Just about everything in Puerto Rico is closed!
And what I love about the coverage of this is that there is so little mention that Puerto Rico is an American colony. One would think we might have something to do with the trouble there.
Hmmmm... as reported by The Brad Blog:
Shuster attended the White House Correspondent's Dinner. He was able to get a short interview with Joe Wilson. Republican operatives have renewed their baseless claim that Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity was not classified. For her part, Valerie Plame-Wilson stood silently by as her husband rejected the well used right-wing talking point.So the Bushies outed the one person who could tell us if Iran really is a threat (which I don't believe it is, at least not for years to come)?
More importantly, David Shuster reports that sources have told him how National Security was damaged when Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity was leaked by the White House. His sources say that she worked with gathering intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The outing of her name specifically damaged the ability to collect intelligence on Iran's nuclear capabilities.
The more I read about this, the angrier I get and the more I want every occupant of Washington, D.C. replaced forthwith!
From ABC News
Most of the changes in natural disaster preparedness proposed by the White House and Congress since Hurricane Katrina are years away at best, leaving the Gulf Coast and other areas vulnerable to new devastation.
Only a few of the 211 suggested improvements from three federal reports will be ready when the hurricane season starts June 1, and limited dollars and political squabbling already are complicating the progress.
"Nature doesn't care about reports," said Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado. "Nor does it care about the fact there are people still suffering, and we're not ready.
"The big question in everybody's mind is whether entities that proved themselves incompetent to handle Hurricane Katrina can become competent by the summer of 2006," Tierney said Friday. "So far, we've seen no evidence of that."
Separate investigations by the House, Senate and White House delved into managing an emergency response to a storm as massive as Katrina, which stretched across 90,000 square miles:
The House report did not make any recommendations for change. It did conclude that local, state and federal officials lacked any sense of urgency in preparing for catastrophic disasters.
The White House inquiry focused on flawed federal plans and confusion during the storm, which hit Aug. 29. The report made 125 recommendations, including 11 to be completed by June 1, including plans for evacuating victims, ably tracking supplies and delivering quick information from disaster zones.
The Senate report, portions of which were released last week, offered 86 recommendations, most notably replacing the Federal Emergency Management Agency with a more potent successor. The report made the case for more money local, state and federal responders, without saying how much or the source of the dollars.
As Constant at Constant's Pations tells us, the paperwork from Vermont was delivered in Washington, D.C., today looking for a vote on articles of impeachment against Mr. Bush.
Read Constant's Pations for more details and background information on the procedure.
Have you heard on TV or in mainstream newspapers about Stephen Colbert's appearance before the White House Correspondents' dinner on Saturday?
Probably not. If you know about it at all, it's from blogs and Web sites and some trade publications such as Editor & Publisher.
The question is why? TV has certainly shown coverage of the event... but always the skit with Mr. Bush and his "double" which I didn't find terribly amusing. I mean, having an evil idiot for the leader of the "Free" World is worse than a mere embarrassment.
The only one to mention the dinner and Colbert's performance in the last two days on TV is Chris Matthews on "Hardball" tonight. But he showed no clips. He put the non-discussion of Colbert down to the fact that Colbert went over like a lead balloon, wasn't funny, was "mean" to Bush.
Since when does the media have the job of telling us what they've decided is too "mean" for us to see and judge for ourselves? I've actually spoken electronically with more than a few Republicans who thought Colbert was right on target.
Did it get into Karlo's secret stash of Falafel and clam fritters or DailyRead's Smoked Salmon salt water taffy, MissM's 140 Proof Maker's Mark Bourbon pancakes or Peter and Xavier's Philly Steak Cheesecake? Or perhaps a toxic mix of ALL?
It's burping up old posts while eating new ones.
See, I would have called it psychopathology myself, with cutesy names like "Turd Blossom" for Karl Rove. But from eTalkingHeads, here you go.
Check this out from the LA Times:
WASHINGTON — Gasoline prices will remain high for years to come and will be largely unaffected by a new White House plan to bring them down, Bush administration officials said Sunday.
Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said the United States faced an oil price "crisis" because surging demand from such countries as China and India had outstripped supply, and he predicted that it would be "two to three years before suppliers are in a position to meet the demands."
The suppliers have lost control of the market," he told NBC's "Meet the Press."Gas prices approached record highs last week, further angering motorists and putting a scare into lawmakers seeking reelection in six months.
The rise in fuel prices is the No. 1 concern of a plurality of Americans, recent polls show.
But we pay the price in crazy gas prices, more global hatred toward us, higher taxes, more demand on our troops, more attacks against American interests and those of our political allies, an American dollar in freefall that may never go back to its once lofty status...
From Josh at Talking Points Memo:
Mark Schmitt is pointing our attention exactly where it should be: Be warned. The White House is now telling us that engineering a confrontation with Iran is a key part of their plan to resuscitate the president's dismal approval ratings in time to survive election day.
And this is probably as good a time as any to address the question we hear more and more from Democrats: how do we prepare for whatever it is Karl Rove has cooked up this election season? How do Democrats or this or that Democratic candidate 'inoculate' themselves from this year's version of the Swift Boat scam?
With respect, this is loser talk. The 'how will we defend ourselves' conversation is an example of the malady itself masquerading as the cure to the disease.
On a battlefield there is a name for armies that spend all their time and energy planning and conditioning themselves to defend against their opponents' attacks. They're called defeated armies. You defend yourself when and where you must. But you do everything you can to maintain the initiative. And that pretty much always means bringing the attack to the other side.
From the Chicago Trib:
WASHINGTON -- As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as "top secret" or "confidential," one office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying documents: the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies and "any other entity within the executive branch" to provide an annual accounting of their classification of documents. More than 80 agencies have collectively reported to the National Archives that they made 15.6 million decisions in 2004 to classify information, nearly double the number in 2001, but Cheney continues to insist he is exempt.
Explaining why the vice president has withheld even a tally of his office's secrecy when such offices as the National Security Council routinely report theirs, a spokeswoman said Cheney is "not under any duty" to provide it.
That is only one way the Bush administration, from its opening weeks in 2001, has asserted control over information. By keeping secret so many directives and actions, the administration has precluded the public--and often members of Congress--from knowing about some of the most significant decisions and acts of the White House.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the administration has based much of its need for confidentiality on the imperative of protecting national security at a time of war. Yet experts say Bush and his closest advisers demonstrated their proclivity for privacy well before 9/11:
Starting in the early weeks of his administration with a move to protect the papers of former presidents, Bush has clamped down on the release of government documents. That includes tougher standards for what the public can obtain under the Freedom of Information Act and the creation of a broad new category of "sensitive but unclassified information."Not only has the administration reported a dramatic increase in the number of documents deemed "top secret," "secret" or "confidential," the president has authorized the reclassification of information that was public for years.
An audit by a National Archives office recently found that the CIA acted in a "clearly inappropriate" way regarding about one-third of the documents it reclassified last year.-
The White House has resisted efforts by Congress to gain information, starting with a White House energy task force headed by Cheney and continuing with the president's secret authorization of warrantless surveillance of people inside the United States suspected of communicating with terrorists abroad. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) recently threatened to withhold funding for the surveillance program unless the White House starts providing information.
The "gunslinger" claim is ridiculous since the Bushies have never hidden their "cowboy" status. Instead perhaps, the Bushies want to keep this bogeyman, just like Osama bin Laden, on the run so we can claim to have an enemy to be terrified about, fight against.
From Australia's The Age:
The United States deliberately passed up repeated opportunities to kill the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, before the March 2003 US-led invasion of that country.
The claim, by former US spy Mike Scheuer, was made in an interview to be shown on ABC TV's Four Corners tonight.
Zarqawi is often described as a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, whose supporters masterminded the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Mr Scheuer was a CIA agent for 22 years - six of them as head of the agency's Osama bin Laden unit - until he resigned in 2004.
He told Four Corners that during 2002, the Bush Administration received detailed intelligence about Zarqawi's training camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Mr Scheuer claims that a July 2002 plan to destroy the camp lapsed because "it was more important not to give the Europeans the impression we were gunslingers".
"Mr Bush had Zarqawi in his sights almost every day for a year before the invasion of Iraq and he didn't shoot because they were wining and dining the French in an effort to get them to assist us in the invasion of Iraq," he told Four Corners.
Seriously. Meanwhile, the president tells us all is grand and glorious, which it is, if you are a billionaire. But the middle class is dying and the poor are worse off still.
From the (UK) Sunday Times:
THE dollar has embarked on a big decline that will see it fall against all leading currencies, according to analysts.We need to get the Bushie crew out of the White House and off Capitol Hill if there is to be any hope of saving this country. The longer they stay, the worse the damage and the more irreversible the effects.
The plunge is being prompted by America’s $800 billion (£438 billion) current-account deficit, they say.
The dollar has been under pressure following last weekend’s meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bankers, which emphasised “global imbalances” and said currencies should reflect economic fundamentals. Then China raised its key interest rate to 5.85%, its first hike for months, and Ben Bernanke, the new Federal Reserve chairman, hinted that American rates would pause at 5% after a rise in May.
Analysts say that without interest-rate support, the dollar will be weighed down heavily by America’s imbalances.
“I think this is it,” said Tony Norfield, global head of currency strategy at ABN Amro. “The dollar has been supported by high yields but markets are saying that is no longer enough. The question for policymakers is going to be how to manage the dollar’s decline. It won’t be a one-way street but the fall is likely to be biggest against Asian currencies.”
The euro has already risen to an 11-month high of more than $1.26, while the dollar is at a three-month low of 113.70 against the yen. The Canadian dollar, known by traders as the “loonie”, rose to a 28-year high on Friday, boosted by a hike in Canadian interest rates.
Today is the day three years ago when George W. Bush had the nerve to pack the crotch area of his flightsuit full to make it look like he had balls, to pretend he could fly an aircraft to land on the aircraft carrier and - the worst deception of all - stand there under a banner pronouncing "Mission Accomplished" while he told us all major combat operations in Iraq were over.
More than 2,000 American soldiers have died since that day. Countless thousands of civilians.
The Iraq War may end up costing us more than one trillion (that's $1,000,000,000,000) in costs and all credibility and compassion in the eyes of the world.
How dare you, Bushies? How dare you?
While I remembered to wish David Anderson at In Search of Utopia a Happy Birthday yesterday, I did not realize 4/29 was also the birthday of the fine and fantastic Mary Scott O'Connor (MSOC) of My Left Wing.
Happy birthday, MSOC!
Greg Mitchell at Ed&Pub takes a look back three years (the anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" is tomorrow, Monday) at the most silly aircraft carrier stunt which started rather than ended some of the bloodiest battles of the war which never should have been fought.
What's interesting about this is that Mitchell does a lead-in to what other journalists and pundits at the time were saying about Bush and the war.
Go read. I'll be here contemplating my navel when you return.
Forbes Magazine offers some possible successors as Secretary of State should The Donald decide to deprive the world of his "leadership".
As you can expect - since we've heard it before - there are names like Joe Liebermans on this list. He'd be a rotten selection, of course.
From Maureen Dowd of The Times at ToppleBush:
Even some State Department officials thought it was like watching a cranky, eccentric uncle with an efficient, energetic niece.
Rummy was ordered to go to Iraq by the president, but he clearly has no stomach for nation-building, or letting Condi run the show. He seemed under the weather after a rough overnight ride on a C-17 transport plane from Washington into Baghdad. And Condi's aides were rolling their eyes at the less than respectful way the DefSec treated the SecState as she tried to be enthusiastic, in her cheerful automaton way, about what she considers the latest last chance for Iraq.
A reporter in Baghdad asked Rummy about the kerfuffle when Condi talked of "thousands" of tactical errors in Iraq. Rummy later noted that "I don't know what she was talking about, to be perfectly honest" and that anyone who said that had "a lack of understanding" about warfare.
She's just a silly girl, after all.
He could have taken the opportunity to be diplomatic about the diplomat, but he's incapable of that, so he just added more fuel to the fire.
"She's right here, and you can ask her," he said, pointing to Condi, who said she had not meant errors "in the military sense." She must have meant mismanagement in the civilians-mucking-up-the-military sense.
The former "Matinee Idol," as W. liked to call him, is now a figure of absurdity, clinging to his job only because some retired generals turned him into a new front on the war on terror. On his rare, brief visit to Baghdad, he was afraid to go outside Fortress Green Zone, even though he yammers on conservative talk shows about how progress is being made, and how the press never reports good news out of Iraq.
If the news is so good, why wasn't Rummy gallivanting at the local mall, walking around rather than hiding out in the U.S. base known as Camp Victory? (What are they going to call it, one reporter joked, Camp Defeat?)
In further evidence of their astute connection with the Iraqi culture, the cabinet secretaries showed up there without even knowing the correct name of their latest puppet. It turned out that Jawad al-Maliki, the new prime minister-designate, considered "Jawad" his exile name and had reverted to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
On the cusp of the third anniversary of "Mission Accomplished," Rummy was still in denial despite the civil war, with armed gangs of Shiites and Sunnis going out and killing each other and Balkanizing whole communities.
When a reporter asked him what the U.S. had to do to get the militias under control and stop the sectarian dueling, he answered bluntly: "I guess the first thing I have to say is we don't, the Iraqis do. It's their country. It's a sovereign country. This is not a government that has an 'interim' in front of it or a 'transition' in front of it. It's a government that's in for a period of years and undoubtedly, unquestionably, will be addressing the question as to how they can best provide for the security of all of their people."
Yeah, let's leave it up to what's-his-name. We broke it. What's-his-name can fix it.
The assertions that Iraq is largely peaceful were belied yesterday by our own government. A State Department report on global terrorism counted 8,300 deaths of civilians in Iraq from insurgent attacks -- more than half of all those killed by terrorists worldwide -- and noted that violence is escalating. The elections have clearly not quelled the violence, and terrorists are said to be trying to turn Iraq's Anbar province into a base for Al Qaeda and other militants. (And since it's our State Department, you've got to figure it's soft-peddling things.)
April was the most lethal month for U.S. soldiers this year; at least 67 died.
Finally! Frank Rich is back in his Times spot.
Raw Story brings us highlights from Rich's column (Times Select subscribers can, of course, read the whole thing), and it's a beaut!
The Downing Street memo -- minutes of a Tony Blair meeting with senior advisers in July 2002, nearly eight months before the war began -- has proved as accurate as "Mission Accomplished" was fantasy. Each week brings new confirmation that the White House, as the head of British intelligence put it, was determined to fix "the intelligence and facts" around its predetermined policy of going to war in Iraq. Today Bush tries to pass the buck on the missing WMD to "faulty intelligence," but his alibi is springing leaks faster than the White House and the CIA can clamp down on them. We now know the president knew that the intelligence he cherry-picked was faulty -- and flogged it anyway to sell us the war.To refresh your memory on the Downing Street Memo, go here and here.
The latest evidence that Bush knew that "uranium from Africa" was no slam-dunk when he brandished it in his 2003 State of the Union address was uncovered by The Washington Post: The coordinating council for the 15 American intelligence agencies had already informed the White House that the Niger story had no factual basis and should be dropped. Last Sunday, "60 Minutes" augmented this storyline and an earlier scoop by Lisa Myers of NBC News by reporting that the White House had deliberately ignored its most highly placed prewar informant, Saddam's final foreign minister, Naji Sabri, once he sent the word that Saddam's nuclear cupboard was bare.
"There was almost a concern we'd find something that would slow up the war," Tyler Drumheller, a 26-year CIA veteran and an on-camera source for "60 Minutes," said when I interviewed him last week. Since retiring from the CIA in the fall of 2004, Drumheller has played an important role in revealing White House chicanery, including its dire hawking of Saddam's mobile biological weapons labs, which turned out to be fictitious. Before Colin Powell's fateful U.N. presentation, Drumheller conveyed vociferous warnings that the sole human source on these nonexistent WMD labs, an Iraqi emigre known as Curveball, was mentally unstable and a fabricator. "The real tragedy of this," Drumheller says, "is if they had let the weapons inspectors play out, we could have had a Gulf War I-like coalition, which would have given us the ((300,000)) to 400,000 troops needed to secure the country after defeating the Iraqi army."
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Cost of the War in Iraq
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