Wednesday, January 26, 2005

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is shown with her husband, Richard Blum, and Al Gore during her swearing-in ceremony in 2000. Feinstein and her husband, who is part owner of a firm that is making millions in Iraq, have a net worth between $26 million and $50 million. No wonder she all but went down on Condoleezza Rice during Rice's secretary of state confirmation hearing last week. I hate Dianne Feinstein redux On her show on Air America Radio today, Randi Rhodes stated that "Democratic" California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband is a war profiteer whose firm got a $600 million contract in Iraq. (Feinstein has supported the Bush regime's war in Iraq from Day One, and, as you know, sings the praises of the likes of Condofuckingleezza Rice.) I was astounded. I looked it up. Randi, as usual, was right. This is from the April 22, 2003 San Francisco Chronicle: URS Corp., a San Francisco planning and engineering firm partially owned by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed an Army contract Monday worth up to $600 million. The award to help with troop mobilization, weapons systems training and anti-terrorism efforts is the latest in a string of plum defense jobs snared by URS. In February, the firm won an army engineering and logistics contract that could bring in $3.1 billion during the next eight years. Government contracting has come under increasing scrutiny by Congress and citizen groups, with critics decrying the political connections of firms winning lucrative jobs. Richard Blum, Feinstein's husband, serves on the company's board of directors and controls about 24 percent of the firm's stock, according to Hoover's Inc. research firm. A Feinstein spokesman Monday declined to comment on the contract. [What a fucking shock!]  Blum and several URS representatives could not be reached for comment. [Another fucking shock!] A Pentagon spokesman said he was unfamiliar with the contract. Announced in a company press release Monday, the contract calls for URS Corp.'s EG&G division and partner International Consultants Inc. to help with operations planning, troop mobilization, weapons system training and anti- terrorism assessment. The contract runs for five years. "We are very pleased with this important win, which further expands our strong relationship with the Army and demonstrates our ability to provide a full spectrum of support services to ensure that our troops remain combat ready and capable of quickly mobilizing to address threats around the world," said George R. Melton, president of the EG&G division, in a press release. URS boasts some 25,000 employees working in more than 20 countries. Although the firm has a long history of government work, it has focused more on those activities since acquiring EG&G from the Carlyle Group investment firm last year for about $500 million. EG&G works with the military, NASA, and several federal departments, according to Hoover's. The company's areas of expertise range from designing transportation infrastructure to training people to dismantle weapons of mass destruction. URS brought in more than $2.4 billion in revenue during 2002. So now you know Dianne Feinstein's price. Not that corruption and major conflicts of interest are anything new to Feinstein. Reports Wikipedia: Critics have frequently accused Blum and Sen. Feinstein of political corruption and conflicts of interest arising from his business interests and his contributions to his wife's Senate campaigns. In 1992, Feinstein was fined $190,000 for failing to disclose that Blum had guaranteed nearly $3 million in loans to fund her 1990 bid for California governor. In 1997, a Los Angeles Times article revealed that while Feinstein was campaigning in the Senate for a lifting of trade sanctions against the People's Republic of China, Blum was managing millions of dollars of investments in Chinese businesses through his firm Newbridge Capital. Shortly after the scandal erupted, Blum announced that he would donate all of his profits from his China investments to charity. You ever gonna cast a(nother) vote for her now? 8:26:17 PM    Comments []

AFP, Reuters and Associated Press photos During a press conference today, George W. "Culture of Life" Bush encouraged Iraqis to risk their lives voting on Sunday to save his political ass. Bush mourned the 37 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq today -- the most killed in a single day in Iraq since the Bush regime's illegal, immoral, unprovoked and imperialistic March 2003 invasion -- for all of about two seconds before he reminded us that it's all about his political agenda: "Listen, the story [of the 37 deaths] today is going to be very discouraging to the American people. I understand that," he said. "We value life and we weep and mourn when soldiers lose their life. But it is the long-term objective that is vital, and that is to spread freedom." Yeah, you can tell he was all torn up. And why is it that when the Bush regime talks about "spreading freedom" it feels like a bad thing, like spreading a deadly virus?  Sociopath Bush to Iraqis: Risk death to save my ass "President" Bush and the members of his regime claim to possess values worth dying for -- as long as it's someone else who's doing the dying, of course. First it was a young George W. Bush supporting the Vietnam War -- but letting other young men die there while he protected Texas and Alabama from the Vietcong (when he decided to show up). Then it was "President" Bush telling the Iraqi freedom fighters to "bring it on" -- it wasn't like they'd be bringing it on his precious rich white ass. Now Bush is telling Iraqis to vote on Sunday -- even though there's a good chance that by doing so they'll be maimed or killed. "I urge all [Iraqi] people to vote. I urge people to defy these terrorists," Bush said today. I think Bush should lead the way and cast the first vote in Iraq on Sunday. You know, to defy the Iraqi "insurgents," to show them that freedom marches on. The only freedom that we've seen so far in Iraq is the freedom of Dick Cheney's Halliburton and other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp to profit obscenely from other people's -- Iraqis' and U.S. military personnel's -- suffering and loss. And it's the only freedom we're likely to see in Iraq in the foreseeable future. Not because Americans or Iraqis don't have fortitude, but because the Bush regime's March 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was predicated upon a pack of fucking lies, was a colossal mistake in the first place, the biggest U.S. foreign affairs mistake since the Vietnam War. Assuming that democracy really is the Bush regime's goal for Iraq -- an assumption that I do not make, as all evidence points to the likelihood that war profiteering has been the Bush regime's primary concern in Iraq all along -- genuine, lasting democracy has to organically grow from the bottom up; it can't be forced down a nation's throat Texas-style. Bush might have learned that lesson -- had he gone to Vietnam. Iraqis and U.S. military personnel are supposed to continue to pay for the Bush regime's March 2003 mistake with life and limb while the BushCheney Corp war profiteers continue to laugh all the way to the bank with the billions of our tax dollars that they are siphoning into their coffers by way of the money pit that is Iraq. Bush was an alcoholic all those years because the people around him enabled him to drink. We're still enabling Bush, and I wonder how long we are going to continue to pay for his colossal mistake in Iraq in billions of dollars from our treasury and in thousands of human lives. See a piece I posted way back in May 2003 titled "Dying for Gee Dubya." 7:08:04 PM    Comments []

Associated Press and AFP photos Condoleezza Rice yuks it up during the second day of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Jan. 19, left; right, a picture of the CH-53 Super Stallion helicopter, the kind of helicopter that crashed in Iraq today, killing 31 Marines in the deadliest day for U.S. troops in Iraq since the Bush regime's immoral, illegal, unprovoked and imperialist March 2003 invasion of the nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 or al-Qaeda and never possessed weapons of mass destruction -- but did provide a great war-profiteering opportunity for Dick Cheney's Halliburton and other war-profiteering subsidiaries of BushCheneyCorp.  Ironic. On the very same day that the U.S. Senate is expected to vote to confirm National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, whom The Associated Press calls "President Bush's ... main architect of his policies on Iraq and the war on terror," as the new U.S. secretary of state, the media are reporting that today has been the single most deadly day for U.S. troops in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. Thirty-one Marines were killed in a helicopter crash and four other Marines were killed in another incident, for 35 U.S. troops killed today. Before today, the single most deadly day for U.S. troops in Iraq had been March 23, 2003, when 26 were killed, according to the AP. Rice's lies about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction -- including the "smoking gun" that could come in the form of a "mushroom cloud" -- have contributed to the unnecessary deaths of more than 1,400 U.S. troops and counting. Oh, yeah, she'll be a great secretary of state.   Update (Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005): The media are now reporting that 31 were killed in the helicopter crash, but that 30 were Marines and one was a Navy sailor, and that six other U.S. military personnel were killed elsewhere in Iraq today, bringing today's U.S. military death toll to 37. Also, the media are now reporting that 28 were killed in Iraq on March 23, 2003. 7:06:14 AM    Comments []

This graphic from Reuters shows that "President" Bush inherited a sizeable federal budget surplus from the Clinton administration when he took office in 2001 but quickly plunged the nation back into a federal budget deficit that is considerably larger than the deficit his father left for the Clinton administration in the early 1990s. 2004's budget deficit of $412 billion was a record, and 2005 is expected to beat that record, with a $427 billion deficit as billions of taxpayers' dollars continue to be poured into war profiteers' coffers and social programs continue to be slashed. Republicans like to bash "tax-and-spend" Democrats, while the Republicans spend but don't tax, leaving huge deficits for future generations to have to deal with.    12:23:56 AM    Comments []