Authorities say the case against [Bristol Palin's future mother-in-law] Sherry Johnston began in the second week of September, when drug investigators intercepted a package containing 179 OxyContin pills. That led to the arrest of the suspects, who agreed to be informants.The trooper's affidavit indicates that Sarah Palin's candidacy factored into the investigation, with state officials delaying execution of a search warrant until this month, when Johnston was "no longer under the protection or surveillance of the Secret Service."
Finally, a solution to two of our problems: obesity can be solved with liposuction and the fat can power our SUV's. Who said Americans don't innovate anymore?Alan Bittner, pictured at right, [a plastic surgeon] who founded a high-profile clinic on Rodeo Drive...claims to be able to power both his Ford Explorer and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator on biofuel converted from excess flesh from human tums, bums and thighs. "The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel – and I have more fat than I can use," he says. "Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly, but they get to take part in saving the Earth."A gallon of "lipodiesel" will give motorists roughly the same mileage as they would get from regular diesel, the magazine added. At present, most biofuel is made from a mixture of specially grown corn, and left-over beef or pork products.
“An Obama job approval rating of 79 percent — that’s the sort of rating you see when the public rallies around a leader after a national disaster. To many Americans, the Bush administration was a national disaster.”
- Bill Schneider, CNN’s senior political analyst, on a poll indicating overwhelming approval for Barack Obama.
(h/t Barry)
My only caveat is the word "was." Bush has 4 weeks remaining and a lot can still happen.
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD PhD, has been appointed adviser for health care to the new president. He is the author of a comprehensive plan to cover all US citizens with high quality health care which seems like exactly what we need. Unfortunately, he is more well known for his brother and incoming White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, with cries of nepotism surfacing.
... and so what? Rick Warren, creator of the Purpose Driven Life franchise, has been chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to give the invocation at the upcoming inauguration event.In his short political career, Obama has deftly manipulated political symbols to his advantage, but he's never been one to pay homage to one of the most sacred regulations of identity politics, which is that one must take care of one's own kind before turning outward. His mind operates differently. Obama does believe, as many of his supporters do, that there are uncrossable demarcation lines between the reasonable and the profane. But he doesn't believe that Warren, someone he admires for reaching outside his (Warren's) comfort zone on AIDS, is all that different from himself. Obama is simultaneously capable of admiring Warren while disdaining Warren's oogedy boogedy appraoch to gay relationships and his uninformed response to torture. Warren's views might be hurtful to gays; Obama does not think they are harmful.
Sure there were no CSI shows on TV, but we had Mannix! Who could forget Joe Mannix, before the faky self-depricating Rockford Files or the more homo-erotic Magnum, chasing the bad guys with the help of his trusty Girl Friday, Gale. That's when men were men: they smoked and drank and wore ties. I'll take Mannix.
Or, why not not just issue arrest warrants and get this thing going?The report concluded that Rumsfeld's actions were "a direct cause of detainee abuse" at Guantanamo and "influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq."
"The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own," the executive summary said.
"Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at (Guantanamo)."
The policies which the Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously [ie, composed of both Democrats and Republicans] concludes were authorized by Bush, Rumsfeld and several other top Bush officials did not merely lead to "abuse" and humiliating treatment, but are directly -- and unquestionably -- responsible for numerous detainee murders. Many of those deaths caused by abusive treatment have been formally characterized as "homicides" by autopsies performed in Iraq and Afghanistan (see these chilling compilations of autopsy findings on detainees in U.S. custody, obtained by the ACLU, which reads like a classic and compelling exhibit in a war crimes trial).[snip]Just ponder the uproar if, in any other country, the political parties joined together and issued a report documenting that the country's President and highest aides were directly responsible for war crimes and widespread detainee abuse and death. Compare the inevitable reaction to such an event if it happened in another country to what happens in the U.S. when such an event occurs -- a virtual media blackout, ongoing fixations by political journalists with petty scandals, and an undisturbed consensus that, no matter what else is true, high-level American political figures (as opposed to powerless low-level functionaries) must never be held accountable for their crimes.
We bailed out financial firms; why not car makers?
Reason: the government has ultimate responsibility for the soundness of our economy's money system; it is NOT responsible for the soundness of the economy's passenger-car manufacturing systems. Money flows in one direction, real goods and services flow in the opposite direction, as explained here. The government must (reluctantly) step in as necessary to prevent the collapse of the nation's money system; private sector nonfinancial firms succeed or fail within that system.
GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?
BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.
GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.
BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.
C'mon, you all knew this... we just didn't have any concrete evidence until now.The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown...Bowing to aggressive lobbying -- along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK -- regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of its governing philosophy, which trusted market forces and discounted the value of government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s. [emphasis Kalamazoo Post's]
In 2005, faced with ominous signs the housing market was in jeopardy, bank regulators proposed new guidelines for banks writing risky loans. Today, in the midst of the worst housing recession in a generation, the proposal reads like a list of what-ifs:
--Regulators told bankers exotic mortgages were often inappropriate for buyers with bad credit.
--Banks would have been required to increase efforts to verify that buyers actually had jobs and could afford houses.
--Regulators proposed a cap on risky mortgages so a string of defaults wouldn't be crippling.
--Banks that bundled and sold mortgages were told to be sure investors knew exactly what they were buying.
--Regulators urged banks to help buyers make responsible decisions and clearly advise them that interest rates might skyrocket and huge payments might be due sooner than expected.
Those proposals all were stripped from the final rules. None required congressional approval or the president's signature.
Barry Ritholtz has noted, "The banks that lobbied most aggressively against the rules reads like a who’s who of bankruptcy and FDIC conservatorship: IndyMac, Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, and Downey Savings." Your tax dollars hard at work bailing out their bad decisions.
So, as we all work that extra decade to make up for our lost retirement funds, we can all rest assured that President Dumbshit and his family are living off a federal pension with full-time secret service and lifetime health insurance-- all at our expense.
And don't worry about Hop-a-Long Cheney: he's been in foreign bonds for quite some time. (Patriot.)
Nobody has written more eloquently and substantively than Glenn Greeenwald on the issue of retired generals and their conflicts of interest. I have referenced a silimilar story last April and now we again have information, this time of General Barry McCaffrey's (shown at right) undisclosed interests while he touts Pentagon programs on network news shows.
Rachel Maddow: Nobody wants the car makers to fail, but is giving them $25 billion just staving off the inevitable?Sen Stabenow: Well, I believe, first of all, that we can't allow them to fail because part of our energy future are those hybrid plug-in vehicles that will frankly get us off foreign oil much faster than drilling and when we look to the future in terms of manufacturing whether it's defense, whether it's aerospace, whether it's a multitude of other industries, autos are an incredibly important part of that and, you know, one out of ten people right now work directly or indirectly for the auto industry, so this is about American jobs and I really think it's about the backbone of the middle class. So, do I think that everything will be fine after a $25 billion loan? No, I think there are some tough times ahead, but we've got to help them get through a credit crunch that is facing the world. Canada's helping their auto makers, Europe is helping their auto makers because of the credit crunch. We need to get them with a bridge loan, and as the author of the re-tooling loans to green the auto industry, I'm very focused on ensuring that we move to the green technologies. The great news is that the incoming president is also interested and very committed to doing that. So I believe that that is going to happen.
One of the irritating features of discussions regarding this topic is how often protectionists describe the Chrysler bailout of nearly thirty years ago as being a "success", because the money was paid back with interest. The reality is that Chryler's failure [would have been] the best way to spur GM and Ford to fundamentally change their business model, and for the UAW's remaining membership to understand why the existing relationship with management was not viable in the long term.
If [White Sox] general manager Ken Williams has his wish, it will be with the Sox, filling a huge vacancy after Crede's expected departure.
There's a reason the South Side is becoming the new Little Havana; Williams first acquired Jose Contreras midway through the 2004 season, then signed Cuban defector Alexei Ramirez last offseason.
After ten straight months of job losses, the NBER's head of the recession dating committee stated the obvious - the US economy is in a recession. Looking on the bright side, though, by the time the NBER typically announces that a recession began, it is usually close to or already over.
"[Emanuel] is a Sharp guy who will run a tight ship.
Very good sign, in my mind.
You want sharp elbows in that spot.
Yes, the GOP will complain. What else is new?
My choices?
Summers as Treasury
Kerry as State
Hagel as Def (Gates won't stay)
Danzig as Nat Sec Adviser
Hamre as DNI
Susan Rice at UNPlease, no Powell! Be a man, Barack!"
