McClatchy: U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation’s “haves” and “have-nots” continues to widen.
…
The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.
…
The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.
These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty – the highest rate since at least 1975.
…

Posted by: b | Mar 19 2007 9:39 utc | 3

via Drudge here is an “unauthorized” video slamming HRC from the obama camp.
HRC needs to be taken out of the game early on so that she does not simply outspend the others….I do think that is her plan right now as she has to know she is not popular.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 19 2007 10:29 utc | 5

Evolutionary biology explains Bush/Cheney foreign policy:
Hoover and colleague Scott Robinson found that when they removed cowbird eggs from the warbler nests, those nests mysteriously got trashed. Turns out that the cowbirds, much like members of the mob, were keeping a close eye on the nests in which they had laid their eggs. If anything bad happened to the eggs, the cowbirds would return and destroy the nest.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/18/AR2007031801130.html

Posted by: YouFascinateMe | Mar 19 2007 17:15 utc | 7

Recommended reading on who should pay for the mortgage damage by Roubini:
Who is to Blame for the Mortgage Carnage and Coming Financial Disaster? Unregulated Free Market Fundamentalism Zealotry

The sub-prime and overall mortgage carnage is now likely to lead to a financial crisis whose cleanup and bailout costs will make the S&L bailout bill look like spare change. We are only at the beginning of this fallout but, already, several proposals and bills in Congress have been submitted to help millions of sub-prime homeowners on the verge of bankruptcy and foreclosure. The prospect of millions of homeowners thrown homeless on the street is already shaking politicians of every stripe. The relatively modest bailout envisaged by the first bills currently proposed in Congress will mushroom into a much bigger fiscal bailout of homeowners, borrowers and lenders once the garbage of sub-prime, near-prime and pseudo-prime toxic waste spreads around the economy and likely leads to a hard landing recession that will cause a much bigger financial and banking crisis.
…
Since a lot of nonsense and financially self-interested ideological spin will be written and said in the months and years to come it is important – from the beginning – to be clear about who is at fault for this utter housing and financial disaster. The answer is clear: the blame lies with free market zealot and fanatics and voodoo economics ideologues who captured US economic policy in the last six years in the same way in which a bunch of neo-cons high-jacked US foreign policy to bring “democracy” to the Middle East while instead leading the country into the Iraq and Mid-East quagmire and now disaster.
…
Booms and busts are regular features of market economies that do not have sensible government supervision and regulation of financial and credit markets. The S&L crisis that led to the credit crunch that caused the 1990 recession started when previously regulated S&Ls were deregulated and there was no sensible supervision of their activities while deposit insurance led them to “gambling for redemption” reckless lending. And blaming “evil” government-provided deposit insurance for their moral hazard gambles is again confusing cause and effect: financial institution that do strictly need deposit insurance to avoid free-market capitalism liquidity and bank runs during panic episodes do require sensible government-imposed and monitored capital adequacy ratios as well as supervision and regulation of their lending activities to avoid moral hazard-induced distortions in their lending behavior. It is not government-generated moral hazard via insurance that lead to reckless gambling for redemption: it is the lack of sensible government-based regulation and supervision that leads to credit and asset bubbles.
…
In summary, lack of sensible supervision and regulation of banks, mortgage lenders and other financial institution – partly induced by an ideology of free market fundamentalism – has been the core cause of this private sector created disaster, not excesses of regulation or of government policy. Thus, to minimize the fiscal costs of cleaning up this mess, use of public funds should be carefully managed and targeted to help the true victims of this mess – borrowers duped by predatory lending practices – while avoiding any bail-out of the culprits of this mess. Privatizing profits in good times while socializing losses in bad times is another form of reckless corporate welfare that generates moral hazard while fostering new bubbles.

Posted by: b | Mar 19 2007 18:41 utc | 9

Wonder why Fed. Prosecutor in San Diego fired? To prevent her from going after Cheney in the same bribery & corruption operation that brought down Duke Cunniham – he’s the one who shoveled the money in the first place…
To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated. link

Posted by: jj | Mar 19 2007 19:04 utc | 11

see here: same link

Posted by: Noirette | Mar 19 2007 19:44 utc | 13

the italian writer & militant, cesar battisti has been arrested in brazil – i imagine in a bit of a charlie pasquaian piece of theatre
while the real criminals are free living off the fat of the land – andreotti & berlusconi – chief amongst them – the militants of the left – are one by one returned to the prisons of italy. many of these militants were convicted on testimony that was & remains tainted. the position of battisti is a case in point – in fact there exists no physical evidence – it is all based on confessions of what are called pentiti who were rewarded for their confession
france under mitterand offered a space of exile for the italian militants if they became disengaged from political violence – the great majority of them whether they were antonio negri or cesar battisti complied – mitterand – the french state gave their word that as long as they rejected violence – they could not be extradited
battisti then has been betrayed – while the real criminals who organised the bombing of squares, banks, trains & railway stations – have never suffed under the law – & those who organised the strategy of tension – the strategy which involved massacres of citizens & functionaires of the state – have never been confronted by justice
the only justice some of those fascists found – was at the hands of their erstwhile allies – the mafia – who for exampled gunned down senator salvatore lima in the middle of the afternoon
one does not expect justice in this life, not even equity – but it is reasonable to expect jurisprudence to follow its own self serving guidelines. it cannot
i do not know if there is any battisti available in english but he is an interesting writer & i hope prodi’d government can be human enough to follow the simple demand of cesar battisti – for a new trial untainted by the coorupt confessions of old comrades clawing away at careers

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 19 2007 20:47 utc | 15

This is joke:
There was a survey around the world with one question:
What is your opinion about food shortages in rest of the world?
Survey ended catastrophically.
-In Africa they didn’t know what the word FOOD means.
-In Western Europe they didn’t know what word SHORTAGE means.
-In Eastern Europe they didn’t know what a word (own) OPINON means.
-In USA they didn’t know what word REST OF THE WORLD means.

Posted by: vbo | Mar 20 2007 3:30 utc | 17

you fascinate me, #7, thanks for the awesome link

Posted by: annie | Mar 20 2007 6:30 utc | 19

From Chris Floyd
(my emphasis)

“You take a lap around the globe — you could start any place: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, North Korea, back around to Pakistan, and I probably missed a few. There’s no dearth of challenges out there for our armed forces,” Pace warned in his testimony.

This is not the statement of a military officer serving in the armed forces of a democratic republic devoted to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of its citizens. This is the action list of a Roman general seeking more funds so that he might fulfill Caesar’s commands for further conquests and punitive raids beyond the frontiers of the Empire. Nation after nation, in every corner of the globe, is laid out for possible military intervention – “and I probably missed a few.” And the legislators – of both parties – who heard these dire warnings merely nodded their heads in solemn agreement: the United States must be ready at all times to strike with massive force at short notice anywhere and everywhere in the world.

Posted by: DM | Mar 20 2007 9:28 utc | 21

ain’t that the truthiness. Good luck trying to convince others that are sold on how we’ve progressed to the point where even unions are an anachronism.
Only our toys have changed.

Posted by: jcairo | Mar 20 2007 13:26 utc | 23

one way the neocons help keep bush programmed
jim lobe: Bush’s Book List Gets More Islamophobic

What is remarkable about all of these books is — much like the cherry-picked and manipulated intelligence stovepiped to Bush in the run-up to the Iraq War — both their extraordinary ideological narrowness and their utility in the pursuit of a neo-conservative agenda, especially in the Middle East.
In one way or another, each affirms core neo-conservative ideas: the essential beneficence of U.S. (and Anglospheric) power even if the “natives” are ungrateful; the supreme importance of both “will” and military might in wielding that power, particularly against enemies that can never be “appeased” or “contained” and that, in [Andrew] Roberts’ words, are motivated not so much by legitimate grievances against U.S. policies, as by “loathing of the English-speaking people’s traditions of democratic pluralism”; the evils of “liberalism”, “secularism” and “moral relativism” of western societies that undermine their will to fight; and the catastrophic consequences of retreat or defeat.
All of these also play to Bush’s own Manicheanism and self-image as a courageous, often lonely, leader in the mold of a Lincoln or Churchill, determined to pursue what he believes is right regardless of what “old Europe”, “intellectuals”, “elites”, or even the electorate thinks about his course and confident only in the conviction that History or God will vindicate him.

greg palast: It’s STILL The Oil: Secret Condi Meeting on Oil Before Invasion

In all the chest-beating about how the war did badly, no one seems to remember how the war did very, very well — for Big Oil.
The war has kept Iraq’s oil production to 2.1 million barrels a day from pre-war, pre-embargo production of over 4 million barrels. In the oil game, that’s a lot to lose. In fact, the loss of Iraq’s 2 million barrels a day is equal to the entire planet’s reserve production capacity.
In other words, the war has caused a hell of a supply squeeze — and Big Oil just loves it. Oil today is $57 a barrel versus the $18 a barrel price under Bill “Love-Not-War” Clinton.
Since the launch of Operation Iraqi Liberation, Halliburton stock has tripled to $64 a share — not, as some believe, because of those Iraq reconstruction contracts — peanuts for Halliburton. Cheney’s former company’s main business is “oil services.” And, as one oilman complained to me, Cheney’s former company has captured a big hunk of the rise in oil prices by jacking up the charges for Halliburton drilling and piping equipment.
But before we shed tears for Big Oil’s having to hand Halliburton its slice, let me note that the value of the reserves of the five biggest oil companies more than doubled during the war to $2.36 trillion.
And that was the plan: putting a new floor under the price of oil. I have that in writing. In 2005, after a two-year battle with the State and Defense Departments, they released to my team at BBC Newsnight the “Options for a Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry.” Now, you might think our government shouldn’t be writing a plan for another nation’s oil. Well, our government didn’t write it, despite the State Department seal on the cover. In fact, we discovered that the 323-page plan was drafted in Houston by oil industry executives and consultants.
The suspicion is that Bush went to war to get Iraq’s oil. That’s not true. The document, and secret recordings of those in on the scheme, made it clear that the Administration wanted to make certain America did not get the oil. In other words, keep the lid on Iraq’s oil production — and thereby keep the price of oil high.

pepe escobar reviews andrew cockburn’s book on rumsfeld
The man who would be king

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy is a book of no-nonsense reportage to be read in one sitting. Much of what it presents is not new. The kicker is how it connects the dots. The picture emerges of a ruthless opportunist, fueled by a toxic ego and blind ambition, a master of very nasty rudeness who perfected the killer technique of “inflicting hours of rapid and often disconnected questions on the people under him”. What for? To win the game – whatever the game might be. Rumsfeld was a shock to the system – the ultimate operative, the ultimate fixer.
Rumsfeld the corporate honcho – at the G D Searle pharmaceutical firm – easily molded into Rumsfeld the warlord. Public-interest lawyer James Turner revealingly tells Cockburn (p 65) how Rumsfeld “is not interested in facts, not interested in truth, not interested in finding out what the fundamental realities are, but is much, much more interested in setting a goal and then, by will and force, pulling all the resources that he could possibly pull together to achieve that goal”. The goal may be to get a dodgy sweetener – aspartame – on the market, or to invade and control Iraq with a nimble strike force.

Posted by: b real | Mar 20 2007 18:15 utc | 25

@Alamat – interesting – “plung protection” by dumping money via big banks into the futire markets. Works for a while, until it doesn’t work anymore …

Posted by: b | Mar 20 2007 21:47 utc | 27

Also, found this while constructing the above…an important background/connection/continuation (is that a word?) to the picture and story that the midnight White House tours by teen boy prostitutes most dramatically presents.
Focusing prosecutors on the adult porn business at the expense of other investigations–there could be a lot of reasons for that, but it’s also easy to see a connection between those two dots.
The Porn Plot Against Prosecutors
this fairly-detailed expose of this particular issue, yet one more example of atrocious power-abuse in the ongoing saga re: WH’s scurrilous, reprehensible behavior. Info I might otherwise have missed.
I’m at least a bit heartened by indications that agents and prosecuters are indignant and/or outraged over the display of such heavy-handed political favoritism, protectionism and game-playing going on by the AG’s office and top Bush Admin. players. Truly an Incredible act of shameless arrogance and contempt for Justice, integrity and Professional ethics —
But of course, near everything associated with the Bush Dynasty thugs stinks of the same kind of bad-faith, criminal ugliness. But too, more and more I tend to see such acts as a symptom of the nation’s self-indulgent psychopathology than ‘merely’ due to an out-of-control, criminal executive branch given to reckless, even desperate neocon dreams of ‘justifiable’ means and ‘righteous’ power.
I dearly hope this incident (among numerous, notable others) will open more people’s eyes to how seriously ill the nation is — and how urgent corrective measures are to cure our slide into even greater catastrophe.
But, I wont hold my breath….
Welcome to the Gannon-Palooza Tour…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 21 2007 2:24 utc | 29

A Must Watch Documentary from Adam Curtis (BBC) – The Trap (2007)

Curtis is best known for his 2004 series The Power of Nightmares: The Rise Of The Politics of Fear. This detailed how neocons in the US talked up the threat of radical Islamism to justify their “war on terror”. The Trap is even more ambitious in scope. Like The Power Of Nightmares, it uses archive footage and interviews to explore the history and political impact of an idea – in this case the model of “individual freedom” that underlies neoliberal economics

In this episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold War and the way in which its mathematical models of human behaviour filtered into economic thought.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 21 2007 9:48 utc | 31

Poor Iraq. First the lies and now, even worse: more help

The greatest fallacy of the coming year is that America or Britain might have any role to play in making March 2008 happier than 2007. While American search-and-destroy patrols roam Anbar province, al-Qaida cells will continue to recruit insurgents from abroad and foment sectarian hatred. While American tanks crash down streets and shoot up villages, they brutalise all they touch. The arrogance that only by staying can we ensure that “things get better” or that “civil war is averted” is now beyond obscenity. There may be an embassy to protect or an airport to defend. But the presence of foreign troops on Iraq’s streets and Iraq’s soil is a humiliation and a provocation alike. They are in occupation but not in power.
…
Economies recover, the more quickly the sooner they are left in peace. The hoodlums and gangsters now rich on American aid will harness the oil exports and eventually find a vested interest in protecting infrastructure and utilities. Religious segregation will enable the ghettos to feel more secure. Business will emerge from the bottom up, and doctors, teachers and merchants will start to move back from Amman and Damascus, once they hear that their old homes are safe and the Mahdists and Badrists are confined to barracks. Economic activity will return to the streets, as it has done to Beirut.
The one thing that would speed this day is for everyone just to leave Iraq alone. Last week, the opposite happened. A nightmare convocation of 13 nations, including Americans, Britons, Russians, French, Syrians, Iranians, Chinese, Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians, piled into Baghdad to congratulate each other on their courage in descending amid the carnage and declare their eagerness to help Iraq. They talked trade, security, borders, aid, oil, refugees and working groups galore. They patted each other on the back and went home. Poor Iraq, I thought. First the lies and now, even worse, they must suffer more help.

Posted by: b | Mar 21 2007 13:41 utc | 33

gaddamnit. here it is

Posted by: slothrop | Mar 21 2007 15:57 utc | 35

and the comments say a lot about the intellectual & emotional capabilities of a large part of the culture

Posted by: b real | Mar 21 2007 17:37 utc | 37

uncle, 38, from the comments
“I didn’t know they were violently asserting themselves in the direction of creating their own nation. Been attacking American patrols and convoys have they?”
While they haven’t been asserting themselves militarily against us, they have been asserting their independence from us by their continued support for (in the form of lack of action against) the PKK/KGK activities in Turkey. The PKK/KGK (a US-designated terrorist group). They have been much more assertive within the Iraqi national government as they maintain tight control over the Peshmergah in the IA and IP, suppress non-Kurds in Kirkuk and re-import Kurds from the Kurdish Autonomous Region (KAR) into Kirkuk in advance of the referendum and conduct many national diplomatic and financial activities from Irbil independent of Baghdad. Not that all of this is necessarily bad (the Kurds have been our best allies), but it doesn’t bode well for a unified Iraq.
in my mind, one of the unresolved questions of the “new middle east map” is how we will support both our allies in the turkey/kurdish region w/the shit starts flying.
it was you who posted that contractor/military personael who got some plumb position representing kurds while at the same time representing his corporation selling ammunition to turkey be used against the very people he was representing. this should be interesting.

Posted by: annie | Mar 21 2007 18:04 utc | 39

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
*Who* Hates Our Freedoms?
[Note that these incidents occurred despite the police attempting to
keep protestors and counter-protestors separate. One might also note
that the counter-protestors, largely Vietnam Veterans, were motivated by
utterly baseless claims of possible plans to vandalize the Vietnam
Memorial. No visible counter-demonstrators have appeared at most other
peace protests, including Sunday’s demonstration in New York City. The
article from _Human Events_, by a prominent conservative (an editor for
Regnery Books), must be read in full to be believed, with its outright
gloating at repression by counter-protestors and police.–DC]

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 21 2007 19:26 utc | 41

Can American Jews unplug the Israel lobby?
found this at Salon, I caught some heat here for suggesting that US Jews would be held responsible for the actions of AIPAC and it seems someone else has written about it.

Liberal American Jews are in a difficult situation, with powerful and understandable emotional crosscurrents pulling them both ways. If they are liberal, antiwar, anti-Bush Democrats, willing to look critically at Israel, you’d think they might be willing to speak out against AIPAC. But why should they? Like most other Americans, most Jews are probably sick of Israel’s endless conflict with the Palestinians, don’t know much about it, and aren’t that interested in learning more. Everyone knows that holding strong opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a surefire ticket to painful arguments — in this case, possibly within one’s own family. Much easier just to let AIPAC be in charge of speaking for Jews on Israel and be done with it.
American Jews may not be as susceptible as they once were to the old fear-and-guilt approach, as Rosenberg suggests, but for many Israel remains something of an untouchable subject. They may not support it 100 percent, maybe not even 50 percent, but they’re still not ready to do anything to undercut a group like AIPAC that does. For some, this is simply a reflection of a more or less ardent Zionism. For others, the reasons can be subtler. For Jews who have little attachment to their religion or their cultural traditions, supporting Israel — which for many, unfortunately, means actively or passively supporting AIPAC’s position on Israel — may be a way of demonstrating that they haven’t completely abandoned their heritage. The internalized second-class status of being in the diaspora, too, may play a role: “Who am I in New York City to say anything against a guy in the West Bank facing suicide bombers?” As Haaretz’s diplomatic correspondent and my longtime Salon colleague Aluf Benn once told me, “For American Jews, Israel is a cause. We Israelis don’t see it that way.”
We find ourselves in a very strange situation. America’s Mideast policies are in thrall to a powerful Washington lobby that is only able to hold power because it has not been challenged by the people it presumes to speak for. But if enough American Jews were to stand up and say “not in my name,” they could have a decisive impact on America’s disastrous Mideast policies.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 21 2007 21:16 utc | 43

I’m right there w/ya b real. Two minutes after reading your post I ran across the below…
I forget at the moment who said it, but they said, ‘humanity is a virus’, I’m more inclined to believe that the older I get. whether empirically that is true or not, one can sure argue it is fucked…
I’ll be in the next stall wrenching right along side b real.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 22 2007 5:10 utc | 45

I haven’t been able to hang out here much lately so apologies if anyone already posted this. But it’s a nice watch. Boston College students staged a big “act out” protest in front of the Israeli Consulate in Boston last week. And the thing is, everything they acted out is 100% true to what happens in the territories in real life, only a much tamer version. However on the streets of Boston it appears pretty extreme.
Boston College students protest Israeli actions

Posted by: Bea | Mar 22 2007 12:11 utc | 47

Further ruminations on my hunch in #28 wrt…
and in particular of, my intuition when I wrote, Wild speculation, but, my immediate gut reaction, is that it wasn’t the rethugs, but factions within the jackass party looking for blackmail on the rest of the party.
Progressive Dems being bullied
If one is familiar with the game ‘go’ or ‘Joseki’, backward compatibleness can be used, for prediction and insight. Backward and forward induction sequential and matrix information signals can be gleaned from such games.
*Blackmail
*Coercion
*Bullying
One can read the above either forwards or backwards on a continuum. It doesn’t necessarily have to be sequential steps from A to B. In other words, what I’m trying to say, perhaps in a convoluted way, is that as the old saying go’s, ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire’. If there are instances of bullying (especially in mammalian politics) you can bet there are deeper levels of direct and indirect gradients, from more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation to indeed, blackmail. And the end result is always social isolation. The M.O. of the authoritarian is divide and conquer, gossip, jingoism, labeling, threats, hazing, etc… whose end result is always the same, social isolation and discounting. This isolation is achieved through a wide variety of techniques, as we know. Textbook rovian. This form of orthogonally, is merely a different form of the Delphi Technique. on a micro scale. Further, –also as we know– these dinks spend billions and billions on the structure, process, and content of Industrial/Organizational/personality psychology; Psychology, and Law and propaganda industrial strength.
Finally, I was blown away a few years ago to learn there were college courses, even degree’s in
Industrial Psychology.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 22 2007 13:07 utc | 49

gore testified yesterday that “America is the natural leader of the world”

“There have been times in the past when our nation has been called upon to rise above partisanship, above political calculations, above the pressures which have always been present for two and a quarter centuries from special interests of this, that or the other kind and reach across the isle and do what history is calling upon all of us Americans to do. America is the natural leader of the world and our world faces a true planetary emergency.”

so what about the “special interests” of those who see “america” as “the natural leader of the world”? natural? how?
what if the united states of america — not “america” — is no more the natural leader of the world than is the climate change which the entire planet is experiencing a purely natural phenomenon…

Posted by: b real | Mar 22 2007 16:15 utc | 51

Uncle $cam recently posted part I of a Adam Curtis (The Power of Nightmares) BBC documentation. Here is part II.
A very interesting documentation about the roots and development of current prevailent economic/political thought from the authoritarian, paranoic views of the McCarthy cold war era.

Posted by: b | Mar 22 2007 17:48 utc | 53

p.s. Considering the question of unplugging the Israeli Lobby that was discussed above, what does it tell you when the guy who is in charge of managing the funding & selection of candidates for the House fought in Israeli Army.

Posted by: jj | Mar 22 2007 19:33 utc | 55

secrecynews: CRS Clamps Down on Public Distribution

In what is being characterized by subordinates as an act of “managerial dementia,” the Director of the Congressional Research Service this week prohibited all public distribution of CRS products without prior approval from senior agency officials.
“I have concluded that prior approval should now be required at the division or office level before products are distributed to members of the public,” wrote CRS Director Daniel P. Mullohan in a memo to all CRS staff. “This policy is effective immediately.”
While CRS has long refused (with Congressional concurrence) to make its electronic database of reports available to the public online, it has still been possible for members of the press, other researchers, and other government officials to request specific reports from the congressional support agency.
But now, “to avoid inconsistencies and to increase accountability, CRS policy requires prior approval at the division level before products can be disseminated to non-congressionals,” Director Mullohan wrote.
The new policy demonstrates that “this is an organization in freefall,” according to one CRS analyst. “We are now indeed working for Captain Queeg.”

Posted by: b real | Mar 22 2007 21:45 utc | 57

Bolton says U.S. should have handed power to Iraqi’s sooner.
Funny, the only ones advocating a quick turnover back then were the French. I think I’ll mail Bolton a nice little beret. What an asshole.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 23 2007 3:58 utc | 59

jj, 54
he is an american citizen only.
– do you have to be an Israeli citizen to be in its Army?
i read earlier today following links in uncle’s dem link you don’t, although there are qualifiers. you are allowed however to become an israeli citizen after you serve in the army. he’s an intriguing character alright. odd

Posted by: annie | Mar 23 2007 6:00 utc | 61

Thanks for the info Annie. I wouldn’t call him odd. Many Americans have close ties to Israel, which is fine – until they’re in positions of power & able to use that position to deny Congressional Seats to those who oppose the Likkudnik policies currently advocated by AIPAC. Or to put it another way, then the so-called Israeli lobby is no longer an external lobby, but an internalized political viewpoint required to hold political power in our country. It’s even zanier, since those who oppose them are merely advancing the only policies that might actually allow Israel to exist for perhaps another half-century or so…the Marx Bros. Does Congress…
Anyway, stopped by to draw everyone’s attention to Peter Galbraith’s art. on Iraq, which I prob. needn’t add is superb & far less turgid than Lang’s offerings 🙂 The Surge There’s nothing to excerpt. Galbraith is as much the decent likeable chap that his father was, so I think all will enjoy reading it.

Posted by: jj | Mar 23 2007 6:49 utc | 63

I wouldn’t call him odd.
well, the ballerina thing threw me for a loop. somehow a senator on toe..whatever.
US struggling to prevent ‘disastrous’ Turkish invasion of Northern Iraq

The firm Turkish belief that the US is playing a double game in northern Iraq. Officials say the CIA is covertly funding and arming the PKK’s sister organisation, the Iran-based Kurdistan Free Life party, to destabilise the Iranian government.
US acquiescence in plans to hold a referendum in oil-rich Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Turkey suspects Iraqi Kurds are seeking control of Kirkuk as a prelude to the creation of an independent Kurdistan.
Speaking about US support for Iranian Kurds opposed to Tehran he added, “Once you begin to differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terrorist organisations, then you lose the war on terror.”

Posted by: annie | Mar 23 2007 7:18 utc | 65

Deployments: The Real Numbers

When all this is complete, sometime in July, the grand total of U.S. troops in Iraq will be 173,000, U.S. military officials here confirmed on background, apparently because of the sensitivity of these details. And it’s likely that U.S. troop numbers will stay at that level for months more, perhaps even into 2008. That’s only part of the picture, however; the total number of U.S. troops deployed into the war theater, that is, Iraq and neighboring countries, may be as much as 100,000 more than that.

273,000 … next year, there will be more …

Posted by: b | Mar 23 2007 8:25 utc | 67

From the informative CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS,
this link about (hurray!) activist “Jewish grandmothers patrol West Bank checkpoints.”
Hanna Barag remembers the day an Israeli soldier called her a Palestinian whore. She was 67 and had just joined Machsomwatch, an all-woman group set up to curb human rights abuses at military checkpoints in the West Bank.
“It was at the Qalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah,” Barag said, “And the remark at first struck me speechless. But then I asked him two questions: ‘Do you really think a woman my age has a chance at that profession? And would you say what you said to me to your grandmother?'”
The soldier said nothing but was embarrassed, and when Barag, who was born in Israel and describes herself as a Zionist, returned for another “shift” of watchdog duty a week later, the soldier was there – and apologized.
…
The group takes its name from the Hebrew word for checkpoint, machsom. From a few dozen in the beginning, Machsomwatch now numbers around 500, many of them grandmothers, who take turns watching 40-odd checkpoints in the West Bank.
The sight of Barag, now 71 and just five feet (1.52 meters) tall, recently in action at a busy checkpoint south of Nablus shows why women are more effective than men in dealing with soldiers when lines are long and tempers frayed.

Posted by: jonku | Mar 23 2007 8:48 utc | 69

@jj – 63 – Peter Galbraith is Adviser to the Kurdistan Regional Government. He wants to partition Iraq and to install a Kurdish state. That is as long as his Kurdish masters pay him.
I’d rather prefer a cynic like Lang over an “expert” payed by one side of the show.

Posted by: b | Mar 23 2007 8:52 utc | 71

There is a common misconception that it was draftees who were the most disaffected elements in the military. In fact, it was often enlistees who were most likely to engage in open rebellion. Draftees were only in for two years, went in expecting the worst, and generally kept their heads down until they got out of uniform. While of course many draftees went AWOL and engaged in group resistance when it developed, it was enlistees who were most angry and most likely to act on that anger. For one thing, enlistees were in for three or four years; even after a tour of duty in ‘Nam they still had a long stretch left in the service. For another thing, they went in with some expectations, generally with a recruiter’s promise of training and a good job classification, often with an assurance that they wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam. When these promises weren’t kept, enlistees were very pissed off. A study commissioned by the Pentagon found that 64% of chronic AWOLs during the war years were enlistees, and that a high percentage were Vietnam vets. The following incident at a GI movement organising conference illustrates this point:
“A quick poll of the GIs and vets in the room showed that the vast majority of them had come from Regular Army, three or four year enlistments. Many of them expressed the notion that, in fact, it was the enlistees and not discontented draftees who had formed the core of the GI movement.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 23 2007 9:11 utc | 73

A-M- One element here that wasn’t present in Vietnam is use of National Guard, who often have marriages, families, mortgages, businesses etc. at home to worry about. Do you have any idea what % they are of total over there? They’ve be better served by having Mil. Families Mvmt. begin organizing domestically to pressure governors to bring them back home. the Mil. Families Mvmt. is so superb ‘cuz it so gives the lie to the empty rhetorice of the Theocrats re “family values” which never was anything more than worship for Old Testament Patriarchy.
(p.s. I didn’t mean to suggest that Lang’s analysis was faulty. Rather I noted that where I was discussing styles. Those rock-ribbed Repugs are so rigid that they’re onerous to read. I’ve been thinking in recent days how now that both parties have been taken over by the Predators, preference for Party A vs. Party B is more of a statement of personal psychology than politics & these two exemplify that. You don’t have to be told to which party each belongs – or did, before each possibly fled in disgust.)

Posted by: jj | Mar 23 2007 9:36 utc | 75

OpEd in WaPo by one John Doe: My National Security Letter Gag Order

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand — a context that the FBI still won’t let me discuss publicly — I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.
…
I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I’ve now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point — a point we passed long ago — the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government’s use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

Posted by: b | Mar 23 2007 10:15 utc | 77

And right on cue:
this
Just found this and did a quick google: crude prices are spiking already.

Posted by: Tantalus | Mar 23 2007 14:41 utc | 79

woa, that’s some link tantalus

Frigate commander
Fifteen British Navy personnel have been captured at gunpoint by Iranian forces, the Ministry of Defence says.
The men were seized at 1030 local time when they boarded a boat in the Gulf, off the coast of Iraq, which they suspected was smuggling cars.
The Royal Navy said the men, who were on a routine patrol in Iraqi waters, were understood to be unharmed.
The Foreign Office has demanded the immediate and safe return of the men, who are based on HMS Cornwall.
The frigate’s commander, Commodore Nick Lambert, said he was hoping there had been a “simple mistake” over territorial waters.

Posted by: annie | Mar 23 2007 16:19 utc | 81

jake, i have a friend that has spent time on minuteman watch on the border and this is her perception. she is involved in an activist group that kept check on the violence perpetrated by these MM and are convinced the are agent provocateurs.

Posted by: annie | Mar 23 2007 16:32 utc | 83

Turkey bombed Kurdish rebels at Iraqi border
this is absent in the US msm
Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish guerrilla positions in the Iraqi border region earlier this week, military sources said on Friday.

Posted by: annie | Mar 23 2007 18:56 utc | 85

I’m surprised, or maybe I missed the post about the 15 brits taken inside Iran. the minute I heard this, I said…okay, here we go…they’re going to go for another war.
It’s all they have left at this point.
and who knows who kidnapped them. it sure is conveeeeenient…but incursions with the hope to create a “provocation” to justify bombing Iran.

Posted by: fauxreal | Mar 23 2007 19:27 utc | 87

Will Hezbollah Hand Israel Its 6th Defeat?

“History teaches us that resistance eventually trumps occupation every time and Israel has never seriously considered a just peace with the Palestinians or its Arab neighbors. There is no rational reason to think that they will now. It’s the Masada syndrome. Fanatics run Israel and they would rather destroy themselves than give back what they stole from the Palestinians”.

A quote from “a Congressional staff member” who “offered the CIA view on March 21, 2007” in the midst of an article about the (Rice/Abrams?) arming of the militias in Lebanon to take the violence to Hizbollah there, start a civil war among the already long, long suffering population of Lebanon just as they have in Palestine.
What strikes me about the quote is that is so well describes the Bush regime’s childish, deadly childish, behavior in Iraq and now in Iran. They would rather burn the world than give back what they’ve stolen from the Iraqis.
And the behavior of the Demoplican “fanatics” who line up in support (bought and paid for) behind them.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Mar 24 2007 2:16 utc | 89

Jake, they may have planned those camps for illegal aliens, though that’s really a cover story, but by the time they get done prosecuting all the corrupt members of Idiot’s Admin., there will be standing room only in those tent cities 🙂

Posted by: jj | Mar 24 2007 4:03 utc | 91

jj- thanks for pointing out the article. will have to read it this w/e. hunt’s wife was dorothy, not ann. where are you getting the info she was w/ jfk? haven’t heard that. as investigator jim hougan noted, she was the “chief negotiator for the plumbers”, collecting & dealing w/ the laundered money used for financing & payoff, which is thought to be the reason for her plane accident, seeing as how some of that money was likely traceable to nixon & his cronies. that makes more sense to me than the jfk thing, but i haven’t read the article yet…

Posted by: b real | Mar 24 2007 4:50 utc | 93

Finally this has emerged from the dark recesses of my mind into the pages of de spiegel. Are GM Crops Killing Bees?
A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.
Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist’s trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that “the very existence of beekeeping is at stake.”
The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

Posted by: jj | Mar 24 2007 5:30 utc | 95

jake, 84. my cousin in NC had mentioned a family friend receiving an electrical contract thru kbr on one of the prisons. i emailed her after reading your enquire. she just got back to me.. charleston.
i’m assuming SC, not virginia

Posted by: annie | Mar 24 2007 17:58 utc | 97

I forget the precise details now, but I was very familiar w/his name from the 60’s- early 70’s. Credibility – from reading the article, Hunt had every reason to not be up front about his involvement. And given what happened to his first wife, I can hardly fault his 2nd wife for her attitude – wanting to protect herself & her children, who one can bet will come out a good bit better than his earlier children – history be damned. Too bad Costner withdrew the big incentive for talking to him. Even his son was convinced he was one of the 3 “tramps” on the grassy knoll. I don’t think there is really any doubt about it. And it’s puzzling why it would weigh so heavy on him were he not involved. My read is that he would have liked to have confessed, had circumstances presented themselves, but … Given the propaganda around CIA agents, I found his son’s discussion of him as a father very interesting – treating his children like citizens of Third World Country, destroying their lives just the same. I’ve recently heard/read elsewhere about LBJ involvement/fore-knowledge, but can’t remember where. I too will be very interested to see what Scott has to say.

Posted by: jj | Mar 25 2007 6:57 utc | 99