Skank

Hoot, hoot!

I especially like Miss September.

Not only is Rush a big, fat idiot but he’s a hypocrite, too. Who’d a thunk it?

New York Times:

Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries, the N.S.A. was never supposed to be turned inward. Thirty years ago, Senator Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who was then chairman of the select committee on intelligence, investigated the agency and came away stunned.

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people,” he said in 1975, “and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.”

He added that if a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A. “could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.”

Rush Limbaugh, from his radio show on December 22, 2005:

“Liberals and Democrats,” Limbaugh claimed, “are only opposed to this because they don’t want anyone finding out what they’ve been up to. . . What have you folks been doing that you so desperately want to keep hidden?”

Rush’s attorney Roy Black with Wolf Blitzer on December 15, 2005:

BLITZER: If Rush Limbaugh has nothing to hide and has done nothing wrong, what’s the problem with letting the prosecutor speak to the doctors and go through all the records?

BLACK: Well, Wolf, that’s an excellent question. A lot of people ask this all the time. You know what? We have a right of privacy in this country that I think is important for us to hold onto. I mean, we could let prosecutors and police into our bedrooms, search our computers, watch us having sex. We could let them do all these things, but then we would have a police state. We would no longer have a democracy. I think it’s very important to fight these privacy battles–and Rush Limbaugh has taken on this battle of privacy with your doctor, and I think it has really been a public service for him. Not only for himself but everybody else who wants their medical records and medical treatment kept private and not to be disclosed in the press or with the police or prosecutors or anyone else who has no business being there.

RushLimbaugh: Champion of his own right to do whtever he wants to.

Tip of the hat to firedoglake.

Steve Chapman over at the Chicago Tribune has a nice column this morning: Beyond the imperial presidency

President Bush is a bundle of paradoxes. He thinks the scope of the federal government should be limited but the powers of the president should not. He wants judges to interpret the Constitution as the framers did, but doesn’t think he should be constrained by their intentions.

He attacked Al Gore for trusting government instead of the people, but he insists anyone who wants to defeat terrorism must put absolute faith in the man at the helm of government.

His conservative allies say Bush is acting to uphold the essential prerogatives of his office. Vice President Cheney says the administration’s secret eavesdropping program is justified because “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it.”

But the theory boils down to a consistent and self-serving formula: What’s good for George W. Bush is good for America, and anything that weakens his power weakens the nation. To call this an imperial presidency is unfair to emperors.

Nice summary.

Army Is Enlisting More Low-Scoring Recruits - Los Angeles Times

The Army met its recruiting goal for November by again accepting a high percentage of recruits who scored in the lowest category on the military’s aptitude test, Pentagon officials said Thursday, raising renewed concerns that the quality of the all-volunteer force would suffer.

The Army exceeded its 5,600 recruit goal by 256 for November, and the Army Reserve brought in 1,454 recruits, exceeding its target by 112. To do so, they accepted a “double digit” percentage of recruits who scored from 16 to 30 out of a possible 99 on the military’s aptitude test, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Just the kind of folks I’d want backing me up…

World Bank questions benefits of free trade:

The bank estimated three years ago that freeing international trade of all barriers and subsidies would lift 320 million people above the $2 a day poverty line by 2015. Now, however, bank economists project the figure at between 66 million and 95 million people. And even that assumes the WTO negotiators would completely abolish tariffs, quotas and other obstacles to commerce — a fanciful scenario, calculated only to show what a maximum deal would produce.

Assuming a more plausible outcome in which the WTO members agree to some deep cuts in tariffs and subsidies while stopping short of pure free trade, the reduction in the number of people below the $2-a-day line by 2015 would be only about 6.2 million to 12.1 million people, the bank now reckons. That is less than 1 percent of the people living below the line.

Imagine that? What’s fabulous for multinational corporations isn’t necessarily good for the third world poor? Who’d a thunk it?

Froomkin at WaPo Online posts this:
White House Briefing — News on President George W Bush and the Bush Administration:

“But McCain would not budge, officials said, and after several months of tense negotiations with Cheney, he went to Bush, said congressional aides. Bush tapped national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley to take over the discussions about six weeks ago.

“First, Hadley asked McCain to exempt CIA officials from the ban on harsh treatment, a move McCain rejected. Then Hadley requested language that would allow the president or the attorney general to grant waivers in extraordinary circumstances — such as if a terrorism suspect has information about an impending attack on the United States — which McCain also rejected, congressional aides said.”

I don’t like John McCain. But it’s good to see a prominent Senator reject forcefully the asinine “ticking bomb” scenario so often used to justify torture. Listen torture fans: some things are just plainly and simply wrong whether there’s a bomb ticking or not. Torture is one of them. The bomb in your “ticking bomb” scenario is a dud.

The NPR ombudsman discusses bias at NPR. They do NOT lean right, says he. But then he gives the score:
NPR : NPR: Mysteries of the Organization, Part I

NPR often calls on think tanks for comments. But NPR does not lean on the so-called conservative think tanks as many in the audience seem to think.

Here’s the tally sheet for the number of times think tank experts were interviewed to date on NPR in 2005:

American Enterprise - 59

Brookings Institute - 102

Cato Institute - 29

Center for Strategic and Intl. Studies - 39

Heritage Foundation - 20

Hoover Institute - 69

Lexington Institute - 9

Manhattan Institute - 53

There are of course, other think tanks, but these seem to be the ones whose experts are heard most often on NPR. Brookings and CSIS are seen by many in Washington, D.C., as being center to center-left. The others in the above list tend to lean to the right. So NPR has interviewed more think tankers on the right than on the left.

The score to date: Right 239, Left 141.

Journalism in general — including NPR — has become overly reliant on the easily obtained offerings of the think tanks.

And if, as John Hendren says, most news organizations resist labeling think tanks, why should NPR be any different? In my opinion, given the fractious times we live in, more information is probably better than less. Putting experts in some sort of context will go a long way to allaying the suspicions of many listeners who seem convinced that NPR is trying to portray experts as neutral when in fact, they aren’t.

So I’m with the listeners who complain about NPR’s decision not to more fully identify the think tanks. For many, the lack of a political context can sound too much like “inside-the-Beltway” reporting and I agree. NPR also needs to be consistent about how think tanks are identified; too often conservative institutions are identified as such but liberal ones are not.

More importantly, NPR needs to make sure that it is presenting an appropriate range of ideas and not just from one side of the debate.

Well, duh!

Pretty easy.
So much for for recounts.

Today the Preznit was asked how many Iraqis had been killed since the invasion of Iraq. He said 30,000.

What’s interesting to me is that the Pentagon has repeatedly said they do not count Iraqi dead and have no idea how many have died.

So…30,000:

1. Is the Preznit just pulling this number out of the air?

2. Or has the Pentagon been lying to us about its record keeping?

3. Or some combination of both.

Seems safest to go with #3.

How low can the Bush administration go? Read this and you can decide.

A local family said fallen soldiers and Marines deserve better and that one would think our war heroes are being transported with dignity, care and respect. It said one would think upon arrival in their hometowns they are greeted with honor. But unfortunately, the family said that is just not the case.

Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag — greeted by a color guard.

But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners — stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo.

John Holley and his wife, Stacey, were stunned when they found out the body of their only child, Matthew, who died in Iraq last month, would be arriving at Lindbergh Field as freight.