Saturday, January 10, 2004

Seeing the Crime Dave Johnson, over at Seeing the Forest must have had more coffee than I did this morning, since he read the Paul O'Neill Iraq revelation and connected some dots: This is huge! If you combine this with the reports that Cheney's "secret energy task force" was meeting with oil companies to divide up Iraq's oil, long before 9/11, we have a criminal conspiracy to invade another country. And I don't mean in our own paranoid fantasies where we imagine the worst about this crowd, I mean for real. 2:29:32 PM    comment []trackback []

Gettin' Dirty I'm quite sure what to make of this month-old Salon blog, but it's more interesting than mine, and it just might be the only weblog on it's particular topic. Worms of Endearment 12:21:14 PM    comment []trackback []

Disengaqged and a Liar Now we know why the President demands loyalty: he's both disinterested and dishonest. It wouldn't do to have those fact slip out: President Bush was fixed on removing Saddam Hussein from power from the very first days of his administration, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in a new book to be released next week. "From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," O'Neill tells CBS News in a television interview to be broadcast Sunday night on "60 Minutes." [. . .] And Suskind said there are documents from the first three months of 2001 to prove the administration was looking at ways to oust Saddam Hussein and what the future of Iraq's oil would be in a post-Saddam Iraq. The book's author told Stahl that a Pentagon document titled "Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" outlines areas of oil exploration. "It talks about contractors around the world from ... 30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq," Suskind said in the television interview. In the book, O'Neill says he is surprised that no one on the National Security Council, which includes national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked why Iraq should be invaded at that time. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" O'Neill told Suskind, according to the excerpt. 11:03:21 AM    comment []trackback []

Rome is Burning, Mr. President. Here is Your Fiddle When the attacks begin on Paul O'Neill for calling the President disengaged, We should point to this: President Bush seized on the lower jobless rate as reason to be optimistic about the economy. "Unemployment dropped today to 5.7 percent . That's not good enough -- we want more people still working," the president told a gathering of women small business owners at the Commerce Department. "But nevertheless, it is a positive sign that the economy is getting better." Even if you had a job, things might not have been so great (italics mine): The weak labor market is holding down pay increases. Average hourly earnings rose 0.2 percent to $15.50. Over the past year, earnings are up 2 percent, the lowest year-over-year gain since 1987. Of course, the Republicans, lead by a President that thinks this is proof that things are just going great, simply refuse to help: The most immediate effect of the new numbers may be in Washington, where the administration and the Republican-controlled Congress will be under increased pressure to revive a federal jobless benefits program they let lapse last month. Until it began shutting down last month, the federal program added 13 weeks of benefits to the 26 weeks available in the traditional state-federal benefits system. Activists said renewal of the program is particularly important because 1 in 5 unemployed workers has now been without a job for more than six months. That comes to about 1.7 million of the nation's 8.4 million jobless. "This is the first time in 50 years that long-term joblessness has been above the 20% mark without workers being offered any federal jobless benefits," said Maurice Emsellem, policy director of the National Employment Law Project Inc. in Oakland. [Addendum: Well, at least he was optimistic. According the the NYT, Bush was all set to trumpet the creation of more than 100,000 jobs Friday morning. Best laid plans, and all that. The stage had been set to celebrate the revival of jobs. With a phalanx of women entrepreneurs at his side and a billboard covered with the word "Jobs!" behind him, President Bush proclaimed his confidence about the economy here on Friday. But he made only passing reference to the latest news about employment. The reason was clear: Friday's report on unemployment in December was much weaker than either the administration or most independent economists had predicted. Maybe the Democratic nominees ought to begin to appear in front of blue banners that repeat the word "Jobs??" ] 10:41:46 AM    comment []trackback []