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A New Paradigm

By Ron Beasley

The death of Jesse Helms on the Fourth of July is symbolic on many fronts.

Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican senator whose uncompromising conservatism made him one of America's leading crusaders against communism, liberalism, tax increases, abortion, homosexuality, affirmative action and court-ordered busing to integrate schools, died yesterday at Mayview Convalescent Center in Raleigh, N.C. He was 86.

Helms was the modern day equivalent of a Neanderthal who's mind set was deeply rooted in the 16th century.  A racist, bigot and homophobe he was truly a man who's species is rushing toward extinction.  He represented the Republican Party that Lee Attwater and Karl Rove created based on the very worst qualities of humans.  The old time bigots are dying and there are increasingly few to take their places which is why the vast majority of those under thirty identify with the Democratic Party and why the Republican Party must once again reinvent itself.

A new paradigm indeed!

The George W. Bush Sewage Plant

By Ron Beasley

Via Steve Soto

How do we honor George W. Bush and best remember his presidency?

An Honor That Bush Is Unlikely to Embrace

SAN FRANCISCO — Reagan has his highways. Lincoln has his memorial. Washington has the capital (and a state, too). But President Bush may soon be the sole president to have a memorial named after him that you can contribute to from the bathroom.

From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

The plan, naturally hatched in a bar, would place a vote on the November ballot to provide “an appropriate honor for a truly unique president.”

Supporters say that they have plenty of signatures to qualify the initiative and that the renaming would fit in a long and proud American tradition of poking political figures in the eye.

“Most politicians tend to be narcissistic and egomaniacs,” said Brian McConnell, an organizer who regularly suits up as Uncle Sam to solicit signatures. “So it is important for satirists to help define their history rather than letting them define their own history.”

I would also like to suggest the Richard B. Cheney Memorial Rendering Plant.

Attention Getters

By Ron Beasley

When I finally had a chance to check the Internet pipes today a few things jumped out at me. First there was this:

Kristol: Bush Might Bomb Iran If He ‘Thinks Senator Obama’s Going To Win’

Now the only thing that is reassuring about this is Bill Kristol is always wrong.

But Cheney might just do it to leave Obama with an even bigger mess.  I guess the question that will be answered is if Cheney still has that much power.  I suspect that Gates and the rest of the Pentagon residents realize that all hell will break lose in Iraq if they do attack Iran.  Does Gates have the power to stop the criminally insane Dick Cheney?

And we have this from another of the really scary people that live in the Bush/Cheney universe:

Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran After U.S. Election But Before Inauguration, Arab States Will Be ‘Delighted’

I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.

I see this as being more likely but the blow back will be the same and leave Obama with an insurmountable problem.

And we have this from Newsweek's Michael Isikoff:

McCain’s Boeing Battle Boomerangs

Yes, Boeing did some bad things up front but it's also obvious that McCain's indignity is in large part because he is in EADS' back pocket.

Critics, including some at the Pentagon, cite in particular two tough letters McCain wrote to Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England in 2006 and another to Robert Gates, just prior to his confirmation as Defense secretary. In the first letter, dated Sept. 8, 2006, McCain wrote of hearing from "third parties" that the Air Force was about to redo the tanker competition by factoring in European government subsidies to EADS—a condition that could have seriously hurt the EADS bid. McCain urged that the Pentagon drop the subsidy factor and posed a series of technical questions about the Air Force's process. "He was trying to jam us and bully us to make sure there was competition by giving EADS an advantage," said one senior Pentagon official, who asked for anonymity when discussing a politically sensitive matter. The assumption within the Pentagon, the official added, was that McCain's letters were drafted by EADS lobbyists. "There was no one else that would have had that level of detail," the official said. (A Loeffler associate noted that he and Nelson were retained by EADS after the letters were drafted.)

And you shouldn't miss this great take down of David Broder by Steve Soto:

Broder Shows His Colors Early

Mr. Broder, who do you think bears responsibility for the fact that only 14% of the country in your paper’s own poll thinks the country is on the right track? Who bears responsibility for why 84% of the public feels the country is on the wrong track, the highest number on record? You do Mr. Broder; you and all the bipartisan members of your Beltway crowd that have tut-tutted your way through this country’s downward spiral these last eight years into a disaster capitalism economy so detached from Main Street America that 84% reject you and your crowd. And you've been there yourself, cheering along George W. Bush. But now it’s Barack Obama who is responsible for establishing the credibility of an election process you broke?

Bush/Saudi Crime Family

By Ron Beasley

The Bush administration looks out for it's friends even when they support the terrorists. (Hat Tip to John Cole)

Indicted Saudi Gets $80 Million US Contract

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush's first business venture, Arbusto Energy.

The Bush crime family is starting to make the Cosa Nostra look like good guys.

Economics by John McCain

By Ron Beasley

John McCain has admitted that he doesn't know much about economics but he has someone advising him who does - Phil Gramm.  Now we briefly discussed how Gramm is up to his neck in the mortgage crisis through his associations with UBS here.  Well now it turns out that Gramm has his fingerprints all over the skyrocketing costs of energy.

Who let the oil market be manipulated?

For anyone who believes that speculation by energy traders explains at least a portion of the run-up in oil prices, the announcement that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating oil market "manipulation" is welcome news. Maybe, at long last, we'll get some clarity on this mystery. Speculation likely does not explain the entirety of $130-a-barrel oil, but it's reasonable to assume that some sort of shenanigans are going on behind the scenes.

But for How the World Works, the most interesting tidbit in the Wall Street Journal's coverage was the news that the CFTC had "reached an agreement" with IntercontinentalExchange Inc, the operator of ICE Futures electronic exchange.

As harped upon in this space on numerous occasions, trading on ICE is not, as the Journal delicately puts it, "subject to the same CFTC reporting requirements as Nymex [New York Mercantile Exchange] trading." Which means energy traders can do what they want under cover of darkness, and regulators are none the wiser. But "ICE will now provide daily information on large trader positions in its oil-futures markets, divulge more details on market participants and notify the CFTC when traders exceed position limits."

To which, all I can say is finally! It's not like nobody knew this was a problem. For background information, interested readers are referred to two lengthy government reports, "The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices: A Need To Put the Cop Back On The Beat," and "Excessive Speculation in the Natural Gas Market," published in 2006 and 2007, respectively. To allow some commodity trading exchanges to operate without oversight while others must report what's going on is an open invitation to traders: "Manipulate me, pretty please."

Of course, this didn't happen by accident. I wrote about this yesterday, and I wrote about it the day before yesterday, and I'm seriously considering writing about it every single day until the next election for the presidency of the United States is decided. The freedom of energy traders to operate on exchanges such as ICE without having to report their activities to the U.S. government is directly attributable to the husband-and-wife politicking of Phil and Wendy Gramm. That's right, Phil "top-economic-adviser-to-John McCain" Gramm. If speculation has pushed up oil prices, Phil Gramm is at least partially responsible.

Phil Gramm has spent most of his life fighting government regulation and economic accountability.  Both the mortgage crisis and the spike in energy costs are at least in part the result of short term greed running wild because of a lack of regulation and accountability.  Just like foreign policy John McCain represents more of the same when it comes to economic policy.

Update

Here are the details of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's probe of oil trading .

As usual Joe Lieberman is wrong

By Ron Beasley

Joe Lieberman like Bill Kristol and the entire Bush administration has been wrong about everything.  That didn't prevent him from taking the Democrats to task on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.  Today Senator Joe Biden does a good job of taking Mr Lieberman to task on those same pages.

On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman wrote on this page that the Democratic Party he and I grew up in has drifted far from the foreign policy espoused by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

In fact, it is the policies that President George W. Bush has pursued, and that John McCain would continue, that are divorced from that great tradition – and from the legacy of Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Sen. Lieberman is right: 9/11 was a pivotal moment. History will judge Mr. Bush's reaction less for the mistakes he made than for the opportunities he squandered.

The president had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead – by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests – Mr. Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

But it's Joe Conason who really explains what Joe Lieberman is all about in Joe Lieberman, ideological turncoat.

Despite his boundless pretensions, Sen. Joe Lieberman is not and has never been a font of foreign policy wisdom. His opinions derive as much from expedience and vanity as any consistent worldview. He will say whatever serves his ambitions at a given moment.

Running against antiwar Democrat Ned Lamont almost two years ago, for instance, he promised Connecticut voters that we were on the cusp of victory in Iraq. "I am confident that the situation is improving enough on the ground that by the end of this year, we will begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops," he said in October 2006, "and by the end of the next year more than half of the troops who are there now will be home." Within weeks after winning that election, of course, Lieberman was joining with Sen. John McCain, his friend and ideological ally, in support of sending 30,000 additional American troops to Iraq -- and bringing exactly none home.

Was he lying when he offered that false but comforting assurance in the heat of a Senate campaign? Was he simply unable to distinguish between reality and his own propaganda? A similar set of questions confronted readers of a Lieberman essay on foreign policy and the Democrats that appeared Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, where we can expect the "independent Democrat" to appear often during the coming months as a turncoat surrogate for McCain -- because today he evidently hopes for appointment as a token Democrat in a Republican Cabinet, or even a second nomination as vice president, on the Republican ticket.

Lieberman's theme in the Journal essay, excerpted from a speech he delivered at an event sponsored by Commentary magazine, the leading neoconservative journal, is easily summarized and utterly unoriginal: Democrats were once patriotic and strong on defense, when Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy led the party, but they have lapsed (again) into weakness and vacillation during the Bush era. And Lieberman pillories Barack Obama for suggesting that he would sit down and talk with the leaders of Iran and other adversarial regimes and for failing to stand up to the party's overbearing liberal wing.

For someone who once considered himself a history scholar, Lieberman shamelessly falsifies not only the diplomacy of past and current administrations but also, by omission, his own political pedigree. His Journal essay opens with a lament about the condition of the Democratic Party and an idealized glance back at the "principled, internationalist, strong and successful" foreign policy of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Truman.

[......]

The Democrats have struggled over foreign policy since Vietnam, although Lieberman's indictment of a party that abandoned the president after 9/11 is just as dishonest as his failure to discuss his own evolution. Democrats stood in lock step with Bush when he invaded Afghanistan, and only began to break with him over Iraq, a ruinous war that was based on lies.

As for his complaint against Obama's willingness to engage with various dictators and despots, let's not forget that American leaders have done so whenever that suited their objectives -- whether secretly, as Ronald Reagan did with Iran, or openly, as George W. Bush has done with Kim Jong Il and Moammar Gadhafi.

But speaking of appeasement, nobody in this debate, including Obama, has ever praised Louis Farrakhan as unctuously as Lieberman did in 2000. Back then, when he was trying to win black votes, he said he looked forward to sitting down with the Nation of Islam leader -- and he set no conditions for that meeting.

Maybe John McCain should renounce Lieberman's support, too.

Joe Lieberman left the Democratic party  at a time it was ascending and joined with the neocons when their stock was plunging.  He knows full well he will have no power in the Democratic controlled Senate and his only hope to hold on to some relevancy is a McCain win and a place in his cabinet.

KBR, Sexual Harrasment And Child Porn

By Cernig

Yet more evidence that there's something seriously wrong with KBR's corporate culture, as if we really needed it after their attempts to sidestep responsibility for rapes and attempted rapes by their employees in Iraq.

From the London Times:

An Iraqi cleaner and two cooks claim that a culture of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying exists at the British Embassy in Baghdad.

The middle-aged cleaner told The Times that a British contractor with KBR, the company hired to maintain the embassy’s premises, offered to double her daily pay if she would stay the night with him. When she refused, she said, her pay was cut and she was later dismissed.

The Iraqis accuse the embassy of leaving the abuse unchallenged and failing adequately to respond to complaints against several British managers for KBR. The company was allowed to conduct its own inquiry, an arrangement criticised as a very serious conflict of interest.

The complainants – the cleaner and two male cooks who worked in the embassy canteen – say that some KBR managers groped Iraqi staff regularly, paid or otherwise rewarded them for sex and dismissed those who refused or spoke out.

The British Embassy heard the complaints initially but left KBR to investigate; a KBR report found that there was no case to answer.

And from the Houston Examiner:

A former bus driver for Iraq war contractor KBR Inc. who was fired in 2006 for possessing child pornography got rehired less than a year later, and has again been caught with a large collection of child porn, according to prosecutors.

Ira L. Waltrip of Lampasas, Texas, who had been working for KBR at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, was charged this week in U.S. District Court with possessing child pornography. According to a court affidavit, KBR fired Waltrip in January 2006 when he was assigned to the Al Asad Air Base in Iraq after he was discovered with a collection of child pornography. At the time, authorities with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service elected not to prosecute Waltrip because they said they lacked sufficient evidence that the pornography in question actually depicted minors. KBR rehired Waltrip in December 2006 as a bus driver. Again, Waltrip was caught with an extensive library of child pornography, some of which appeared to depict children as young as four to six years old.

It is not entirely clear how Waltrip managed to get rehired by KBR. A spokeswoman for the Houston-based company, Heather Browne, issued a statement saying that KBR keeps a list of employees ineligible for rehire.

It would appear, to me, that KBR thinks issuing repeated statements claiming they are doing the right thing are enough, when it's readily apparent they aren't and that they consider Iraq the kind of place where anyone will do for the job. It also seems to me, although I'm not a lawyer, that the pattern of such incidents might be sufficient to establish KBR's complicity and incompetence were someone to sue them for one of these incidents alleging that their corporate culture encouraged such events to occur.

Yoo Don't Say

By Cernig

John Yoo, legal advisor to torturers, has refused to testify to Congress about his infamous memos.

Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who wrote the controversial legal memos authorizing harsh interrogation programs, will not testify voluntarily before the House Judiciary Committee -- paving the way for a possible subpoena and showdown over Executive Privilege. Yoo's lawyer has just informed House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers that he would not appear.

In a letter, Yoo's lawyer told Conyers he was "not authorized" by DOJ to discuss internal deliberations.

"We have been expressly advised by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice that Professor Yoo is not authorized to discuss before your Committee any specific deliberative communications, including the substance of comments on opinions or policy questions, or the confidential predecisional advice, recommendations or other positions taken by individuals or entities of the Executive Branch," Yoo's lawyer, John C. Millian, wrote in a letter to Conyers.

Millian also noted that Yoo was involved in a lawsuit over the legal memos and that it would "not be appropriate" for him to testify while the litigation was pending.

Conyers invited Yoo to testify before the committee May 6th about the memos. He told Yoo the committee was prepared to subpoena him if he declined to appear voluntarily. Today's letter -- and DOJ's position that Yoo was not authorized to answer Conyers' questions -- is likely to lead to that next step.

Conyers also wants testimony from Ashcroft, Feith, Addington and Tenet - and all of them will refuse to testify too.

Because according to the Bush administration committing war crimes is covered by executive privilege...

Hannity's Pal Marches With Neo-Nazis In D.C.

By Cernig

A busload of Neo-Nazis held a march today in D.C., assembling on Constitution Avenue to "denounce illegal immigration and to offer white Americans an alternative to the two-party political system." The marchers, carrying Swastika flags and yelling "Sieg Heil", were protected by a massive show of force from D.C. police and several counter-demonstrators were arrested in struggles.

Alongside the 30 marchers from the Michigan-based National Socialist Movement was Hal Turner, rightwing white-supremacist radio host.

One speaker railed against illegal immigrants and shouted, "White America, your option is with us." Another, introduced as radio host Hal Turner, said the group was "part of a much greater movement" that was "willing to play hardball" to fight illegal immigration. He warned that if Congress did not solve the problem, the movement would assemble in "minority areas" of U.S. cities and "clean house."

Periodically, hecklers watching from a distance shouted "racist pig" or vulgar slogans. But a far more powerful reproof came from a protester who played a tape of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech from the March on Washington in 1963.

"Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood," King's voice boomed across the Capitol.

Turner was recently the subject of much blogging when he contradicted Fox radio host Sean Hannity, who had said he didn't know Turner at all:

I was quite disappointed when Sean Hannity at first tried to say he didn't know me and then went on to say that I ran some senate campaign in New Jersey. In fact, Sean Hannity does know me and we were quite friendly a number of years ago.

In 2000, Turner tried and failed to get the Republican nomination for election to Congress from New Jersey's 13th district. Ironically, today was also the anniversary of the Ku Klux Klan Act, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress in the days when their party wasn't the first option for white-supremacist racists. 

Collaboration Program Related Activities

by Eric Martin

Noah Shachtman produces some excerpts from a recent Zawahiri Q&A session that pretty much eviscerate the loosely sourced (deja vu) claims that Iran and al-Qaeda have a working relationship - claims that have been all the rage for the McCain campaign and its coterie of supporters.

Recently, Senator John McCain has repeatedly indicated that Iran and al-Qaeda are in cahoots.  The terror group's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, would beg to differ.  In a long-promised online Q&A session, Zawahiri says it would be "in the interest" of Al-Qaeda to see Iran "sap[ped]" by a fight with the United States.  Moreover, he seems to promise that the extremist collective will "battle" whoever wins that U.S.-Iran struggle.

The dispute between America and Iran is a real dispute based on the struggle over areas of influence, and the possibility of America striking Iran is a real possibility. As for what might happen in the region, I can only say that major changes will occur in the region, and the situation will be in the interest of the Mujahideen if the war saps both of them. If, however, one of them emerges victorious, its influence will intensify and fierce battles will begin between it and the Mujahideen, except that the Jihadi awakening currently under way and the degeneration state of affairs of the invaders in Afghanistan and Iraq will make it impossible for Iran or America to become the sole decision-maker in the region. (emphasis mine; translation courtesy of IntelCenter)

This isn't the first time Zawahiri has criticized Iran, either.  In a videotape released in December, he said that "Iran has stabbed the Muslim Ummah [nation] in the back" during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

It caused itself and the Shiites following it a historic disgrace. The signs of this stab will remain vivid in the Muslims' memory for a very long time. The strange paradox to which I would like to draw attention is that despite the fact that Iran permitted the Crusader troops to enter Iraq, recognized the agent government there, and pushed its militias to participate in this government's army, security services, and police force.

Some might claim that this is just a disinformation campaign meant to conceal the super secret collaborative relationship between al-Qaeda and Iran.  A few thoughts on that: First, Zawahiri, like Bin Laden, tend to be surprisingly up front about their intentions and objectives.  Not entirely forthright, but not prone to double-speak either. 

Second, Zawahiri's statements on Iran are entirely consistent - almost mandated - by the brand of theological extremism espoused by al-Qaeda (salafism with a takfiri streak) when coupled with the goal of re-establishing some romanticized notion of a pan-Islamic state based on their version of fundamentalist Sunni Muslim doctrine. Not a lot of room for Iran - or Shiites in general - in that worldview.

Finally, this would be an extremely reckless way to go about throwing the US off the scent - and one that would rightly make Iran pretty nervous: Zawahiri's words inspire would-be terrorists and jihadists, and it is implausible to think that they are all "in the know" about Zawahiri's hypothetical subterfuge (leaving aside the fact that the terrorist/jihadist community has long held views on Iran similar to those expressed by Zawahiri in these recent examples - making meaningful collaboration even less likely regardless).

Karl Rove sees what he likes

By Libby

This interview with Karl Rove at GQ is already generating some buzz at Memeorandum. It was a long and fascinating exchange with some decent questions. Everyone seems to have their favorite quote and Karl's wankery is already being dissected by the wonks. Leaving the debunking to them, my personal favorite speaks to how he justifies his own existence.

So there's good calculating and bad calculating?
Absolutely.

I'm sure that I don't need to tell you Karl believes his calculating is good and Democrats' calculating is bad. But I do wonder what benefit he calculated from giving this interview. It certainly wasn't to promote his new book.

What's your goal with this book? You intend to set the record straight, as you see it? Absolutely, absolutely. Sure. You bet. I intend to set the record straight.

I imagine you're going to have a lot to say.
Yeah, exactly. Available soon for $29.95…. I gotta go! I gotta go!

So why do you suppose he was willing to give away the 'family secrets' at this moment in time? Call me paranoid but I never underestimate the long range thinking of Rove. I have to believe he had a reason and I wonder what it was.