"...not some perjury technicality"

You know, just when I think I've seen every possible permutation of Republican hypocrisy there is, one of them says something so mind-bogglingly lunatic it still makes my jaw drop.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, today on Press the Meat:

I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation were not a waste of time and dollars.

Funny, this isn't what she and other Republicans thought when it was lies about sex instead of revealing the name of a CIA NOC, which may very well have resulted in people's deaths.

Here's what she said then:

(i) The President of the United States willfully, and with intent to deceive, gave false and misleading testimony under oath with respect to material matters that were pending before the Federal grand jury on August 17, 1998, as alleged in Article I presented to the Senate. I, therefore, vote `Guilty' on Article I of the Articles of Impeachment of the President in this Proceeding.

(ii) The President of the United States engaged in a pattern of conduct, performed acts of willful deception, and told and disseminated massive falsehoods, including lies told directly to the American people, that were designed and corruptly calculated to impede, obstruct, and prevent the plaintiff in the Arkansas Federal sexual harassment case from seeking and obtaining justice in the Federal court system of the United States, and to further prevent the Federal grand jury from performing its functions and responsibilities under law, I, therefore, vote `Guilty' on Article II of the Articles of Impeachment of the President in this proceeding.

Hypocrite. But a good little brownshirt.

For this they want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans' health benefits

Next time you're tempted to think that entitlements have to be cut if we're going to do something about spending and deficits, or you see someone in the checkout line at the Piggly Wiggly with food stamps and you start thinking about welfare, consider where your tax dollars are going, with the full support of the Bush Administration and Congress. They're going to companies like Unisys for projects like this one:

Federal auditors say the prime contractor on a $1 billion technology contract to improve the nation's transportation security system overbilled taxpayers for as much as 171,000 hours' worth of labor and overtime by charging up to $131 an hour for employees who were paid less than half that amount.

Three years ago, the Transportation Security Administration hired Unisys Corp. to create a state-of-the-art computer network linking thousands of federal employees at hundreds of airports to the TSA's high-tech security centers.

The project is costing more than double the anticipated amount per month, and the network is far from complete -- nearly half of the nation's airports have yet to be upgraded. Government officials said last week that the initial $1 billion contract ceiling was only a starting point for the project, which they recently said could end up costing $3 billion.

In two reviews conducted last year, federal auditors found that Unisys charged higher per-hour labor rates than were justified for lower-level employees, according to copies of the audits obtained by The Washington Post. For example, Unisys billed taxpayers $131.12 an hour for a technical writer who should have made no more than $46.43 an hour. The extra money was generally not passed along to the employees but was kept by the company.

Last spring, the auditors referred findings of "suspected irregularity" to the Office of the Inspector General at the Homeland Security Department, which includes the TSA, according to copies of the audits and referral.

The contract is under review for possible violations of the federal False Claims Act, according to documents and interviews. A spokeswoman for the inspector general's office declined to comment.

"There certainly was no attempt here to commit any type of misdeed of any form," said Tom Conaway, managing partner of homeland security for Unisys who is overseeing the contract.

Unisys of Blue Bell, Pa., inappropriately charged some of the highest rates possible under the contract by labeling lower-level employees as experts in their fields, the auditors found. Unisys said the employees' experience and responsibilities merited the higher rates.

At the same time, the auditors discovered that timesheets were repeatedly adjusted to change job and labor categories long after the work was performed without "adequate explanations," the auditors said.

"We found significant internal control weaknesses regarding the reliability of the recorded labor hours," said auditors from the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which was hired by the TSA last year to examine the Unisys contract. "We were unable to quantify the impact of the adjustments due to the lack of verifiable documentation."

The TSA has not publicly released the audits. The Post obtained copies independently.

Hell, I'll write a bloated system with missed deadlines for HALF that.

Pulling the curtain aside

I dare not hope that the MSM has finally been deprogrammed from its worship of the Cult of Bush, but when Time Magazine runs an exposé of how Congress has allowed corporations to bail out of providing health insurance and pensions, I can only wonder if a sea change away from the Republican culture of greed and avarice may actually be coming:

Businesses in one industry after another are revoking long-standing commitments to their workers. It's the equivalent of your bank telling you that it needs the money you put into your savings account more than you do--and then keeping it. Result: a wholesale downsizing of the American Dream.[...]

Congress's role has been pivotal. Lawmakers wrote bankruptcy regulations to allow corporations to scrap the health insurance they promised employees who retired early--sometimes voluntarily, quite often not. They wrote pension rules that encouraged corporations to underfund their retirement plans or switch to plans less favorable to employees. They denied workers the right to sue to enforce retirement promises[...]

One by one, lawmakers have undermined or destroyed policies that once afforded at least the possibility of a livable existence to many seniors, while at the same time encouraging corporations to repudiate lifetime-benefit agreements. All this under the guise of ensuring workers that they are in charge of their own destiny--such as it is.

[snip]

Truth to tell, the 401(k) was never intended as a retirement plan. It evolved out of a tax break that Congress awarded to corporate executives in 1978, allowing them to defer part of their salaries and cut their tax bills[...]

Noticeably absent from many accounts was any reference to the median value, a more accurate indicator of the health of America's retirement system. That number was $17,909, meaning half held less, half more. Nearly 1 in 4 accounts had a balance of less than $5,000.

(Excerpts via "tiberius" at Daily Kos, because Time makes you subscribe to their print edition in order to read online.)

Why do Americans hate America

...and women and black women in particular?

An ABC news poll shows that in a theoretical matchup between Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza "I believe it said...'Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." Rice, Clinton wins by nine percentage points at 50/41%.

Both John McCain and Rudy Giuliani defeat Clinton in the same poll.

I find this fascinating. John McCain has developed the kind of Teflon usually reserved for guys named "Reagan" and "Bush". People seem to still regard him as a straight-shooter, for all that he has embraced the man whose 2000 campaign accused his wife of being a drug addict and his not-yet-adolescent daughter of being the product of a liaison with a black prostitute. In the world I live in, straight-talking honest politicians don't forgive that kind of just plain rottenness for political expedience.

As for Rudy Giuliani, well, I'd just be interested in thinking what the red-state "sanctity of marriage" crowd would make of that. Of course, their idea of "sanctity of marriage" means "Only marry someone of the opposite sex -- but when she gets too old, drop her for a younger version. Repeat until senile."

Here's where we show the Democratic Party the power of the netroots

I've just put up a link to ActBlue, where you can donate to some candidates I think are worthy of our support. This page was triggered by Paul Hackett's decision to run for Mike DeWine's Senate seat in Ohio.

Hackett is the Iraq war veteran who came within a hair's breadth of winning his staunchly Republican district's Congressional seat in a special election against a well-funded Republican wingnut. Now he's setting his sights on the Senate. His formal announcement.

This is one of those "it's his turn" cases, "him" being Rep. Sherrod Brown, who made no noises about running for the seat -- until Hackett started making noises that HE was going to run. Now Brown is forcing a primary, and the national Democratic Party is supporting him, on the grounds that "it's his turn."

This is exactly the kind of thinking that brought us the wonderful campaign of John Forbes Kerry, and the kind of thinking that's giving us here in New Jersey the bumbling gubernatorial campaign of Jon Corzine, who has managed to blow most of a 20-point lead by not running an aggressive campaign, instead deciding to rely on his greater name recognition. Corzine's support in the party led to the incumbent acting governor, Richard Codey, dropping out of the race, which is how we may very well end up with Governor Doug Forrester, since Codey is enormously popular in the state right now, with his appeal spanning both Republicans AND Democrats. So of course, the party instead chooses the party insider. Corzine is an insider with a solid progressive record, but he's an insider, and he's run a completely lackluster campaign so far.

Based on what I read from people in his district, Sherrod Brown is not a bad guy. But the fact that he only tossed his hat into the ring AFTER the race became competitive, and AFTER Paul Hackett tossed HIS in, tells me that Brown is yet another cautious Washington Democrat, very likely to cave into the peculiar conciliation towards the worst elements of Republican extremism that seems to be the hallmark of Washington Democrats.

I find the notion of "It's his turn" even more distressing. Back in 1984, a pre-scandal Gary Hart nearly overcame Walter Mondale in the presidential primary race to become the nominee, thanks to a grassroots campaign that presaged today's netroots. When it began to appear as if Hart might actually win this thing, the national party put more muscle behind Mondale, who became the nominee and lost soundly to the incumbent, Ronald Reagan. Does that sound familiar to those of you who don't remember 1984? It should, because if you substitute either the name "Dick Gephardt" or "John Kerry" for "Walter Mondale", and the name "Howard Dean" for "Gary Hart", you'll see that very little has changed, for all that said Howard Dean is now at least the titular head of the party.

I'm not saying that Paul Hackett, should he manage to fight the power and win the nomination and the Senate seat, is guaranteed to bring his no-bullshit style to the senior house of Congress. Last year it was another Midwesterner named Barack Obama who took the netroots by storm, and Obama has so far proven to be yet another cautious Democrat in practice. The same thing may very well happen to Paul Hackett if he manages to pull this off.

But what choice do we in Blogtopia really have? If we want to make this party stand for something, if we want to be better than the cronyism and greed that are the pillars of today's Republican agenda, guys like Sherrod Brown just aren't going to cut it. At least Hackett is unencumbered by hackery up to this point.

And that's why this New Jersey blogger is asking for support for Paul Hackett for Senate in Ohio.

MoDo's silver hammer

...is brought down soundly upon the head of Judy Kneepads today. After the obligatory disclaimer that she's always liked Chalabi's fuckbuddy, she begins the massacre:

The traits she has that drive many reporters at The Times crazy - her tropism toward powerful men, her frantic intensity and her peculiar mixture of hard work and hauteur - have never bothered me. I enjoy operatic types.

She never knew when to quit. That was her talent and her flaw. Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, she was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers. She more than earned her sobriquet "Miss Run Amok."

Judy's stories about W.M.D. fit too perfectly with the White House's case for war. She was close to Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who was conning the neocons to knock out Saddam so he could get his hands on Iraq, and I worried that she was playing a leading role in the dangerous echo chamber that Senator Bob Graham, now retired, dubbed "incestuous amplification." Using Iraqi defectors and exiles, Mr. Chalabi planted bogus stories with Judy and other credulous journalists.

Even last April, when I wrote a column critical of Mr. Chalabi, she fired off e-mail to me defending him.

When Bill Keller became executive editor in the summer of 2003, he barred Judy from covering Iraq and W.M.D. issues. But he acknowledged in The Times's Sunday story about Judy's role in the Plame leak case that she had kept "drifting" back. Why did nobody stop this drift?

Judy admitted in the story that she "got it totally wrong" about W.M.D. "If your sources are wrong," she said, "you are wrong." But investigative reporting is not stenography.

[snip]

Judy refused to answer a lot of questions put to her by Times reporters, or show the notes that she shared with the grand jury. I admire Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Bill Keller for aggressively backing reporters in the cross hairs of a prosecutor. But before turning Judy's case into a First Amendment battle, they should have nailed her to a chair and extracted the entire story of her escapade.

Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover "the same thing I've always covered - threats to our country." If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands.

Game, set, and match to Maureen Dowd.

This is what they used to go to war in your name, folks.

Here, from "Sherlock Google" at Kos, is an image taken from the actual forged Niger document which, if there's any justice, will bring down the Bush Administration once and for all. Overlaying the document is the actual Republic of Niger seal. Wouldn't you think that a real document would use that, instead of the crude, hand-drawn version that appears in the document?



That, my friends, is the forgery on which our government based its WMD claims. That, my friends, is what the Administration and the Pentagon called "evidence." That, my friends, is why almost 2000 American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead. That, my friends, is the government we have.