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August 2010
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View Article  To whom did Blagojevich 'try to sell a senate seat'?
To whom did Blagojevich 'try to sell a senate seat'?

The Blagojevich trial is over, and with a richly deserved black eye for the prosecution. On 23 out of 24 counts with which U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, in Chicago, tried to sandbag the defendants, the jury declared a mistrial. Blagojevich was found guilty on one count, lying to the F.B.I., the Martha Stewart kind of conviction. 



As of today, the story making the rounds is a statement by a 21-year-old guy on the jury that the deadlock came from one juror. Time will tell whether the lone-holdout story is ...   more »
View Article  BP oil spill may be spreading east
BP oil spill may be spreading east

This may not be the time for I-told-you-so's. But I was worried from early on about the common denominator in BP's response to the oil gusher at the Deepwater Rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The common denominator? --Apparently, their main emphasis was to keep as much away from the surface as possible.

The most recent news is that BP's use of 'dispersants' may have created plumes of oil on the ocean floor, now being detected far eastward of the oil rig disaster.

As I wrote previously, BP seemed to be doing ...   more »
View Article  Blagojevich jury hung: There was no case
Blagojevich jury hung: There was no case

To make one thing clear at the top, I have no prediction about the verdict in the Blagojevich 'trial'. It is often difficult to read a jury, and most attempts are fatuous. I did not make predictions about the outcome even in the trial of Irve Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Jr., where I was present in the courtroom half the days--unlike most of the commentators. I cannot predict the jury verdict in a trial I have not seen and heard.



The important point about the Blagojevich trial is that there is little or ...   more »
View Article  Hillary Clinton would not be good assassination insurance
Hillary Clinton would not be good assassination insurance

In one of those political non-stories that get floated periodically, a few media outlets are trying to pump up a suggestion that Vice President Joe Biden should be bumped from the Democratic ticket in 2012--to be replaced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This is the kind of item that gets pushed during summer doldrums.

It is easy to see why the GOP and its media allies would willingly boost this suggestion: Hillary Clinton was far less popular than Barack Obama in the last election cycle, especially among young people, and proved ...   more »
View Article  Why is the National Rifle Association helping the drug cartels?

Why is the National Rifle Association helping the drug cartels?

 

Amid all the fanfare and the genuine carnage in the increasingly violent war among and between Mexican drug cartels, there remains one dirty little secret.

 

While loudly trumpeting an unbridled right of citizens to bear arms north of the border, the National Rifle Association in this country is all but openly assisting the most violent of the violent Latin American drug ...   more »

View Article  U.S. imitates Brazil: Extreme inequalities in quality

The United States imitates Brazil: Extreme inequalities in quality



Sao Paolo

 

We are facing a breath-taking gap of extreme differences between top and bottom, a Brazil-like chasm, now approaching crisis proportions. Savage inequalities, to use Jonathan Kozol’s characterization of U.S. schools, have widened for three decades. Billionaires seek new ways to drop millions of dollars and to consolidate ownership of resources at one end of the income scale, while half ...   more »

View Article  Déjà vu all over again, part 1: Rightwing attacks on Franklin Roosevelt

Déjà vu all over again, part 1: Rightwing attacks on Franklin Roosevelt

 

There are few better ways to get a handle on the current political scene than to re-read Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger’s history trilogy on the New Deal, The Age of Roosevelt. Volume 3 is titled The Politics of Upheaval, and upheaval there was in plenty. During the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the struggles of American labor ...   more »

View Article  Michael Steele partly wrong, partly right

Michael Steele: Partly wrong, partly right

 

Writers are saying that ‘Michael Steele is in trouble again.’ This is imprecision. Michael Steele was always in trouble, if you put it that way, from the moment he took over as chairman of the Republican National Committee.


Steele


For one thing, Steele is basically a nice man fronting for the party of savage, Dickensian redistribution of wealth upward. The GOP now stands--at whatever cost ...   more »

View Article  The Texas Gulf Coast

The Texas Gulf Coast

 

Riding down to Galveston from Houston, going to the beach, I remember acres of emerald-green rice fields fanning out through the car window. Those glowing, Emerald-City-green fields, shimmering into the horizon and laced with the silver of irrigation, are not there any more. Neither are the acres of sugar cane fields stretching west of Houston—hence the name Sugarland. Remnants of the old sugar industry are still ...   more »

View Article  What soCIALISm looks like to John Boehner?
What soCIALISm looks like to John Boehner?

Well, he does keep being drawn, compulsively it seems, to talk about it.




Eli Lilly and Co. really ought to be paying Boehner for the free advertising. Of course, he has already been the recipient of a lot of Big Pharma money over the years.


   more »
View Article  Energy & Commerce hearing on BP blowout today

Today the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., holds a hearing on the BP oil spill. From the Committee:

 

“The Subcommittee on Energy and Environment will hold a hearing on legislation to respond to the BP oil spill and prevent future oil well blowouts on Wednesday, June 30, 2010, in 2322 Rayburn House Office Building.  The hearing will focus on the discussion ...   more »

View Article  Don Siegelman wins cert; Robert Blagojevich asks on tape “who is Valerie Jarrett?”

Don Siegelman wins cert; Robert Blagojevich asks on tape “who is Valerie Jarrett?”

 

Don Siegelman wins cert: The Supreme Court today vacated the conviction of Don E. Siegelman, whose conviction is widely suspected to have been railroaded. The Siegelman case is remanded to appeals court. A substantial blog entry on the ruling is posted here.



Siegelman


The decision itself is posted here, one succinct item in a long list ...   more »

View Article  'GOVERNMENT'S MOTION TO LIMIT EXTRAJUDICIAL COMMENTS' in Blagojevich matter
'GOVERNMENT'S MOTION TO LIMIT EXTRAJUDICIAL COMMENTS' in Blagojevich matter

Of all people in the world, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago has now filed a motion asking the judge in the Blagojevich matter to limit "extrajudicial comments"--BY THE DEFENSE.

And this motion had to be filed by Debra Bonamici, recently added to the list of prosecutors on the court filings, whose performance I greatly admired during the trial of I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby.


Libby

Side note: I just got back from a couple of trips, mostly not online; items of outrageous shamelessness on the part of people including specifically but ...   more »
View Article  Note to Ed Shultz: PLEASE acknowledge that you also said 'shakedown'
Note to Ed Shultz: PLEASE acknowledge that you also said 'shakedown'

This is getting slightly depressing. I am all for castigating Joe Barton, his oil donations, and the harmful policies he almost always espouses. But I've been listening--for the past few minutes--to Ed Schultz castigate Barton for calling the BP $20 billion escrow fund a 'shakedown'. Regrettably, Schultz went on about Barton for several minutes without mentioning up front that he did the same (previous post).

Also regrettably, rightwing bloggers are picking this one up: See links here and here and here, for example.



To be fair, Schultz has ...   more »
View Article  Did Joe Barton get his 'shakedown' idea from Ed Schultz?
Did Joe Barton get his 'shakedown' idea from Ed Schultz?

--Or from Rush Limbaugh?

As everybody not living under a rock knows, Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, still the ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, made his bones as open shill for Big Oil on June 17.


Barton

From the transcripts:

I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. So, I apologize.

 

“I apologize, I do not ...   more »

View Article  What is McChrystal doing in Afghanistan?
What is McChrystal doing in Afghanistan?

If part of Obama's broader political strategy is to give opponents and critics enough rope to hang themselves with, the tactic has produced some notable successes. Setting aside any other examples of rampant ineptitude, selfishness or petty spitefulness surfacing in business, government and politics, we now get Gen. Stanley McChrystal, in Afghanistan, weighing in on domestic politics for Rolling Stone magazine like any Rush Limbaugh wannabe.


Gen. Stanley McChrystal

And, it sounds like, blaming his own situation on others.

The full interview in the article "Runaway General," by Michael Hastings, is linked above. McChrystal ...   more »
View Article  Rush Limbaugh: An Army of What? Part 3

Rush Limbaugh: An Army of What? Part 3

 

Final segment on the most recent Limbaugh biography



 

As Zev Chafets’ biography of Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One, makes clear, Chafets received extensive cooperation from Limbaugh and from people associated with Limbaugh.

 

The cooperation ensured that the book would be published, assuming that was ever in doubt. Evenhanded treatment of its subject was hardly demanded.

 

Thirty pages of Chafets’ ...   more »

View Article  Rush Limbaugh: An Army of What? Part 2
Rush Limbaugh: An Army of What? Part 2

Back to town after a hiatus, mostly not online; picking up where we left off—

 

As written earlier, it is to Zev Chafets’ credit that his biography of Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One, does not omit the two flaming character issues of Limbaugh’s adult life—his getting out of Vietnam and getting into prescription drugs. But also as written earlier, a suggestion that ...   more »

View Article  WHY DIDN'T THEY RAISE THE RISER?
WHY DIDN'T THEY RAISE THE RISER?

With the 20-20 of hindsight--not that it's hindsight yet, since the BP undersea oil gusher is by no means in the past--I am now wondering, again as a non-scientist, why BP did not hoist that 'riser' to the surface, ruptures and all. Even severely damaged, the riser--i.e. an underwater pipeline, so far as I can tell--both contained and channeled much of the oil flow. At the surface, the oil coming from the 'riser' could be piped onto a tanker or tankers.



Meanwhile, obviously the oil spewing from the holes would not be perfectly contained. ...   more »
View Article  The BP oil spill: 'Capping a volcano' versus channeling lava
The BP oil spill: 'Capping a volcano' versus channeling lava

As a non-scientist, I am reticent re suggestions for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As someone who grew up partly on the Gulf Coast, furthermore, and who loves it, I have been too demoralized by the disastrous BP/Halliburton/Transocean oil gusher to write much about it. The disaster speaks for itself.



Nor do I wish to predict ills. Predicting ills can be a form of ill-wishing, and I love the place too much not to hope for the best. That aside, predicting generally is a form of silliness, ...   more »
View Article  Rush Limbaugh: An Army of What?

Rush Limbaugh: An Army of What?





Reading a book fast . . . 


Zev Chafets’ biography of Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One, makes one thing clear: Chafets enjoyed extensive cooperation from Limbaugh and from people associated with Limbaugh including employees--although probably not from the employee referenced below.   Read on . . .

 

Back on Friday, June 13, 2003, after publishing a column in local newspapers titled “An open ...   more »

View Article  United States law: "applicable standards of performance"
United States law: "applicable standards of performance"



A suggestion just made by plaintiffs' attorney Mike Papantonio on MSNBC's The Ed Show--check out U.S. Code 1316, "National standards of performance."

A key term here is pollutants, like those now gushing into the Gulf of Mexico:

"(1) The term “standard of performance” means a standard for the control of the discharge of pollutants which reflects the greatest degree of effluent reduction which the Administrator determines to be achievable through application of the best available demonstrated control technology, processes, operating methods, or other alternatives, including, where practicable, a standard ...   more »
View Article  Update: FBI says new date for release of Sen. Edward Kennedy file
Update: FBI says new date for release of Sen. Edward Kennedy file

According to information received, Friday will not be the day after all that the Bureau's dossier on Sen. Edward M. Kennedy will be released.

Release of the Bureau's dossier on the late Sen. Kennedy is now pushed back to June 4.

As written, the file promises to hold items of interest, if only to illuminate further the obsessive concern of late FBI director John Edgar Hoover with keeping tabs on public servants that he could then hoard up in private rather than sharing with the public.

The Kennedy ...   more »
View Article  Habusa beats Case in Hawaii special election

Hanabusa beats Case in Hawaii special election

 --but mainland meddling on behalf of Blue Dog candidate gives HI seat to GOP

 

That Colleen Hanabusa came in solidly ahead of Edward Case in Hawaii's special election Saturday should not be surprising. Federal Election Commission figures have shown Democratic House candidate Hanabusa consistently ahead of primary rival Case in fundraising.

 


Hanabusa


FEC receipts for 2010 show that the two Democratic candidates together have ...   more »

View Article  Who was Richard Blumenthal during Vietnam?

Who is Richard Blumenthal, and who was he during Vietnam?



 

A good post at the Free Republic*:

Rightwing Free Republic website condenses this useful chronology on Connecticut Democratic senate candidate Richard Blumenthal:

 

Dec. 1, 1969: The government has its first military draft since World War II. Mr. Blumenthal's number is 152; men with numbers 195 or lower who didn't have deferments were called. Mr. Blumenthal at the ...   more »

View Article  Blumenthal reported sympathetically on anti-Vietnam War movement; got sent abroad
Blumenthal reported sympathetically on the anti-Vietnam War movement; got sent abroad for his pains

 

Vietnam was much on people’s minds during the Vietnam War, and young Richard Blumenthal was no exception. As a cub reporter for the Washington Post in the Sixties, Blumenthal reported sympathetically on anti-Vietnam War activism. Articles bylined by Blumenthal, then in his early twenties, clearly reflect the mood of the time.



 

The Post then sent Blumenthal to ...   more »

View Article  Breaking: FBI to post Kennedy FBI file on “Hot Topics” website

Breaking: FBI to post dossier on Sen. Edward Kennedy on “Hot Topics” website

 

J. Edgar Hoover and Teddy Kennedy

 

This just in--The public will be able to learn more about Bureau surveillance of Americans, including American politicians, next Friday. On May 28, according to information just received, the FBI will post its file on the late Edward Moore Kennedy on its “Hot Topics” website.

 


 

In response to a request ...   more »

View Article  Dems outpoll Republicans in ‘bellwether’ May primaries; Waxman to hold hearing today on runaway acceleration

Dems outpoll Republicans in all four ‘bellwether’ May primaries; Waxman to hold public hearing today on runaway acceleration

 

Figures from the Kentucky State Board of Elections show that voting cast in Tuesday’s Democratic senate primary exceeded voting in the highly publicized Republican primary by more than 150,000. Unofficial figures posted at the elections board website show that 351,931 votes were cast in the GOP race featuring front-runners Dr. Rand Paul, who won ...   more »

View Article  Pro-oil-spill crowd suffers defeat in elections around the country

Pro-oil-spill crowd takes hits in elections

 

The pro-oil-spill crowd took some big hits Tuesday: Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln faces a June ...   more »

View Article  “Served in Vietnam”? Egg on the face for Connecticut, for CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, for Washington Post

“Served in Vietnam”?

 

Egg on the face for Connecticut, for CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, for Washington Post

 

Today’s New York Times has a hot political-news article about Connecticut Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal, currently Attorney General of Connecticut.




Blumenthal has repeatedly said that he “served in Vietnam,” without clarifying that he served only as of 1970, in the Marine Reserves, stateside. He did not go to Vietnam....   more »

View Article  Transocean follows in the wake of the TITANIC, invokes old law to hold down its liability

Transocean invokes old law to hold down its losses; may be giving HAL and BP an out too

 

Following in the wake of the Titanic . . .

 

 


As of Thursday, the National Law Journal reports, Transocean is trying to cut its losses from the BP oil spill down to $27 million. Transocean, which owns the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, filed a motion in ...   more »

View Article  BP, Transocean, Halliburton at hearing: No, we didn't prepare for this
BP, Transocean, Halliburton at hearing: No, we didn't prepare for this

The hearing now underway shows one thing definitively: According to witness statements themselves, under oath, unforced, none of the major companies most closely involved in the current oil spill had preparations to contain such a disaster.

Go to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources--right now--and you will hear Alabama Republican Sen. Sessions asking top management at the three companies why they did not have such a thing constructed.

Good question.

I can provide the answer. The reason top management at the major companies involved kept on representing ...   more »
View Article  Hearings on BP oil spill today; IG report faults Interior Dept
Hearings on BP oil spill today; IG report faults Interior Dept

Congressional hearings begin today on the BP/Transocean/Halliburton oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.



Meanwhile, overwhelming evidence continues to mount that public policy, applied with feeling and thought, could have prevented this disaster. Even as many people labor to clean up the mess created by a combination of laissez-faire non-regulation and non-enforcement with corporate greed and unscientific wishful thinking, comes the release below.



It should be more than apparent by now that the brand of physics, chemistry and engineering applied by BP in our Gulf of Mexico was about ...   more »
View Article  How about bringing NASA in to work on the oil spill?
How about bringing NASA in to work on the oil spill?

Following the cumulative revelations about runaway acceleration at Toyota, Chrysler turned to NASA experts to help it fine-tune safety. Two gearheads are better than one; sharing advanced technology might actually improve safety and reliability.

The move at Chrysler followed a wits'-end move at Toyota. When no one else could definitively figure out the problem with the runaway acceleration, even with financial incentive from sources including edmunds.com, NASA was brought in on the investigation on problems at Toyota.

Now we have more problems in the gear-head spectrum, huge ...   more »
View Article  UAE provides shelter, way station, getaway vehicle. Again.

UAE provides shelter, way station, getaway vehicle. Again.



 

Among today’s numerous news reports that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad had boarded a flight although his name was on a watch list, the Washington Post report gets closest to the mark:

 

“Officials also pointed to Emirates' failure to update its no-fly list in response ...   more »

View Article  BP oil spill and more to come from Halliburton
BP oil spill and more to come from Halliburton

Too early to state definitively the extent, but questions have already risen about the responsibility of giant oil-field services company Halliburton, among others, in the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.



Among those prominently raising the questions are the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. From Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak, this notification:

"
WASHINGTON, DC [April 30] Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak sent a letter to Halliburton Co. regarding its cementing activities at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.  ...   more »