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.
