BunkBlog

W.House Looks for Rice Compromise

The White House looked for a deal on Monday with the Sept. 11, 2001, commission under which national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would appear in private before the panel, but it refused to budge in the face of demands she testify in public and under oath.

What exactly are they afraid of? Why would a public servant who has done nothing wrong want to avoid testifying publically under oath about their honorable and competent actions? Just sayin’.

The recent news from Richard Clarke and Sibel Edmonds regarding intelligence abuses (they aren’t failures – the intel geeks knew things they were apparently told to ignore) makes me wonder about the enforcement of nondisclosure agreements in the government. I have to sign an NDA every time I get read on to specific compartments of information, and these NDAs are supposed to be adhered to in perpetuity (To reduce paperwork storage requirements, they acknowledge that the NDA will be disposed of 75 years after it is signed. Even so, I don’t have any reasonable expectation of living to 108.).

Sibel Edmonds says she translated materials for the FBI from Turkish and Farsi into English. These materials sound like real corkers, too – details of locations and plans from the 9/11 terrorists. So, they would presumably be at least Secret and compartmented. Yet, she’s speaking with impunity about these documents? Sure, she claims that Ashcroft is out to get her and threatened her with jail. Um, yeah. You should be thrown in jail if you intentionally disclose highly classified information to unauthorized persons. That’s why you signed documents noting your legal understanding that you would get thrown in jail if you talked about this stuff. It’s the rules. You don’t have to sign the NDA – you just don’t get that cushy job as a translator for the FBI.

So why hasn’t the FBI at least arrested her for her security violations? I don’t get it.

BTW, I think Ashcroft is a jackass and should be investigated very thoroughly. But I still signed that NDA knowing I had to shut the hell up about things. Duh.

Ya gotta love Bill Maher. He’s got a little blurb up at Salon this week. Here’s a taste:

“Washington insider” is by definition a function of one’s proximity to the president. That’s you, Mr. Bush. You’re ground zero. Ever wonder, sir, why everyone stands and they play music when you enter a room? When you’re given check-writing privileges by the Federal Reserve, you just might be a Washington insider.

From Daily Kos, here’s an excerpt from the list of Bush flipflops. But, of course, we all know Bush has been consistent and it’s only his opponents who ever change their positions on things.

* Bush is against campaign finance reform; then he’s for it.
* Bush is against a Homeland Security Department; then he’s for it.
* Bush is against a 9/11 commission; then he’s for it.
* Bush is against an Iraq WMD investigation; then he’s for it.
* Bush is against nation building; then he’s for it.
* Bush is against deficits; then he’s for them.
* Bush is for free trade; then he’s for tariffs on steel; then he’s against them again.
* Bush is against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli Palestinian conflict; then he pushes for a “road map” and a Palestinian State.
* Bush is for states right to decide on gay marriage, then he is for changing the constitution.

Because a judge in California thinks a semicolon is important, gays and lesbians keep marrying in San Francisco. I love it. Imagine the consternation on those pinched little bigoted faces when they were told they couldn’t stop women from marrying women because of an elementary school punctuation error. Hilarious.

In worse news, they expected to only marry 50 couples today, as compared to the 750 yesterday. I guess a lot of city workers had been drafted to fill the ranks of Mayor Newsom’s marriage brigade and they had to go back to work today.

A semicolon. I still love it.

BillMaher: Georgey The Greek

According to the same finely-tuned analysis that led them to believe the stuff about the WMD, how we’d be greeted as liberators and the like, the White House now says the economy will create 2.6 million jobs in 2004. Not just jobs, but fantastic jobs. And leprechauns. I’m a tad skeptical of his powers of prognostication, however. You might remember last year when he told us if we passed all his tax cuts the economy would create 1.8 million new jobs last year and 3.7 million in 2004. Well, we did pass the tax cuts and we lost 53,000 jobs last year. But if you don’t believe we’ll have 2.6 million jobs in 2004, would you believe 3.6 million jobs in 2005? Well, they’re saying that, too. It’s like we’re watching a bad re-run of Get Smart.

I really don’t have anything to add to that. Just wanted to say, “bwahaha!”

In the Salon article From programming to delivering pizza, there are many tales of woe. These are stories I have heard often in the media, especially online, which act as some sort of scary boogeyman for those who may want to join the high-tech field. What’s ironic is that we keep graduating fewer IT-related college majors, and yet we have plenty of jobs for them. We just want the jobs to pay no more than they pay in New Delhi.

I see these stories and I contrast it with my own experiences. Since separating from the military, I’ve had no particular difficulty finding steady employment with a decent paycheck. There was that period of two months when I was on terminal leave that made me nervous, but it was no big deal in hindsight, especially when placed beside these people who have been unemployed for two years.

Of course, there’s also the problem of underemployment, particularly for college grads who need to pay off their loans. It’s all well and good to tell people that any job is a good job, but if you actually require a minimum of 30 thousand dollars per year to pay off the long-term debts you acquired in college, 6 bucks an hour won’t cut it.

I can’t help but wonder if this unemployment problem in the IT field is really there or if there are some isolated cases that make good stories. I know I’ll probably never want for work, because I have a clearance and those jobs will never be outsourced. But if I wanted to get out of defense contractor land, would I be making a big gamble, or is it much ado about naught in order to sell advertising space?
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Wesley Clark now says that Bush has created a new ‘axis of evil’. Even in this season of overinflated rhetoric, isn’t it a bit much to equate the perfidy, greed and cronyism of the Bush administration to actual evil? To make the implication that Bush is morally equivalent to Iraq and Syria is a bit too hard to swallow.

I wonder if the candidates are even trying to convince the fence-sitters and moderates any more. They seem to be preaching exclusively to the choir of late.

In case you thought she wasn’t senile, the Queen will bestow knighthood to Bill Gates. Yeah, she’s off her nut.

Janklow sentenced to 100 days in jail

The 64-year-old Republican was found guilty December 8 of second-degree manslaughter, speeding and running a stop sign for a collision that killed 55-year-old motorcyclist Randy Scott at a rural intersection on August 16.

100 days. For manslaughter. Think you’d get that kind of sentence for running a stop sign and running over a motorcyclist? Me neither.

Infiltration of files seen as extensive

Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe.

From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight — and with what tactics.

Kellinator’s State of the Union synopsis falls in line with a lot of my thoughts. I didn’t watch all of the speech. As soon as Bush started praising the USA PATRIOT Act as a piece of essential legislation, I had to leave the room.

Microsoft Takes on Teen Over Web Site

I love the fact that Microsoft has retained the law firm of Smart and Biggar to assist them in Canada. And the fact that they are suing a 17 year old boy to get him to stop using his own name…

Iraq’s Arsenal Was Only on Paper

Tamimi’s covert work, which he recounted publicly for the first time in five hours of interviews, offers fresh perspective on the question that led the nation to war. Iraq flouted a legal duty to report the designs. The weapons they depicted, however, did not exist. After years of development — against significant obstacles — they might have taken form as nine-ton missiles. In March they fit in Tamimi’s pocket, on two digital compact discs.

The nine-month record of arms investigators since the fall of Baghdad includes discoveries of other concealed arms research, most of it less advanced.

Get that? Much of the research was less advanced than mere plans without any manufacturing at all. Less. Advanced. This is advanced?

News

President Ronald Reagan was concerned about maintaining good relations with Iraq despite evidence of Saddam’s “almost daily” use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels.

Texas housewife busted for hawking erotic toys

I love this state. Not only can’t I buy a decent bottle of beer in the city limits of San Angelo, I can’t buy sex toys either! When will the insanity end?

Seriously, they used undercover narcotics officers to run an anti-vibrator sting. I’m guessing there are more important ‘crimes’ to solve.

Bitter medicine

A reaction to vaccinations, including anthrax, probably killed 22-year-old Rachael Lacy — and her grieving father thinks the Army has a lot of questions to answer.

Shevardnadze resigns as president of Georgia to avoid bloodshed

Think about that statement for a while. Let it really sink in. That is what makes the USA great.

What do you think? I need to choose a different font, but I think it’s subtle enough…

Interesting interview with RFK’s son, the environmental lawyer.
Save the Earth — dump Bush

Many of our laws will remain on the books in one form or another. But we’ll be Mexico, which has these wonderful, even poetic, environmental laws, but nobody knows about them and nobody complies with them because they can’t be enforced.

The National Academy of Sciences predicts that 30,000 Americans a year will die because of the Bush decision. And that’s just one of the impacts.

Another is that airborne mercury contamination has made it dangerous to eat any freshwater fish in 28 states and the fish in most of our coastal waters. And that mercury is coming from those same power plants. Fifty percent of the lakes in the Adirondacks are now sterilized from acid rain that’s coming from those same power plants.