...like "Deficit Commission" co-chairs Erskin Bowles (D) and Alan Simpson (R) - Suck On This!
Rich people who want to screw the "least of your brothers" have a single deserved destination. Eternal damnation in the fires of Hell. There are days when I think that a belief in Biblical literalism might not be such a bad thing.
More on this abomination here.
After passage of a law requiring suspicious types to prove their citizenship to local police and another putting an end to ethnic studies programs, Arizona goes into the "you can't make this stuff up" zone. From the Arizona Republic:
A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.
The project's leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children's ethnicity. But the school's principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.
The "Go on Green" mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.
R.E. Wall, director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town's most prominent intersections.
"We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars," Wall said. "We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics)."
Wall said school Principal Jeff Lane pressed him to make the children's faces appear happier and brighter.
"It is being lightened because of the controversy," Wall said, adding that "they want it to look like the children are coming into light."
Lane said that he received only three complaints about the mural and that his request for a touch-up had nothing to do with political pressure. "We asked them to fix the shading on the children's faces," he said. "We were looking at it from an artistic view. Nothing at all to do with race."
City Councilman Steve Blair spearheaded a public campaign on his talk show at Prescott radio station KYCA-AM (1490) to remove the mural.
In a broadcast last month, according to the Daily Courier in Prescott, Blair mistakenly complained that the most prominent child in the painting is African-American, saying: "To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?"...
Faces in the mural were drawn from photographs of children enrolled at Miller Valley, a K-5 school with 380 students and the highest ethnic mix of any school in Prescott. Wall said thousands of town residents volunteered or donated to the project, the fourth in a series of community murals painted by a group of artists known as the "Mural Mice."
The public art, funded by a $5,000 state grant through the Prescott Alternative Transportation Center, was selected by school students and faculty.
"The parents and children love it," Lane said.
As I'm waiting for the womens' hockey clash between Sweden and Slovakia, I've got MSNBC on in the background. Olbermann & Maddow have been beating the hell out of former Vice President Dick Cheney over his performance on the Sunday talk shows. As a 'media vegan' (I love C-SPAN precisely for skipping all the 'Special Segment' and 'Worst Person in the World' silliness) I'm beginning to become suspicious of a symbiotic relationship between MSNBC and figures like Cheney. I think they need each other. Cheney, I believe, has a book due out in about a year and any attention, even bad press, scratches the hype itch. For MSNBC, Cheney is low hanging fruit for which they can squeeze out ample sauce for their faithful 'Blue Team' viewers. It's amazing how much energy both Olbermann and Maddow can muster rebutting Cheney's criticism of the Obama Administration's war on terrorism and the handling of the Christmas day bomber. Still, the real question might be why is anyone even bothering to listen to Cheney in the first place? What achievement, besides providing covering fire for torture, can Cheney really hang his hat upon in the fight against terrorism? However, here's some breaking news that might help handicap the question for our noble media: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar has been captured in a joint effort between the CIA and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directive (ISI) and is apparently being held in Karachi. This could be huge.
Mullah Baradar is believed to be second in command to Mullah Muhammad Omar and close to bin Laden. It's also big news in another way -- the cooperation between the CIA and ISI. Since the ejection of the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001, the two security agencies have maintained a deep and mutual mistrust against each other. Apparently, Mullah Baradar was captured last Thursday. U.S. and Pakistani officials chose not to talk about the capture so to allow the joint mission to further plum for intelligence and further possible captures. The Taliban has denied Mullah Baradar was caught. President Obama, the target of Cheney's criticisms about returning to "pre-911 mindsets" did assert as candidate and commander, that he would take the fight to Taliban and Al Qaeda. Capturing Baradar might be an important dividend of that effort.
Circling back to Dick Cheney, one should note that it was the Bush Administration that spent years trying to prop up Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf in the failed belief that Musharraf would deliver Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders wanted by the U.S. Pakistan and the ISI did surrender a number of Al Qaeda operatives. Often these assets where surrendered as much to deflect embarrassing collusions between the ISI and militants. One of the overall goals of Pakistan has always been to use Afghanistan as a buffer and counterweight to Indian influence in the region, incubating and using the Taliban as the very instrument by which to control the government in Kabul. Yet this troublesome truth didn't prevent Bush from trying to bargain for the impossible. Under Bush, the U.S. pumped billions of aid dollars to Pakistan (that was mostly spent on military hardware to counter India). The deal was suppose to be that Bush (and Cheney) would persuade Musharraf, over time, to gradually move toward democracy while countering the threat of Islamic fundamentalists. "Pakistan is an ally in the war on terror and the American people are safer." Those words were an applause line in a Bush speech in July of 2004. Bush and Cheney asserted that they had secured Pakistan's support through Musharraf. It was an utterly compromised proposition. Bush and Cheney failed to pressure Musharraf to stop allowing the Taliban a safe haven in Pakistan -- even after the assassination attempt on his life. While Taliban forces regrouped in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, Musharraf let the ISI play a long and risky game of double-dealing with the very Islamists they were supposed to be apprehending. This is the underwhelming record Mr. Cheney is allowed to side step while he embellishes some nonsense about miranda rights. Again, why?
Update
Yes. I cleaned up a couple of gruesome sentences. Much more importantly, Pakistan continues to help clean up the Taliban. Mr. Cheney might be wondering how the Bush Administration could've gotten the ISI to clear out their rolodex sooner.
Richard Perle, one of the chief ideological architects of the invasion of Iraq, resigned from the Defense Department's Policy Board shortly after the war was launched over conflicts of interest, with his business group directly profiting from the decision. The saga of war profiteer Perle, a major star in the NeoConservative universe since the Reagan era, continues, here.
Land mines. Obama's against 'em. Hillary ain't. I mean, it's not a major dealbreaker over there at the Princeton econ department like a failure to send the IRS to garnish wages of people who haven't bought their health insurance, but it seems worthy of at least a bit of consideration when evaluating how these respective Dem candidates match up for any liberal with a conscience.
There was a time when The Wall was a symbol of the failure of Soviet Communism. When The Wall fell, it was a symbol of freedom.
Today, the U.S. military is building a three-mile wall across the center of Baghdad, dividing Shia from Sunni in an effort to stem sectarian violence. This Wall stands as a symbol of the failure of Bush's "liberation" of Iraq. If what's transpired in Mesopotamia since the U.S. occupation is in any sense a "liberation", Bush will go down with Pandora - who according to Greek mythology unleashed a world of woe in an act of naive curiosity - as one of history's least welcome "liberators."
"(The Chinese) government has been considering a labor law
that promises a smidgen of increase in workers' rights. And since March
of last year, the American businesses so mightily invested in China
have mightily fought it." 
(Harold Myerson on this affront to common decency by "General Electric, Microsoft, Dell, Ford, and dozens of other household brand names" exploiting the toiling masses, here.)
Too many episodes in the Bush administration saga just leave you in a state of near-awe at their ability to match sheer ineptitude with brazen mendacity. The fiasco of PR manipulation and cover-up of football star Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire in Afghanistan is one that continues. Tillman was notable for being a priviliged, accomplished, high-profile young man who turned down a $3.6 million pro football contract and volunteered, along with his brother, for miitary service in the wake of 9/11. Tillman eventually served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was killed by misdirected fire from his own forces. His body armor and uniform were burned in order to destroy evidence of his dying in a tragic crossfire. Although the truth was known at the time, senior U.S. military including the top Iraq commander at the time, General Abizaid, approved awarding of medals with citations that completely fabricated the circumstances of Tillman's death in order to avoid embarrassment and create a a more useful icon for their PR machine. False information freely flowed from the Defense Department in numerous news stories. Tillman's family, unforgiveably, was lied to about their son's death.
This story still drags on (here) - even after revelations about the cover-up have long been verified. There is also uncomfortable sidebar that adds even deeper irony - in the course of press investigations of the incident, friends and family of Tillman revealed that while he was eager to serve his country in the wake of 9/11 and willingly fought in Afghanistan which he saw as a locus of al Qaeda, Pat Tillman was a staunch critic of Bush and the misadventure in Iraq.
The Bushies want their heroes cut from cardboard, "mission accomplished" - if only for the media. In the course of trying to fit one man's complicated heroism into a convenient and self-serving mold, they proved themselves little more than scoundrels and shamefully unworthy of the sacrifices that they wantonly and wastefully impose on others. Words fail...
Halliburton - which has been paid $13 billion by the U.S. government for their work in Iraq alone - are demonstrating their allegiance to the country by moving their operations from Houston to Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. David Lesar, the CEO, is packing up the HQ and taking his marbles to the fastest growing business center in the Middle East. Although it looks at this end like a slinking off, make no mistake - Dubai's hot. As a symbol of their towering heights in the corporate pantheon, Dubai is currently building the world's tallest skyscraper. (Contrary to the UAE stereotype, Dubai doesn't make most of it's money from oil. It's biggest bucks come from industry specific "free zones" that service international corporations and a booming tourist trade - Dubai's "Emirates Airline" booked 24 million mostly international passengers in 2005.)
Dubai has no corporate or personal income tax. Last year Halli's Honcho, Lesar, was compensated nearly $30 million, so the dubious distinction of residing in Dubai will pay off. Neither does Dubai have congressional investigating committees sniffing into Halliburton's business. Another thing you won't find in Dubai is any Israelis. It's not entirely clear whether non-Israeli Jews can travel to Dubai - few try and reports vary as to whether there's a total exclusion. But anyone or anything Israeli is banned - including any internet traffic linked to ".il". Halliburton will, no doubt, survive without. Clearly they respect Dubai's claimed distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Or something...
If this is the last we see of Halliburton, it's not what I would consider a loss. Too bad they couldn't have trucked off to Dubai when Dick Cheny was Halliburton's Top Gun. I can't think of a better berth for his bunker.
Richard commented on the veteran's hospital scandal yesterday. Here are some more thoughts from Joe Galloway, longtime war correspondent and co-author of the Vietnam best-seller We Were Soldiers Once, And Young:
"The same politicians, from a macho president to the bureaucrats to the people who chair the congressional committees that are supposed to oversee such matters, have utterly failed to protect our wounded warriors. They've talked the talk but few, if any, have ever walked the walk...
How can they look at themselves in the mirror every morning? How dare they ever utter the words: Support Our Troops? How dare they pretend to give a damn about those they order to war?"
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