Wow...what a concept. A presidential candidate who, when faced with embarrassing behavior, addresses the nation directly about the controversy, instead of hedging:



Frankly, while I find Rev. Wright's words and tone to be unnecessarily inflammatory, I also find that I don't have a lot of argument with anything he said.

We live in a culture that has been defined by victimology ever since the 9/11 attacks. We like to think we are a strong people, but look at how Americans have behaved over the last six-plus years. Yes, this country endured a terrible attack. Thousands lost their lives on September 11, 2001. But it is not "hating America" to say that we have to look at our policies and the leaders we have supported, often under the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" doctrine, to LEARN from what happened and avoid similar situations in the future.

There's no getting around the fact that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were directly spawned by American policy -- in this case, arming the Afghan Mujahadeen against the Soviets during the latter's invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1980's. There's also no getting around the fact that the American policy of "Israel By Definition Can Do No Wrong" has contributed to the mess we now find in the Middle East.

That doesn't make me an anti-Semite. I am not religious, but I am a Jew. I have had relatives who endured the pogroms in Russia and Poland and others who died in Hitler's camps. I've had many conversations with many people, including my own spouse, about Israel. I support Israel's right to exist, at the same time as I see its founding as a mistake; a misguided attempt by the U.S. and Europe to somehow atone for its appalling lack of concern about what was happening to the Jews under Hitler. It's hardly surprising that Israel is a paranoid country. You aren't paranoid if they really ARE out to get you. In placing the Jewish state smack in the middle of disputed lands, the Allied countries that helped set up that country virtually ensured that this so-called haven for Jews when all else fails would never be any kind of a haven.

The fact remains that Israel exists, and we cannot, nor should we, dismantle it. That said, we have to stop this knee-jerk ZOMG HE ATTACKED ISRAEL HE MUST BE WRONG attitude every time someone dares to bring up how our policy has often been shown to be problematic.

Having gotten that out of the way, we also know that one of Osama bin Laden's beefs was our bases in Saudi Arabia. Well, after 9/11, the Bush Administration closed our bases in Saudi Arabia. But now we are establishing permanent bases in Iraq. And so it starts all over again.

We ARE a country of punkass bullies. For six years we have been a people hell-bent on revenge. The civilian body count in Iraq is in the tens to hundreds of thousands -- and still we do not feel we've gotten even. At the same time, we continue to allow those who would exploit our fears to perpetuate their wars for oil, for booty, for empire, for hegemony, to tap into that part of our brain that's like the last frame of the Life in Hell cartoon I posted yesterday -- the one that lies awake at night terrified at the prospect of our own nonexistence.

I'd like to believe that the knee-jerk reaction to the tone of Rev. Wright's comments as opposed to their content are a result of our knowledge, much as we hate to face it, that our own government has reached what I call the Tipping Point of Evil -- monstrousness so profound that we simply cannot fathom any leaders we elect -- or allow to be selected -- could possibly be as evil as our currentl leadership seems to be. We know that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. We know that Osama bin Laden is still out there. We know that we have not vanquished al-Qaeda and we know that the Taliban are regaining control in Afghanistan. We also know that the life we've led for the last fifty years; a life of prosperity relative to the rest of the world, is imperiled. We fear for our future and that of our children, but we know we're powerless against the corporations whose survival is placed at a higher priority by our government than that of our citizens.

And so we continue to be afraid, caged animals, clinging desperately to the last vestiges of hope that somehow everything will work out, that this nightmare will end. We cling desperately to the notion of inherent American goodness. We cling to this idea that somehow the blessings we have had are the will of the universe -- of God, if you like. And we are willing to lash out in anger at all of those who would dare to tear down our wall of delusion by sheer force of will.

I myself am far more offended at the ongoing pattern of hatred shown by John McCain's spiritual advisers, the Reverends John Hagee and Rod Parsley. For their hatred is a manifestation of what I see as a perverted form of the teachings of the Jewish carpenter from Nazareth. It's a perversion that calls for support of a nation (Israel) only because you need the citizens of that nation -- and every other one -- to convert or be burnt alive for your own religious dream to come true. It's a religion as perverted as radical Islam -- and yet its practitioners are allowed to pass themselves off as mainstream, and be acceptable ajuncts to a Republican presidential candidate, because something called Christianity is still the dominent spiritual tradition in this country.

I am far more offended when people I regard as friends ask me if I really believe that Barack Obama is loyal enough to this country -- because they've received e-mails making all kinds of scurrilous accusations because he has a middle name we associate with a Very Bad Guy. I am far more offended that religion, whatever its form, is having such a prominent place in our political discourse.

In politics, we should be dealing with what IS -- with the rational world -- what we can see, hear, taste, and touch. Belief in some great white alpha male in the sky that you can't prove exists has no place in this process. If I'm offended at anything regarding where Barack Obama goes to church, or who his pastor is, it's that he has to talk about it at all. I don't care whether Barack Obama believes in Joshua of Nazareth as the literal son of God, or even if he believes in God. It's none of my business, just as it's none of his, or John McCain's, or anyone's business what I believe.

It's time to get God out of politics. It's time to stop allowing ignorance from both our leaders and our fellow citizens to color the decisions we have to make about where we go as a nation. It's time to stop looking at American policy through this pink prism of inherent goodness. It's time we became adults and started realizing that our actions as a nation have consequences, and that we citizens end up living with those consequences.

If this foofarah over Rev. Wright were to have any good come out of it, we would have a dialogue about what he said, rather than scurrying like so many cockroaches back under the rock of American delusion in which we live most of the time.

Labels: Barack Obama, rant

On Wednesday, March 12, 2008, the Committee of One, Bill Gates, testified in front of Congress that the H-1B visa limit of 65,000 for "highly skilled" guest workers (plus 20,000 for advanced degree holders) needed to be raised. His speech, which I've provided in the link above, is absolutely breathtaking as he talks about science and computing and networking and how many computers we have and how computers and its [Microsoft] software affects just about every aspect of our lives.

(For the uninitiated, letting in foreign skilled workers seems like a good way to address critical shortages that may crop up in the scientific, engineering and computer science fields. What I, and many other people object to, is the fact that employment opportunities and salaries for American technical workers have plummeted since the beginning of the H-1B program in 1990. We are repeatedly told that the United States needs more high tech workers. Oddly enough, both recent college graduates and experienced technical workers have difficulty finding employment in their career fields, despite the fact that high tech companies are supposedly begging for qualified workers. Most companies have impossible-to-meet standards for American workers, yet those standards seem to disappear altogether for lower-paid foreign workers. Even more amazing, American workers are forced to train their foreign replacements in order to receive severance packages. At the end of the cycle, the foreign workers head back overseas, taking their jobs with them. Predictably, enrollment in computer science programs and other technical fields are declining at fast rates.)

Back to Bill Gates' testimony. Skim through the pages where he talks about how the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, through its largesse, will make everything that is already good in this world even better. You'll find it didn't take long for him to get to what's really eating him.

• We're a nation of dunces.
• We need more foreign guest workers.
• Taxpayers need to foot the bill for basic research and training more high tech workers.
• High tech companies need more tax breaks.

Despite what Gates said in the rest of the pages of his speech, it all boiled down to, We Need More Foreign Guest Workers. If You Don't Give Us More Foreign Guest Workers, We'll Show You Who's Boss By Sending These Jobs Overseas.

Several members of Congress practically tripped over each other as they lined up to profess their fawning admiration for Bill Gates. Why shouldn't they, when so much money for potential campaign contributions and from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is at stake? Representative Bart Gordon, (D-Tennessee), said, "Bill Gates embodies both the American spirit of innovation and the theological virtue of charity. … I can think of no other witness better suited to share his insights with this committee."

A few Representatives had the guts to ask some tough questions. Dana Rohrbacher (R-California), asked if:

..........H-1B workers were driving down U.S. wages or replacing "B and C students" from the United States. Gates said no, citing a study released Monday by the pro-immigration think tank the National Foundation for American Policy, saying that for every H-1B position applied for, companies create an additional five jobs.

[Note from Carrie: How convenient that report came out just a few days before Gates' testimony.]

"The top people are going to be [paid] higher," Gates said. "It's just a question of what country they're working in."

For more good discussions on the National Foundation for American Policy report, you can read Rob Sanchez' and Norman Matloff's newsletters. Please also see Patrick Thibodeau's article at Computerworld for another good recap. (For some reason, I'm having a devil of a time trying to link to his article. If motivated, look for his article "Gates: U.S. Puts Tech Jobs at Risk by Capping Foreign Workers" dated March 12, 2008 under the "Government" section.)

Another member of Congress spoke up:

Rep. Laura Richardson, a California Democrat, challenged Microsoft and other tech companies to fund scholarships for science and engineering students with the money they use to recruit workers and apply for visas.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides scholarships for 14,000 minority students, Gates noted. But more scholarships won't solve the problem of a lack of U.S. science and engineering students, he said.

"Scholarships can be helpful, but I'm not sure that alone would drive the shift we need," Gates said.

Predictably, by late Thursday afternoon, Gabrielle Giffords, (D-Arizona) introduced the Innovation Employment Act that would double the number of H-1B's being issued from 65,000 to 130,000 per year. A number of safeguards are supposed to be included in this bill, such as:

• increasing the penalties for H-1B fraud
• rejecting applications for "clear indicators of fraud"
• prohibiting companies from hiring H-1B workers and then immediately outsourcing them to other companies
• prohibiting companies "with more than 50 employees that have more than half of their staff as H-1B workers from hiring more H-1Bs"
• prohibiting employers from advertising their jobs as being exclusively for H-1B workers

I say these "safeguards" are little more than window dressing. However, that will be another post for another day.

Many pundits admit that Congress will have a tough time passing legislation for higher numbers of H-1B workers during an election year, when people are finally reaching a consensus that unemployment rates are going higher while the economy is going sour. However, just for extra insurance, Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced the catchy-sounding Strengthening United States Technology And Innovation Now (or Sustain) Act, which would triple the number of H-1B visas being issued for 2008 and 2009.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: Bill Gates, employment, H-1Bs

Reuters via Huffpo:

Bush "Envious" Of Soldiers Serving "Romantic" Mission In Afghanistan
"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you...in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

The soldiers' impulses to frag him must have been tremendous.

Why is it that Barack Obama has to answer for the inflammatory words of his pastor, while John McCain gets a free pass on his alliance with John Hagee and Rod Parsley?

I usually don't give the mighty Buzzflash the credit it's due. For pure one-stop shopping for news stories, Buzzflash is hard to beat. These days, Buzzflash is struggling, because it's being boycotted by Hillary Clinton supporters who are upset that the site is reporting on the Clinton campaign's efforts to wrest the Democratic nomination away from Barack Obama by any means necessary. So if you can, please throw them a few shekels today by making a donation or buying a premium.

This morning is just one of the reasons why supporting Buzzflash is worth your while. Here are just a couple of examples of why the House of Representatives should have impeached George W. Bush and Dick Cheney a long time ago, and perhaps why even after they leave office (assuming they do), they should be prosecuted -- and also why no one should ever vote Republican ever again.

The Administration doesn't want you to see a report that debunks any notion that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with Al Qaeda, and debunks any notion that his terrorist activities had anything to do with either the U.S. OR Israel; that they were all with the simple goal of self-preservation. All that "Saddam = Hitler" stuff? All horsepuckey.

Do your kids have asthma? Do you have respiratory problems on hot summer days? Are you concerned about global warming? Well, as far as George Bush is concerned, you can just go Cheney yourself, because the EPA has, at Bush's request, weakened ozone limits the agency set as part of the Clean Air Act. After all, nothing must be allowed to get in the way of the profits of Bush's friends, cronies, and contributors.

Doesn't it bother ANYONE that the White House e-mail system is conveniently missing e-mails from the time period when the criminal investigation of the Plame leak had begun? This is destruction of evidence. Are they going to get away with this too?

While men all over America are fantasizing about fucking the one of forty kazillion pretty girls on MySpace who just happened to be a $4000/hour hooker patronized by the governor of New York, and the news radio stations are talking about nothing but hookers and gym instructor rubbing up against customers, there's new evidence in the OTHER case of a Democratic governor finding himself in hot water, that of Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, that a group of Republican interests stood to profit financially from Siegelman's downfall.

Meanwhile, back in the city that disappeared on George W. Bush's watch and that hasn't come back and probably never will, it seems that Bush's Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Alphonso R. Jackson, steered hundreds of thousands of government contracts to his friends in New Orleans and the Virgin Islands.

And while we're on the subject of Administration Cabinet officials, it seems that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is stumping for the re-election of her husband, Mitch McConnell, on our dime.

And finally, from the "stifling dissent" file, we have this case of a Denver man who is suing five Secret Service agents for civil rights violations and a conspiracy to retaliate for his dissent. There seems to be an issue of whether the agents are lying about the nature of the man's approach to Cheney.

Meanwhile, in other news, gasoline in Maui has hit $4/gallon, the House votes today on whether to uphold the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan have killed a bunch of civilians in our name.

I really should post every time I add a new blog to the blogroll, especially since, as you can see, I've added quite a few of late. But today I want to call your attention to our latest addition, Little Country Lost.

I've always been one of those people who fear death. We're talking sit-bolt-upright-in-the-middle-of-the-night-in-a-cold-sweat fear of death. Even after I shake off those occasional OMG WHAT IF THE CHRISTOFASCIST ZOMBIES ARE RIGHT?? thoughts, it still comes down to utter, complete, terror. Sort of like the kid in this 1986 Life in Hell cartoon:



One of the side benefits of the perception that the world is going to hell in a handbasket is that the sense that you probably won't be around when it all goes to shit becomes a comfort as you get older. I'm not there yet, but I'm starting to understand that.

Of course the down side of this thinking is that it can make you a self-centered wretch, given the dark underbelly of this thought, which is "Why should I care? I'll be dead by then". This is a sentiment that has been verbalized by none other than George W. Bush, so it's something we want to avoid.

Still, it's hard, no matter how much you think you owe the next generation to give them as good a world to live in as you can, to continue to rail against the dark forces that have taken over our country when so much others -- those who have children and who have a more direct stake in the future than I do -- don't seem to give a shit. They're still buying the McMansions and guzzling $3.25 gasoline in their Ford Explorers and putting out seventeen bags of trash twice a week because they can't be bothered separating stuff out for recycling. It's hard to give young people any hope when you have none.

But if you're young and you have the guts and the wherewithall to do it, you can still just chuck it all and take off for Someplace Else to see what the world has to offer and if it's worth resettling in one of those Someplace Elses, rather than watch America completely collapse. I don't know if I'd have the guts even if I were young, given the kind of timid soul I was. But Jen Clark does, and I've added her blog to the blogroll today, partially because it's a good blog, and also to prod her to, as she promises, report from her great adventure.

Good luck, kids! I hope you find a place you want to settle and I hope you have a fantastic time. Just please try not to be too smug about those of us who are stuck here. Though I couldn't blame you if you were.

Labels: bloggers

Today's honoree: Keith Olbermann.

Labels: Hillary Clinton, Keith Olbermann, racism

We all have a book we want to write. I have three novels in my head, each with a different cast of characters. These characters have been living in my head for between three and ten years. They really want to get out and have me tell their stories, and perhaps if we can avoid blowing up the world long enough for me to retire, I just might finish one of them, which is probably about 1/3 written. Then there's the compendium of posts from this here blog, which I should probably pull together and just self-publish on Lulu or some such.

I've always had kind of a "can't win, don't try" relationship with conventional book publishing. Perhaps it's from my days at Simon & Schuster when part of my job was to read and report on selections from the slush pile, knowing full well that none of those books would ever be considered. You had to be a published writer to be a published writer -- or so it seemed; or at the very least be someone well-connected to whoever's in power on a given day (which explains how people like Dinesh D'Souza originally got published).

But my boss had a book on gardening published a couple of years ago and is working on another one, so first-time authors CAN break through. And now there's truly exciting news, because Kate and The Rotund have sold a book to Penguin; a book that is no doubt going to come with lots of promotion tours in which they are going to discuss things like Health At Any Size and Intuitive Eating to the kind of rail-thin morning talking head show hostesses who are used to interviewing nothing but diet "experts". I can't wait to see their heads explode when presented with two self-accepting women who take up more than a few inches of space.

This book can't come out soon enough. Today I received in the mail a freebie magazine obviously sponsored by one of the local hospitals. It's supposedly about health and fitness, but there are an awful lot of ads for plastic surgeons and people who you pay to do "energy field analysis." The word "yoga" appears nowhere in this magazine, and an article about eating out tells you how to order your food: "Ask for a half-portion of pasta with a 1/4 portion of sauce. Ask for your fish just lightly brushed with olive oil and cooked on a dry grill." Why on earth would restaurants hire chefs if the customer is going to be able to tell them how to cook? I'd much rather have it the way it's done at Tom's Homestead restaurant in Bridgton, Maine, where if it isn't busy on a given night, Tom himself will take you back to the kitchen and show you how he makes cioppino. The person spending a Saturday afternoon at the museum doesn't tell the artist what to paint, either.

But where this magazine lost me is when a doctor interviewed in one of the articles said that women should aim for a BMI of between 19 and 25. This means that I should weigh between 91 and 119 pounds. Way back when I was 27 and went on the 300-calorie-a-day Cambridge Diet because I thought I was too fat, I weighed 118 before I started, and 105 when I went off this ridiculous non-eating plan after losing a colossal 13 pounds in 16 weeks. And my metabolism never recovered.

Recently I decided it was time to get rid of everything that no longer fits me and buy some clothes for the way I am now, the way I live now, the size I am now. I decided to deal with the numbers of the size I would need to buy, and bought some skirts, pants that actually FIT, and some lovely tops from J. Jill's clearance section. After wearing the same tatty sweaters and leggings for the last ten years, I now look like a reasonable human being, and I really don't give a rat's ass what the size number is on the pants. They fit, I feel great in them, and they look fantastic.

I took all the clothes that I'd bought thinking I'd shrink into them or that fit me for five minutes in 1983 and donated them to charity, clearing a lot of space for my new clothes that work on a postmenopausal size sixteen body.

And it only took me 52 years to get here.

I hope Kate and Rotund's book sells 40 kazillion copies. I hope they end up spending an entire year on the road doing TV appearances and radio interviews. Because all over this country there are women putting their lives on hold until they're thin. And life is just too damn short for that.

Go get 'em, girls.

Labels: bloggers, weight

Jesse Wendel nails it:

We are nuking Iran this summer (peak driving time; lots of opportunity for gas prices to blow SKY HIGH for their oil tycoon friends) or just after Labor Day, when everyone is paying attention, can freak out, and go rushing to the polls for McCain.

LISTEN UP: AIN'T NO ONE GIVING CONTROL OF THE NUCLEAR FOOTBALL TO A BLACK DUDE OR A WOMAN DURING A NUC-LEAR WAR.

The Football is going to the Fighter Jock ex-POW, high-temper and all. Frightened white people will NEVER vote control of launch codes to a nig**r or a gi*l.

“If Bush/Cheney nukes Iran (or starts a war), initially, can a black or woman win?”

No.
Another edition of Short Answers to Foolish Questions:

McCain would win by 10-15%.

[snip]

Ain't nobody stopping this here permanent Republican revolution, no Sir. More importantly, ain't nobody nailing Dick Cheney or George W. Bush for war crimes. Nobody named President John McCain, that is. That's the deal. [Video at the link.] McCain already said clearly and publicly he won't be going after them: “I do not agree with your sentiment that there has been widespread corruption. I just don't accept that.” So no justice for what's happened, and how would he have time? Not when he's busy fighting a Global War on Terror with weekly attacks in huge LIBERAL cities all across the United States by actual terrorists major league pissed 'cause we fucking turned Iran into a glass parking lot.

Nothing like a weekly 9/11 attack to cause Americans to Rally Round the Flag, Boys, Rally Round the Flag like nothing else on earth. The flag of Jesus Christ, the United States of America, Purity Balls for Daddy's Little Girls to keep her sacred [you know] safe from everyone but Daddy, and the triumph of Republican Party for 1,000 years, Amen and Amen.

And if you think Bush/Cheney won't nuke anyone, remember...

No one including their parents and the Draft Board has ever told these folks "NO" and made it stick.

Labels: batshit crazies, George W. Bush, insanity, Iran attack, John McCain

Why Eliot Spitzer should not resign:

Two words. Don Siegelman. Doesn't it seem a little odd that the IRS just HAPPENED to notice Spitzer moving money around, and equally odd that everyone is admitting that someone less "high profile" probably wouldn't have been noticed doing the same thing? This wouldn't be the first time the Bush Administration's justice department sandbagged a Democratic governor who was pissing them off.

As Scott Horton notes in Harper's:

However, there is a second tier of questions that needs to be examined with respect to the Spitzer case. They go to prosecutorial motivation and direction. Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice. This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican.

Beyond this, a number of the cases seem to have been tied closely to election cycles. Indeed, a study of the cases out of Alabama shows clearly that even cases opened against Republicans are in fact only part of a broader pattern of going after Democrats. So here are the rather amazing facts that surface in the Spitzer case:

(1) The prosecutors handling the case came from the Public Integrity Section.

(2) The prosecution is opened under the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. You read that correctly. The statute itself is highly disreputable, and most of the high-profile cases brought under it were politically motivated and grossly abusive.

Here are a few:

• Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson was the first man prosecuted under the act — for having an affair with Lucille Cameron, whom he later married. The prosecution was manifestly an effort “to get” Johnson, who at the time was the most famous African-American. (All of this is developed well in Ken Burns’s film “Unforgiveable Blackness”).


• University of Chicago sociologist William I. Thomas was prosecuted for having an affair with an officer’s wife in France. Thomas was targeted because of his Bohemian social and his radical political views.


• In 1944 Charles Chaplin was prosecuted for having an affair with actress Joan Barry. The prosecution again provided cover for a politically motivated effort to drive Chaplin out of the country.


• Canadian author Elizabeth Smart was arrested and charged in 1940 while crossing the border with the British poet George Barker

(3) The resources dedicated to the case in terms of prosecutors and investigators are extraordinary.
(4) How the investigation got started. The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer’s payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution.

All of these facts are consistent with a process which is not the investigation of a crime, but rather an attempt to target and build a case against an individual.

(h/t for the above: Jane Hamsher)

So, Governor, perhaps you should stay on and fight this. You're a prosecutor, go digging. There's more than a little smoke here that this is a politically-motivated prosecution.

Why they're going after you now is anyone's guess. It isn't as if you're the most popular New York governor of all time. On the contrary; a majority of New Yorkers thought you were a prick (in the metaphorical sense) well before all this came to light. So why are the Feds going after damaged goods?

In a sane world, it would be hard to believe that the timing of this story could be linked to something so relatively insignificant, but we ARE talking about a Republican party whose doctrine would logically punish women for having menstrual periods. So the idea that the announcement would be timed to prevent Spitzer from speaking before the Planning Advocates of New York State about a proposed bill that would ensure the legality of abortion services in the state should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade doesn't seem as ludicrous as it sounds.

Governor Spitzer, you're most assuredly an asshole. But if you're a criminal, then so is David Vitter. HE's still in Congress, because he chose not to cave. Get up, declare this a politically-motivated prosecution, and fight. Tell the press that you'll step down when Vitter does. Sure, you'll be impeached and probably removed, and since you're a party hack this won't matter to you. But it'll be something people like ME can point out -- that Republicans are willing to throw an elected official out of office for sex; while Democrats can't even get their act together to throw a NON-elected president out of office for illegally spying on Americans, getting us into war on a lie, and bankrupting the country to stuff cash into the pockets of his friends.


Why Eliot Spitzer should resign:

Why should Eliot Spitzer resign as governor of New York when we have a parade of Republicans, most notably David Vitter, who have committed similar transgressions and are still holding office?

Because Democrats are supposed to be better than this. Most of us have had a field day pointing out the hypocrisy of moralistic Republicans who look for anonymous sex in public rest rooms or patronize prostitutes who have the same first names as their wives. And we've also had a field day with the hoops their apologists have had to jump through in order to justify what they did, or show how it isn't so bad, when the fact of the matter is that it is that bad, and there is no justification. If you're going to take the moral high road, you'd better make sure you don't have any bread crumbs left in your own path. And while Spitzer may not have been the kind of Christofascist Zombie we ordinarily associate with getting caught with one's hand in the cookie jar, he was not without his own holier-than-thou factor.

Spitzer should also resign because there's nothing the media love more than a good, juicy sex scandal. In the summer of 2001, while Richard Clarke was trying to get Condoleeza Rice to pay attention to warning after warning about an impending al-Qaeda attack, the media were slobbering over just how much nasty an obscure Congressman from California was doing with a young Jewish woman with a New Agey name. That summer was All Gary Condit, All the Time (at the same time as they were ignoring the mysterious death of a young woman who worked for then-Florida Republican Congressman and current MSNBC talking head Joe Scarborough in said Congressman's office, but that's yet another story).

Yesterday Admiral William Fallon resigned as the head of CENTCOM, an event which seems to be the main horseman of the apocalypse that George W. Bush seems determined to rain upon us before he heads for his ranch in Crawford to sit at the right hand o'Jesus, eating pretzels and finally having a long cold beer while watching those pesky Jews and heathens finally burn for not accepting his Lord and Savior. But this event went largely unnoticed, because what is the resignation of the main firewall between the American people and catastrophe when compared with the opportunity to post photos of a babe in a bikini who was bought and paid for by the Democratic governor of New York?

The third reason Spitzer should resign is because the kind of mind-boggling stupidity that leads any man, particularly a Democrat in this day and age, one who was loathed by so many powerful people, one who fancies himself to be an upright enforcement of the law, to think he can move this kind of money around and patronize hookers and delude himself that he'll never get caught deserves to be punished. I mean, violation of the Mann Act? You gotta be shitting me. That's one of those statutes that stays on the books because no one thinks anyone will ever be actually prosecuted for violating it. And yet, I'll bet that as prosecutor, Spitzer wouldn't have hesitated to invoke it. Dumbass.

And the final reason is to spare Silda Wall Spitzer, who is the kind of beautiful, accomplished woman that makes us mere mortals wonder, "If HER husband can't stay away from the hookers, what chance do rest of us have?" from having to continue to walk the path taken by Lee Hart, Suzanne Craig, Dina Matos McGreevey, Wendy Vitter, and so many others even one more time. I don't judge those women one bit. To find out via the press that the life you knew has just imploded and is doing so spectacularly on a public stage, it may be easier to stand up there and decide later just what you plan to do. I just wish that the rule book which says that these women have to do this could be rewritten so that a wife of one of these nimrods who decides she just wants to sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and try to start making some decisions as to what she wants to do, can do so instead of having to be out there so the whole world can evaluate just how upset she is.

It's over, Governor Spitzer. Now leave the stage, see if there's anything you can do to make amends to your wife and your children, and for God's sake learn something from this.

Republicans used to have a neverending field day with Bill Clinton’s fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants foreign policy despite the fact that it kept us out of bloody, expensive and endless wars, which, of course, was the reason while it was so vilified. There’s not much of a percentage in peace.

Yet if Bush goofing off surrounded by opulence in the Middle East and dancing the Watusi in the less troublesome nations of Africa has brought one point home, it’s this: Under George W. Bush, the American ship of state, once the flagship of the Free World, has been reduced to a pocket rocket. That is, it’s ludicrous, diminished and dangerous.

In trying to make permanent our illegal and murderous occupation of Iraq in the final year of his equally illegal and murderous administration, Bush effectively removes any pretense or need for pretense that he may have previously entertained about accomplishing any mission in Iraq that actually benefits the Iraqis.

We’re not talking about lowered expectations here but the realization of lofty expectations that were actually and, until now, secretly held. They began with Grenada-like promises of five minutes of firefight and five weeks of sun and sand, costing only a billion or so and Wolfowitz’s assurances to Congress that the reconstruction of Iraq would be paid for by their oil, based on ludicrously bloated predictions of their oil production.

$3 trillion is not money wasted if the lion’s share of that money winds up in the bulging pockets of Bush and Cheney’s base of Haves and Have Mores. Who cares whose pockets it came out of?

Also lost during the endless amateur hour is that war, while it can jumpstart a depressed economy, it cannot indefinitely sustain and invigorate one, especially when such a short-term effect is massively compromised by neverending tax cuts. And our economy was really booming (for many more people than it is now) when we’d invaded Afghanistan in late 2001.

The resignation today of Admiral “Fox” Fallon barely more than a year after becoming CENTCOM chief, is more telling than anyone, including Fallon, is willing to admit. Jeff Huber reminded us at the time that the choice of Fallon to head CENTCOM actually made sense when you realize that Bush was thinking specifically of someone who could wage war with Iran. As Huber said, “If anybody knows how to run a maritime and air operation against Iran, it's ‘Fox’ Fallon.”

Yet, Fallon has not been what the blood-crazed hyenas at PNAC and Pennsylvania Avenue would call a war hawk, even though he’s said that America needs to be strong and demonstrate “a willingness to engage.” That’s not warrior-speak: That’s a plain fact. Any national military needs to be ready to engage even if only to justify its existence and if Fallon believed otherwise, he never would’ve gotten out of Annapolis.

Yet, according to what he’d told al-Jazeera last autumn, via the Esquire article from which everyone in the government, including Fallon himself, is trying to distance themselves, Fallon’s dedication to warring with Iran was anything but non-negotiable, especially in light of the NIE that brought Iran's so-called nuclear threat back to manageable perspective. Last fall, Admiral Fallon told the Arabic news service, “This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions.”

Despite Fallon's pooh-poohing, that's pretty unambiguous.

Even if Fallon wasn’t talking about Iran, it still would’ve been an unwelcome message for a bunch of spittle-flecked armchair warriors inexperienced and unskilled in the art of war. And compounding the friction with the White House that Robert Gates and Fallon are trying to deny existed is the plain fact that mere months after taking over as CENTCOM chief, Fallon was already being quoted as saying that war with Iran “won’t happen on my watch.”

And those weren’t the only quotes both attributed and attributable to Fallon that were at odds with an administration that’s been acting toward the Middle East like the apes toward the monoliths at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, only with better and costlier sticks.

I believe that Fallon’s decision to resign effective at the end of the month was an autonomous one. But it’s also notable that Gates, at a delicate time in US-Iran relations (are there any other?) accepted Fallon’s resignation the first time. It also ought to be noted that Gen. John Abizaid, Fallon’s predecessor, publicly disagreed with McCain before Congress about a surge in Iraq before the surge had even been enacted. Abizaid had also quietly criticized the Bush administration for its policies in Iraq, contributing to Bush wanting to make “a clean sweep” of top commanders to whose judgment he professes to defer.

Fallon may be doing the typically cowardly thing almost expected of all commanders serving under Bush and claiming that Esquire was putting words in his mouth and making him sound more rebellious than he really was. But one thing is clear: Given the Bush administration’s history of vindictiveness toward generals and admirals who don’t completely toe the line, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility when Esquire’s Thomas Barnett wrote, “The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.”

And now we’re looking for another officer to fill Fallon’s shoes. And Bush and his failed foreign policies are running out of four star generals and admirals who see things his jaundiced but rosy way.

As part of the annual Rite of Spring, Bill Gates will be heading from the state of Washington to Washington, D.C. to beg for an increase in the number of foreign workers who will be allowed in the United States. As Patrick Thibodeau in his March 3rd ComputerWorld article points out:

The topic of the hearing is familiar ground for Gates on Capitol Hill. But what makes his scheduled appearance on March 12 potentially explosive is its timing, less than three weeks before the start of the annual application rush for H-1B visas.

April 1 is the first day that U.S. immigration authorities will begin accepting H-1B applications for the federal government's 2009 fiscal year, which begins in October. Last year, the government stopped taking applications after receiving about 150,000 in a single day — far more than enough to exhaust the annual cap of 65,000 regular visas and 20,000 set aside for foreign nationals who have advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

Like last year, Bill Gates will be expected to be the only person to appear before Congress to address this issue. He will testify that Americans are too simple-minded for technical work and that only foreign workers have the talent and ability to take on these jobs. Also like last year, people like Kim Berry from The Programmers Guild are expected to rebut each and every charge, and declare that the only shortages Microsoft, Cisco, and Oracle et al are facing is a shortage of Americans who will do the work at substandard wages.

For a look at the ideal employee Gates has in mind, watch this video taken at the Microsoft Canada Development Center in Vancouver. Remember, this is the development center Microsoft claims they were forced to open to skirt the limits on foreign workers allowed in our country.

I see their point. The United States is definitely lacking in young programmers who don't like to work particularly hard and are champion Foosball players.

Naturally, there are intriguing events leading up to the drama. Job Destruction's Rob Sanchez reported on the behind-the-scenes machinations staged by Nancy Pelosi to try to increase the cap on H-1B and other guest worker visas, in addition to trying to (of course) offer another amnesty for illegal aliens. Far away from the big players in Washington D.C., I reported on the suspicious timing of a job fair where Michigan recruiters are trying to (don't laugh - this is so quaint) match up engineering students with local venture capitalists and their startup firms.

Patrick Thibodeau, the hard-working staff member of Computerworld who I find myself linking to more and more, posted this story of how Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) issued a letter describing even more abuses of the H-1B system:

"Everyday we're learning more and more, but it appears that most H-1B visas are going to foreign-based companies," said Grassley, in a statement. "U.S. businesses that need highly skilled workers are getting the short end of the stick."

In regard to the leasing of H-1B workers, Grassley, in his letter to Chertoff, charged that "hundreds" of foreign workers are "standing by, waiting for work" and are being offered for lease by their employers. The information about this practice came from a constituent in Iowa, not identified in the letter, who was being "bombarded" by these requests to lease H-1B workers, wrote Grassley.

"My constituent even said one company went so far to require him to sign a memorandum of understanding that helps the H-1B "factory firm" justify to the federal government that they have adequate business opportunity that requires additional visa holders," wrote Grassley. "It's a complete falsification of the market justification for additional H-1B workers."

I nominate this story for the annual March Surprise, where the important-sounding National Foundation for American Policy (which, according to Rob Sanchez, is merely a front for H-1B cheerleader Stuart Anderson), issued a report claiming that 5 to 7.5 jobs are created for Americans for every H-1B worker hired. I have some severe doubts as to the cause and effect of jobs magically appearing for Americans every time an H-1B visa is issued, and so does Rob Sanchez. He should have one of his Newsletters devoted to this issue showing up in his archives within the next few days.

In the meantime, MainStreamMedia and industry mouthpieces are dutifully running the story at InformationWeek, PCWorld, the Washington Post, InfoWorld, the National Association of Manufacturers Blog, and CNET News. Be sure look at the comments section on these sites, which are often more informative than the main articles.

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

UPDATE: Here is the link announcing Bill Gates' appearance in front of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science and Technology.

Labels: Bill Gates, employment, H-1Bs, outsourcing

Either Hendrik Hertzberg has a peculiar sense of humor or he's gone completely off the deep end. Because in this week's New Yorker, he suggests that John McCain choose Condoleeza Rice as his running mate:

This space is usually devoted to pristine moral reasoning, but, hell, it’s an election year. Let’s get down and dirty. If McCain really wants to have it all—to refurbish his maverick image without having to flip-flop on the panderings that have tarnished it; to galvanize the attention of the press, the nation, and the world; to make a bold play for the center without seriously alienating “the base”—then he can avail himself of a highly interesting option: Condoleezza Rice.

To deal first with the obvious: Rice may be “only” the second woman and the second African-American to be Secretary of State, but she is indisputably the highest-ranking black female official ever to have served in any branch of the United States government. Her nomination to a constitutional executive office would cost McCain the votes of his party’s hardened racists and incorrigible misogynists. They are surely fewer in number, though, than the people who would like to participate in breaking the glass ceiling of race or gender but, given the choice, would rather do so in a more timid way, and/or without abandoning their party. And with Rice on the ticket the Republicans could attack Clinton or Obama with far less restraint.

By choosing Rice, McCain would shackle himself anew to Bush’s Iraq war. But it’s hard to see how those chains could get much tighter than he has already made them. Rice would fit nicely into McCain’s view of the war as worth fighting but, until Donald Rumsfeld’s exit from the Pentagon, fought clumsily. And it would be fairly easy to establish a story line that would cast Rice as having been less Bush’s enabler than a loyal subordinate who nevertheless pushed gently from within for a more reasonable, more diplomatic approach.

Rice is already fourth in line for the Presidency, and getting bumped up three places would be a shorter leap than any of the three Presidential candidates propose to make. It’s true that her record in office has been one of failure, from downgrading terrorism as a priority before 9/11 to ignoring the Israel-Palestine problem until (almost certainly) too late. But this does not seem to have done much damage to her popularity. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken when opposition to the Iraq war was approaching its height, she enjoyed a “favorable-unfavorable” rating of nearly two to one. The conservative rank and file likes her. Though she once described herself as “mildly pro-choice,” she is agile enough to complete the journey to mildly pro-life. And she is a preacher’s daughter.

The reason it's difficult to tell if Hertzberg is joking is that this is precisely the kind of cynical, "I'll take your black guy and your white woman and raise you a black woman" plan that I'm quite certain is being seriously considered over at Camp McCain. Because even now, Condi is the Republicans' Black Friend; the one they can trot out to show that despite the appalling race-baiting that's still an integral part of Republican politics, they really, really do love the Negroes (sic). She looks great in clothes! She plays the piano! She was an ice skater! Wow!

What they don't tell you is the level of her responsibility for allowing the attacks of September 11, 2001, to play out.

For years, my answer to the question "Who benefitted?" from the attacks pointed to some degree of Administration complicity; most likely complicity-by-looking-the-other-way. I used to be regarded by many people as crazy, but as the fallout has continued to benefit the Bush Adminstration and their most wealthy allies; and as we have continued to suck up to the Saudis while invading a country that had nothing to do with the attacks, it's hard to believe the official story.

Via Cliff Schecter comes an excerpt from a new book that has to make you wonder whether Condi needed a fucking engraved announcement to realize what was going on -- or if she deliberately looked the other way:

Even reporters in Washington who covered intelligence issues acknowledged they were largely ignorant that summer that the CIA and other parts of the Government were warning of an almost certain terrorist attack. Probably, but not necessarily, overseas.

The warnings were going straight to President Bush each morning in his briefings by the CIA director, George Tenet, and in the presidential daily briefings. It would later be revealed by the 9/11 commission into the September 11 attacks that more than 40 presidential briefings presented to Bush from January 2001 through to September 10, 2001, included references to bin Laden.

And nearly identical intelligence landed each morning on the desks of about 300 other senior national security officials and members of Congress in the form of the senior executive intelligence brief, a newsletter on intelligence issues also prepared by the CIA.

The senior executive briefings contained much of the same information that was in the presidential briefings but were edited to remove material considered too sensitive for all but the President and his top aides to see. Often the differences between the two documents were minor, with only a sentence or two changed between them. Apart from the commission's chief director, Philip Zelikow, the commission's staff was never granted access to Bush's briefings, except for the notorious August 2001 briefing that warned of the possibility of domestic al-Qaeda strikes involving hijackings. But they could read through the next best thing: the senior executive briefings.

During his 2003 investigations it was startling to Mike Hurley, the commission member in charge of investigating intelligence, and the other investigators on his team, just what had gone on in the spring and summer of 2001 - just how often and how aggressively the White House had been warned that something terrible was about to happen. Since nobody outside the Oval Office could know exactly what Tenet had told Bush during his morning intelligence briefings, the presidential and senior briefings were Tenet's best defence to any claim that the CIA had not kept Bush and the rest of the Government well-informed about the threats. They offered a strong defence.

The team's investigators began to match up the information in the senior briefings and they pulled together a timeline of the headlines just from the senior briefings in the northern spring and summer:

"Bin Ladin Planning Multiple Operations" (April 20)and "Bin Ladin Threats Are Real" (June 30)It was especially troubling for Hurley's team to realise how many of the warnings were directed to the desk of one person: Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Adviser. Emails from the National Security Council's counter-terrorism director, Richard Clarke, showed that he had bombarded Rice with messages about terrorist threats. He was trying to get her to focus on the intelligence she should have been reading each morning in the presidential and senior briefings

"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (May 3)

"Terrorist Groups Said Co-operating on US Hostage Plot" (May 23)

"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing" (May 26)

"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent" (June 23)

"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (June 25)

"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks" (June 30),

"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (July 2)

Other parts of the Government did respond aggressively and appropriately to the threats, including the Pentagon and the State Department. On June 21, the US Central Command, which controls American military forces in the Persian Gulf, went to "delta" alert - its highest level - for American troops in six countries in the region. The American embassy in Yemen was closed for part of the summer; other embassies in the Middle East closed for shorter periods.

But what had Rice done at the NSC? If the NSC files were complete, the commission's historian Warren Bass and the others could see, she had asked Clarke to conduct inter- agency meetings at the White House with domestic agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI, to keep them alert to the possibility of a domestic terrorist strike.

She had not attended the meetings herself. She had asked that the then attorney-general, John Ashcroft, receive a special briefing at the Justice Department about al-Qaeda threats. But she did not talk with Ashcroft herself in any sort of detail about the intelligence. Nor did she have any conversations of significance on the issue with the FBI director, Louis Freeh, nor with his temporary successor that summer, the acting director Tom Pickard.

There is no record to show that Rice made any special effort to discuss terrorist threats with Bush. The record suggested, instead, that it was not a matter of special interest to either of them that summer.

And why not? We've focused on the August 6 PDB as if it came out of nowhere and it was just Bush being his bratty, snippy self, not wanting something like, oh, say, an impending attack on this country interfere with his well-deserved vacation after barely six months in office. But now we know that there was a flurry of e-mails from Richard Clarke, who WAS reading the intelligence reports, and WAS trying to get Condi to pay attention ALL FUCKING SUMMER -- but either she was told not to bother Captain Codpiece or she was too busy fantasizing about being the second Mrs. George W. Bush to think that maybe...just maybe...she ought to let the President of the United States know that there was a serious threat of an attack on this country, even if he'd said he didn't want to be disturbed.

So which is it? Was she negligent, thinking with the wrong part of her anatomy, too stupid to realize what Clarke was telling her, or part of an Administration conspiracy to let an attack play out as a justification to get the neocon vision of American empire in the Middle East rolling?

Whatever the reason, this ought to disqualify Condoleeza Rice from ever holding a high position in Washington ever again.

Labels: Condoleeza Rice

Remember Total Information Awareness, that Big Brother-esque effort complete with its Masonic / Illuminati imagery and its ominous motto, "scientia est potentia" (knowledge is power), to be led by Iran-Contra bigwig John Negroponte? Remember how the program was killed by Congress?

Well, since the Bush Administration don't need no es-teenking Congressional permission for anything, they just moved it to the NSA. No longer was NSA spying and data mining about foreign terrorists; now it was about scooping up every piece of phone, e-mail, and other communications traffic in the U.S.

This horrific bombshell report appeared in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, of all places:

Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans' privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn't disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people's communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Congress now is hotly debating domestic spying powers under the main law governing U.S. surveillance aimed at foreign threats. An expansion of those powers expired last month and awaits renewal, which could be voted on in the House of Representatives this week. The biggest point of contention over the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is whether telecommunications and other companies should be made immune from liability for assisting government surveillance.

Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency's mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called "transactional" data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA's own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge's approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA's enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world's main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called "black programs" whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

It isn't clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency's work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all.

A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government can examine such a large array of information without violating an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy "has never really been resolved," said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has worked for both parties on Capitol Hill.

I wonder if this is how they nailed Spitzer.

Before Congress votes to give the telecom companies retroactive and open-ended immunity, I hope they read this article.

Labels: civil liberties, domestic spying, totalitarianism, You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you

Let it not be said that Camp Clinton makes its reporting entourage work in a boiler room. Because that would actually be a step up. The Hollywood Liberal reported a few days ago via the Huff Po that the Clinton campaign, on the night before the Texas/Ohio primaries, relegated the press covering her campaign to sitting in the men’s room so they could write their dispatches.

I’ve heard of reporters flushing out news sources but this is taking it to extremes.

Considering the spanking that Obama’s been giving Hillary all year, perhaps he ought to make sure that when Hillary says “running mate” she doesn’t mean, instead, “bathroom attendant.”

Note to Elliot Spitzer: There is no wiggle room for you in things like Prostitution Rings!! What the fuck were you thinking? Text messages, emails?....
This is the tragic end of another career...and either he is being set-up by someone who has a grudge, or he is totally out of his mind!
Now I have heard everything.
Waiting now for the press conference, I have to say that if this isn't some major misunderstanding, then we've got a much worse problem than just evil wingnuts doing what hey decry...Jesus this is bad....
International prostitution ring...money laundering...
How exactly was he involved?

HuffPo via The Smoking Gun quoted the description of the Emperor's Club:

An international call girl ring that solicited wealthy male clients via a web site that rated its hookers on a scale of diamonds (and charged accordingly) has been busted by federal agents. The operators of the New York-based Emperors Club were named in a felony complaint unsealed today in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Dan Abrams is absolutely sputtering...
Crashing website mirror here: Emperor's Club

More about what this could possibly mean, to come.....

Update 3:15 PM EST
Spitzer's very short press conference:

…He failed to live up to the standards he set for himself and his office…sorry to his family etc…

And he needs some time now to rebuild the trust that he has wrecked up….

Alan Derschowitz on Phone to MSNBC : men think with a different organ of the body…and when men think that way they make terrible mistakes….

Dershowitz Claims that Spitzer was surely just a John, and that it has nothing to do with money laundering or tax scams...but how do we know that? I guess old Alan has his crystal ball out; or has known about this for some time and knows what the worst thing that they have on Spitzer is.

Tucker Carlson, the newly dethroned boy-prince of MSNBC, expressed his disgust at the specter of a grown man going to a prostitute! Prediction: Tucker is next getting caught in a men's room, or the like....
Tucker is gonna buy popcorn and go sit and wait for Hillary Clinton's statement on this. Heh...

If Spitzer thinks that this is only about him regaining the trust of his family...well...

Now...sources say that he is going to step down...

The shock is palpable!

Texts AND Wiretaps!...

c/p RIPCoco

Labels: crime, sex, sex crimes, spitzer

I have one of those freebie subscriptions to Information Week that go on forever and serve mostly to add to the paper coming into the house. Most of the time, IW has at least one article on how you can save your company money by shitcanning those greedy Americans and farming out your programming (and in creasingly your remote data center administration) to other countries, primarily India, where you can pay peanuts and not have to worry about pesky things like health insurance and 401(k) plans that interfere with your ability to give your CEO a forty kazillion dollar pay package and make Jim Cramer and Larry Kudlow happy.

But why stop at sending corporate jobs to India? Why not outsource the very work of replacing ourselves as well? Yes, folks, foreign adoption isn't enough, because it doesn't serve the needs of western people to perpetuate their gene pool -- something an adorable Chinese baby just doesn't do. Now the hard work of pregnancy is going to India too:

An enterprise known as reproductive outsourcing is a new but rapidly expanding business in India. Clinics that provide surrogate mothers for foreigners say they have recently been inundated with requests from the United States and Europe, as word spreads of India’s mix of skilled medical professionals, relatively liberal laws and low prices.

Commercial surrogacy, which is banned in some states and some European countries, was legalized in India in 2002. The cost comes to about $25,000, roughly a third of the typical price in the United States. That includes the medical procedures; payment to the surrogate mother, which is often, but not always, done through the clinic; plus air tickets and hotels for two trips to India (one for the fertilization and a second to collect the baby).

“People are increasingly exposed to the idea of surrogacy in India; Oprah Winfrey talked about it on her show,” said Dr. Kaushal Kadam at the Rotunda clinic in Mumbai. Just an hour earlier she had created an embryo for Mr. Gher and his partner with sperm from one of them (they would not say which) and an egg removed from a donor just minutes before in another part of the clinic.

The clinic, known more formally as Rotunda — The Center for Human Reproduction, does not permit contact between egg donor, surrogate mother or future parents. The donor and surrogate are always different women; doctors say surrogates are less likely to bond with the babies if there is no genetic connection.

There are no firm statistics on how many surrogacies are being arranged in India for foreigners, but anecdotal evidence suggests a sharp increase.

Rudy Rupak, co-founder and president of PlanetHospital, a medical tourism agency with headquarters in California, said he expected to send at least 100 couples to India this year for surrogacy, up from 25 in 2007, the first year he offered the service.

“Every time there is a success story, hundreds of inquiries follow,” he said.

In Anand, a city in the eastern state of Gujarat where the practice was pioneered in India, more than 50 surrogate mothers are pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Britain and elsewhere. Fifteen of them live together in a hostel attached to the clinic there.

Dr. Naina Patel, who runs the Anand clinic, said that even Americans who could afford to hire surrogates at home were coming to her for women “free of vices like alcohol, smoking and drugs.” She said she gets about 10 e-mailed inquiries a day from couples abroad.

Under guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research, surrogate mothers sign away their rights to any children. A surrogate’s name is not even on the birth certificate.

This eases the process of taking the baby out of the country. But for many, like Lisa Switzer, 40, a medical technician from San Antonio whose twins are being carried by a surrogate mother from the Rotunda clinic, the overwhelming attraction is the price. “Doctors, lawyers, accountants, they can afford it, but the rest of us — the teachers, the nurses, the secretaries — we can’t,” she said. “Unless we go to India.”

It's hard to know where to begin on the many appalling aspects to this. There's the obvious one of exploiting poor women, but there's also the whole Handmaid's Tale aspect to women being kept in special hotels as incubators for Westerners, where they live under rules that keep their Sacred Wombs™ free of Bad Things like alcohol and tobacco. There's the ethnic/racial aspects of dark-skinned women being used as incubators for Caucasian babies (note how these surrogates don't provide the eggs either).

What does it say about the Americans and Europeans who are perfectly able to justify this kind of exploitation with warm fuzzy thoughts that they're helping these women to eat? The article goes on to say that of the approximately $30,000 that is paid for Indian surrogacy, the actual surrogate woman only gets around $7,500.

That, folks, is exploitation, I don't care how many pictures of happy American couples with babies they couldn't have otherwise you show me.

It's unfortunate that the article focuses on one couple in Israel, leaving the door open to the "Rich Jewish Princesses Who Don't Want to Ruin Their Figures" image and thus exonerate the many Americans and Europeans who are going in for this practice.

It's easy for me to judge, because I was mercifully spared the kind of baby madness so many women go through that makes women resort to desperate measures to have a baby. So I'm not necessarily opposed to reproductive technology (though I question how much of the American health care dollar it warrants). Given how American surrogate contracts have gone (such as the Baby M case), it's understandable that those who want to use this method to reproduce want the person who went through the pregnancy to be as far away as possible. And I'm in no way certain that a woman who needs to carry a baby for others in order to eat and put a roof over her head is exercising anything resembling free will. But if you're going to start outsourcing pregnancy to the developing world, at least make sure the woman herself is handsomely paid, not the middlemen who seem to be making the real bucks off this kind of womb-selling.

Labels: outsourcing, Women's bodies

Little Tucky is toast:

Insiders tell TVNewser Tucker Carlson's 6pmET show Tucker is getting the axe, but Carlson stays on as a political contributor to all MSNBC shows at least through the 2008 election. The official announcement, expected tomorrow, will include details about who will replace Tucker at 6pmET as well as other political programming additions. Sources say the network is going to beef up its schedule with more NBC News talent.

In recent days, Jossip, as well as other blogs, ratcheted up the talk that Tucker would be replaced "for a new project." In its 33-month run, Carlson's show has had two names, four time slots and multiple formats. At 6pmET, it builds on its Harbdall lead-in on some days, but loses audience on others.

I know, I know, Rachel Maddow has just gained an additional hour on her radio show, which looks an awful lot like AAR trying to keep her off of Countdown. But she's the logical choice to replace The Effete Fratboy. Besides, if Maddow jumps to MSNBC, that leaves the 6-9 PM slot open for the Seder Maron Experience.

We can only hope....

Labels: Air America, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow

Well, yesterday Barack Obama soundly trounced Hillary Clinton by twenty three points in Wyoming, which of course means that Wyoming is by the Clinton campaign's definition, Not Important™. Actually, it's a double Not Important, becuase a) Clinton didn't win, and b) it's a caucus state, and of course Clinton says that caucuses are inherently unfair and shouldn't be counted. Doesn't this "only states that vote for me should count" attitude remind you of someone else; someone who's been occupying the White House for the last seven years? Maybe Bill's BFF Poppy Bush has rubbed off on them.

My absolute favorite Wyoming residents: "Vernice Sack, 80, and her husband, Paul Sack, 83, counted themselves among the first-time caucusgoers. They both supported Mr. Obama, they said. “He’s got the right ideas,” Mr. Sack said."

Yes we can indeed.

So let's go for a Sunday morning drive:

William K. Wolfrum's mom is battling leukemia, and he's working with the National Marrow Donor Program on a donor drive to be held March 29 in Victorville, CA. But he takes time out to recognize that for all that Americans are susceptible to having the reptilian part of their brains tapped, and for all that they can be xenophobic and selfish, the vast majority are good people. Can Americans help people like his mom? Yes we can.

Can the Democrats pick up Denny Hastert's old seat in Congress? Yes we can.

Can anyone in the media show the talking heads of the news networks how to ask John McCain the tough questions? Yes he (Jon Stewart) can.

Can we as citizens come up with viable plans to revive the economy? Yes we can.

Can bloggers help Sibel Edmonds finally be able to tell her story? Yes we can.

Can ordinary citizens prevent Blackwater from building a paramilitary training camp in their community? Yes they can.

Can we cut through the bullshit and get to what election campaigns are REALLY about? Yes he can.

Can we come up with really cool and weird things to do to get attention? Yes we can. And so can they.(Don't miss this one, it's awesome.)

Can we let our representatives in Washington know en masse how we would vote on pending legislation? Yes we can.

Can we start thinking about what's in that box of frozen convenience food we're tempted to buy because it's just SO much easier than cutting the stems off all that broccoli rabe, or chopping all those peppers, or making marinade for that chicken? Yes we can.

Can we really say there's been no terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11/01? No we can't.

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