You don’t pardon Richard Nixon after insisting you weren’t going to. All this lout managed to do was pave the way for future executives to run amok and decimate a generation’s faith in government. The country deserved to be told the truth, and this man denied us that.

“I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn’t want to see my real friend have the stigma,” Ford said in the interview.

Aw…they were palls.  What a good example set for Rumsfeld and Cheney, to know that above all else, their feelings were the most important thing.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 1:47 AM GMT+4

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Stories collide on a Wednesday, with the SEC changing a rule made in July that would have allowed stockholders to know exactally how much compensation their executives were receiving in the form of stock options. On a Friday, with no prior public notification, the federal agency changed the requirement in a way that allows executives to continue hiding this compensation from investors. For a bird’s eye view of how anti-investor this rule change happens to be, let’s take a look at the $198 million dollar compensation package Hank McKinnell, now ex-CEO of Pfizer, is walking out the door with. Nevermind the fact that his leadership led to a 40% loss in the stock’s value over five years, how about the purposely confusing clumps of stock he will be receiving as he leaves? $20.7 million, $18.3 million, $5.8 million – to go along with a pension estimated to be worth $82 million – and many more itemized rewards that shareholders were most likely unaware of until they were announced last week.

Had shareholders been aware of McKinnell’s ability to extract 1/5th of a billion dollars from them regardless of his performance, would it have taken this long to force him out? Perhaps a more tallented executive could have replaced him sooner and/or a larger portion of his package could have been reworked a few years back to tie in with the stock’s performance. All of this is possible, but the Bush administration is working day and night to make sure our country’s top earners continue to receive more than they deserve.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics at 1:41 PM GMT+4

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What is the best way to hide your stash of marijuana when the police come knocking? How do you avoid positive tests for drugs? And what can you do to hoodwink narcotics-trained sniffer dogs? All these questions and many more will be answered by a DVD called Never Get Busted Again, about to go on sale on the internet. US law enforcement officers are furious about the DVD. What has made them even more furious is the fact that, until recently, the man who made it was one of the most experienced narcotics officers in the Texas police force. If anyone knows the dos and don’ts of getting busted, it is Barry Cooper. Mr Cooper, who made more than 800 drug arrests in his time with the Permian Basin drug task force, plans to begin selling the DVD on Tuesday. It is, he says, directed solely at marijuana dealers, not at dealers of harder drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine. He told his local newspaper, the Tyler Morning Telegraph, he was following his conscience because he believed the war on drugs, specifically marijuana, was counter-productive. “I know I won’t be accepted by my peers here in East Texas, but in other areas of the country I will be celebrated,” he told the paper.

“When I was raiding houses and destroying families, my conscience was telling me it was wrong, but my need for power, fame and peer acceptance overshadowed my good conscience.” So far Mr Cooper is being coy about the details of the tips he gives out, revealing only in a three-minute promotional video that he goes into such crucial issues as whether coffee grounds really work as decoys, how to avoid narcotics profiling and how to “fool canines every time”. Tim Scott, the local police chief, said he was stunned by what a former top drugs officer was doing. “He’s going to tell all the ones we have been fighting how to get away with it and that makes me mad.” A senior narcotics officer in the region, Mark Waters, was similarly incensed. “This is a slap in the face to all that we do to uphold the laws and keep the public safe,” he said. Mr Cooper’s former bosses said that they would wait to see the new DVD before deciding what, if anything, to do about it.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 3:02 AM GMT+4

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We’re already experiencing the novelty of a post-Rumsfeld era at the Pentagon in the form of a Joint Chiefs of Staff that has suddenly found its voice after having been neutered since before our initial invasion of Iraq. The point of view expressed by “the generals” has always been a political scrap to President Bush, tossed out whenever the catapult for propaganda needed repairs, and until now the military had been effectively tied to a board and submerged the moment a flower of dissent appeared to be budding. Careers ended, missions changed, grown men in smart outfits covered with shiny and colorful medals hunched over Rumsfeld’s lap for a spanking, the patronizing “I listen to what the generals on the ground have to say” comment always available to the President, is now more or less a non-factor as the dictator whose paddle he once relied on is no longer there, and in the void that remains, dreaded honesty is expanding.

He truly is alone at this point, or I should say, the right-wing is truly alone. As the idea that a military has no business being involved in military strategy is becoming an obvious culprit for what is wrong, responsible for not only the mess, but also the continuing addiction to a mulish assumption that the public will continue to stand by while men in business suits scheme for a way to continue using the troops like a hammer to pound nails into concrete. The amount of contempt and obvious lack of respect for these volunteers is so prevalent within the corps of right-wing think tanking and punditry at this moment, it’s difficult to imagine the force having been perceived by these people as anything but an expendable resource from the very beginning. How else can a statement like this from a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board be explained? “…all that means is decreasing the length of some breaks from tours of duty and increasing the lengths of some tours of duty. That’s not a hard thing to do when you’ve got 1.4 million troops.”

The generals provide us an insight by telling us they “think the White House, after a month of talks, still does not have a defined mission and is latching on to the surge idea in part because of limited alternatives”, and if you focus on the message coming from the right-wing, strategy in terms of securing victory is not the fight they’re engaged in at the moment. Instead it is whether or not the military is capable of providing the number of troops expected to be called for early next year. The objective at hand right now for these people is hardly whether or not more troops will make a difference, but whether or not we have them to send in the first place. Once the decision is made and promises to those in need of rest are broken, the outcome doesn’t become any less grim, though for the time being, the ability to substitute “the President is listening to his generals” with “the President’s plan must be given time to work before it is criticized” provides enough political cover to last at least until a Democratic Congress can be blamed for certain failures that are bound to take place.

Coming up with a justification for sending more troops over there is the hitch, and right now there are plenty of signs that indicate the mission at hand has to do with nothing more than just that. To concede the military’s points and decide that resources are not available would legitimize the correct perception shared by the majority of Americans, that not only are we kicking a dead horse in Iraq, but our military is close to lying down beside it. This does not bode well for the legions of war-happy influences interested in nothing besides a way to skate past reality on the road to 2008. For them the sacrifice that is expected has more to do with securing their own dignity than securing Baghdad. The war is lost, but the battle over its political consequences continues to rage, regardless of whether the military is on board or not. The gallows of reality sit ominously atop a hill not too far off in the distance, and for the time being, our President’s top priority is to find a way to keep circling it until his time is up.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 2:07 PM GMT+4

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On the December 16 edition of Fox News’ Journal Editorial Report, after Wall Street Journal editorial board member Jason Riley claimed that it would be “very difficult,” politically, for President Bush to increase troop levels in Iraq, fellow Journal board member Robert Pollock countered: “[A]ll that means is decreasing the length of some breaks from tours of duty and increasing the lengths of some tours of duty.” Pollock added: “That’s not a hard thing to do.”From the December 16 edition of Fox News’ Journal Editorial Report:

PAUL GIGOT (host and Journal editorial page editor): The president is never going to win over the people who didn’t want to go to war in the first place or want to get out.

But there are people, Jason, that — [Sens.] John McCain [R-AZ], Joe Lieberman [CT], and some others — who have that criticism that [American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Frederick] Kagan has, which is we haven’t been prosecuting this war in the right way. We haven’t been doing enough to win. Those, it seems to me, are the people, politically, the president can’t afford to lose. And they’ve been saying, “More troops.” So why not move in that direction?

RILEY: Well, I’d like to, personally. I think the president would like to. But I just think that the political reality here would make it very difficult for Bush to do that. Kagan’s plan calls for increasing troop levels by some 35,000 over the next two years. In ‘07? In the run-up to a presidential election? And when congressmen –

POLLOCK: All that means is decreasing — all that means is decreasing the length of some breaks from tours of duty and increasing the lengths of some tours of duty. That’s not a hard thing to do when you’ve got 1.4 million troops.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 1:13 AM GMT+4

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While the boy wonder was busy “listening” to people in the know about how best to continue fucking up the lives of millions in Iraq, he had the presense of mind to address a dip in the polls by dispatching Laura to inform you and I, that the piles of headless bodies (Sunni), those full of holes made by murderers with power tools (Shia) and the multitude of mothers and children barely managing to exist from day to day as the hell that surrounds them grows more gruesome by the day, has little to do with the public’s lack of confidence in her husband, but rather it is the media that continues to get the story of this war wrong day after day, callously shirking their responsibility to report on all the “good things” happening, out of laziness I suppose, or perhaps it is true that the thousands of people who have risked their lives to bring us the story had it in for Laura’s man all along…just like she and the 25% of Americans, who seemingly don’t fear for the safety of anything not attached to an umbilical cord, had suspected all along.

That’s right, it’s YOUR FAULT for buying into this anti-Bush rhetoric, this news, cooked up in the heads of traitors who understand psychology and unleased throughout the country for the purpose of turning your stupid brain into an organ of evil, much like the inside of a smoker’s lung, black and sticky without the ability to function like it once used to, leading to the necessary convulsions for survival with hatred and death expelled outward in the form of idiotic lies about our president and his devine path we were at one point lucky enough to walk alongside him on towards the glory that was just over the next hill if we’d had the strength or the character to not abandon faith and christ once things got tough. And so now we are without salvation, understanding or even the intelligence God provided us to begin with…Laura told me so.

She’s not the only one looking for an appology either, as there are plenty of stupid white men whose desire was a war, which they got, only not the outcome they expected along with it because of how stupid everyone involved was about carrying it out, and a fellow like Richard Pearle wants us to know that he is owed an appology from the soldiers and their bosses and their bosses’ bosses for draging his brilliance through the mud, like a band of arrogant vandals they persecuted his vision and striped away all the important parts, leaving him without an oil tanker bearing his moniker, no high speaking fees, just the burden of stupid people and their failures unjustly attached to his name.

Forget about the fatherless, homeless children who are afraid and the smell of burning garbage and the roving bands of murders killing at will day after day…it’s about these people we see on television and read about in Vanity Fair, and what this war has done to them, how it has tarnished their image and spoiled their legacies. These poor people and all the bad things that have been done to them. Boy wonder hasn’t been happy in so long now…we should all be ashamed of ourselves!

Posted by Al Swearengen as Military at 3:28 AM GMT+4

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1. On Sunday, Paul Barnes, founding pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel in this Denver suburb, told his evangelical congregation in a videotaped message he had had sexual relations with other men and was stepping down. “I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy…I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.” Barnes, 54, led Grace Chapel for 28 years. He and his wife have two adult children.

deadissue: The church is reaching out to John Ashcroft for advice on what to do about this, and he’s suggested covering the crucified Christ in loincloth statue or start making updated ones where he’s dressed business casual. Limit the temptation for his body and the “kinky desires” that naturally get tied up together from years and years and years of getting down on his knees in front of this snuff statue and feeling happy, safe, warm, loved…

2. Phillip Carter – What about the Grunts?: “For all of the time they spent learning about America’s war in Iraq, the Iraq Study Group failed to study the war at its most critical level: that of the grunts. Nothing makes this clearer than the report’s appendix, which lists scores of men and women interviewed for the report, but none below the rank of lieutenant colonel…Forget about its technological sophistication or vaunted all-volunteer force—today’s American military is the largest and most lethargic bureaucracy in world history. Its job in Iraq has been made tougher by the grafting of numerous civilian headquarters onto its existing Hydra-headed command—first the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, then the Coalition Provisional Authority, then a U.S. Embassy, and now a U.S. diplomatic mission and a nascent Iraqi government. The Iraq Study Group, the Pentagon, and the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad have all displayed an almost pathological inability to listen to and learn from their own people.”

3. Robert Tait in Tehran – Students protest against Ahmadinejad: “Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced an unprecedented outburst of public opposition yesterday from student demonstrators who burned his picture and chanted “Death to the dictator”…This year, Mr Ahmadinejad demanded a purge of “secular and liberal” lecturers, whom he accused of having been a fifth column for western values and colonialism in Iran for the past 150 years. Under his presidency, a hardline cleric was appointed chancellor of Tehran university for the first time.”

Posted by Al Swearengen as Military, Religion, Words at 1:51 AM GMT+4

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The caller ID only had the last seven numbers – we got cut off twice for some reason.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 7:49 PM GMT+4

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1. Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR), Senate Floor: “To fight an insurgency often takes a decade or more. It takes more troops than we have committed. It takes clearing, holding, and building so that the people there see the value of what we are doing. They become the source of intelligence, and they weed out the insurgents. But we have not cleared and held and built. We have cleared and left, and the insurgents have come back. I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore.” (Video)

2. Ed Snider, Chairman of the Philadelphia 76ers: “We’re going to trade him.”

deadissue: I can’t think of a reason why we wouldn’t both have the goods to offer Philly and the best reason to go over the top where these other suitors, Dallas and Denver come to mind, aren’t going to yield a top 15 draft pick most likely, so the first rounder the Celtics provide is going to be more valuable than either of theirs following the trade, with Minnesotta’s the only other as enticing as Boston’s. Who is it though, Wally or Ratliff (both around $11 million) to fill the salary cup to match, and what after that? Gerald Green or Ryan Gomes? After Jefferson’s 25-14 performance tonight, perhaps we could get away with something like Szczerbiak, Jefferson, Telfair & a 1st round pick. Assuming the Dallas players Philly would want are Terry or Harris, it could come down to youth and pick value, and Ainge has a strong hand to play this go around. I think he should make this happen if it has to take away a chunk, because this is Iverson, and this team isn’t doing anything else this year as I see it.

3. Iraq Scam – “At the lowest level, Blackwater security guards were paid $600 a day. Blackwater added a 36 percent markup, plus overhead costs, and sent the bill to a Kuwaiti company that ordinarily runs hotels, according to the contract. That company, Regency Hotel, tacked on costs and profit and sent an invoice to ESS. The food company added its costs and profit and sent its bill to Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton, which added overhead and profit and presented the final bill to the Pentagon. “… it appears that Halliburton entered into a subcontracting arrangement that is expressly prohibited by the contract itself,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote. “After more than two years, we still do not know how much ESS and Halliburton charged for these security services.”

Posted by Al Swearengen as Military, Words, sports at 1:39 AM GMT+4

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1a. Sam Smith – “We know this isn’t going to end well. The Kings’ Ron Artest sat out Saturday’s loss to the Spurs with a sore back after complaining after the loss in Dallas on Friday he didn’t get the ball enough, didn’t get enough shots and wasn’t sure coach and management are on the same page. Artest told the Sacramento Bee: “We’ve got to find ways to get me the ball. I know that’s kind of selfish, but something has to happen. The organization needs to find out which way it wants to go, you know what I’m saying? I think Coach understands what I can do. It just has to be clear between the organization and coach.” It was Artest’s demands for the ball over Jermaine O’Neal that started all the problems in Indiana…”

1b. Peter Vecsey – “Obviously, 3-9 Memphis is suffering dreadfully without Gasol’s scoring. rebounding and a presence that demands strict defensive attention from two or three opponents. In the final year of his contract and guaranteed not to be re-hired – if for no other reason, the “incoming” owners can’t afford him – Mike Fratello isn’t quite as good a coach without Gasol; funny how that works. Yet, the thrice one-round-and-done playoff team isn’t a big draw in Memphis. Who knows, maybe the franchise has no other choice but to trade him for a squadron of undeveloped, minimum-wage hustlers, the business blueprint (unearthed last week by the Commercial Appeal) of the under-funded group headed by Brian Davis and Christian Laettner. While that may, indeed, be something that could go down once Michael Heisley’s 70 percent is sold, nothing is about to happen at this time. By all accounts, VP Jerry West is forbidden to make a trade no matter how insignificant (or change coaches) until the new group is either approved or disapproved in mid-December, maybe later.

Again, until then, the Celtics, probably the Grizzlies, too, are on their own, while Rivers and Fratello coach from weakness. Should Ainge start to warm up in the bullpen (a la Gregg Popovich replacing Bob Hill when Tim Duncan joined forces with David Robinson), I suspect Boston may be on the brink of acquiring Gasol.”

2a. William E. Hurwitz, M.D., J.D. – “The DEA and its state counterpart agents are embarked on a program of harassment of pain patients through repeated investigations, seizures, and arrests without charges or followed by dropping unsubstantiated charges. Similarly, they pay intimidating “visits” to pharmacists and physicians to “advise” them on how to practice their professions. This type of law enforcement by intimidation has not been seen in the Western world since before the Second World War, and, so far as I am aware, has never been seen in the United States of America. So, we already are perilously close to a situation in which the police agencies simply will not allow medicine to be practiced in conformity with honest and ethical standards.”

Asa Hutchinson, Director of the DEA, 3/14/2002 (in a talk before the American Pain Society): “I’m here to tell you that we trust your judgment. You know your patients. The DEA does not intend to play the role of doctor. Only a physician has the information and knowledge necessary to decide what is appropriate for the management of pain in a particular situation. The DEA is not here to dictate that to you. We do not intend to restrict legitimate use of OxyContin or other similar drugs. We will not prevent practitioners acting in the usual course of their medical practice from prescribing OxyContin for patients with legitimate medical needs. We never want to deny deserving patients access to drugs that relieve suffering and improve the quality of life.”

“The policy of targeting physicians based on patient misbehavior establishes a standard of perfection in selecting patients that no doctor could meet. It forces doctors who try to treat pain to act like police, reinforcing a perverse medical paternalism that subverts the ethical imperatives designed to protect patient autonomy and dignity. This distortion of the patient-physician relationship stigmatizes patients and erodes their trust. At the same time, it assigns doctors a function that they are ill-qualified to perform.”

2b. Laura Cooper, an attorney with multiple sclerosis and a former patient of Hurwitz, moved to Oregon when his practice was shutting down. Her new doctor “is also under the microscope,” she says. “All of these guys are on their way out — if not on their own, the government is on the way to putting them out. Anybody who would treat me the way I need to be treated is not long for American medicine. When my doctor goes down, I don’t know what I’ll do.” Since Cooper lives in Oregon, she notes, “by law I can get drugs to kill myself, but not to treat my pain. The doctor could say, in effect, ‘I’m not trying to treat pain; I’m trying to kill her,’ and that would be more acceptable. Clearly, something’s a little off kilter. My medical needs are less important than their war on drugs.” (Szalavitz, 2004)

2c. Frank Fisher seems to have been targeted based on just this sort of suspicion. At his Northern California clinic, the Harvard Medical School graduate accepted patients on Medicaid and Medi-Cal (California’s health insurance for the poor) that most other physicians refused, and he tried to treat their pain as aggressively as he would treat anyone else’s. In February 1999 state law enforcement agents raided Fisher’s clinic and arrested him for drug dealing, fraud, and murder. His bail was set at $15 million. State prosecutors accused him of “creating a public health epidemic” of OxyContin abuse and death. They implied that he must be a drug dealer because he was the largest prescriber of the drug under Medi-Cal. But in a context where fear of prosecution leads most doctors to under-prescribe, anyone who prescribes what is necessary for severe pain will be a top prescriber. The DEA insists physicians aren’t targeted based on volume alone. But Fisher believes he was. While patients with moderate pain can be treated effectively with low doses of opioids, he explains, severe pain requires that the dose be adjusted (“titrated”) to a level that maximizes pain relief and minimizes side effects. “To get a sense,” he says, “I titrated about two dozen patients, and they ended up taking almost half of the OxyContin 80-milligram pills prescribed in California in 1998. What that tells you is that nobody else titrated.”

Fisher was jailed for five months, during which time the prosecution’s case began to evaporate. First, the murder charges were reduced to manslaughter by the judge, who saw no proof of intent. Then the truth about these “killings” came out. One death involved a passenger who died when her spine was severed in a van accident. Fisher was charged with her “murder” because she had high levels of OxyContin in her blood. Another “victim” had taken drugs stolen from a patient, while a third died of a self-administered overdose two weeks after Fisher was incarcerated. During cross-examination in pretrial hearings, it was revealed that seven attempts by undercover agents to get drugs from Fisher had been rebuffed. “I had a screening process for those who tried to get controlled substances,” he says. “I screened out 60 percent of those, and apparently the agents were amongst them.” In January 2003, four years after Fisher’s arrest, a state judge dismissed all the charges against him because prosecutors had tried repeatedly to delay the trial. (Szalavitz, 2004)

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:09 AM GMT+4

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“Keeping us up here eats away at families,“ said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.” Bear in mind that I really like this guy, but with our military pulling 15 month long deployments in Iraq, having to accomplish a certain amount of work to deserve earning ones’ government paycheck, in safety stateside, should be viewed as a blessing to begin with. Are we disconnected from this war?

His first statement had my head connecting the dots with some other stuff I’ve been reading…“Keeping us up here eats away at families,”…“(Army officer) As a Cadet in ROTC, I was taught about taking care of soldiers and doing the right thing. That’s not practiced in the Active Duty Army that I experienced. Rank isn’t supposed to have it’s priveleges but it does. Commander’s lived like Kings while their soldiers didn’t have electricity or even the proper equipment to do the job, and that shouldn’t have been.“

Are the words telling a story about us? “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.” The Army has begun the practice of tricking soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder into signing something that says their condition was preexisting, that they had a “personality disorder”, as in, “I was a mental case before I enlisted in the Army”. They are told that the deal will provide them disability and they’ll be able to keep their reenlistment bonus, then on the last day before catching a flight back to civilian life, are told that they are entitled to no diability benefits, VA treatment for their mental problems, and you owe us $4000 for the bonus which we’re taking back. (Link to the story) (Sonicrusk’s Post on the topic)

It’s unfortunate that Congressman Kingston would be the one to provide a timeless quote on the topic of an extended work week, as even though there is a war going on and the required budget work from last year was ignored, somehow the burden of having to eat his meat before he could have any pudding is a travesty of justice and well worth the necessary time spent (on the clock) exposing the real reason behind all of it…they hate families…those Democrat m************!

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 1:57 PM GMT+4

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This season of The Wire ends for me in about an hour and a half, w/ the ondemand available at midnight.  I predict that if Snoop and Chris are locked up, it’s because the security guard’s badge will be found and the fingerprint will match up.  Perhaps charges only come on Snoop and not Chris, and next season it’s Michael and Chris as the two top fixers in Marlo’s crew.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 12:40 AM GMT+4

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