martin, has soared to $531 million, more than double the original, and by some calculations could be $100 million more. With an alternate General Dynamics prototype similarly struggling at an Alabama shipyard, the Navy last year temporarily suspended the entire program.

// posted by montag @ 6:49 AM 0 Comments

The Federal Aviation Administration announced Thursday its second effort in three years to stop its managers in Texas from covering up air safety violations _ after a new investigation found the misconduct continued into last year.

In the latest blow to an agency already under fire for letting airlines ignore its safety directives, the FAA announced that the top two managers of an air traffic control facility in Dallas-Fort Worth had been removed from their jobs.

In addition, the Transportation Department's inspector general found FAA managers in Dallas-Fort Worth routinely and intentionally misclassified instances where airplanes were allowed to fly closer together than they were supposed to, the FAA said. Instead of calling them operational errors or deviations from safety rules by FAA controllers, the managers labeled them pilot errors or nonevents.

// posted by montag @ 6:59 PM 0 Comments

"This is a test of leadership for John McCain. If he can't pick up the phone and make members of his own party stop airing a television ad he claims to oppose, how can he lead our country through an economic crisis or the war in Iraq?"

// posted by montag @ 6:14 PM 0 Comments

Asked whether the planned nominations by Mr. Bush were a sign that American policy was to “stay the course” in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that the security gains that had been achieved under General Petraeus’s command meant that “staying that course is not a bad idea.”

// posted by montag @ 7:07 AM 0 Comments

Republicans certainly can't sell McCain to the American public as a sure-handed pilot to steer the economy through dangerous straits. Maybe voters will be generous enough to let him withdraw his confession that he doesn't really understand economics that well. But I don't see how most Americans will believe that McCain's basic economic philosophy -- keep cutting taxes for the well-to-do and restrain discretionary government spending -- will make their lives any better.

McCain can hardly be painted as a foreign policy sage. His biggest handicap in this regard, of course, is the war in Iraq -- an albatross that McCain actually volunteered to wear.

mage consultants could try to portray McCain as a latter-day Dwight Eisenhower. I've actually heard Republicans try to make the comparison, but it won't work without rounding up and destroying all the history books.

// posted by montag @ 6:50 PM 0 Comments

Mr. Diamond, 80, met Mr. McCain when he was a former prisoner of war running for Congress in 1982. “I liked him right away because I respected what he went through in Vietnam,” Mr. Diamond recalled. When he got to know Mr. McCain and his wife, Cindy, Mr. Diamond said, “it became a love fest.”

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For weeks, there have been reports that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is preparing to move ahead with a multimillion-dollar program to rebuild the southern swath of Sadr City, which is currently occupied by Iraqi and American troops.

But almost a month after American and Iraqi forces pushed into the area, there are no signs of reconstruction. Instead, the streets are filled with mounds of trash and bubbling pools of sewage. Many neighborhoods are still without electricity, and many residents are too afraid to brave the cross-fire to seek medical care. Iraqi public works officials, apparently fearful of the fighting, rarely seem to show up at work, and the Iraqi government insists the area is not safe enough for repairs to begin.

On Saturday, three Sadr City residents gingerly approached an American Army position to deliver a warning: Unless the Iraqi government or its American partner did something to restore essential services and remove the piles of garbage, the militias would gain more support.

// posted by montag @ 6:50 AM 0 Comments

the Pentagon statistics showed the Army allowed 106 convicted burglars to enlist in 2007, up from 36 the year before. It also granted waivers to 43 recruits convicted of aggravated assault that year, up from 33 a year before; and to 130 people convicted of possession of drugs other than marijuana, a rise from 71 in 2006.

It also allowed two people convicted of making terrorist or bomb threats to enlist in 2007, up from one the year before.

// posted by montag @ 6:08 PM 0 Comments

A ceremony at which she unveiled a plaque commemorating civilian deaths in the Green Zone was briefly delayed by a "duck and cover" alert, one of several during her six-hour visit to the fortified compound housing the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government.

// posted by montag @ 7:12 AM 0 Comments

McCain insists he has never budged from his lifelong belief in less government and less taxation. But whoever wins the Democratic nomination will surely argue that behind McCain's antipolitician label, he has always been cozy with the agents of the special interests he rails against.

The policy shifts are evident: He abandoned comprehensive immigration reform last year as it threatened to sink his candidacy and is supporting tax cuts for the wealthy he had criticized for years and twice voted against in the Senate. And he has all but ignored the signature issues that framed the 2000 portrait of a maverick: campaign finance reform and a crackdown on the tobacco industry.

Compared with his 2000 insurgency, a doomed high-wire act that was short of money, staff, research, and policy papers, the McCain campaign of 2008 also has come under fire for its reliance on elite Washington lobbyists - 66 by one recent tally - who work for or are helping his campaign. News stories in recent weeks have questioned McCain actions that benefited political supporters or clients of friendly lobbyists.

// posted by montag @ 5:38 PM 0 Comments

And as the financial crisis spawned in the US spreads globally, there is even unprecedented talk of 'shame' in the ranks of the super-rich. 'There is something really obscene going on. This is an era of ridiculous excess. We have not seen the worst of it and there is going to be real anger,' said David Rothkopf, author of a new book, Superclass

The man with history's biggest annual pay packet is hedge fund manager John Paulson of Paulson & Company. But he is not alone, as the 'Alpha 25 list' of the super-rich published by Alpha financial magazine last week made clear. Up with Paulson were global markets gambler George Soros and rival dealer James Simons, who made $3bn apiece. Meanwhile ordinary Americans are being squeezed harder by inflation and the credit crunch, a stagnant economy, falling house values and rising unemployment - and, in a tax system rigged against them by successive conservative administrations, often pay proportionately twice as much tax as Paulson, Soros and their cohorts.

The widening gap that these trends are producing in US society is shaking traditional values to their roots. There are growing signs that the majority are losing faith in the remains of the American dream, while the chief beneficiaries of it feel guilty as never before. 'It's unprecedented that the superwealthy would express so much shame in public', said Robert Frank, author of the book Richistan, which chronicles the rise of America's new super-wealthy to a point where they live in a separate world of rarefied exclusivity. 'It is not just people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett standing up and saying "it's not fair". I spoke to 100 people earning over $10m who would not even admit to being rich: they feel ashamed about the inequality.'

// posted by montag @ 1:49 PM 0 Comments

In 1994, McCain tried to stop a primary challenge to the state's Republican governor, J. Fife Symington III, by telephoning his opponent, Barbara Barrett, the well-heeled spouse of a telecommunications executive, and warning of unspecified "consequences" should she reject his advice to drop out of the race. Barrett stayed in. At that year's state Republican convention, McCain confronted Sandra Dowling, the Maricopa County school superintendent and, according to witnesses, angrily accused her of helping to persuade Barrett to enter the race.

"You better get [Barrett] out or I'll destroy you," a witness claims that McCain shouted at her. Dowling responded that if McCain couldn't respect her right to support whomever she chose, that he "should get the hell out of the Senate." McCain shouted an obscenity at her, and Dowling howled one back.

Woods raced over, according to a witness, and pulled Dowling away. Woods said he has "no memory" of being involved, "though I heard something about an argument."

"What happens if he gets angry in crisis" in the presidency?" Hinz asked. "It's difficult enough to be a negotiator, but it's almost impossible when you're the type of guy who's so angry at anybody who doesn't do what he wants. It's the president's job to negotiate and stay calm. I don't see that he has that quality."

Having reunited with his old boss after a falling out in the '90s, Woods is back on board. Barbara Barrett, too. Other Arizona Republicans, once spurned or alienated from McCain, have accepted invitations to rejoin him, though not Sandra Dowling or Jon Hinz, who said, "I've just seen too much. That temper, the intolerance: It worries me."

// posted by montag @ 1:20 PM 0 Comments

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

McCain can't come out and say we need to crush the Armed Iraqi Revolution, because that would be an admission that the US has been fighting Iraqis for 5 years and still hasn't defeated them. So he and the Republican strategists and the retired generals and their Pentagon handlers make up this "al-Qaeda" business, as though people in Baquba would be gunning for Americans if Americans hadn't invaded their country and turned it upside down.

// posted by montag @ 12:42 PM 0 Comments

Of course, Obama fans were angry because of the barrage of McCarthyesque guilt-by-association charges against their candidate, portraying him as a fellow traveler of bomb-throwing, America-hating, flag-denigrating terrorists. The debate’s co-moderator, George Stephanopoulos, second to no journalist in his firsthand knowledge of the Clinton White House, could have easily rectified the imbalance. All he had to do was draw on his expertise to ask similar questions about Bill Clinton’s check-bearing business and foundation associates circling a potential new Clinton administration. He did not.

But viewers of all political persuasions were affronted by the moderators’ failure to ask about the mortgage crisis, health care, the environment, torture, education, China policy, the pending G.I. bill to aid veterans, or the war we’re losing in Afghanistan. Those minutes were devoted not just to recycling the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bosnian sniper fire and another lame question about a possible “dream ticket” but to the unseemly number of intrusive commercials and network promos that prompted the jeering at the end. The trashiest ads often bumped directly into an ABC announcer’s periodic recitations of quotations from the Constitution. Such defacing of American values is to be expected, I guess, from a network whose debate moderators refuse to wear flag pins.

// posted by montag @ 10:22 PM 0 Comments

The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable, lawyers from the Government Accountability Office said Friday.

In a formal legal opinion Friday, the accountability office said the new policy “amounts to a marked departure” from a longstanding, settled interpretation of federal law. It is therefore a rule and, under a 1996 law, must be submitted to Congress for review before it can take effect, the opinion said.

But Jeff Nelligan, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said, “G.A.O.’s opinion does not change our conclusion that the Aug. 17 letter is still in effect.”

// posted by montag @ 4:46 PM 0 Comments

"We never authorised torture, we just didn't, not what we would do," Myers said. Sands comments: "He really had taken his eye off the ball ... he didn't ask too many questions ... and kept his distance from the decision-making process."

Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell, US secretary of state at the time, told the Guardian: "I do know that Rumsfeld had neutralised the chairman [Myers] in many significant ways.

"The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important communications, meetings, deliberations and plans.

"At the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful chairman in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for the job".

// posted by montag @ 12:58 PM 0 Comments

The nation's top transportation official yesterday announced steps that she said will improve oversight of airlines' compliance with safety mandates and ensure that last week's mass groundings and flight cancellations do not recur.

The measures included establishing a roving team of officials to conduct comprehensive checks of airline maintenance practices and the creation of a system to better track the status of looming and overdue inspections, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said.

// posted by montag @ 12:49 PM 0 Comments

In recent days, United States forces have built high concrete blast walls to cordon off Sadr City’s government-controlled southern section from the rest of the sprawling district, which remains firmly under the control of the Mahdi Army militia. Within that Mahdi-controlled area, Falah Shanshal, a Sadrist member of Parliament, said Friday that the American and Iraqi government offensive in Sadr City was a “political war against the Sadrists.”

During a tour of several streets in the Mahdi-controlled area on Friday, it was clear that concrete blast walls erected elsewhere in Sadr City had been moved or knocked down. Some were covered with anti-American slogans.

Posing as municipal workers in fluorescent orange and yellow vests, three militia members — one masked with a checkered head scarf — dug holes in one main thoroughfare while wary drivers skirted around them and loose wires trailed across the street every few yards. Nearby, some of the heaviest fighting in weeks broke out late Friday night.

// posted by montag @ 12:35 PM 0 Comments

“The U.S. has not been fighting Al Qaeda, it’s been fighting Iraqis,” said Juan Cole, a fierce critic of the war who is the author of “Sacred Space and Holy War: The Politics, Culture and History of Shi’ite Islam” and a professor of history at the University of Michigan. A member of Al Qaeda “is technically defined as someone who pledges fealty to Osama bin Laden and is given a terror operation to carry out. It’s kind of like the Mafia,” Mr. Cole said. “You make your bones, and you’re loyal to a capo. And I don’t know if anyone in Iraq quite fits that technical definition.”

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is just one group, though a very lethal one, in the stew of competing Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iranian-backed groups, criminal gangs and others that make up the insurgency in Iraq. That was vividly illustrated last month when the Iraqi Army’s unsuccessful effort to wrest control of Basra from the Shiite militia groups that hold sway there led to an explosion of violence.

The current situation in Iraq should properly be described as “a multifactional civil war” in which “the government is composed of rival Shia factions” and “they are embattled with an outside Shia group, the Mahdi Army,” Ira M. Lapidus, a co-author of “Islam, Politics and Social Movements” and a professor of history at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in an e-mail message. “The Sunni forces are equally hard to assess,” he added, and “it is an open question as to whether Al Qaeda is a unified operating organization at all.”

// posted by montag @ 12:09 PM 0 Comments

Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle. As of fall 2007, this conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead and over 28,000 wounded. Allied casualties accounted for another 300 dead. Iraqi civilian deaths—mostly at the hands of other Iraqis—may number as high as 82,000. Over 7,500 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have also been killed. Fifteen percent of the Iraqi population has become refugees or displaced persons. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the United States now spends over $10 billion per month on the war, and that the total, direct U.S. costs from March 2003 to July 2007 have exceeded $450 billion, all of which has been covered by deficit spending.1 No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total impact on Service personnel and materiel.

The war’s political impact also has been great. Globally, U.S. standing among friends and allies has fallen.2 Our status as a moral leader has been damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and various issues concerning the treatment of detainees. At the same time, operations in Iraq have had a negative impact on all other efforts in the war on terror, which must bow to the priority of Iraq when it comes to manpower, materiel, and the attention of decisionmakers. Our Armed Forces—especially the Army and Marine Corps—have been severely strained by the war in Iraq. Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.

// posted by montag @ 7:48 PM 0 Comments

McCain's proposal, outlined April 15, would extend President George W. Bush's tax cuts, reduce the top corporate rate, repeal the alternative minimum tax and double exemptions for dependents. Price: $3.3 trillion by the end of a President McCain's second term in 2017, according to figures from his campaign and the Treasury.

The Arizona senator said that would be offset by eliminating pork-barrel spending, freezing a portion of the budget, and Medicare savings. He could cut the budget by $100 billion a year ``in a New York minute,'' he said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday.

``The huge imbalance'' in McCain's plan ``is that the tax cuts are specific and large and the spending cuts are small and vague,'' said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Washington- based Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates budget restraint.

Once, McCain was a deficit hawk, Bixby said, but ``strange things happen when people run for president.''

Tax Cuts

Extending Bush's tax cuts would cost $1.5 trillion through the end of a hypothetical second McCain term, according to Treasury Department figures. His proposal to reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 percent would cost $100 billion a year, McCain's campaign estimates. Doubling the exemption for dependents to $7,000 a year would cost another $65 billion annually and the AMT repeal adds another $60 billion a year, his campaign said.

McCain released tax returns today that showed he paid $5,413 in AMT in 2007 and $6,979 in 2006.

McCain's spending cuts, combined with increased revenue from economic growth, total $1.5 trillion over eight years, leaving a $1.8 trillion net increase to the national debt.

``This is really a massive increase in the deficit,'' said Joel Slemrod, an economist specializing in tax policy at the University of Michigan.

``The numbers add up,'' former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in an interview.

To help pay for the tax cuts, Holtz-Eakin said he would save $30 billion a year by eliminating so-called ``rifle shot'' provisions. Those include items such as tax breaks for small insurance companies.

A Treasury Department report Holtz-Eakin cited as the source of his estimate states $27 billion could be raised by eliminating narrowly used tax preferences spread over a decade, not a single year.

// posted by montag @ 6:06 PM 0 Comments

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday that whoever wins the presidency in November, "at least we'll have an adult in office who can lead and accomplish something."

// posted by montag @ 7:21 AM 0 Comments

A suicide bomber struck the funeral of two anti-al-Qaida Sunni tribesmen in a town north of Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 45 people, police said.

The blast was the latest attack in Iraq's Sunni areas after a period of relative calm that was broken this week, raising concerns that Sunni insurgents are reorganizing.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki told European lawmakers Wednesday that his administration is closer than ever to defeating al Qaida-allied Sunni Muslim extremists, a day after bombings attributed to the Iraqi version of the militant group killed about 60 people and wounded 120 north of the capital.

// posted by montag @ 6:47 AM 0 Comments

The President’s short-term goal is to do nothing, his medium-term goal is to do nothing much, and his long-term goal is to do nothing close to what’s needed to save the planet from global warming.

// posted by montag @ 6:37 PM 0 Comments

A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing...

...One big problem is that the Iraqi troops have responded to militia gunfire with such intense fusillades that the soldiers have endangered civilians, American soldiers and even their own forces. The barrage of Iraqi Army fire has become such a regular occurrence that some American soldiers are worried that militia fighters have tried to insert themselves between nearby Iraqi units to induce the Iraqi soldiers to fire on one another.

// posted by montag @ 7:07 AM 0 Comments

The people who know him like him the least. He is a media darling, so the general population doesn't know his record - and conservatives do

// posted by montag @ 6:48 AM 0 Comments

The State Department is warning U.S. diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year and says it will soon start identifying prime candidates for jobs at the Baghdad embassy and outlying provinces, according to a cable obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

A similar call-up notice last year caused an uproar among foreign service officers, some of whom objected to compulsory work in a war zone, although in the end the State Department found enough volunteers to fill the jobs.

Now, the State Department anticipates another staffing crisis.

"We face a growing challenge of supply and demand in the 2009 staffing cycle," the cable said, noting that more than 20 percent of the nearly 12,000 foreign service officers have already worked in the two major hardship posts - Iraq and Afghanistan - and a growing number have done tours in both countries.

// posted by montag @ 6:05 PM 0 Comments

A car bomb killed 40 people and wounded 70 others outside a government office in the Iraqi city of Baquba on Tuesday in one of the deadliest attacks in months, police said.

Police said they expected the death toll to rise because there were still charred bodies inside cars at the scene of the blast in the capital of Diyala province, north of Baghdad.

Police and a hospital source also said a suicide car bomb had killed 13 people and wounded 14 others in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. That bomb exploded outside a restaurant.

// posted by montag @ 6:49 AM 0 Comments

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona may not have been paying the closest of attention last week during hearings on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

Speaking Monday at the annual meeting of the Associated Press, McCain was asked whether he, if elected, would shift combat troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to intensify the search for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

“I would not do that unless Gen. [David] Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that,” McCain said, referring to the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Petraeus, however, made clear last week that he has nothing to do with the decision. Testifying last week before four congressional committees, including the Senate Armed Services Committee on which McCain is the ranking Republican, Petraeus said the decision about whether troops could be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan was not his responsibility because his portfolio is limited to the multi-national force in Iraq.

Decisions about Afghanistan would be made by others, he said.

// posted by montag @ 7:34 PM 0 Comments

ACLU Calls for Independent Counsel to Investigate Administration's Approval of Torture and Abuse

WASHINGTON – In a stunning admission to ABC news Friday night, President Bush declared that he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details of the CIA's use of torture. Bush reportedly told ABC, "I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved." Bush also defended the use of waterboarding.

Recent reports indicate that high-level advisers including Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet were part of the National Security Council's "Principals Committee" that met regularly and approved the CIA's use of "combined" "enhanced" interrogation techniques, even pushing the limits of the now infamous 2002 Justice Department "torture memo." These top advisers reportedly signed off on how the CIA would interrogate suspects – whether they would be slapped, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning.

"We have always known that the CIA's use of torture was approved from the very top levels of the U.S. government, yet the latest revelations about knowledge from the president himself and authorization from his top advisers only confirms our worst fears," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "It is a very sad day when the president of the United States subverts the Constitution, the rule of law, and American values of justice."

Romero added, "It is more important than ever that the U.S. government, when seeking justice against those it suspects of harming us, adhere to our commitment to due process and the rule of law. That's why the ACLU has taken the extraordinary step to offer our assistance to those being prosecuted under the unconstitutional military commissions process. We unfortunately can't erase or make up for what has already happened, but at least we can attempt to restore some of the values and some semblance of due process that the Bush administration has squandered in the name of national security."

The American Civil Liberties Union is calling on Congress to demand an independent prosecutor to investigate possible violations by the Bush administration of laws including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws.

"No one in the executive branch of government can be trusted to fairly investigate or prosecute any crimes since the head of every relevant department, along with the president and vice president, either knew or participated in the planning and approval of illegal acts," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress cannot look the other way; it must demand an independent investigation and independent prosecutor."

Fredrickson added, "Congress is duty-bound by the Constitution not only to hold the president, vice president, and all civil officers to account, but it must also send a message to future presidents that it will use its constitutional powers to prevent illegal, and immoral conduct."

// posted by montag @ 7:19 PM 0 Comments

The four-term Arizona senator, a longtime member of the Armed Services Committee, criticized the earlier handling of the war but has been a crucial ally in President Bush's effort to increase and maintain U.S. forces in Iraq.

Besides the war, McCain agrees broadly with Bush and other conservatives on:

-Abortion. McCain promises to appoint judges who, in the mold of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. McCain's record is not spotless on abortion: He said once, in 1999, that Roe v. Wade should not be overturned.

But that was an aberration in an otherwise unbroken record of opposing abortion rights for women. McCain voted repeatedly to ban federal funding for abortion; he once voted against Medicaid funds for abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

He voted to require parental consent for abortion and voted to criminalize anyone but a parent crossing state lines with a minor to help get an abortion. McCain also supported a ban preventing women in the military from getting abortions with their own money at overseas military hospitals.

"I am pro-life and an advocate for the rights of man everywhere in the world," McCain told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. "Because to be denied liberty is an offense to nature and nature's Creator."

// posted by montag @ 5:55 PM 0 Comments

The I.R.S.’s scrutiny of the nation’s biggest companies is at a 20-year low, according to the study, conducted by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, a research group affiliated with Syracuse University.

The study, made public Sunday, points to “a historic collapse in audits.” It found that major corporations — defined as those with assets of at least $250 million — have about a one in four chance of being audited, down from about three in four in 1990.

// posted by montag @ 6:38 PM 0 Comments

President Bush and his wife, Laura, will host a White House dinner in honor of the pontiff Wednesday evening. U.S. Catholic leaders from around the nation will attend. The menu will offer Bavarian-style food in recognition of the pope's German heritage. It's even the pope's 81st birthday. But he won't be there.

// posted by montag @ 6:13 PM 0 Comments

"They hate us for our freedom" was possibly the dumbest, most insulting piece of bullshit ever to escape the lips of an American president.

// posted by montag @ 5:43 PM 1 Comments

A highway patrolman who was photographed in a handmade Ku Klux Klan costume while on duty the day before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday has been suspended without pay, authorities said.

A fellow trooper who transmitted the cell-phone photo of white-masked lawman has been demoted.

Craig Franklin, a 12-year veteran of the Ohio Highway Patrol, is pictured in the January 20 photo with a white cone on his head, white paper mask and a white cloth covering his shoulders, according to a highway patrol report.

Franklin is otherwise in trooper uniform. A handgun holster, a radio normally issued by the patrol and other police equipment can be seen in the photo, the report said.

// posted by montag @ 1:36 PM 2 Comments

And I approved

// posted by montag @ 5:44 PM 0 Comments

It was easy to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. Easy, too, to let the genie of sectarian violence out of the bottle. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and then-defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and their neo-conservative cheerleaders predicted that our troops would be greeted as conquering heroes, that the war would cost only $50 billion, last only three or four months and implant Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East.

Now it's harder than Chinese algebra to get out after five long years of war, an American death toll of more than 4,000, an Iraqi death toll numbered in the hundreds of thousands and a cost to the United States estimated at as much as $3 trillion if the war ended tomorrow.

How much more American and Iraqi blood must be spilled between now and January 20, 2009, so George W. Bush can boast that Iraq wasn't lost on his watch, that he never cut and ran and that — never mind — it wasn't al Qaida or Iran that defeated us in Iraq, it was the Democrats?

// posted by montag @ 1:52 PM 0 Comments