Well. There It Is

With video.

As US secretary of state, Colin Powell gathered his notes in front of the United Nations security council, the man watching — Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, known to the west's intelligence services as "Curveball" — had more than an inkling of what was to come. He was, after all, Powell's main source, a man his German handlers had feted as a new "Deep throat" — an agent so pivotal that he could bring down a government.

As Curveball watched Powell make the US case to invade Iraq, he was hiding an admission that he has not made until now: that nearly every word he had told his interrogators from Germany's secret service, the BND, was a lie.

Everything he had said about the inner workings of Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programme was a flight of fantasy - one that, he now claims was aimed at ousting the Iraqi dictator. Janabi, a chemical engineering graduate who had worked in the Iraqi industry, says he looked on in shock as Powell's presentation revealed that the Bush administration's hawkish decisionmakers had swallowed the lot. Something else left him even more amazed; until that point he had not met a US official, let alone been interviewed by one.

Hook. Line. Sinker. Pole.  Boat.  Fisher.

You Say That As If It's a Bad Thing

In the (Missouri) Republican drive to bring back the world of Charles Dickens, this stands out.

JC – “Well, I recently watched Oliver Twist on television. I’ve got to tell you, Satan – child labor was some of your best work! It kept the wretched little fuckers off the street, increased available labor, and made discussions of public school education ridiculous. Why pay to educate children when we should be putting them to work, right? I love it!”

Satan – “Stop…you’re making me blush and that’s not easy for a crimson-faced demon lord to do!”

(No, not real quotes.  Just well-imagined. Here's the bill summary:

SB 222 – This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

Thanks to Shark-fu and the AFL-CiO blog.

Pitchers and catchers start reporting today!

(And not a minute too soon.  Brain currently feta cheese.  I am keeping an eye on Egypt, but other than GO, EGYPTIANS!!! I have nothing to say.  Wait, they have different cheese.)

O for Oblivious

I'm not normally a noticer of things;  if a parade of pink elephants with angels sitting on their backs passed by, I might notice that there'd been a lot of pink lately.

But this is the New York Times article on Mubarak's exit, and even I, who take things at more-or-less face value, noticed two things almost immediately:

1. Mubarak is nowhere directly quoted; and
2. "The military" seems to be speaking with one voice.

See what I mean here:

The streets of Cairo exploded in shouts of “God is Great” moments after Mr. Mubarak’s vice president and longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, announced during evening prayers that Mr. Mubarak had passed all authority to a council of military leaders.

“Taking into consideration the difficult circumstances the country is going through, President Mohammed Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave the post of president of the republic and has tasked the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to manage the state’s affairs,” Mr. Suleiman, grave and ashen, said in a brief televised statement.

[...]

Shortly before the announcement of Mr. Mubarak’s departure, the military issued a communiqué pledging to carry out a variety of constitutional reforms in a statement remarkable for its commanding tone. The military’s statement alluded to the delegation of power to Mr. Suleiman and it suggested that the military would supervise implementation of the reforms.

The military did not indicate whether it intended to take the kinds of fundamental steps toward democracy that protesters have been demanding. This was the second direct statement from the military in two days, and it largely stuck to the main constitutional and electoral reforms that Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Suleiman had promised to implement. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Suleiman would retain a role, under the military council, in running the country.

Now I think they mean "The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces" and are just being synecdochic, but the impression I'm getting is coup.

Yesterday's Scandale du Jour

Shakesville has a poker-faced account of the resignation of Representative Christopher Lee of upstate New York, and jurassicpork at Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread (also at Brilliant at Breakfast and Welcome Back to Pottersville) delivers a Letterman-style "Top 10 Funniest Things..." on the Congressman who failed to follow the proper Republican template for sex scandals.  One of the comments at Shakesville referred to further comedy comment at Live Journal's ontd_political, so I spent an hour or so that I'll never get back wading through the comments (200+).  Early on, someone made the obvious connection.  OK.  (Myself, I latched onto Count Dooku, as someone apprenticed to a Sith Lord, but not up on the whole game.  But that's me.)

In the department of I know nobody admits to looking at pornography, even accidentally, but honestly, you guys!, although jurassicpork hints at it:  cell phone pictures of shirtless men are usually found on the gay side of the Great Porn Kingdoms.  Unless he was emulating the Old Spice Guy?  (ETA:  Tweet via skippy.)

Also?  (Yes, another Princess Bride quotation.  Deal.)  "Classy"?  I do not think it means what you think it means.

His lie about his age to one side (he was already lying about so much):  If one is going to do something one doesn't want everyone to know about, since one's already falsifying many of the details, use a different name.  I know politicians are weak on imagination (it's why they go into politics instead of, oh, music), but really!   There are lots of 18th and 19th century officeholders whose names could be dusted off for use as identity in a scandal.  And it would be educational.  Especially for the junior congresspeople.

Malefactors of Great Wealth and No Ethics

Or maybe "All Gaul," because there will be three parts:

• Daisy Deadhead of Daisy's Dead Air has inaugurated a weekly "Haley Watch" on the shenanigans, when they happen, of the Governor of South Carolina, beginning with the sizable pay raises of her staff.
• Whistleblower in UBS case sits in jail, allegedly for not yielding up all possible information.

  Birkenfeld says that only a massive cover-up can explain why he is in prison after delivering such valuable information to authorities. And, he charges that the federal government is trying to protect the wealthy and powerful Americans who have millions of dollars hidden from the tax system in secret Swiss accounts like the ones he used to manage.

  (via CNBC)
• Avedon Carol at The Sideshow on the Deep Game being played (and without scorecards, even):

  I've touched on this before, but I don't think people really get how tricky the game really is. If you listen to a lot of the things Limbaugh and Rush and even Palin say, they always carry enough of a grain of truth with them to make them compelling to their audience even while they also carry enough crazy to make it easy for everyone from Katarina to Dancin' Dave to even Bill Kristol point at them and say they are going overboard.
  
  People are hurting and our economy is tanking and the White House keeps telling us how things are fine even though all the rest of us can see that they are not. And though they blame it all on Obama as if Bush and the GOP leadership had nothing to do with it, the fact is that Obama and the Dems spent two years in charge and absolutely refusing to do what Americans wanted them to do. And what Americans want them to do is get out of stupid wars (not just change the names from "combat troops" to something else), give them a better health care system (not just pass something called a health care bill), protect Social Security benefits (not just the existence of some program that still retains the name "Social Security"), and, yes, tax the rich a lot more than they tax people who actually have to work for a living. What Americans certainly didn't want them to do was protect cut-throat loan sharks who are stealing their money and their homes, and protect anti-American transnational corporations who are stealing their time and money and exporting their jobs.

Lisa Golden Hits One Out of the Park

What you never see in the mainstream media.

People without health insurance walking us through their experience with the American health care system.
Workers discussing business policies.
Family farmers talking about farming and food.

There's more.  And she asks "What would you like from our media?

Law, Fantasy, Baseball, and Warning Sirens with Flashing Lights

1. Pitchers and catchers report starting February 14.  Whew!
2. Metsgrrl on driving past the location of Ebbets Field.
3. She also has the guide to slogging through the complaint about the enmeshment of the Wilpons (owners of the NY Mets) with Bernie Madoff (boo, hissssss).  It's unfortunate that both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Louis Auchincloss are dead; this would be their meat.  
4. Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast cuts the Gordian knot of Republican pro-life posturing while being opposed to the welfare of, how should I say this, women.

Six Questions

Scott Horton asks Cherif Bassiouni, author of  The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration: Is Anyone Responsible? 

Because we haven't forgotten.

Clue-by-Four of Truth

• "Conservatives" won't face consequence of their "budget cuts."  Republic of T paints the picture:

  Paul’s challenge underscores the dishonesty of his budget, as well as those proposed by other conservatives. Paul and other conservatives wear their proposed budget as badges of honor, but they lack the courage to state clearly the human impact of their budget cuts, and the candor to confess the unreality of their proposals.
  
  [...]
  
  But the snapshot of consequences in Kentucky underscores a point driven home at the end of the Lexington Herald editorial.
  

  Paul pines for a land built on libertarian theory. But the country of his ideals is a place that few Americans would want to leave their children.

  It’s a place that few Americans want to live in, or want their children to live in, today.

  [Emphasis and link in original.]
  
• Driftglass again demonstrates his qualifications for the Mike Royko Memorial Chair at whatever school of journalism has one and in the process reminds all that Mr. Brooks of the NY Times needs to revisit the difference between journalism and public relations.

  First, however beloved and renowned Rahm Emanuel might have been in Mr. Brooks' D.C. social and political circles, back in Chicago he is still regarded as a carpet bagger. He has no natural constituency here, and when he went away to join the DLC Elite, he left behind no appreciable mark, or legacy, or footprints in the sands of Garfield Park Conservatory that he could in any way plausibly use to claim clear title to the status of a Favorite Son finally returning to the bosom of his home town.
  
  He pulled no swords from stones here, and no Watery Tarts of Lake Michigan threw him any Excaliburs.
  
  Instead what Mr. Emanuel has going for him is an assload of money, direct, hard-wired connections to every million-watt insider/power-broker in the Democratic Party and, most importantly, a tacit but unmissable nod from the Daley Machine. A formidable and very-probably unbeatable political armory to which he can now add Mr. Brooks' free, full-page political advertisement masquerading as a New York Times Op-Ed.

  (If you click through, you get a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  You won't get that from conservative Republican columnists, even if they understood it.)
  

Another Modest Proposal

from Southern Beale, who comes out swinging on reproductive choice (that would be birth control):

Look fellas, I’m sorry you lack the plumbing that would enable you to get pregnant, gestate and give birth and all that. I’ve long suspected your inability to create life in the same way we ladies do has been a source of equal amounts fascination and disgust on your parts for thousands of years. Grow the fuck up already.

You know, I can’t imagine what it’s like to have my reproductive organs flying around loose in the breeze where any predator, fungus or hunting accident could come along and snip it all off, making me evolutionarily irrelevant. That’s a hard burden to bear, a not-so-subtle reminder of how biologically dispensable you guys really are. There are always more males out there willing to spread their seed; it’s the female of the species who carries the burden of the species’ survival. We’re the ones who not only bear the young but care for them as well.

Latest Scare

(Actually a week old, but we're not the vanguard around here.  The vanguard is over there, either buying or being bought by AOL.  It is of no moment.  We're going to put on some cutting-edge Chuck Berry, who still cannot be defined out of rock 'n' roll.  So there.)

(Also, when I first saw the story, I'm afraid that not only did I not take it seriously, my first reaction was "What is that guy smoking?")

Republic of T, who has been posting up a storm despite the fact that according to my blogroll, he hasn't posted in three weeks--my lying eyes, of course--has put up the second of the series on drugs, prohibition, and the failure of US drug policy as seen in the panic over "bath salts."

I get that Schumer is not talking about banning bath salts so much as drugs-masquerading-as-bath-salts. And I understand the danger after reading the horror stories of people who took this stuff and either died of it or because of the hallucinations and behaviors that ensue after using it. There seems almost to be a subculture of people who know it’s not just a bath salt, and the directions on the packaging are basically a “win[k] and nod” towards the intended “off label” use.

In the Dock

Apparently today is the day we are supposed to get nostalgic and schmoopy about the centenary of the 40th President of these United States.

Er, no.

From the McClatchy website, the case for a more pragmatic, less ideological Reagan:

Nothing ended up infuriating the right more than Reagan’s fear of the prospect of nuclear war. To the outrage of conservatives such as commentator George Will, he tried to cut a deal in 1987 with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, that would have abolished nuclear weapons. He went on to sign the sweeping START I arms-control treaty with the Kremlin, slashing the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles. So much for Reagan the ideologue.

From Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread, i.e., Jurassicpork, a full-blown indictment:

Under Reagan, the deficit tripled, national defense spending increased, he got a massive wave of tax breaks designed primarily to benefit his wealthy campaign contributors, public education took a rogering, he tried unsuccessfully to take food and milk out of our childrens' mouths at the same time he was giving tax breaks to corporations, more soldiers than ever died for his foreign policy adventurism, he was a coward and cut and ran when terrorists killed 241 of our Marines in Beirut, he cut back room deals with the contras under the fictional guise of combating the Commies, funneled money to them through arms sales to Iran and before he was even elected, sent envoys to talk to Iranian officials and illegally meddling with the hostage crisis under Carter (the all-but-discredited October Surprise which is making a comeback).

And there are lots of links just in that paragraph, let alone the rest of the essay.

That's not even getting into his "team," who share responsibility for some of the ill effects.

Hmmmm.  Maybe I should go hang out at a museum or something.  Since there's some football game going.

B.A.D. Bad Leroy Brown

For Blogroll Amnesty Day, I traditionally pull up stuff of interest from other people's blogrolls, but as Blogger and Safari are not at the moment playing nice with each other, I'd just better grab what I can.

• Just an Earth-Bound Misfit.  Because it's never what I expect.
• Ephemeral New York.
• Southern Beale.
• Some of my blogroll is AWOL.  Sometime this month I'm going to have to reorganize the lists.  Lisa posts at Black Magpie Theory, for example, which has good stuff, but I never see it unless she's posted there.  I also have to move her back to blog 'n' roll, because she's not infrequent.  Cooking for Bad Motherfuckers is dormant.  I need to add people.

*sigh*

Also

Senator Sanders' newsletter points to two stories:  one on Pentagon fraud (shocked whispers:  "No!"), which appears at Time's swampland blog, and one on defending Social Security.

Must reading.

The Egress

Scott Horton of Harper's has an article in Foreign Policy about the constraints on dictators-in-exile and how this might affect Hosni Mubarak's, um, departure.

Oh, And...

Echidne explains why, economically, the individual mandate is necessary in Health Care Reform.

My view is that the HCR went wrong when it insisted on sticking with the insurance model, even if the political reasons for that can be understood. Once it did that, however, most everything else that happened was a logical consequence of that initial decision, including the individual mandate.

Alternatives to that model exist all over the place. Indeed, almost all other industrialized countries have something different. But that "something different" is seen as communism here. So we are stuck.

I really need to do some research, and on something other than rock bands. ;-)

Advocacy

Tiger Beatdown has a guide to Twitter advocacy against H.R. 3 (short version:  considerably narrows the definition of rape and forbids insurance from covering abortions).

I stole this graphic from Shakesville.

Two Things

1. Digby (Hullabaloo) on Reagan's legacy:

   Most people actually like government programs that benefit them and are usually hostile only to those they think benefit the "undeserving." But there is no doubt in my mind that Reagan and his progeny have made anti-government sentiment in general a baseline value among a large number of Americans, which has led to an ongoing, incremental degradation of the relationship of people to their government. People may not want their government services cut in the abstract, but with every vote for a Republican or Democrat who rails against taxes, they make it that much more difficult to deliver them.

2. Jill (Brilliant at Breakfast) on what democracy looks like and why Americans don't look like that:

   The teabaggers are dancing to the tune of their corporate masters. The left is still cats resisting being herded. And the party that's supposed to be a counterbalance to the likes of John Boehner being the guest of honor at insurance company dinners and passing out checks on the House floor is telling us to suck it up and stick with the status quo.
   
   We ought to be taking a really good, close look at Egypt. Because what's going on there is what happens when people get their act together and realize that it is their own government that's working against them.

The events in Egypt so far have alarmed pundits and heads of state.

Good.

Speaking of Sports

Via Southern Beale, the pre-autopsy report on NASCAR.

More than half the races were at least 10 to 30 thousand fans short of a sellout, because NASCAR was no longer affordable for the average family.

Instead, it was marketed more for the business-class side of society, the same path that basketball, baseball, and football took.

The true NASCAR fans were basically forced to watch their favorite drivers from the confines of their own living rooms, instead of the mega-seat stadiums that were built to house the faithful who hung around to watch the sport slowly be destroyed.

Not really a fan of NASCAR, but I enjoy the spectacle of heavily modified autos going vroom on carefully configured tracks on occasion.  Except the accidents, of course.

"If It Takes Just a Little While"

No, you don't want to know why I was running through several hours of documentaries on Fleetwood Mac yesterday.

Don't hit that metaphoric snooze button, says Anna van Z, and adds supporting links to readersupportednews.org and FAIR.

LowerManhattanite on the departure from the Senate of Joe Lieberman:

I will not miss him, and neither will you. His bogus “moooooaaaaaawww-raaawwwwllll” nature will be an afterthought after countless afterthoughts before it. That passive-aggressive backstabbiness and craven ransom holding of votes that should have been simple-human-decency-based will not be thought of as ironic or crafty politicking, but rather as what they were—underhanded and self-serving. His migraine-inducing plays for integrity when confronted with his misdeeds, trotting out the sad, soggy old card of neo-cons everywhere—“I marched with Dr. King”—will absolutely not be missed. Real warriors of that time never have to bring that shit up out of context. Only post-mid-life-crisis ideological flip-floppers looking to cover their naked asses from rightful criticism work that mawkish angle out of the blue.

Ron Patterson, co-founder of Renaissance Faire back in the day, has died.

It Tolls for Thee

Via the new paradigm, via Mills River Progressive:  Pointer to The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein, in particular this paragraph:

Yes, you can locate yourself as far as possible from the war zones, trash incinerators, toxic waste dumps, smog zones, bad neighborhoods, and other perils of an increasingly toxic world, but sooner or later the converging crises of our era will obliterate all defenses. No matter how diversified your investments, no matter how many guns in your walled compound or cans of food in your basement, the tide of calamity will eventually engulf you. Gates, locks, razor wire and guns can ensure security only temporarily, and a fraudulent, anxious security it is. Eventually we will abandon our bunker mentality and understand that the only security comes through giving, opening, and being at the center of a flux of relationships, not taking more and more for self; security comes not from independence but from interdependence. The survivors will not be those who try to insulate themselves in a fortress, but who are able to give, to help, and to contribute to a community. They will form the basis of a new kind of civilization.

We're definitely in trouble.

In Memoriam

Milton Babbitt, composer.

(Also, in two weeks the New York Times will be limiting the number of articles one can see free.  Just so you know.)

(ETA:  These folks got left out.  Sorry.)

• Gladys Horton, Marvelette;
• Milton M. Levine, ant farms;
• David Frye and
• Charlie Callas, comedians;
• Dr. Eleanor Galenson, observed children's discovery of their sexual identity;

25 Years Ago

The Challenger.

[ETA:  Driftglass on causes.]

Oh, And...

The Kampala Rolling Stone?  Is an accessory before the fact.

Dickensian Values in Action

Southern Beale:  We do not value people.

Hello to My Readers from Belize!

• William Gibson's OpEd on digital vandalism in the New York Times.
• For lack of 2 cents in health care.  (I remember being able to go to doctors without insurance and being able to pay out of pocket.  You can't do that anymore.)  Via Echidne of the Snakes.
• Macadamia nut oil (I think there has to be a downside that isn't probable price, but I'm not as up on this stuff as I was) featured in Mark's Daily Apple. 

Surpassingly Weird

Pitcher retires because he doesn't feel he's earning the money.

“This isn’t about being a hero — that’s not even close to what it’s about,” Meche said this week. “It’s just me getting back to a point in my life where I’m comfortable. Making that amount of money from a team that’s already given me over $40 million for my life and for my kids, it just wasn’t the right thing to do.”

Heh

Via skippy:  Conservative Christians (and young people in that culture) divorce more.

She said the paradox can be explained by the accelerated transition into adulthood and early marriages that young conservative Protestants practice.

Factors that lead to high rates of divorce among Christians are the prohibition of sex before marriage leading to marriage at an earlier age and teachings against abortion and birth control, which lead to “shotgun weddings,” she said.

I don't suppose Catholics were included in the study?

In Memoriam

Bruce Gordon, whose best-known role was as Frank Nitti on The Untouchables.

(ETA:  Saw a few minutes of the State of the Union address, and then the eye exam I was actually there for happened.  [Yes, I'm still myopic.])