Defending the indefensible...Buried in the Briefs...Still making up news

Good Morning....

Perhaps you heard last week that the "president" has approved a deal where 6 major ports on the East Coast are to be taken over by a United Arab Emirates-based shipping company, Dubai Ports World. I'm so glad the "president" has the best interests of these United States as far as jobs and National Security are concerned. It turns out that both sides of Congress, and the Republican governors of two of the states affected aren't so sure. But the "president", in all his stubbornness, has threatened to veto any legislative action created to block the sale. Wonder how much money is being funneled into his pockets to get him all riled up like that?

WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday strongly defended a United Arab Emirates company's agreement to take over the operation of seaports in six US cities, and he threatened a veto if Congress tries to pass legislation against an accord his administration has blessed.

Facing objections from both parties, Bush took the unusual step of summoning reporters to the front of Air Force One to condemn efforts to block a firm from the United Arab Emirates from buying rights to manage ports from New York to New Orleans.

The Bush administration has approved the sale of a London-based company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which now manages the ports, to state-run Dubai Ports World. The accord has raised alarms on Capitol Hill and with the Republican governors of Maryland and New York, who say that the Emirates have housed terrorists. Both states would be affected.

The federal government has approval rights over business transactions with national security implications. In this case, Dubai Ports World would oversee shipping arrivals, departures, and unloading at the docks, but the federal government would continue to handle port security.

''I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard" than a British company, Bush told reporters. He said the transaction was thoroughly scrutinized by officials, who concluded that it poses no threat to security.

Bush praised the United Arab Emirates as a close ally against terrorism and warned of sending the wrong message by condemning a business because it is Arab-owned.

But many Republicans and Democrats who represent the seaport regions remain deeply skeptical of a United Arab Emirates-owned company playing such a central role. They said some of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks used the UAE as an operational and financial hub.

The Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, called on Bush to delay the takeover and re-evaluate the risk.

Frist threatened to introduce legislation to delay the takeover if Bush does not act quickly.

Representative Mark Foley, a Republican of Florida, called Bush politically tone deaf. ''Of all the bills to veto, if he lays down this gauntlet, he'll probably have 350 members of the House ready to accept that challenge," Foley said.

Bush said: ''They ought to look at the facts and understand the consequences of what they're going to do. But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it, with a veto."

Continued...

Turning as we often do to the "warron terra", there's a paragraph-long story buried deep in the "national briefs" section of the Boston Globe today...where the Pentagon pretty much admits to abusing and torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Nice.

The military commander responsible for the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, confirmed yesterday that officials there last month turned to more aggressive methods to deter prisoners who were carrying out long-term hunger strikes to protest their incarceration, The New York Times reported today. The commander, General Bantz J. Craddock, said soldiers at Guantánamo began strapping some of the detainees into ''restraint chairs" to force-feed them after finding that some were vomiting or siphoning out the liquid they had been fed, the Times reported.

Now moving to Iraq, remember the story from some months back where the Pentagon actually paid reporters to make up favorable stories that were eventually published by the Iraqi press? At the time, there was a significant uproar, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the practice "had ended". Well, like everything else associated with the Bush Criminal Enterprise...not quite.

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that the Pentagon is reviewing its practice of paying to plant stories in the Iraqi news media, withdrawing his earlier claim that it had been stopped.

Rumsfeld told reporters he was mistaken in the earlier assertion.

''I don't have knowledge as to whether it's been stopped. I do have knowledge it was put under review. I was correctly informed. And I just misstated the facts," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.

Rumsfeld had said in a speech in New York last Friday, and in a television interview the same day, that the controversial practice had been stopped.

He said that General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, was reviewing the practice. Previously, Casey has said he saw no reason to stop it.

In his speech last week to the Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign-policy think-tank, Rumsfeld raised the issue as an example of the US military command in Baghdad seeking ''nontraditional means" to get its message to the Iraqi people in the face of a disinformation campaign by the insurgents. Continued...

Lastly, in another harbinger of spring....position players are to report to Fort Myers today.

Freedom Fries Redux...Bird flu on the move...Arabs now own our ports

Good Morning....headed into a long weekend at last!

Do you like your Danish in the morning? Well, as it turns out, so do the Iranians. But in the wake of the Muslim Cartoon Controversy, they've decided to give them a new name.

TEHRAN -- Iranians love Danish pastries, but when they look for the flaky dessert at the bakery they now have to ask for ''Roses of the Prophet Mohammed."

Bakeries across the capital were covering up their ads for Danish pastries yesterday after the confectioners' union ordered the name change in retaliation for caricatures of the Muslim prophet published in a Danish newspaper.

''Given the insults by Danish newspapers against the prophet, as of now the name of Danish pastries will give way to 'Rose of Mohammed' pastries," the union said in its order.

''This is a punishment for those who started misusing freedom of expression to insult the sanctities of Islam," said Ahmad Mahmoudi, a cake shop owner in northern Tehran.

One of Tehran's most popular bakeries, ''Danish Pastries," covered up the word ''Danish" on its sign with a black banner emblazoned ''Oh Hussein," a reference to a martyred saint of Shi'ite Islam. The banner is a traditional sign of mourning. The shop owner declined to comment yesterday.

In Zartosht Street in central Tehran, cake shop owner Mahdi Pedari didn't cover up the word ''Danish pastries" on his menu, but put the new name next to it.

''I did so just to inform my customers that Rose of Mohammed is the new name for Danish pastries," he said.

Iran has cut all commercial ties with Denmark in retaliation for the prophet cartoons.

Meanwhile, the Bird Flu continues to move into Western Europe. After last week's reports from Italy and Greece, now there's word from Slovenia. It's not that far away...and the flu doesn't need a passport to cross international borders.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia -- Slovenia became the latest European Union country to detect H5N1 bird flu and others awaited results yesterday as an EU medical specialist said the virus was likely to continue spreading.

The virus was first confirmed in the European Union on Saturday, when Greece and Italy said they had found it in wild swans. Austria and Germany reported cases on Tuesday.

''Of course we are worried and we have to get used to the fact that avian flu is now spreading within the European Union," Zsuzsanna Jakab, head of the EU's Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, told Reuters television.

''And I'm sure it will also spread to other countries beyond these five."

Hungary was awaiting results from a specialist laboratory in Britain to determine whether the H5 virus detected in three dead wild swans on Wednesday was in fact the H5N1 strain of H5. If confirmed, it would be the country's first case.

Sweden, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic carried out tests, but all results were negative.

Slovenia said a dead swan found near the Austrian border carried the deadly virus strain. Officials were testing for H5N1 in another three dead swans in which H5 had been found, while Germany discovered 10 more H5N1 cases. Greece detected an additional two cases and Austria also reported one more.

Lastly, there's this rather stunning story from Washington...it seems that the President has turned over control of the Ports of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami, and Philadelphia to an Arab-owned company. Congress is none too pleased, and you shouldn't be happy, either.

WASHINGTON -- The management of major US ports taken over by an Arab-owned company? What was the Bush administration thinking when it allowed such a thing?

That is the question being asked by members of Congress from both parties. Their indignation is aimed at the $6.8 billion purchase by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates, a corporation that handles most operations at ports in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

At a news conference yesterday, a group of seven House and Senate members from both parties demanded that an interagency task force on foreign investments, which approved the transaction, examine it more closely.

The group asserted that although the United Arab Emirates may have a strongly pro-US government, some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers allegedly used the country as a transit point, and that its banking system has been used by several groups allegedly affiliated with Al Qaeda.

''Our ports are major potential terrorist targets," said Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat of Connecticut. ''I strongly urge the administration to thoroughly investigate this acquisition."

Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican of Oklahoma, said, ''Handing the keys to US strategic ports to a regime that recognized the Taliban is not a sound next step in our war against terror."

Administration officials defended approval of the deal by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a panel with representatives from 12 US agencies that reviews foreign takeovers of US companies or possible risks to national security.

Do you feel safer?

Hey, the Big Dig worked!...Trial by Media...Harvard prints cartoons

Well, it's been 18 years since construction began on Boston's "Big Dig". After putting up with all the corruption, delays, cost overruns, leaky tunnels, and wholesale disruption of downtown Boston for nearly two decades...it turns out that it may have been worth it after all.

The project has reduced by 62 percent the number of daily vehicle hours traveled on both the central artery, the airport tunnels, and Storrow Drive eastbound.

Speeds on Storrow Drive east to I-93 north have improved from 4 to 21 miles per hour.

Afternoon peak travel times along the length of the I-93 northbound through downtown have dropped from 16 to 3.1 minutes.

''This is the first report done since the opening of the project, and it demonstrates that those commitments and promises made back in the 1980s were true," the authority chairman, Matthew J. Amorello, said yesterday.

The report says that one of the most far-reaching impacts the project has had involves giving more people faster access to Logan.

When the turnpike extension connecting Interstate 90 with Logan Airport, opened fully in 2003 and allowed drivers from the South Shore to avoid snaking through downtown Boston to the Callahan tunnel, the number of people who found themselves within 40 minutes of drive time of the airport grew by 800,000, to a total of about 2.5 million.

That extension, coupled with the opening of the Ted Williams Tunnel, resulted in less traffic on the Callahan and Sumner tunnels, where average weekday speeds increased from 13 miles per hour to 36 miles per hour.

The report projects that the highway improvements will attract $7 billion in private investment, adding more than 43,000 jobs along the I-93 corridor and in the South Boston Seaport District.

''Looking toward the future, the pattern of new development in the Back Bay that originally derived from the Turnpike extension project is being repeated in South Boston and along the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway as a result of the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project," the report says. The turnpike extension from Newton to Boston was completed in 1965.

The report estimates that property tax revenues from Big Dig development on the South Boston Waterfront, where large parcels remain undeveloped, will equal 9 to 11 percent of the city's 2005 tax base of $1.13 billion when the waterfront is fully developed as planned, in about 20 years.

(More...)

Staying local, I now turn to a story that I have avoided covering, especially since it appeared on the front page of "People" Magazine. Accused murderer Neil Entwistle is scheduled to return to the Commonwealth today...and there's worry that he won't be able to get a fair trial due to all the publicity. I suppose keeping the story out of the 'tabloids' might have helped, hmm? How many sheeple have already tried, convicted, and hung him in absentia all due to speculation fueled by the media?

...With the publicity surrounding the case, several legal specialists said yesterday that it will be difficult for Entwistle to get a fair trial, particularly after a judge unsealed police affidavits this week that detail much of prosecutors' evidence said to support allegations that he shot Rachel and 9-month-old Lillian in their Hopkinton home last month.

The lawyers said they were appalled that Framingham District Judge Robert V. Greco made public 151 pages of affidavits that allege, among other things, that during the week of the killings Neil Entwistle surfed the Internet for websites that describe how to kill people.

''I think it's shocking, absolutely shocking," said Charles Rankin, a well-known criminal defense lawyer and one of the overseers of the state public defender agency. ''It just feeds more stories in the media and makes it harder to eventually find a jury that hasn't heard in excruciating detail the Commonwealth's version of events that hasn't been tested by any adversary process."

Jeffrey B. Abramson, a specialist on juries and a former Middlesex County prosecutor who teaches legal studies at Brandeis University, said that relentless news coverage of the killings and Neil Entwistle's flight to his native England already made it hard to find a fair and impartial jury. With the release of the affidavits, which also described alleged Internet searches by Neil Entwistle for paid escorts, Abramson said he could not fathom how that can ever be done.

Greco unsealed the affidavits Monday, over prosecutors' objections, after news organizations, including the Globe, sought their release because of intense public interest in the case. The judge said he had to balance the rights of all the parties in the case, privacy concerns, and the ''extent of community interest." Based on those factors, he unsealed the documents after ordering a few details blacked out...

Lastly this morning, there's word that a conservative student newspaper at Harvard University has reprinted the inflammatory Dutch cartoons showing the prophet Muhammed. I haven't seen these cartoons, so I don't have an opinion regarding their content....but I make note of the fact that the University hasn't been overrun by rioting extremists, either.

A conservative student newspaper at Harvard University has become one of the few media outlets in the country to show inflammatory Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, angering students on campus and prompting a forum to discuss the controversy.

The four cartoons appeared in the Feb. 8 issues of The Harvard Salient, a conservative, biweekly newspaper, under the headline, ''A pox (err, jihad) on free expression." The student editors called the cartoons, including a sketch of Mohammed carrying a bomb in his turban, ''relatively innocuous."

''Publishing materials that criticize the ways Islam has been usurped worldwide for purposes of violence and oppression is a risky, but honest and necessary, business," the editors wrote in an accompanying editorial.

Muslim students and others were angered when copies of the paper arrived on campus Thursday, calling the decision to reprint the cartoons a show of disrespect to Muslims. ''What really bothers them are that these are schoolmates who are out to offend them," said Khalid M. Yasin, a junior and president of the Harvard Islamic Society. ''They're people their age that are really attacking things that are very integral to their lives."

Travis R. Kavulla, a junior and the editor of the paper, said the student journalists meant no disrespect to Muslims, and had hoped instead to provoke a debate on campus. ''Now that [the cartoons] have provoked such a firestorm around the world, it's a shame that the mainstream media isn't publishing them because many people don't understand what they look like," he said.

On the same page, the paper also reprinted two anti-Semitic cartoons that ran in newspapers in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, including one that superimposed a swastika over the Star of David.

After the paper was published, some students called for Kavulla to resign. Tomorrow night, the Harvard College Interfaith Council is hosting a forum to discuss the cartoons.

And so, the world turns on, whether us Americans choose to pay attention or not....given our current leadership, I'd say "not".

Cheney's Manhunt

Good Morning. In case you missed it, Vice President Cheney shot a man this weekend.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally wounded a companion with shotgun pellets on a weekend quail hunt in Texas, his office said on Sunday.

Cheney's companion, Austin lawyer Harry Whittington, 78, was listed in stable condition after being brought in on Saturday night, said Yvonne Wheeler, a spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Cheney's office said Whittington had been sprayed by birdshot while hunting at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, about 200 miles south of San Antonio.

But of course, the news couldn't be released without a good dose of spin, to whit:

The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. The vice president's office did not disclose the accident until the day after it happened.

And then of course, typical of the neo-con death cult that Cheney is in charge of, he did not accept responsibility, and in fact, blamed the victim:

...Cheney, an experienced hunter, did not realize Whittington had rejoined the group without announcing himself, which is proper protocol among hunters.

"They had no idea he was there," Armstrong said.

"A bird flew up, the vice president followed it through around to his right and shot, and unfortunately, unbeknownst to anybody, Harry was there and he got peppered pretty good with a spray of 28-gauge pellets," Armstrong said in a telephone interview.

"He was turning, facing the vice president, but turning to the right, and it sprayed him across the right side of his face, his shoulder, his chest and along the rib cage area," she said....

...She described Cheney as "an excellent, conscientious shot."

"The person who is not doing the shooting at that moment in time is just as responsible and, should be, as the person actually shooting," Armstrong said.

Ah well...at least the VP's medical team took care of the poor man...and he's reportedly going to be OK.

Armstrong said Cheney's medical team attended to Whittington before he was taken to the hospital.

And you know what the really funny thing is? 'Ol creepy crooked mouth is a lifelong member of the NRA. This comes to us right from their website:

ALWAYS keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
This is the primary rule of gun safety. A safe direction means that the gun is pointed so that even if it were to go off it would not cause injury or damage. The key to this rule is to control where the muzzle or front end of the barrel is pointed at all times. Common sense dictates the safest direction, depending on different circumstances.

Know your target and what is beyond.
Be absolutely sure you have identified your target beyond any doubt. Equally important, be aware of the area beyond your target. This means observing your prospective area of fire before you shoot. Never fire in a direction in which there are people or any other potential for mishap. Think first. Shoot second.

But what am I thinking? He's the Vice President! The rules don't apply to him anyway.

Never heard of it...Treason in high places...DNC donates surplus

Good Morning....in a feeble attempt to justify domestic spying, the Bush "administration" has come out with the news that a major terrorist attack on LA was foiled in 2002. The problem with that is the Mayor of LA never heard of such a thing. Think somebody pulled that out of their arse?

LOS ANGELES - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday he was blindsided by

President Bush's announcement of new details about a purported 2002 plot to crash a plane into a downtown skyscraper.

But the White House and state officials said the mayor's office had been contacted beforehand.

"I'm amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels," the Democratic mayor told The Associated Press. "I don't expect a call from the president — but somebody."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Los Angeles officials were told Wednesday about the president's planned remarks.

"And the word I heard was that there was great appreciation for the notification that we provided," he said.

Bush has referred to the 2002 plot before, but he publicly filled in the details Thursday.

Bush said terrorists had begun planning to fly a commercial airplane into the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast, the US Bank Tower in Los Angeles. He said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative.

The mayor said he was watching Bush's speech on television Thursday when he first learned of the new details about the hijacking plot.

"I would have expected a direct call from the White House," Villaraigosa said at a City Hall news conference.

Meanwhile, new revelations are coming out in the Plamegate spy scandal. Scooter Libby has pointed the finger squarely at Darth Cheney...apparently he authorized Scooter to leak sensitive and classified information to the media. In another time and place, that would have gotten you shot. The best we can hope for today is an indictment.

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff testified that his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to court records in the CIA leak case.

Cheney was one of the ''superiors" I. Lewis ''Scooter" Libby said had authorized him to make the disclosures, according to sources familiar with the investigation into Libby's discussions with reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. But it is unclear whether Cheney instructed his former top aide to release classified information, because parts of the National Intelligence Estimate were previously declassified.

The disclosure in a legal document written by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald demonstrates one way in which Cheney was involved in responding to public allegations by Plame Wilson's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the administration had exaggerated questionable intelligence to justify war with Iraq.

In a letter written in January and released in court papers filed by Libby's defense Monday, Fitzgerald wrote that Libby testified that his ''superiors" authorized him to disclose information from the National Intelligence Estimate to reporters in the summer of 2003. The National Journal first reported on its website yesterday that Cheney had provided the authorization. The intelligence estimate is a classified report prepared by intelligence officers for high-level government officials, and some parts are declassified in a summary and available to the public. (Continued...)

And lastly this morning, in a clear indication of the difference between Republicans and Democrats...the DNC has donated $4m in surplus from the convention to a host of local charities. You can be sure that any such surplus from the RNC was donated to a host of special interest's wallets.

BOSTON --The committee that organized the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston gave its $4 million surplus to 32 charities and nonprofit organizations on Thursday, including some to the city's top cultural institutions.

The Institute of Contemporary Art and Zoo New England received the largest grants, $400,000 each. Other organizations, including the Boston Center for the Arts, the Museum of Science and the JFK Library Foundation, received donations of between $25,000 and $300,000.

The convention cost more than $100 million to stage. The federal government paid security costs of about $40 million, while the Democratic National Committee spent $14.9 million in federal funds to run the convention itself.

The Boston 2004 committee raised $56.8 million from private donors, about $6.4 million more than they spent. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry was nominated at the convention, then eventually lost the election to Republican incumbent George W. Bush.

The committee has already given away $1 million to the Rose Kennedy Greenway and another $1 million to a trust fund to improve city parks.

The organizers wanted to distribute the rest of the money to groups whose missions are similar to the convention committee's goal of enhancing the city and promoting tourism and business development, said president David Passafaro.

So, it's another Friday after another long week....we've got snow coming this weekend, maybe a foot or more. Time to break out the sleds!

Manila makes a deal...

Good Morning. Got some news on the 'warron terra' to report today. It's from the Philippines. Seems that the truce with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on my home island of Mindanao has been holding since 2003...and the government is looking to make it official.

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine government could sign a peace deal with Muslim rebels as early as September, Manila's chief negotiator Silvestre Afable said on Wednesday after returning from the latest round of talks in Malaysia.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has been fighting for an independent state for Muslims on the southern island of Mindanao, although a truce has been holding since July 2003.

Negotiators from the two sides said on Tuesday they had agreed to a preliminary deal on land claims, the key to ending a nearly four-decade revolt that has cost more than 120,000 lives.

Agreement on an ancestral domain for Muslims in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic nation could be reached as soon as March, allowing the first formal talks in three years to begin, a joint statement said.

"We're working toward a peace deal, hopefully by September," Afable told reporters in Manila after a two-day meeting at the Malaysian seaside resort of Port Dickson.

Afable said he could not rule out the possibility of hardline elements breaking away from the rebel group but added there was "a consistent assurance from the MILF that they are negotiating as a consolidated group."

A peace deal with the 12,000-strong MILF would speed development of impoverished but mineral-rich Mindanao and improve the overall investment and security climate in the Philippines, the closest ally of the United States in Southeast Asia.

"The light at the end of the tunnel is not only flickering, but is getting nearer and nearer," Mohaqher Iqbal, head of the MILF delegation, said on Tuesday. (Continued...)

But, I don't suppose we could tell the "president" that diplomacy and negotiations can work...that requires intelligence and commitment, two things sorely lacking in Washington these days. Speaking of Washington, there's a possibilty that that intelligence level could bump up some after the midterm elections...at least 40 Iraq veterans have launched campaigns for Congress. So there is some hope that someone with actual combat experience might get in and influence some policy. Perhaps there is a future president among them. Don't forget, John F. Kennedy got his start as a Congressman in 1946.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- After 20 years in the Air Force and Bronze Star service during the 1991 Gulf War, Jay Fawcett, a Democrat, decided to come home and run for Congress, largely out of disgust with the way American troops were being used in Iraq.

''I think it's just gotten to the point where a significant number of us who've served are looking at this administration particularly -- and Congress doesn't get off the hook -- and saying: 'What're you doing? What's the plan?' " he said.

Fawcett is part of a large and possibly unprecedented number of former soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines running for Congress this year.

About 40 of the candidates are Republicans, while at least 55 are Democrats. By one count, at least 11 veterans of the Iraq war or Afghanistan are hoping to get elected to the House or Senate, all but one of them Democrats.

The fighting Democrats, as some call themselves, say their military experience could give them the credibility to criticize the war without being dismissed out of hand by the GOP as naïve and weak on defense, as the Bush administration has often done.

''One of the things I think is behind this movement is, we're not stupid in the military. We know when we've been used and misused," said Navy veteran Bill Winter, a Democrat who hopes to challenge Representative Tom Tancredo, a Republican, in the GOP-dominated suburbs of Denver.

Former senator Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat who lost both legs and an arm while serving in Vietnam, said the Iraq war veterans running as Democrats will offer ''a direct rebuttal" to the administration on the Iraq war.

''This administration, come April, will be going into the fourth year of this war after the president said three weeks into it 'Major combat over, mission accomplished. Bring them on,' " Cleland said. ''You tell me who's out of touch. It's not these Iraqi veterans that are coming back and saying, 'This is not the way it was on the ground there, and I'm going to do something to change this.' "

Remember all the talk in the SOTU about ending America's "addiction to oil"? Well, big surprise, the "president" is a lying sack of crap. He sure talked a good game, but when the rubber hits the road, there's going to be a $100m shortfall. But you can be sure his buddies at ExxonMobil support these measures wholeheartedly.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's latest spending plan is unlikely to substantially reduce US oil consumption in the short term because it slashes $100 million from federal programs promoting conservation and falls short of the commitment in last year's energy bill to make vast new investments in renewable and emerging technologies, like hydrogen fuel and solar power.

Despite Bush's ambitious goal of cutting Middle East oil imports by 75 percent within 20 years -- outlined in his State of the Union address a week ago -- the president's budget calls for an 18 percent cut in programs aimed at reducing energy consumption, like financial aid to help needy families better insulate their homes and research to make cars use fuel more efficiently.

Critics say the budget sends a mixed message on energy policy: The president wants to invest in renewable energy but would spend less on it than he promised in the energy bill he signed and would scale down efficiency programs that would more quickly reduce the nation's demand for oil.

''The reality in no way meets the rhetoric," said Dan W. Reicher, president of New Energy Capital, a Vermont-based renewable energy company. Reicher, deputy energy secretary under President Clinton, said the White House budget cuts ''energy efficiency and other vital programs in order to pay for renewable-energy increases. It's hard to see that we reach the goals the president has set."

Democrats also allege that the president still refuses to abandon his administration's longstanding emphasis on oil drilling and exploration. He is giving the Interior Department's budget for drilling on public lands a 10 percent increase; is reviving a politically nettlesome proposal to allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; and would provide $4.6 million to manage the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline, a longtime oil industry priority.

Do pay attention today, there's plenty of news swirling about if you're aware of it.

Paraphrasing Dr. King

Martin Luther King was carrying these notes in his pocket the morning he was shot. Coretta Scott King read them at a rally in New York not quite 3 weeks later. It was about the war of the day in Vietnam, but they're still apropo for today. I have changed the requisite places and people...I'm sure Dr. King wouldn't mind.



The Ten Commandments for Iraq:

Thou shalt not believe in a military victory…

Number two. Thou shalt not believe in a political victory.

Number three. Thou shalt not believe that they, the Iraqis, love us.

Number four. Thou shalt not believe that the Sunni government has the support of the people.

Number five. Thou shalt not believe that the majority of the Iraqis look upon the insurgents as terrorists.

Number six. Thou shalt not believe that the figures of killed enemies or killed Americans.

Number seven. Thou shalt not believe that the generals know best.

Number eight. Thou shalt not believe that the enemies’ victory means terrorism.

Number nine. Thou shalt not believe that the world supports the United States.

Number ten. Thou shalt not kill.


Come to think of it, it's surprising how little I actually had to change. Thanks to LSD at Air America Place for the original post!

Mass Responds to SOTU...Plea Bargain at the Station...Great Pick

Good Morning...we'll go with the obvious lead story.

WASHINGTON --Sen. John Kerry took sharp aim at his former rival after Tuesday night's State of the Union address, accusing President Bush of living in a "fantasyland" while America's problems at home and abroad worsen.

"In Republican Washington, the rhetoric continues to mislead and the promises continue to be broken," Kerry, D-Mass., said in a statement. "It's going to take more than poll-tested lines in a speech to strengthen our union."

Kerry is seen as a potential 2008 presidential candidate.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., criticized Bush's proposal to end U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

"The President also said tonight that we need to end our addiction to oil -- an idea I welcome if it means he'll also end his addiction to Big Oil," Kennedy said in a statement. "To live up to that bold statement, the President should insist that his cronies in the oil industry return to the U.S. Treasury a fair share of the immense windfalls they received from sky-high profits."

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Malden, said if Bush was serious about ending the nation's reliance on Mideast oil, he would embrace measures like boosting fuel economy rates for cars and SUVs to 40 miles per gallon over the next decade. Markey said much of Bush's energy plan had been proposed before by the White House.

Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Lowell, said he was surprised Bush did not focus on needed reforms in the wake of the corruption scandal embroiling Capitol Hill.

"With 70 percent of the American public believing Washington is corrupt, I was disappointed the President didn't tackle corruption issues head on," Meehan said in a statement.

Staying local, remember the Station Nightclub Fire? Well, a plea-bargain has just been reached where the band manager will admit his guilt for setting off the pyrotechnics that sparked the fire, and will spend no more than 10 years in prison. Not bad for killing 100 people, eh?

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --Eileen DiBonaventura sat in the back of a courtroom and showed little emotion as she learned the man who set the deadly nightclub fire that killed 100 people -- including her son -- would spend no more than 10 years in prison.

But she strode out of the courtroom Tuesday and went straight to prosecutors after Judge Francis Darigan announced that former Great White tour manager Daniel Biechele would plead guilty to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter for setting the Feb. 20, 2003 blaze.

After a closed-door meeting that lasted 45 minutes, she emerged to tell reporters she was disgusted. Biechele had originally faced 200 counts, each with a maximum 30-year sentence.

"It's a mere slap on the wrist. My son is dead and so are 99 others," she said.

Her son, Albert, was 18 when he was killed -- among dozens of concertgoers who had turned out one chilly night to hear a heavy metal band play to a packed crowd at The Station, a nightclub in West Warwick.

Darigan said the agreement "meets the ends of justice" and spares the victims' families from what he said would be a lengthy and costly trial. Attorney General Patrick Lynch said he was working to bring justice to the families.

But that has brought little solace to those who survived and the relatives left behind by those who died. (Continued...)

Lastly this morning, if you've been desperately hoping for a Democratic Governor of our fair Commonwealth....it looks like leading candidade Tom Reilly may have just shot himself in the foot with his pick for Liuetenant Governor. Nice Going, Tom!

State Representative Marie P. St. Fleur, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's choice to be his lieutenant governor running mate, has had three delinquent tax debts in the last four years, including an April 2005 federal tax lien of $12,711 against her and her husband, according to records examined yesterday by the Globe.

St. Fleur, in an interview last night, disclosed that she also owes $40,000 in delinquent federally backed student loans.

St. Fleur told the Globe last night that she had paid down the federal tax debt to about $8,000 by making $500 monthly payments since last spring. But later last night, Corey Welford, a Reilly campaign spokesman, corrected her, saying that she had in fact made only one $500 payment last May and that the balance is still more than $12,000.

Reilly, St. Fleur said, first approached her Saturday about being his running mate and offered her the spot on Sunday. She said she told Reilly that she had ''some financial issues" with taxes and student loans, but that he didn't ask her to provide any numbers and only sought assurance from her that she was dealing with the problems.

''This is embarrassing to me; I knew this was going to come out," St. Fleur said, adding later: ''I knew that when I stepped out like this that it might be the end of my career."

Nonetheless, she said, she has no intention of stepping aside nor any sense of whether her debt will be a political liability. ''That's up to how people interpret this," she said.

I've been weighing whether or not to volunteer for Mr. Reilly's campaign...I'm thinking I should check out Deval Patrick now.