Oilman-in-Chief approves Regional Oil Deal

... while State Department publicly said such a deal could undermine Iraq's Petroleum Law.

And its not about the oil. W thinks we're all as bright as... well as he is! Fooled us again, George! Gosh... we're such dummies.

Bush administration officials told Hunt Oil last summer that they did not object to its efforts to reach an oil deal with the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, even while the State Department was publicly expressing concern that such contracts could undermine a national Iraqi petroleum law, according to documents obtained by a House committee.

Last fall, after the deal was announced, the State Department said that it had tried to dissuade Hunt Oil from signing the contract with Kurdish regional authorities but that the company had proceeded "regardless of our advice." Although Hunt Oil's chief executive has been a major fundraiser for President Bush, the president said he knew nothing about the deal.

Yesterday, however, Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released documents and e-mails showing that for nearly four months, State and Commerce department officials knew about Hunt Oil's negotiations and had told company officials that there were no objections. In one note, a Commerce Department official even wished them "a fruitful visit to Kurdistan" and invited them to contact him "in case you need any support."

Go Waxman go. Dig it all up.

You never know: maybe someday we'll have a government willing to prosecute. Someday... we may have a Congress with just a tiny bit of courage; enough to outweigh their greed.

Well maybe.

Bushie aide blocked health report

Gosh, another wet-behind-the-ears, clean cut, know-nothing Bushie aide (Liberty college?) blocked a medical report drafted by then Surgeon General Richard Carmona because... aw shucks... it just wasn't political enough for him.

It seems there was a Bushie with longstanding connections to both Bush and Cheney standing between the American people and information about their health and safety, not to mention the spread of diseases around the globe.

I'm shocked - SHOCKED to hear this has been happening! Whatever will we hear next? That Bush has been breaking laws?

From the Washington Post:

Carmona told lawmakers that, as he fought to release the document, he was "called in and again admonished . . . via a senior official who said, 'You don't get it.' " He said a senior official told him that "this will be a political document, or it will not be released."

If there is really something called 'corruption fatigue' then I'm suffering from it. Are you?

And aren't you sick of these sweet, WHITE, young and oh-so-innocent looking political robots the Bush administration has planted throughout the entire administration? What -- couldn't Bush find anyone with a brain and a conscience to do his lockstep without squealing? And of course we can't forget -- he can't hire anyone smarter than he is. So that leaves most of the country out of the equation.

The report - which when you hear about it, seems to have been doomed from the offset - highlighted the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to fight diseases as an aim of it's foreign policy plan (what plan?) and called on corporations (yeah, right!) to 'help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.'

I'm so sure!

Nice try Carmona... but this is so totally anti-Bushie! What were you thinking...? Fighting diseases? What does that have to do with bombing people? Where is the money in this?

Did you honestly believe that Bushies are capable of caring about the health or the wellbeing of anyone but their rich, White corporate cronies? Helping poor people? Get out - didn't you see what happened in New Orleans?



Here is a copy of the actual report, posted with this story by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services.

The rest of the Washington Post story can be found here. Read it and weep.

Bushie accuses war protesters of 'not paying taxes'

Anti-war, pro-impeachment protesters heckled Nancy Pelosi as she attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for some boring, federal building. (OK, it was a big, expensive building and an obvious delight to the Neocon hosting the event. Nice that it was at least energy efficient.)

About a dozen people chanted "Impeach now!" as Pelosi spoke at the dedication of the $144 million, 18-story landmark office complex, which boasts cutting-edge energy efficiency features. The demonstrators also unfurled a large "impeach" banner that directly faced Pelosi and other speakers.

The protesters - kept well away from the action - were nearly loud enough to drown out Madam Pelosi; but she of course ignored them (and believe me, we're all becoming used to that treatment -- aren't we Nancy?)

Then the Bushie Neocrat-in-charge had the temerity to accuse the protesters, relegated to the outskirts of the ceremony, of 'not being taxpayers' like the important people who had been invited to the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Ah, the sneering disdain of the 'upper class.'

Pelosi ignored the protesters, who were loud enough to compete with her remarks, but not loud enough to drown her out. The event was held outdoors, with invited guests kept outside a police barricade but well within shouting distance.

However, a Bush administration official fired back at the demonstrators, accusing them of not paying taxes. Peter G. Stamison, appointed by President Bush as the General Services Administration's top official for the Pacific Rim region, acted as master of ceremonies.

"I think we all as taxpayers—those of us taxpayers, as opposed to you people back there—are the ones that make this work," Stamison said of the government efforts that brought the new building to life.

"Excuse me, I pay taxes!" a protester yelled.

Roll that truck back. Did I hear that right? A Bushie accusing anyone (who obviously isn't in the multi-billionaire club) of not paying taxes?

Get out!

Someone should give this guy the memo... the only people who get a pass from paying taxes these days are neocons and oil companies.

The rich get the tax-cutsies and the tax-breaksies. Everyone else pays the taxsies - everyone. Future generations should have lots and lots of taxsies, because this administration has plunged our nation into debt for generations; all while making a tidy profiteering haul (all taxsie-free!) from this bloody oil war.

We're paying for it. We paid for the right to protest it, buddy.

That comment really takes the cake - and the ribbon from the ceremony (which someone should wrap around that bone-head's mouth.) The most idiotic Bush-brain comment of the day... and it didn't even come from Bush!

NET Neutrality dealt serious blow

On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission dealt a serious whack to Net Neutrality proponents as it issued a report dismissing claims that the government needs to get involved in preserving the fairness of networks in the United States.

In other words, they and their corporate masters don't want the involvement of the courts or Congress -- just let those big AT&T corporate guys do as they please, no oversight needed -- and definitely not wanted. Reminds me of the Times-Warner overhaul of our postal system so that it would penalize the smaller news media like The Nation and Mother Jones, among others.

This is so familiar. Cookie-cutter familiar. Like the 'no oversight needed' management style FEMA conducted by Bush's beloved Brownie. Like the 'no oversight needed' approach by the FDA that allowed all of that melamine-tainted food into our country so that our cats and dogs would die horrible, painful deaths. And of course, that 'no oversight needed' approach the EPA now espouses when it refuses to enforce carbon emissions standards.

From ars technica:

The report, entitled "Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy," was drafted in response to growing concerns about broadband competitiveness and network neutrality. The FTC intends the report to be consulted as a guideline by policy makers and legislators, but it has no binding force. Nevertheless, the report's findings are yet another sign that US government agencies are not particularly interested in the network neutrality problem right now. In fact, the FTC is essentially saying that they can find no evidence of a problem to begin with.

Gotta love the Bushies, they're consistently against us at every turn.

In a statement, Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said, "This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving, dynamic industry of broadband Internet access, which generally is moving toward more - not less - competition. In the absence of significant market failure or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area."

Did I mention Bushies? This report was issued by Bush appointee Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras. A quick Google of Majoras reveals, from Sourcewatch:

Deborah Platt Majoras was appointed May 11, 2004, by President George W. Bush to be Chairman and Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Majoras was to fill the vacancy created by Timothy J. Muris, who announced May 11, 2004, that he would step down to return to academia.

According to Majoras' FTC profile, she was sworn in August 16, 2004, and President Bush had announced his intention to appoint her to the position on July 30, 2004.

"The Federal Trade Commission chairwoman is the FTC's point person on its gasoline price gouging inquiry in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, in her prior life at the Jones Day law firm she was also the point person for ChevronTexaco and Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. In 2004, Senator Ron Wyden opposed her nomination for her refusal to outline the steps she would take to investigate and fight gas price gouging."

I'm telling you -- every single Federal Commission is now invested with these people, many from the oil industry. We're screwed.

The "hands-off" approach is the approach preferred by the telecoms, who will also be delighted that Chairman Majoras cleared them of any wrong-doing in their network management so far. Nevertheless, the FTC says that it will continue to monitor the situation, as will the FCC and DOJ. Perhaps more encouraging for proponents of such legislation, the FTC says that increased awareness of the debate will help them with monitoring the need for government regulation.

Oh yes! The Department of Justice is going to help too! Gosh, I feel so much better. I'll be writing twice as often now, knowing that my hours and perhaps even minutes out here are numbered.

By the way, the head of the FCC, who will be formerly making the Net Neutrality decision is:

Chairman Kevin J. Martin

Chairman Martin was nominated by President George W. Bush to a Republican seat on the Commission, and was sworn in on July 3, 2001. He was designated chairman by President Bush on March 18, 2005. Chairman Martin was re-nominated for a second term as commissioner and chairman by President George W. Bush on April 25, 2006.

Before joining the FCC, Martin was a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. He served on the Bush-Cheney Transition Team and was Deputy General Counsel for the Bush campaign. Prior to joining the campaign, Martin was an advisor to FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. He has also served in the Office of the Independent Counsel and worked as an associate at the Washington, DC law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Before joining Wiley, Rein & Fielding, Martin was a judicial clerk for U.S. District Court Judge William M. Hoeveler, Miami, FL.

Martin received a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Masters in Public Policy from Duke University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the Federal Communications Bar Association.

I'm praying his law degree from Harvard will over-rule his connections to the Bush/Cheney transition team. I guess we'll see.

Killing us softly, Pt. 2

Breaking news from PetConnection blogger, Christie Keith, out on Daily Kos. And here I thought I was actually on top of this FDA, melamine, poisoned food, deadly drug, Chinese tainted disaster. Not hardly. They're way, way ahead of me.

It would seem that the FDA today announced that Tembec, an Ohio-based company, has been adding melamine and related compounds to an ingredient used to make fish, shrimp, cattle, sheep, and goat feed.

Yes, this is an AMERICAN company adding melamine to animal feed. Seriously! Apparently this feed has have been sold internationally as well as domestically. So now other countries will be forced to recall American food.

Feeling proud? You betcha.

And we truly think our corporations are any less creepy than the Chinese? Hey - the Chinese actually sentenced the head of their FDA to death. We can't even impeach... oh never mind.

I'll let Christie Keith tell you about the strange media blackout that followed:

Wed May 30, 2007 at 06:46:33 PM EDT


On May 22, the FDA suspended its until-then twice-weekly media conferences on the melamine contamination investigation, saying there was nothing new to report and they’d let us know when there was.

The night before they suspended the media conferences because there was nothing new to report, UC Davis had found melamine in a previously unrecalled pet food. FDA did subsequently issue a recall notice for this food, although they had not at the time they canceled the media conferences.

On the very day they canceled the media conferences because there was nothing new to report, a news story broke that the FDA’s own labs found melamine in catfish submitted by the state of Arkansas for testing, which was meant for human consumption. That catfish had been imported from China.

This was the first time melamine was detected in food meant for human consumption, but there still has been almost zero coverage of this in the mainstream media. Would there have been if the media conferences hadn’t been canceled?

Still wonder who the media is really working for? Democracy? Oversight? Anyone?

Christie Keith continues:

Now we find out that four days before canceling the ongoing press conferences because there was nothing new to report, on May 18, FDA learned that a US company had been adding melamine to its binding agent, which is used to make commercial fish and shrimp feed as well as livestock feed for cattle, goats, and sheep — not only in the US, but we’ve been exporting this stuff.

Some of the reporters at the media conference sounded pretty aggravated -- I especially liked the guy from the Washington Times who kept pushing for "FDA food safety czar" David Acheson to share how he felt, really felt, about the food safety official in China who just got the death penalty, and ABC News' David Kerley was absolutely relentless with his questions -- but I still want to know, where the hell has the legacy media been since the press conferences got canceled?

Not only have we been reporting these things on PetConnection -- a freaking PET BLOG, albeit one run by nationally syndicated columnists who are actual reporters, but still -- but I posted about the catfish here on DKos last Tuesday. David Goldstein has been posting about this on horsesass.org, too. It's not like there isn't a story here. It's not like the media doesn't have this story. But literally overnight, the minute FDA stops holding press conferences, it all just stopped.

Of course it stopped. My God, imagine if this one got out. Americans might (gulp) stop trusting their Bushie government...

Beam me up Scottie. This is getting beyond belief.

One down...

I hesitate to blog it - because I'm still not quite sure I really believe it. Is the Wolfie really out the door?

Or is this just a predictable scene in a B-rated slasher movie... where the 'supposedly dead' monster miraculously rises from the floor to attack the falsely-relieved, former/soon-to-be-again victims?

Is he really gone? And where will he pop up next? (Perhaps our next Attorney General?)

Never forget that Wolfie is a loyal Bushie. He isn't gone - no chance. He's merely been reassigned.

Finally: A graphical guide to 'Bushie' scandals!

This is almost too good to be true: a graphical guide to the incomprehensible web of lies, scandal and corruption gradually rising up and out of the fog that is 'Bush Country!'

Actually, I just changed the title from 'GOP' scandals - even though these are mostly GOP politicians we are talking about. Bush-world is all partisan, all the time, so other than an occasional Joe Lieberman, you aren't likely to find any Democrats in these lucrative neocon games.

I live in a Goldwater Republican bastion and I still refuse to paint the entire Republican party with a neocon brush. The same thing could easily have happened (and may happen yet) to the Democratic party. Any party that gets absolute control and is tied so closely to lobbyists is going to be subjected to the same temptations. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

No, this is 'Bushie' stuff. I can't imagine Chuck Hagel behaving like this, or my own Senator, Richard Lugar. Huckabee also seems like a nice, honest and ethical guy. It must be a rough time to be a reasonable, ethical Republican.

Ethical Republicans absolutely do exist, they've just been pushed around and bullied like the rest of us. They are beginning to speak out. I feel for them, and I hope they can rescue their party. Without a strong and responsible Republican party (I'm thinking pre-Gingrich here; the Contract On America was the beginning of the BS-fest,) the Democrats themselves will have absolute control... and we'll be right back where we are now. Lobbyists are equal opportunity employers.

Actually, I have come to believe that we need at least three political parties - all acting as oversight over one other.

Its all about balance and oversight. With three strong parties, we'd never been stuck (as we are today) hoping that the Democrats will save us from a Republican party-gone-mad. Both parties are corrupted and taking kickbacks from the same lobbyists. I have slightly more faith in the Democratic party right now - but not much.

You'd think that with a mandate from the people, and with daily corruption unfolding right and left, the Democrats would have found the will to take a strong stand on Iraq. They can't seem to do even that - with most of the country behind them. And that's how much we matter in this day of corporate lobbyists. The corporations are making a killing in Iraq. Our only entertainment in the meantime - while the Democrats dawdle and hope we don't notice until after the 2008 elections are over - is to watch the daily corruption follies.

From Slate.com:

Bushies Behaving Badly

An illustrated guide to GOP scandals.
By Holly Allen, Christopher Beam, and Torie Bosch

For an interactive feature on the recent scandals of the Republican party, click here.

Having a hard time keeping track of all 10,000 GOP scandals? Between fired U.S. attorneys, deleted RNC e-mails, sexually harassed pages, outed CIA agents, and tortured Iraqi prisoners—not to mention the warrantless wiretapping, plum defense contracts, and golf junkets to Scotland—you could be forgiven for losing track of which congressman or Bush administration flunky did which shady thing. Renzi—now, was that the guy with the skeezy land deal? Or the woman Paul Wolfowitz promoted?

We all have a stake in protecting our freedom

To my Representatives:

If you expect me to believe that we are not living -- right now -- under a dictatorship, then please write back and let me know what you intend to do about the contents of the article I am attaching below. Thank you.

"I have a personal stake here, but so do all Americans who take their political system seriously. Thus I hope you and your colleagues will take some positive action to bring the Administration's conduct to the attention of a far larger, and more influential, audience than I could hope to reach." - Walter F. Murphy

As an American citizen, I know my Constitutional rights, and I also refuse to accept tyranny in any form. That's right, as an educated American citizen, I was raised to reject tyranny: raised on the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. If this is all now dismantled, then I demand an explanation.

I plan to travel to Ireland next year. And yes I did attend a peace rally, finally, in Washington D.C. last January. I took part in the rally and march around the Capitol building in an attempt to get your attention about this bone-headed war. This is the first time I have ever done this, and it was at great cost to myself physically (I have severe Fibromyalgia, and the 16 hour bus ride each way was excruciating.) I felt that I had no other choice - you all have left me no other choice. No one was listening. It was my right as an American to be there, assembling peacefully with a permit in defense of my democracy. As I recall, John Conyers was there - I suspect he is still flying, as are the Hollywood celebrities who spoke at the rally.

Just giving you a heads up, that if I ever find myself on one of these bogus no fly lists, I will get into my car and drive to Washington to visit each of you personally (or wait outside your office) until you - my representatives in this broken government - make it right.

I'd prefer you made it right in advance.

The Patriot Act was obviously put into place as a means to persecute American citizens and expand the reach of a power-grabbing executive branch -- and no I do not feel safe. I don't recognize my country at all. I ache for those who really did die for our freedom... because its being taken from us, by stealth, while those who should be defending it stand by and do nothing.

"I confess to having been furious that any American citizen would be singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any elected official, Democrat or Republican. That harassment is, in and of itself, a flagrant violation not only of the First Amendment but also of our entire scheme of constitutional government. This effort to punish a critic states my lecture's argument far more eloquently and forcefully than I ever could. Further, that an administration headed by two men who had "had other priorities" than to risk their own lives when their turn to fight for their country came up, should brand as a threat to the United States a person who did not run away but stood up and fought for his country and was wounded in battle, goes beyond the outrageous. Although less lethal, it is of the same evil ilk as punishing Ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticizing Bush's false claims by "outing" his wife, Valerie Plaime, thereby putting at risk her life as well as the lives of many people with whom she had had contact as an agent of the CIA. - Walter F. Murphy

I will not be bullied by anyone, especially my own government. I am a law-abiding citizen. I am also - apparently - more patriotic and informed than my President. It appears to me that the people who refuse to abide by the rule of law and our Constitution are mostly in Washington these days. If they can fly, I expect to be able to fly as well.

Thank you, and please excuse my anger... but you will notice that this Walter F. Murphy -- professor emeritus at Princeton University and "most distinguished scholar of public law in political science" who also happens to be a retired Marine colonel, fought in the Korean War, was wounded, and decorated for heroism -- is a lot more distinguished than I am. If he is on a no-fly list for speaking out against Bush, then I ask you: who exactly is allowed to fly these days? Exxon executives? Christian fundamentalists? Or just loyal Bushies?

My God -- my country is looking more like a banana republic by the day. Did you not all -- all of you -- swear to uphold the Constitution? Did anyone happen to read it first?

Fix this.

March in peace protest, get on the no-fly list

By Joshua Holland
Posted on April 9, 2007, Printed on April 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/50342/