Thursday’s Mini-Report

March 27, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Like McCain, Maliki doesn’t care what anybody says: “Iraq’s prime minister vowed Thursday to fight ‘until the end’ against Shiite militias in Basra despite protests by tens of thousands of followers of a radical cleric in Baghdad and deadly clashes in the capital and the oil-rich south.”

* Bloodshed in Baghdad, as well as Basra: “A U.S. government employee was killed and four others were wounded in Baghdad this week by rocket attacks on the Green Zone diplomatic and government compound, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the casualties occurred during four days of rocket attacks on the compound in central Baghdad beginning on Sunday.”

* Now that Al Wynn has lost his House primary, he’s cashing in: “Lame-duck Rep. Albert Wynn (D-Md.) announced Thursday afternoon that he will leave the House in June to join a Washington, D.C., law firm. Wynn, who was defeated in February in his bid for a ninth term when he lost the Democratic primary to nonprofit executive Donna Edwards, will become a partner in Dickstein Shapiro’s Public Policy & Law Practice and will focus on legal, legislative and regulatory counseling.”

* I get the impression that Speaker Pelosi is not easily intimidated: “A recent letter from several Hillary Clinton fundraisers to Nancy Pelosi seeking she step back from her contention that superdelegates should support the pledged-delegate leader appears to have had little effect on the House Speaker.”

* On a related note, MoveOn is rallying to Pelosi’s defense.

* AEY Inc., a company led by a 22-year-old with some run-ins with the law and who has no discernible experience in military procurement, somehow won a military contract to provide ammunition to Afghan security forces. Now that the ammo has turned out to be useless, no one can explain why and why this happened.

* Henry Waxman has more than a few questions about the AEY contact. (If Joe Lieberman believed in doing his job, he would be asking questions, too.)

* Would the U.S. team up with Iran in Basra? Hmm.

* Maybe, just maybe, the State Department can review how its employees and contractors access private files of high-profile Americans.

* Bring on the Siegelman hearings.

* Rebate checks are going to make the economy “stronger than ever before“? Somehow, I doubt that.

* Good idea: “Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to explain the decision to eliminate the public corruption unit in Los Angeles that has been investigating Rep. Jerry Lewis’s (R-Calif.) ties to a lobbying firm.”

* Too many conference calls? “The first question on today’s latest Clinton campaign conference call came from the ‘freelance humor columnist’ for the Syracuse Post-Standard. Maybe it’s time to put this whole campaign on pause for a month or so?”

* I’ll never really understand why the media is this irresponsible in its coverage of McCain: “After playing a video clip of Sen. John McCain’s March 25 speech on the housing crisis, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer asked, ‘Is this a real turning point for him, being this specific and detailed on what the economy needs?’ Um, Contessa? He didn’t offer any specifics.

* It looks like the LA Times really got burned on that Tupac Shakur story.

* John Solomon wants everyone to know that the Washington Times will remain biased and unreliable. What a relief.

* The NYT ran a story today, on the front page, about how young people like to send and receive news links and videos to their friends. “According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well — sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them.” You don’t say.

* And finally, another day, another series of frustrating server problems. Everything was going along smoothly until yesterday, wasn’t it? I’m sorry for the inconvenience; we’ll get this straightened out just as soon as possible.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

If its any consolation, you are not the only one with these server problems. The Agonist was down for much of the day, too. But CB feels like we’re back to dial up service today.

  • “I’ll never really understand why the media is this irresponsible in its coverage of McCain: “After playing a video clip of Sen. John McCain’s March 25 speech on the housing crisis, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer asked, ‘Is this a real turning point for him, being this specific and detailed on what the economy needs?’ Um, Contessa? He didn’t offer any specifics.”

    Maybe Contessa attended the recent BBQ with the rest of the press at McCain’s Sadona ranch.

    We know the many politicians have no scruples. I’m beginning to realize that most of the press has no scruples either.

  • To add to that NY Times story, I’ve recently discovered that young people often like to get their political news from these things called “web logs” or “blogs” for short. They consist of people referencing recent news stories and sometimes offering analysis or extra perspective to these news stories. I’ll keep yall updated on this trend as I learn more. I think it might be the new fad.

    One warning though: Some of these web loggers can be quite angry, and a few have been known to use profanity. FYI.

  • “Iraq’s prime minister vowed Thursday to fight ‘until the end’ against Shiite militias”

    I didn’t realize “Maliki” was Arabic for “Bush.” Has anyone in the MSM recognized that none of this huge wave of violence has anything to do with al Qaeda or even it’s red-headed stepchild al Qaeda in Iraq? If the period of relative calm was being used by militias to stockpile and rearm, the Green Zone might be in some serious trouble.

    Nancy Pelosi, thank you for showing how strong your resolve can be. Please use it more against George Bush.

  • If Helen Thomas were on MSNBC, McCain would not have gotten the pass. Either Contessa Brewer did not hear or read the speech, or she is totally incapable of analyzing it. I fear the second. But I am sure she has a nice voice and a soothing demeanor. Perhaps she graduated from the Katie Couric School of Journalism.

    I am still snickering that Bush and the Iranians will be backing the same horse in Basra. I also liked the comment by the Iraqi soldier that the fight is difficult because the Sadr’s army is better armed. Tell me again where the $500 billion went?

  • I don’t even get a rebate, so… Pffft.

    How could a 22-year-old have enough contact to ship useless ammo? I mean really, at least you’d think if it got there at all, it’d be retail stuff.

  • Oh goody – waxman is going to send another nasty letter….

    Give me a break – if waxman did he job and upheld his oath of office, things would never have gotten to this point in the first place.

  • How could a 22-year-old have enough contact to ship useless ammo? I mean really, at least you’d think if it got there at all, it’d be retail stuff.

    Good question, but gotta remember – it is not possible to spend $720 PER DAY wisely – This is a HUGE number that most people cannot understand. Certainly typical government procurement procedures CANNOT account for this volume of expenditure. That is how outrageous the whole affair is.

    Remember, Halliburton and the military-industrial complex have looted TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars and cannot account for ONE PENNY of it!

    Perhaps this kid has some “connection.” But if not, it still shouldn’t surprise anyone because it is not possible for the pentagon to spend 720 BILLION DOLLARS A DY responsbily.

  • “* Like McCain, Maliki doesn’t care what anybody says…”

    There you are–we found McCain’s runningmate.

  • On the NYT piece about how the young people like to get their “news” on the new-fangled “internets”, my elderly wife & I (both 42) have been struck how good Obama’s campaign has been at using the “World Wide Web” to go around the traditional media. Case in point; after his Philadelphia speech on race last week, we both got emails within hours from the campaign, with a link to the whole speech, asking us to pass it on to everyone we know. It was an acknowledgment that the MSM would pick out two or three soundbites and endlessly recycle them, thus completely missing the point. I suspect this is part of the reason there hasn’t been much of a “Wright Effect.”

    Contrast with Clinton and McBush, who think they can get away with saying any old BS (Iran is Al Qaeda! I single-handedly fought off Bosnian militia to save a small child!) and no-one will notice. They don’t seem to have noticed that many people under fifty don’t read newspapers, and don’t believe television, and there’s this thing called YouTube.It seems to me that this effect gets more pronounced the younger the people are.

    People who were born in 1990 will vote in November. Think about it.

  • al-malaki reminds me a lot of the south vietnamese generals we propped up for so long: ready, willing, and able to fight to the last drop of american blood.

  • AEY Inc., a company led by 22-year-old with some run-ins with the law and who has no discernible experience in military procurement, somehow won a military contract to provide ammunition to Afghan security forces. Now that the ammo has turned out to be useless, no one can explain why and why this happened.

    Unfortunately, this is too easily explained. My co-writer on “Infidels” was CO of an Embedded Training Team with the Afghan National Army. He regularly would cadge a ride up to Bagram Air Base (the US HQ inAfghanistan) where he would go through the trash to get the thrown-away uniforms and other gear from the US forces, which was better than the hand-me-downs given the ANA. “Big Army” does’t care about the “sand monkeys” even if they are the people who are supposed to end up defending their country if there is to be a real victory.

    That that this contract could happen is easy to explain: Big Army doesn’t care.

  • cry for help! – ignorant people like you is why the criminality goes on – the pentagon is blowing more than 700 MILLION a day – with a procurement system that cannot handle it. Virtually NO procurement system can handle it.

    And morons like you would rather attack the messenger – don’t tell me, you must be a big shillary fan, right? The kind that would rather vote than mclame if the pathological liar doesnt’ (and she can’t) get the nomination.

    So what other piece of “wisdom” can you bring to the dialog?

  • Tom – you are right – they don’t care and they have been given TOTALLY INSANE budgets to work with – not possible to spend $720 million a day in a contructive manner.

    THEY ARE JUST BUYING CRAP because they don’t couldn’t carefully spend that each day even if they did give a damn.

    Remember – the neocons behind this want to loot the treasury, line their pockets with cash, and tell us that “government is the problem”.

  • I do not know why for the life of me, Andrea Mitchell dug up old tapes or writings on Rev. Wright 10 days after the fact, when she did not do the First Reporting on Hillary’s Bosnia Fabrication, although she was on the trip with her, and only reported on this after it became public knowledge that there was no sniper fire and after Hillary had told this tall tale, 3 times. So why is Andrea so compelled to keep bringing up Rev. Wright, when we are electing a President, not a Reverened! Is she a Hillary surrogate instead of an unbiased reporter? Makes you wonder. Hillary states she would not meet with her enimies, yet she met with Richard Mellon Scaife, her arch enemy who accused her and Bill of murders and conducted a witch hunt against her during their White House Years. Did Andrea report on that? And, then there is speculation that Hillary might have exagerrated her story about Chelsea’s jog near the Twin Towers on 9-11. Has anyone took a look at the video done by Date Line to see what Hillary really said, not the transcript put out by Media Matters but the actual video? Where is the reporting on that? Then there is exaggeration about Nafta, Ireland and there are more to come, the unraveling of Hillary. In her desire to make Barack look unelectable, it looks like, instead, the Chickens are Coming Home to Roost!

  • * AEY Inc., a company led by 22-year-old with some run-ins with the law and who has no discernible experience in military procurement, somehow won a military contract to provide ammunition to Afghan security forces. Now that the ammo has turned out to be useless, no one can explain why and why this happened. I read this story. Pathetic. It seems that the vetting process took a vacation in awarding this contract. I hope somebody gets their ass handed to them for this travesty.

    * Henry Waxman has more than a few questions about the AEY contact. (If Joe Lieberman believed in doing his job, he would be asking questions, too.) If Waxman, had been doing his job, he wouldn’t have to wait for news reports to find out he needs to schedule hearings on this. Oh, but he had time to schedule two sets of hearings on baseball and steroids, didn’t he?

    * Good idea: “Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to explain the decision to eliminate the public corruption unit in Los Angeles that has been investigating Rep. Jerry Lewis’s (R-Calif.) ties to a lobbying firm.” Mukasey is probably up to his ears in the Democrat “culture of corruption” with Spitzer, Kilpatrick, the Dem governor of Puerto Rico, and the corruption trials of those with ties to Chicago Mayor Daley, Illinois Gov. Blagojevich, and Sen. Obama. Mukasey is probably also going to be hip deep in investigating the probably criminal activity of Dem House members who had a trip to Iraq paid for by Saddam Hussein. Who knew Dems would consider Saddam’s government in Baghdad to be extension of K Street?

  • AEY Inc., a company led by a 22-year-old with some run-ins with the law and who has no discernible experience in military procurement, somehow won a military contract to provide ammunition to Afghan security forces. Now that the ammo has turned out to be useless, no one can explain why and why this happened.

    Simple. An administration built on lies, perversion of justice and self-interest of corporate fascism.

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