Magpie

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Welcome back!

South Dakota's Tim Johnson will be returning to the US Senate this Wednesday, resuming work for the first time since he almost died from a brain hemmorage last December. With Johnson back in the Senate, the Democrats' razor-thin margin of control is slightly less precarious.

Via CQ Politics.

Labels: Congress, Politics

| | Posted by Magpie at 5:19 PM | Get permalink

Tancredo to New Orleans: F*ck you!

GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo continues to show that he's the epitome of compassion.

The Hill reports that Tancredo has called for an end to federal aid to the Gulf Coast areas hit by Hurricane Katrina, and that the hurricane's survivors need to realize that ' the taxpayer gravy train [has] left the New Orleans station.'

"The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called 'recovery' efforts has been mind-boggling," said Tancredo, who is running a long-shot presidential campaign. "Enough is enough...."

"At some point, state and local officials and individuals have got to step up to the plate and take some initiative.... The mentality that people can wait around indefinitely for the federal taxpayer to solve all their worldly problems has got to come to an end."

The lawmaker criticized in particular the amount that has been wasted through fraud and abuse, estimated at $1 billion.

"This whole fiasco has been a perfect storm of corruption and incompetence at all levels," he added.

This magpie is tempted to agree with Tancredo on that last point, except that I'm certain the gentleman from Colorado doesn't think (as I definitely do) that the 'corruption and incompetence' emanates directly from the White House.

Labels: Big fat idiots, Hurricane Katrina, Incompetence, Tom Tancredo

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:45 AM | Get permalink

Friday, August 31, 2007

Ooooooh, really shiny!

The south pole of the Sun, taken in stereo view this past March.

Wow.
[Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/NRL/GSFC]

[This] image is one of many taken by NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) satellites, which have provided the first three-dimensional images of the sun. For the first time, scientists will be able to see structures in the sun's atmosphere in three dimensions. The new view will greatly aid scientists' ability to understand solar physics and thereby improve space weather forecasting.

You can see a full-resolution version of the image if you go here.

Via NASA Image of the Day.

Labels: Astronomy, Shiny things

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:35 PM | Get permalink

Ooooooh, shiny!

A really cool mash-up of Google Maps and that nighttime satellite picture of the whole Earth that we've all seen.

Labels: Maps, Shiny things, The Earth

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:35 AM | Get permalink

The occupation that just keeps on giving (2).

Cholera is on the rise in northern Iraq as sanitation and medical systems break down from the stresses of coping with thousands of internal refugees. So far, 5000 people have been afflicted with the disease.

"The disease is spreading very fast," Dr Juan Abdallah, a senior official in Kurdistan's health ministry, told a UN agency. "It is the first outbreak of its kind here in the past few decades."

Doctors in Sulaimaiyah in Iraqi Kurdistan have appealed for help because of the rapidly increasing number of cases, saying there is a shortage of medicines. Although the city has been less affected by fighting than almost anywhere in Iraq, Unicef says that mains water is only available for two hours a day and many people have dug shallow wells outside their homes.

"There is a shortage of medicines to control the disease and the focal point [the source of the disease] hasn't been identified yet," Dr Dirar Iyad of Sulaimaniyah General Hospital told the UN news agency Irin. Ten people have already died and he expects more deaths to occur "over the next couple of days as victims are already in an advanced stage of illness."

The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has risen from 50,000 to 60,000 a month, the UN High Commission for Refugees reported earlier this week.

Via UK Independent.

Labels: Epidemics, Iraq, Occupation, Public Health

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:16 AM | Get permalink

Thursday, August 30, 2007

This could be tinfoil hat stuff ...

... or it might be that the much-rumored attack on Iran may be coming up Real Soon Now.

Here's part of a post by Barnett Rubin at Informed Comment Global Affairs:

Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:
They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran. This anecdote is also inconclusive, but it is consistent with the depth of planning that went into the reconstruction effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Emphasis added]

You should really read the whole post, in which Rubin (a well known expert on Afghanistan and Central Asia) draws some scary comparisons between what happened in the weeks ahead of Dubya's attack on Iraq, and the stuff that's going on now.

Labels: 'War on Terrorism', Cheney, Dubya, Iran, Paranoia

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:26 PM | Get permalink

US workers ain't got no ethics.

While ethical lapses among upper-level management are allowing them abuse worker health and safety, and grab millions of dollars via fraud, it appears that a similar lack of ethics exists among cube rats and other workers. According to a survey just released by the Ethics Resource Center, those workers are abusing their sick days.

[The Center] surveyed 3,452 employees in public, private and nonprofit organizations around the country and found sizable abuses of sick days.

More than one-third of those questioned by Opinion Research Corp. said they knew of co-workers who called in sick when they weren't.

Hmmm. Perhaps workers would be less likely to abuse their sick days if employers had to give paid leave for pregnancy, child care, or illness in the family. Or maybe if US workers had more vacation days—they currently have the fewest days of workers in any industrialized country—they'd have enough time to work on improving their ethics.

Just saying.

Via Kansas City Star.

Labels: Ethics, Studies, Workplace

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:51 PM | Get permalink

Remember those high US gas prices last summer?

The Federal Trade Commission says that the oil companies didn't manipulate supplies or engage in price gouging.

Apparently it was all Saddam Hussein's fault. Or something.

Via Reuters.

Labels: Big fat liars, Energy, Oil

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:32 PM | Get permalink

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Shame? What shame?

On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of the Gulf Coast, Dubya had the nerve to visit New Orleans and tell people that feds are 'paying attention' to the reconstruction of the city and other places hit hard by the storm.

"It's one thing to come and give a speech in Jackson Square; it's another thing to keep paying attention to whether or not progress is being made. And I hope people understand we do, we're still paying attention," he said.

The prez was referring, of course, to his own speech in Jackson Square in 2005, part of a visit aimed mainly at controlling the damage caused by the feds' inadequate response to Katrina—a response that was highlighted by his own failure to do anything but give New Orleans a fly-over in the days immediately after the hurricane.

Ninth ward residents give thumbs down to President Bush

It's thumbs down for Dubya as his motorcade passes thorough the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
[Photo © Lee Celano/Reuters]

Dubya's latest visit to the Crescent City appears to be yet another PR ploy, as the prez failed to mention how inadequate the federal response to Katrina continues to be, two years after the event. The LA Times has noticed New Orleans' continuing problems, however, although the paper loses points for burying their rebuttal to Dubya's speech at the bottom of their story on Dubya's speech:

his motorcade route took him past the lingering evidence of the long-lasting damage: blocks where some rebuilding has taken place but other homes remain deserted. Many are boarded up and bear the spray-paint markings left by those seeking the storm's victims, alive and dead, two years ago.

Off his route in the Lower Ninth Ward, there was even more evidence: entire blocks deserted, with no sign of rebuilding attempts, and store after store boarded up -- Family Dollar, Walgreens, St. Claude Hardware.

Pushing up against Bush's upbeat remarks are statistics: The city's pre-storm population was 455,000; it is now about 274,000. Of the 184,000 people who sought help from the government grant program created to help with rebuilding, 43,000 have been sent checks. The program is $5 billion short of what it needs to help the others, and at the start of the year fewer than 1% had received any money from the plan.

More than half the city remains in disrepair....

Reflecting the confusion over how much federal assistance has been disbursed, the RFK Center and the Institute for Southern Studies estimated in a recently published joint report that the Bush administration was overstating overall federal funding for the Gulf Coast rebuilding campaign by as much as 300%, with roughly $35 billion of an estimated $114 billion actually spent. The White House said the spending had reached $96 billion. [Emphasis added]

As many observers noted right after Katrina hit New Orleans (and continue to note), the feds would undoubtedly have responded faster and more adequately if the city had been wealthier, white, and Republican. New Orleans' continuing difficulties, coupled with the lack of adequate federal aid, has resulted in a huge number of the city's poorer residents having to go into what increasingly looks like permanent exile, kept away from their homes by skyrocketing rents and lack of essential city services.

But if you're a Republican president, those are hardly bad things.

Labels: Big fat liars, Dubya, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:10 PM | Get permalink

Dubya's economy continues to deliver the goods.

And the latest delivery, according to new figures from the US Census Bureau, is the fact that the number of Americans without health insurance is at the highest level ever.

The census data found that, compared with 2005, the number of uninsured Americans rose 5 percent last year to 47 million, due in large part to cutbacks in employer-sponsored health coverage. It also found that 11.7 percent of US children under 18 lacked health insurance, compared with 10.9 percent in 2005. [Emphasis added]

What's especially interesting is that the Census Bureau numbers also show that, over the past two years, the national poverty level has gone down slightly and that Americans' median income has gone up. Despite these improvements, health insurance has still become less available to the average person.

Of course, if everyone would just get one of Dubya's much-vaunted healthcare savings accounts, everything would be wonderful. Right?

Via Boston Globe.

Labels: Health Care, Trickle-Down Economics

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:44 PM | Get permalink

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

USA! USA! Number One!

The US is the most heavily armed country on the planet, with 90 firearms per 100 people in the civilian population.

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.

"There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said.

Of course, the sheer number of weapons floating around the country has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of gun-related violence and crimes in the US.

Via Reuters.

Labels: Craziness, Guns

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:06 PM | Get permalink

Monday, August 27, 2007

Revealed! The secret paymaster for Iraq's insurgents.

Is it Osama? Or Iran? Nope, you're way off the mark.

It turns out that a major source of funding for Iraq's insurgency is the US treasury. According to a report by McClatchy's Hannah Allam, insurgents are financing at least part of their attacks on US forces by shaking down contractors in Anbar province. In return for cash (siphoned from US reconstruction funds), the insurgents allow contractors to move people and supplies, and carry out their projects with a modicum of safety. At minimum, this protection racket has generated hundreds of thousands of US dollars since 2003. It's more likely, say Iraqi government sources, that the figure is actually in the millions.

A U.S. company with a reconstruction contract hires an Iraqi sub-contractor to haul supplies along insurgent-ridden roads. The Iraqi contractor sets his price at up to four times the going rate because he'll be forced to give 50 percent or more to gun-toting insurgents who demand cash payments in exchange for the supply convoys' safe passage.

One Iraqi official said the arrangement makes sense for insurgents. By granting safe passage to a truck loaded with $10,000 in goods, they receive a "protection fee" that can buy more weapons and vehicles. Sometimes the insurgents take the goods, too.

"The violence in Iraq has developed a political economy of its own that sustains it and keeps some of these terrorist groups afloat," said Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh ...

"I put it right in my contracts as a line item for 'logistics and security,'" said one Iraqi contractor who is still working for a major American company with several long-term projects in Anbar. "The Americans think you're hiring a security company, but how you execute it is something else entirely. This is how it's been working since Day 1."

One Iraqi contractor who is working on an American-funded rebuilding project in the provincial capital of Ramadi said he faced two choices when he wanted to bring in a crane, heavy machinery and workers from Baghdad: either hire a private security company to escort the supplies for up to $6,000 a truck, or pay off locals with insurgent connections.

He chose the latter, and got $120,000 for a U.S. contract he estimates to be worth no more than $20,000. The contractor asked that specific details of the project not be disclosed for fear he'll be identified and lose the job.

"The insurgents always remind us they're there," the contractor said. "Sometimes they hijack a truck or kidnap a driver and then we pay and, if we're lucky, we get our goods returned. It's just to make sure we know how it works.

"Insurgents control the roads," he added. "Americans don't control the roads — and everything from Syria and Jordan goes through there."

Despite the widespread and longstanding diversion of American money into insurgents' pockets, the US embassy in Baghdad refused to answer McClatchy's questions about the shakedowns. An embassy spokesperson said only that US contracts contain 'checks and balances' that prevent any 'irregularities' from occurring.

Yeah. Right. And I'm the f'n empress of the universe.

Via McClatchy Washington Bureau.

Labels: Insurgency, Iraq, Occupation

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:11 AM | Get permalink

Another rat leaves Dubya's sinking ship

I see that attorney general Alberto Gonzales resigned from his post this morning.

The rumor is that his replacement will be Michael Chertoff, the current head of the Department of Homeland Security. The prez apparently feels that Chertoff's major role in bungling the federal response to Hurricane Katrina makes him ideally qualified to lead the Department of Justice.

Via Agence France Presse.

Labels: Al Gonzales, Attorneygate, Dubya, Incompetence

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:29 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, August 26, 2007

I wouldn't laugh at this woman if I were you.

I mean, it's really easy to make fun of Lauren Caitlin Upton, South Carolina's entrant in the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant, as she tackles a question about geography.

Upton's obviously been taught a bunch of stock phrases to use to buy time when she's trying to answer a pageant question. And it's painfully obvious that she's using use stock phrases to try—try to the point of incoherence—to cover up the fact that she hasn't a clue about how to answer the question she was asked.

But—and be honest now—how many people in the US who aren't beauty pageant contestants are just as clueless, and would give answers that were just as pathetic as the one Upton gives in this YouTube clip?

She's not the only one who wouldn't be able to answer the question.

While it's easy to laugh at Upton, I'd submit that she's practicing the same craft that's used by US business leaders and politicians every day: that of saying a whole bunch of meaningless stuff to try to hide the fact that a statement is wrong, incoherent, or nonexistent. And that the only reason that we're laughing at Upton is because she doesn't have the years of practice that her (mostly male) elders use to hide their ignorance and dishonesty.

It's just easier for us to laugh at Upton's answer because she's young, attractive, and female,

Via Suburban Guerilla.

Labels: Cluelessness, Geography, Sexism

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:17 AM | Get permalink