Just in case you missed this

five years ago:

The Enron Story Everyone Is Missing: The Bush-Ken Lay Connection

Bush should be called as a witness in the congressional hearings scheduled to unravel this mess. One thing that should come up in the hearings is then-Gov. Bush’s October 1997 telephone call on behalf of Lay to then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge to help Enron crack into the tightly regulated Pennsylvania electricity market.

“I called George W. to kind of tell him what was going on,” Lay told the New York Times about the 1997 phone call, “and I said that it would be very helpful to Enron, which is obviously a large company in the state of Texas, if he could just call the governor [of Pennsylvania] and tell him [Enron] is a serious company, this is a professional company, a good company.”

Since we now know Enron lacked those virtues, it’s clear Bush was used to sell a bill of goods to the unsuspecting Pennsylvania folks.

That Lay was instrumental in Bush’s rise to the presidency is indisputable. Since 1993, Lay and top Enron executives donated nearly $2 million to Bush. Lay also personally donated $326,000 in soft money to the Republican Party in the three years prior to Bush’s presidential bid, and he was one of the Republican “pioneers” who raised $100,000 in smaller contributions for Bush. Lay’s wife donated $100,000 for inauguration festivities.

Once again, I <3 Molly.

Since it is a long and noble Texas tradition for the accused to fight all allegations by finding Jesus, this indicates a major degree of guilt.

Well over a year ago I read some where Bill Clinton was angling for Secretary General of the UN when Annan retires. I still don't know if that's a good idea or not. Interesting article on what to look for in a new UN SG: 10 Qualities to Look for in a New UN Secretary General. I don't think much of it is based in reality - bit like the lists we used to send of to Santa Claus when we were kids. Ah well, it'll make International Politics a bit more interesting this year. I wish the UN was covered better in the US.

BattleCry: Ron Luce's Holy War, by Sunsara Taylor.

“Do you care more about the pigs around you or God?” BattleCry leader Ron Luce roared at the crowd of more than 17,000 youths gathered at Wachovia Spectrum Stadium in Philadelphia on Friday, May 12. No, this wasn’t a metaphor: After reading a passage from Luke 15 that mentions pigs, he actually brought several squealing, pink farm animals on stage. Got it? You either get with Luce’s hateful, hyper-patriotic, woman-bashing, racist god or … you’re a pig.

What’s more, it became clear during the rally that all the rhetoric about battles, warriors and war was not just metaphorical, either.

The 9/11 Story That Got Away

Now, in an exclusive interview, Miller reveals how the attack on the Cole spurred her reporting on Al Qaida and led her, in July 2001, to a still-anonymous top-level White House source, who shared top-secret NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) concerning an even bigger impending Al Qaida attack, perhaps to be visited on the continental United States.

Ultimately, Miller never wrote that story either. But two months later -- on Sept. 11 -- Miller and her editor at the Times, Stephen Engelberg, both remembered and regretted the story they "didn't do."

I'm Pregnant!

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Not that there is a civil war in Iraq, but Basra Carnage Escalates as One Person Killed Every Hour.

US Secretly Backing Warlords in Somalia.

Us? Never!

U.S. officials have long feared that Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1991, is a desirable place for al-Qaeda members to hide and plan attacks. The country is strategically located on the Horn of Africa, which is only a boat ride away from Yemen and a longtime gateway to Africa from the Middle East. No visas are needed to enter Somalia, there is no police force and no effective central authority.

Oh, right! Silly me! The Terrorists!

Thanks be to god we're friends with Muammar Qaddafi, that fine, upstanding fellow! Always been a true-blue friend of democracy he has.

This is the country that used its vast oil wealth to finance Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's fantasies of international revolutionary leadership by sponsoring coups, invasions, assassination attempts and terrorist atrocities across the world. Americans got a taste of Colonel Qaddafi's methods in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, an attack that killed 270 people. A year later, another Libyan terrorist bomb killed 170 people on a French airliner over Africa.

Never! I won't believe a word of it! Miss Rice says they're the good guys now, so that's good enough for me.

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Hey Millennials, Debt Becomes You:

While tuition prices continue to rise, the acceleration slowed this year, Ms. King says, offering a positive projection for future college students. And the job market is relatively healthy, she says, opening up more doors for graduates. But interest rates will increase on July 1, when federal loan programs move from a variable rate system to a higher, fixed rate. Stafford loans will jump from the current 5.3 percent rate after graduation to 6.8 percent. PLUS loans, designed for parents, will rise from 6.1 percent interest to 8.5 percent.

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* No, I'm not pregnant.

** What the fuck is next? Donna Reed cloning? Get your period for the first time and you get outfitted with pearls, poodle skirts and heels?

No, we don't live a fascist, Nanny state.

In the tradition of Mega Corporations taking over sporting arenas and renaming them, I think we should stop calling the White House the White House and instead call it the Fox Broadcasting Arena.

Rainy days and America get me down.

I learn something new every day. Today's professor is Matthew Aid, as interviewed by Kim Zetter at Salon. Read The NSA is on the line -- all of them.

The controversy over Project Shamrock in 1976 ultimately led Congress to pass the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other privacy and communication laws designed to prevent commercial companies from working in cahoots with the government to conduct wholesale secret surveillance on their customers. But as stories revealed last week, those safeguards had little effect in preventing at least three telecommunications companies from repeating history.

I knew about the FISA... I didn't realize it stemmed from Project Shamrock. I guess I didn't pay close enough attention at the time. And, as I recall, my introduction to FISA (something like 15 years ago) was by a guy who firmly believed the government is out to get each and everyone of us. Real conspiracy theorist. We'd debate his "theories" endlessly. It was fun and I never took any of it seriously.

I do now.

We should be terrified that Congress has not been doing its job and because all of the checks and balances put in place to prevent this have been deliberately obviated. In order to get this done, the NSA and White House went around all of the checks and balances. I'm convinced that 20 years from now we, as historians, will be looking back at this as one of the darkest eras in American history. And we're just beginning to sort of peel back the first layers of the onion. We're hoping against hope that it's not as bad as I suspect it will be, but reality sets in every time a new article is published and the first thing the Bush administration tries to do is quash the story. It's like the lawsuit brought by EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] against AT&T -- the government's first reaction was to try to quash the lawsuit. That ought to be a warning sign that they're on to something.

As usual, me hearts Molly.

I hate to raise such an ugly possibility, but have you considered lunacy as an explanation? Craziness would make a certain amount of sense. I mean, you announce you are going to militarize the Mexican border, but you assure the president of Mexico you are not militarizing the border. You announce you are sending the National Guard, but then you assure everyone it’s not very many soldiers and just for a little while.

Martial law, anyone?

As if the weather isn't depressing enough.

I didn't bother watching Der Fuehrer last night. More lies I don't need to listen to.

So much for Fitzmas in May. Jason Leopold, Sockpuppet Extraordinaire.

And, as if the news in this country isn't depressing enough, the civil war we started in Iraq is intensifying. See Juan Cole's entry for today.

Al-Sari said that for the last month, Basra has been afflicted by a mass of assassinations, equalling one each hour of the day. (That would be 24 a day, and 720 for the month). Sources in the city allege that the police are helpless to intervene, and indeed refuse to go out to the crime scene to attempt to capture the assassins, since they would take fire from tribesmen supporting the assassins, who belong to their tribe.

The Professor's article today also directed me towards photos at AfterDowningStreet.org. Go look, face the war that this government won't let you see. And if so inclined, say a prayer. For them, for us.

Those pictures are not for the weak of heart or mind. But then, the truth never is.

Common Sense

So we may have Fitzmas in May, come Monday?

It's welcome, but not enough.

Impeach Cheney first, then Bush, this is what must happen. Granted that leaves us with the Speaker of the House, but it's a start.

Though I've believed it for months I haven't said so - we live in a fascist country. It's hard to believe it, to think it, let alone say it. It's not enough to blog and comment. All representatives of the people, state and federal, need to hear from us. Write them and ask for articles of impeachment to be delivered. Be polite but outline all the reasons why - and god knows there's enough of them. It is up to each of us to change our country. It's not too late.

I've been re-reading Thomas Paine lately, and the Federalists. They still have much to teach us. Go back, read what they thought a Nation should be and compare it to what we have. The differences are glaring - painful even.

We can fix this. Not everyone is cut out for campaigning, electioneering, but each of us can write an intelligent, well reasoned argument in favor of impeaching and removing all members of the current administration. Set off a writing campaign even Republican's cannot ignore; copy your letters to state and federal representatives to television and print publications and post them on your blogs.

HOW CAME THE KING BY A POWER WHICH THE PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO TRUST, AND ALWAYS OBLIGED TO CHECK? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, WHICH NEEDS CHECKING, be from God; yet the provision which the constitution makes supposes such a power to exist.

Common Sense

It's been pouring like mad all night. We're slated to get 4 inches in southwestern CT before it's done.

By Larisa Alexandrovna Rawstory

The UN source also says that a military analysis suggests that no military action should be undertaken in Iran until spring of 2007, but that things remain volatile given this administration’s penchant for having "their own way."

By Sunsara Taylor Battle Cry For Theocracy

If you’ve been waiting to get alarmed until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in “God’s army,” wait no longer.

In recent weeks, BattleCry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement, has attracted more than 25,000 people to mega-rally rock concerts in San Francisco and Detroit, and this weekend it plans to fill Wachovia Stadium in Philadelphia.

The leaders of BattleCry claim that their religion and values are under attack, but amid spectacular light shows, Hummers, Navy SEALs and military imagery on stage, it is BattleCry that has declared war on everyone else. Its leader, Ron Luce, insists: “This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent—the ‘forceful’ ones—will lay hold of the kingdom.”

I'm glad I don't live in Philly.

I missed Jack Cafferty on CNN yesterday. Well, I miss him every day because he's on when most folks are still working. The transcript of his question yesterday is at AMERICAblog:

"Does it concern you that your phone company may be voluntarily providing your phone records to the government without your knowledge or permission?"

Yes, it does. But what concerns me more is that this government thinks what it's doing is legal, Constitutional. This is the part that really matters:

Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn't have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.

Read that sentence again.

A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it's not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says okay and drops the whole thing.

In other news, Der Führer approval ratings are at 29%.

And as if Mussolini didn't have enough problems: What MI5 knew.

War Clouds

Los Angeles Times:

Russian leaders continue to mouth the usual diplomatic platitudes about democracy and global cooperation, but Russia is actually playing a complex double game. On Tuesday, Russia launched a spy satellite for Israel, which the Israelis can use to monitor Iran's nuclear facilities. On the same day, Russian leaders confirmed their opposition to any U.N. Security Council effort to impose sanctions against Iran, and their intention to go through with the lucrative sale of 29 Tor M1 air defense missile systems to Iran.

Interesting take. I still think the Iran War starts in March of 2007.

Life Without A Net

In one of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti, Marijo lives in perhaps the worst of its slums. Cite Soleil is a teeming shantytown of a quarter-million people living in poverty so abject it is difficult for anyone outside of here to imagine.

Robert Scheer: Top Spy’s Story on Prewar Intel Is Finally Told

Perhaps most damning is an interview, added for the broadcast version, with Tyler Drumheller, a CIA veteran of 26 years’ service who was the agency’s top spy in Europe until his retirement a year ago. According to him, before the war Hussein’s foreign minister had been “turned” and was talking secretly to U.S. intelligence. At first excited by this rare inside look at Hussein’s regime, the top dogs at the White House dropped the issue like a hot rock as soon as his information contradicted their overheated rationale for “preemptive” war. “The policy was set,” Drumheller told CBS correspondent Ed Bradley. “The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.”

See also:

"Nothing Prepared Me for Bush"

The press doesn't care. The media, because it's been driven much more by market competition and competition with electronic media. They're doing this "gotcha" journalism. What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise.

Sometimes they have a good one - like torture and the rendering of prisoners. Those are good stories. But in the main, there's no felt obligation to cover the economy, poverty, or foreign policy in any systematic way. When the print organizations had a more dominant power in their own markets and publishers that cared to excel or readers that demanded they excel, they felt the need to cover even the boring issues. Now there isn't any of that felt obligation at all.

Also at Alternet.org