This here is a 'wow' article on Dubai. It doesn't surprise me, but it's pretty shocking nonetheless.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

Recap

So.

In 1999, wealthy political investors known as 'pioneers' came up with the idea of, and financed, the presidential campaign of George W. Bush, son of former President George H.W. Bush, who was at that time holding the largely ceremonial Governorship of Texas.

Under the ruthless and brilliant direction of Karl Rove, and with the aid of a news media intent on ridiculing the awkward but competent Al Gore, and with the aid of a Nader candidacy sucking voters disenchanted with Clinton's centrism, the candidacy of George W. Bush manuevered itself into striking distance of the Presidency.

With the aid of the President's brother, Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, and Katherine Harris, Secretary of State of Florida and state chair for the Bush campaign, Voter rolls were liberally cleansed of African American and other likely Democratic groups of voters. An extremely close election in Florida was called by the networks for Bush, despite the fact that a recount was likely and that recounts tend to add more votes from poorer, more Democratic districts due to their inferior voting machines.

With a complicit news media and a Secretary of State acting in Bush's favor, Gore had to go to the Florida Supreme Court to try to get a recount, while fighting a public relations battle to convince people he was not being a sore loser. The Florida Supreme Court (who should be given medals for patriotism) came down with a sensible decision on how to recount the votes, based on Florida law which clearly favored determining voter intent.

With a recount likely to end up favoring Gore, the United States Supreme Court shockingly agreed to review Bush's case. Then even more shockingly, they ruled that the recount must stop. For the U.S. Supreme Court to meddle in a state's election, even for a national office, was shocking and unprecendented. Their logic was flawed. And yet they stopped the recount and gave the election to George Bush. Months later, findings were released which indicated that had a full recount based on determining voter intent been undertaken according to Florida law, Gore would have emerged with more votes, and would have won the Presidency. And yet, he did not, due to the astounding, anti-democratic and unpatriotic actions of Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and 5 Supreme Court Justices, all of whom derelicted their duties as Americans in order to install their preferred candidate in the White House. Let us name them. William Rehnquist. Antoin Scalia. Sandra Day O'Connor. Anthony Kennedy. Clarence Thomas.

Once President, the administration of George Bush, largely run by Vice President Dick Cheney, proceeded to hand out large sums to the 'pioneers' in the guise of a number of disingenous policies - policies whose effects were usually contradictory to what their names described. No Child Left Behind. Clear Skies Initiative. Regulations were dismantled and industry exectives were appointed to regulate (or to not regulate) their own industries. The Alternative Minimum Tax was abolished - retroactively, and taxes already paid were returned to large corporations that financed Bush's campaign. Meanwhile, Neo-Conservatives from the Project for The New American Century were shaping foreign policy.

Before September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration ignored warnings from the Clinton Administration and from subsequent intelligence that indicated that Al Qaeda was capable of and was planning an attack on American soil. On that day, over 3000 Americans died in the attacks. The Neo-cons' PNAC document stated that a 'New Pearl Harbor' might be necessary to garner public support for its foreign policy goals. With 9/11, that event happened. And what the Bush Administration did after 9/11 is exactly what the Neo-Cons proposed.

They used the good will and sympathy from the nation and the world to enact more policies which enriched the 'Pioneers'. They used that good will to go to Afghanistan, where a pipeline opposed by the government there soon got underway. They used that good will to sell the nation and mainstream news media on a war in Iraq, which helped them to control the world's energy supply, and allowed them to funnel still more money to Halliburton and other 'pioneer' companies such as Blackwater. Meanwhile, they ran the national deficits up and ballooned the national debt. With all the money going into their contributors' pockets. Meanwhile thousands of American soldiers died. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died, and millions suffered as the infrastructure of Iraq was destroyed. Here in America, the infrastructure crumbled. Laws protecting ordinary working Americans disappeared. Those people got poorer. But the pioneers got richer, and this was all that mattered to them. This was a grift. This was organized crime on a huge scale. They stole our surplus, then they borrowed money and stole that. It was the joining of Corporate and Political power - the very definition of Facism.

Slowly, more and more Americans began to wake up and notice that something was wrong. This was not an administration. These were not conservatives. These were not moral Christians. The geniality of Bush fooled people for a long time. People trusted Bush to be decent. They believed him, and if someone like him was in control, it seemed unlikely that evil was being done. But Bush was not in control. He was never in control. He wasn't interested in being in control. That's why he was the perfect front man for this operation.

As the levees crumbled in New Orleans and Katrina drowned the city and its poorer residents, the last of the veneer began to strip away. Throughout history, faced with this dilemma, Fascist dictators became more and more desperate and would crack down harder and harder. And they would not reliquish control until it was pried from their dead hands. However, in this peculiar form of American Facism, the unmotivated and empty vessel of a leader had no power or interest in maintaining power to the end. In typical Bush fashion, they prepared to leap overboard with their profits as the ship sunk. Like rats, off they went in their lifeboats, with one last bailout of the institutions whose unregulated malfeasance caused the economy to collapse. And they rowed away, waiting for a day when the people once again trusted their Goverment and their news media. And when that day comes, they will once again try to exploit the public trust for private greed. Meanwhile, they will buy up the desperate nation's resources for pennies on the dollar. They are desperate for wealth and power, and they think this makes them better than the rest of us. In fact, they are sick, deranged human beings, who think it perfectly acceptable for others to suffer and die so that they can have more and more.

A new day is upon us. A new generation of leaders, led by the decent and earnest Barack Obama, has gained power and tilted the balance once more toward a vision of the public good. As we continue to feel the effects of this Bush hurricane which has leveled our nation, we will all suffer and we will all have to work together to restore what we have lost. To rebuild on a solid foundation of teamwork and mutual respect. Power will once again belong to those that have earned it in the eyes of their fellow citizens.It will be hard, and it will be good.

But I, for one, will never forget what those bastards did to us. What they did to our soldiers. To the residents of New Orleans. To the people of Iraq. Whether Bush and Cheney and everyone else who was a party to this scheme spends the rest of their lives in a jail cell or sipping margaritas in Paraguay doesn't matter to me anymore. But I want the people of this nation to know what happened. I want the details to be exposed, and publicized. We should know exactly what they did and how they did it, so that next time, more of us will see the warning signs, so that people like Dick Cheney, who by all rights should have lived his life muttering to himself at the last seat of some bar, will remain there, and leave the rest of us to build the best life we can for our families and our communities.

To George Bush and Dick Cheney and the Pioneers: Fuck off and die.

Love,

Peter Fuhry

I'm going to go a bit against the grain here. Why exactly, now more than any other time, is Harry Reid being Mr. Tough Guy about Blagojevich's appointment of Burris to Obama's Senate seat?

If he calls a vote to exclude Mr. Burris, he's on shaky Constitutional ground. If they seat Mr. Burris and then try to expel him, he needs a 2/3 vote, which may be difficult to get. Why invite a lawsuit and a big hubbub? And why all the posturing, threatening not to seat a Blago appointment? Now that Blago has called your bluff, you have to step to the plate.

Meanwhile the Illinois secretary of state threatens that he won't certify the appointment. On what authority?

Everyone is falling all over themselves to prevent this guy from making an appointment. Meanwhile, though it may be clear that he isn't an honorable fellow and isn't fit for office, he has yet to be convicted of anything - he has yet to be impeached, and he is still, legally, the Governor of Illinois. Everyone is getting their panties in a bunch over this guy, but they're making the mistake of posturing and threatening. And they don't have the power to follow through.

Read it: We don't have the power to easily and ethically stop Blagojevich from appointing Burris to the Senate.

And what is the big deal anyway? So Burris, who seems to be at least somewhat qualified, serves out Obama's term. Then, he probably loses the primary in the next election, as he has before... Unless he distinguishes himself and distances himself from the Blagojevich stink.

I think Reid will cave on this, as he caves on most things after talking tough. But I think he picked the wrong thing to talk tough about. Of all the things!

I would like to see Reid step down. He's shown bad judgment in the way he's handled this. This is like bad parenting. You make threats and yell and scream, and then capitulate. How about staying quiet and calmly enforcing rules and pushing your agenda as best you can? How about calling the Republicans' bluff like everyone calls yours?

How about Russ Feingold replacing Harry Reid? Shit, even John Kerry would be better.

* * *

And another thing. Diane Feinstein will never whine about Big Business ruling America and stealing from the treasury. But appointing Leon Panetta to head the CIA? Hissy fit. I think Diane Feinstein is an idiot.

This is a ballsy move for Obama. I like it, because it's confrontational. It says "I'm going to change the culture at the CIA," and that's a dangerous thing to do. It's also a scary thing for Panetta to do. But it speaks to a conviction and a dedication to reversing the torture ethos, and removing the stink of providing 'intelligence' to satisfy a political need. Panetta has a history of being principled.

This is awesome

This is the most awesomely awesome thing I've read in a long time.


RAHM EMANUEL: This is Rahm.
ROD BLAGOJEVICH: Hey Rahm, yeah it's Rod.
EMANUEL: Uh-huh. What's going on governor, I'm busy.
BLAGO: Well, it's about that Senate appointment...
EMANUEL: We already gave you the list of people we like.
BLAGO: Yeah, I been looking the list over. Interesting names. Good people. How's the transition going?
EMANUEL: It's going fine, governor. Are you calling to fucking tell me anything, or what, cause I--
BLAGO: No no, I'm just wondering if you have all your picks already made. I heard something about Dashle for HHS--
EMANUEL: I'm not gonna discuss ongoing deliberations, gov, you know that.
BLAGO: Hey, come on Rahm, let's not act like I'm a stranger here.
EMANUEL: Did I call you a stranger? If I thought you were a stranger, you think I'd be interrupting my important fucking business to take this fucking phone call?
BLAGO: Hey you don't have to get curt with me, Rahm.
EMANUEL: This isn't me being curt, Gov, this is me being fucking busy. Now what did you call about?
BLAGO: I'm just feeling you out, seeing if Valerie [Jarret] still wants that Senate seat, just wondering what kind of priority that is for the President-Elect.
EMANUEL: Actually, it's not a priority. Valerie's had second thoughts about the job.
BLAGO: What, she doesn't want it anymore?
EMANUEL: She's having second thoughts. You want more details, you ask her.
BLAGO: She won't take my calls.
EMANUEL: Big fucking surprise.
BLAGO: What's that supposed to mean?
EMANUEL: Um, I don't know, what's it supposed to mean governor? A.) You're a fucking crook. B.) You're a fucking asshole. C.) All of the above.
BLAGO: I'm clean Rahm, you know this. You think that fucking Fitzgerald would being twiddling his fucking thumbs if he had shit to go on?
EMANUEL: I gotta go, Gov. You appoint who you want, we really don't give a shit.
BLAGO: What if I appoint Valerie, what if she takes it?
EMANUEL: What do you want me to say? We'd appreciate it, I'm not gonna fucking kiss your ring over it.
BLAGO: "Appreciate it"? Come on, this is a senate seat we're talking about. It's worth a fuck of a lot more than appreciation.
EMANUEL: You asked us for a list, we gave you a fucking list, you want to make your own list then make your own fucking list. [Raising voice] But if you're asking for anything else from me, or Barack, or Valerie, then you can fucking stop talking right now Rod.
BLAGO: Wait a sec there Rahm. Wait just a fucking minute. Who are you to talk to me like that? I fucking made you.
EMANUEL: You made me? You made me? Tell me you're fucking joking.
BLAGO: No no no, you listen to me shit-face. You see this list I got, the names motherfucking Obama fucking wants for the Senate. I just ripped it in two. How you like that? Oops, Harris just dropped it in the shredder. Harris?
HARRIS (muffled): Yes sir?
BLAGO: Did you just drop that list in the shredder?
[Whirring, shredder noise]
HARRIS (muffled): I did.
EMANUEL: Do you have me on fucking speakerphone?
BLAGO: It's in the shredder, Rahm. The list is bye bye.
EMANUEL: Hold on a sec -- you got me on fucking speakerphone? Who the fuck do you think I am?
BLAGO: Who are you Rahm? Who are you? You're shit, you hear me? Don't come back to Chicago Rahm, it's not your town any more.
EMANUEL: Pick up the phone Rod.
BLAGO: I'll put someone in the senate who will fucking fuck you. I might even put myself in there, how you like that Rahm? How you gonna explain that to fucking Barack, every time he's gotta call me up for my fucking vote. He'd have to take my calls then, wouldn't he?
EMANUEL: [Screaming] I said pick up the FUCKING phone!
BLAGO: [Picks up phone, speakerphone off] I got your attention now, didn't I?
EMANUEL: Shut the fuck up and listen to me for one second Rod. And I want you to listen carefully, because this is the last time I'm ever going to talk to you. You are fucking dead to me. You been fucking dead to Barack since '06, now you're dead to me. Know what that means? That means you're dead to my people in Chicago, Daley on down, and all these friends you think you have aren't gonna touch you with a ten foot fucking pole.
BLAGO: Oh now you're the fucking Godfather? Fuck you.
EMANUEL: No fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.
BLAGO: Fuck you!
EMANUEL: Listen up asshole. The shit's gonna hit the fan, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, and when Fitz finally brings down the hammer it's gonna be my name that's going through your head. You won't know the hows or the fucking whys, but it's gonna have my fucking fingerprints all over it. Have a great life fatso.
BLAGO: Hey fuck--
EMANUEL: [Click.]
End of conversation

Why Minnesota Rocks

This is a release from the Citizens for Electoral Integrity of Minnesota. This is a great thing to read, and explains pretty well how to run an election. I'm putting it here in its entirety - pg

Why Minnesota's Recount Process is a Model for the Country
- Statement by CEIMN November 20, 2008

Mark Halvorson, Director, Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota; David Klein, Elections Operations Specialist, formerly with the Ohio Secretary of State; and Pam Smith, President, Verified Voting Foundation.

With a celebrity candidate and record-setting expenditures the race to represent Minnesota in the US Senate captured the nation’s attention even before the historically close margin was announced. An automatic, manual recount of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race that began could last until mid-December. As non-partisan, election integrity advocates in Minnesota, we welcome this attention and hope that one of the outcomes will be lessons learned that strengthen our democracy.

One reason for our optimism is that Minnesota’s election system minimizes problems and circumstances that have historically reduced voter confidence. The occurrence of such problems and circumstances in other states plagued the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. The people, procedures, and technology comprising Minnesota’s election system are among the most respected in the nation. Minnesota’s election system has great potential to certify results that accurately reflect the will of the voters and in which voters can have confidence.

Minnesota’s reputation for electoral integrity begins with the state's choice of election technology: a system of voter-marked paper ballots which are read by optical-scan machines. A meaningful recount is possible because the paper ballots provide a permanent record of each voter’s intent. Such a permanent record does not exist in all states; over one third of the states use electronic machines that do not offer voter-verifiable paper records. Many top computer security experts have warned that paperless electronic voting is inherently insecure and does not provide for a real recount.

Minnesota’s election process is characterized by transparency and openness. Citizens can, and do, observe the process. For example, Citizens For Election Integrity Minnesota, The League of Women Voters Minnesota, and Common Cause Minnesota are mobilizing a non-partisan citizen observation of the recount to protect the integrity of the process.

Minnesota independently assesses the accuracy of the election system that uses optical scanners by auditing a random sample of roughly 5% of the ballots immediately after every federal election cycle; 16 states conduct post-election audits, which is the highest number ever, but not high enough. There is no question that every state should include a mandatory process to independently check the accuracy of election results that includes provisions to expand the verification when errors are detected. Moreover, such post-election review processes need to have mechanisms in place to see that the errors are corrected automatically instead of needing to go to a judicial or a legislative body. The audits, along with the 2008 primary election recount, have given Minnesota election officials statewide the experience in manually counting ballots and in determining voter intent necessary for the impending U.S. Senate recount.

Claims of partisan application of the law will inevitably be leveled in these situations. Certainly there is a benefit to laws in Minnesota and elsewhere that prevent our state’s chief election officer from grossly appearing to have a conflict of interest such as overseeing an election while also chairing the state’s committee to elect one of the candidates as was the case in Florida (2000) and Ohio (2004).

The detailed, written procedures of the Minnesota recount law leave little room for discretion or bias in conducting the recount, covering: the ballot chain of custody, ballot counting, and the interpretation of voter intent. The Minnesota recount law requires that 100% of accepted ballots be manually inspected, counted, and tallied.

At the end of the recount, we expect to see a lot of really bored lawyers, election officials, reporters, and citizens who were present for the sorting, stacking, and counting of 2.9 million paper ballots. We expect confirmation that the vast majority of ballots unambiguously reflect a selection of one of the candidates, or no vote at all. We expect a tiny percentage of ballots marked in a way that the optical scanners cannot determine the voter’s intent, which could change the outcome given the miniscule margin. Any programming errors, software glitches or clerical errors in reporting vote totals will be caught and corrected by the manual recount.

Be careful not to yawn and fail to recognize that the effort and detailed care is necessary, even if the outcome doesn’t change – there is no other way to be confident in the results of this race. It is not that a systematic review is required because we distrust the election system. Rather, a systematic review is required because we care enough about this important process to be as certain as possible.

http://www.ceimn.org/Minnesota_senate_recount_Franken_Coleman_Ritchie_elections

GM Bailout?

Hey... I have an idea.

Extend Medicare to cover all GM employees.

You save the country and the industry from a bloody Labor-Management battle.

You effectively bail out GM by saving them from crushing health care costs for their employees. You remove the incentive to bust the Union or export jobs overseas. You turn one corporate giant against another.

If you borrow more money from China to bail them out, that money's going to go right into the healthcare industry. Fuck that.

The other car makers, and other corporations, are going to line up to be a part of this deal. The health insurance industry is killing us. The only way to stop them and get decent health care for all Americans is to turn the other industries against them.

I have another idea: Huge tax breaks for every electric car manufactured. GM and the other carmakers, including startups, can get huge tax savings, basically bailouts, by producing electric cars. You've got to produce the financial means for these major car makers to stop being pawns of the oil companies.

If GM and the US carmakers don't want to take your deal, you let them fail and let Tesla, Myers Motors, and Commuter Cars inc take the deal.

I have little sympathy for the American auto manufacturers. Most of the cars they produce don't sell. They make 20 different models each, all of which do basically the same thing, hoping to make one that's 'hot' and catches the fancy of your average car buyer. Instead of searching for new markets (hybrid, electric, etc) they merely hope that extending more and more credit to car buyers will help them to buy cars more often. They have a very inefficient strategy. If people can't get the credit, their whole scheme is over. If people were more like me, and avoided going into debt for a car that will lose 90% (or more) of it's value in 10 years, there would be no auto industry.

But if I could buy an electric car for $20,000 that would give me thousands in fuel savings, I might do it. I, like most people, drive less than 50 miles per day. It's astonishing that I simply cannot buy such a car today, though it would meet my needs perfectly. My only option is for a tiny, expensive vehicle from a boutique startup, or an equally expensive conversion. If GM was still making the EV-1, can you imagine how many would have sold when gas hit $4 a gallon? It probably would have saved their ass. The Government of California already tried to save their ass in the 90's and they said 'Fuck you'. Now they come asking for a handout and blaming the unions. Maybe we should tell them 'Fuck You' and give the money to Tesla.

I actually think unions can be problematic. They wield enormous power, and while they are great, and necessary, in order to prevent worker abuse, they can shoot themselves in the foot by handicapping their industry and by eliminating merit-based pay. In this way, they can encourage mediocrity. And I say this as a person who's grandfather was a union boss. It's a tricky business. In a way, a union wedges itself into a position of co-managing the corporation, and they've got to think that way.

And I think most of them do. But I think the expanding cost of health insurance has put a knife into Labor-Management relations in this country. And I think they ought to work together to remove that knife and repair relations. And I think the Government ought to encourage that.

Pipe dream, I know.

All this talk about what Obama's victory means and whether was or is now a center-right country or a center-left country is... not interesting, but notable.



I think that what happened was that the Republican Party was discredited by the events of the last 4 years - starting with Katrina and the quagmire quality the Iraq war took on, continuing with power abuses and the US attorney scandal, and finishing up with the economic collapse. Events proved the Bush administration's ideas to be without merit. And since the Republicans did such a good job of sticking together over the last eight years, there was no way any Republican could separate him or herself from Bush. And McCain didn't really try the 'distancing' approach until after the economic collapse. It was way, way too late.



It could be said that the only chance the Republicans had was to tack leftward. Only McCain, Giuliani and possibly Romney could have done that, but usually a moderate doesn't win a primary. In this case, almost miraculously, McCain won. He could have picked Lieberman or another more moderate Republican. He would have risked ascending the candidacy of Bob Barr, but that still might have been a better risk for him. Instead he picked Palin and tried to tack leftward and rightward simultaneously.



What does it mean? As I said, I think this election was about the failure of Republicans becoming apparent. However, it was also about the success of the Democrats' campaign - Hillary's as well as Obama's - to take advantage of the fracturing of the Republican coalition. But they did it not by forcefully espousing liberal or progressive ideas. They did some of that, but mostly they did it by truly capturing the center. Over the years, they've abandoned or de-emphasized some of the liberal views that many people find offensive. They've also repositioned themselves as the party of responsible, mainstream adults. They are not particularly hawkish or doveish. They don't generally put forth european solutions to social issues. They believe in God and go to church. They have marriages that often stay together. They're not gay, but they're OK with it. They're not super rich.



And as they've slowly convinced the American people that they're absolutely mainstream, the Republican Party has begun to eat itself in frustration. One head, the fearful, anti-intellectual country folk, blames the socially moderate, fiscal conservative monied head.



Has America changed? I'd say not much, other than people have sat up and started to notice things a little more. More people have bothered to get informed. And more people have decided that it's worth it to go and vote.



But America was never a center-right country. The unholy marriage, aka the 'southern strategy' , with a lot of corporate help, managed to elect a center-right Government. A long time ago, in 1976, an unholy marriage of old southern Democrats and liberal northerners managed to elect a center-left Government. Actually it may have been a right-left coalition Both fell apart, as unholy marriages do.



I think Obama will govern from a pragmatic place. I think it is pretty close to the center. The center is a place that Republicans have been calling radical left for years, but they only got away with that because of the temporary power afforded them by their unholy alliance. Meanwhile the Democrats have been utterly mainstream and uncontroversial for at least eight years, and I think people started to see that. Indiana started to see that.



This is all still Civil War stuff resolving itself. The Democrats, being the pro-slavery party, seceded from the Union in the face of a populist uprising of abolitionism. The Republicans, having defeated the Democrats, lost the will and the popular mandate to continue to occupy the south, so they let the Democrats back in. Slowly, by the 1920's, the popular tide had turned racist and the Republicans largely went along, clinging only slightly to Lincoln.



With FDR and the Depression, the Democrats began to capture the national needs, and then, with Kennedy standing up for Blacks in the south, they suddenly turned the country on its head by 1964. The chaos of the Vietnam war allowed a moderate Republican to be elected, who later damaged their brand further.



Finally, Reagan appealed to southern whites left behind by the Democratic Party's transition. And they rode that train as far as they could. But in the last eight years, they've completely discredited themselves by abandoning any sense of honor and fiscal conservatism.



I don't see the Republicans, as currently constituted, being able to hash together an alliance to win a national election. I think they will have to tack centerward, toward reason, honor and accountability, at some point. Perhaps the Democratic party will become too progressive in a way that turns off a lot of Americans and makes them ripe to be swiped back again. Maybe the Republican party will redefine itself as the anti-corporate party. Or the anti-interventionist party. Stranger things have happened.