BakerMuckraker
Blogs in the Month of
October - 2005
- October 28, BAD
SMELLS FROM DC, GOOD ONES FROM NYC
- October 27, THE
NIGHT BEFORE FITZMAS
- October 26, FAITHLESS-BASED
AID
- October 24, KARL'S
NEW WAR
- October 21, JUST
IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN, HE'S BAAAAACK......
BAD SMELLS FROM DC, GOOD ONES FROM NYC
I was hoping to articulate the bad smell still emanating from the White House, that bad smell that lingers after all is said and done about the Fitzgerald indictment. I was trying to get at the root of what all those reporters were asking, were trying, against all reasonable hope, to expect a ramrod prosecutor to discuss.
And then it hit me: what we need now are some good smells. I found them in the pages of today’s New York Times, to wit:
Good Smell Perplexes New Yorkers
By Kareem Fahim
An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted
through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it
and declared that it was awesome.
''It's like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes,'' he said. ''It's
pleasant.''
The odor had followed Mr. Padilla and his friend along their walk in
Lower Manhattan, from a dormitory on Fulton Street, to Pace University
on Spruce Street, and back down again, to where they stood now, near a
Dunkin' Donuts. Maybe it was from there, he said. But it wasn't.
Mr. Padilla was not alone. Reports of the syrupy cloud poured in from
across Manhattan after 9 p.m. Some feared that it was something
sinister.
There were so many calls that the city's Office of Emergency Management
coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast
Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to look into
it.
By 11 p. m., the search had turned up nothing harmful, according to
tests of the air. Reports continued to come in from as far north as
112th Street shortly before midnight. In Lower Manhattan, where the
smell had begun to fade, it was back, stronger than before, by 1 a.m.
''We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to
make sure there's nothing hazardous,'' said Jarrod Bernstein, an
emergency management spokesman. ''What the actual cause of the smell is,
we really don't know.''
There were conflicting accounts as to its nature. A police officer who
had thrown out her French vanilla coffee earlier compared it to that.
Two diplomats from the Netherlands disagreed, politely. Rieneke Buisman
said it smelled like roasted peanuts. Her friend Joris Geeven said it
reminded him of a Dutch cake called peperkoek, though he could not
describe that smell.
SYMBOLIC VS SUBSTANTIVE
Today, a Times report about the former drug dealer and pimp embraced by Laura Bush as “the person who inspired my whole interest” in the struggles of poor, fatherless boys. That’s very nice, especially since an article on Kenyatta Q. Thigpen (if not his colorful name) launched Mrs. Bush on a national campaign for troubled youth. This led to a Laura Bush-hosted White House conference yesterday.
But Mr. Thigpen seems unappreciative.
….angry that despite his minor celebrity he remained stuck in a dead-end job. Though he spent the day among cabinet secretaries and N.B.A. stars, he lost two days of wages as a pizza delivery man, and he was going home to a girlfriend upset because of the lost pay and because he had spent his last $25 on a new shirt and tie……
[They showed a video of Mr. Thigpen with his 3-year-old in his arms] "That was so beautiful," he said, leaving the conference before heading to a White House reception. "That was going on! And then tomorrow, I got to go back home to the same old nothing."
Well, not necessarily. Didn’t a position just open up on Vice President Cheney’s staff? Mrs. Bush, can't you make a call?
STILL MIRED IN MIERS
Several of you complained about my blog tease the other day, “Miers and Crickets.” You found it misleading since it was mostly about crickets and hardly at all about Miers.
So here’s something on the late great Supreme Court nominee:
She explained her withdrawal from consideration yesterday thusly: “I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interests of the country.”
Well, that’s one of those common statements in Washington that is half true. If you could only snip off the back half of most sentences.
It is in the interests of the country, Dear Harriet, to find out what advice you gave President Bush about several things. Like: how to explain to clamoring reporters the missing year from Bush's National Guard service, when the topic re-emerged in 2004. Like: what Bush should say when asked by Patrick Fitzgerald about his knowledge of and interest in the smearing of Joseph Wilson and the outing of Wilson's wife, the CIA operative Valerie Plame. Like: How to arrange things so the president’s fingerprints aren’t on anything going on around him.
So yes, Dear Harriet, that surely would have been a burden for the White House and the staff. Yes, indeed.
THE NIGHT BEFORE FITZMAS
(A Must-Read While Waiting for Fitz )
'Twas the night before Fitzmas, and in the White House Every one was scared shitless, and Bush was quite soused.
The indictments were hanging like Damocles' sword As verminous oxen prepared to be gored.
The perps were all sleepless, curled fetal in bed, While visions of prison cells loomed in each head.
And Dick in his jammies and George in his lap Were sweating and swearing and looking like crap.
When out on the web there arose such a clatter, The blogs and the forums were buzzing with chatter.
Away to the PC Rove ran like a flash;
He booted his browser and cleared out his cache.
The rumors that flew through the cold autumn air Made Dubya shiver with angry despair.
When what to his horror-filled eyes did he spy?
A bespectacled man with a brown suit and tie!
With an impartial manner that gave Bush the shits, He knew in a moment it must be St. Fitz!
With unwavering voice, his indictments they came.
He cleared out his throat and he called them by name:
Now Scooter, Now Libby,
Now Blossoming Turd,
Now Cheney, dear Cheney,
Yes, you are the third.
To the bench of the court,
Up the steps, down the hall,
Now come along, come along,
Come along, all!
He then became silent and went right to work.
He filed the indictments and turned with a jerk And, pointing his finger at justice's scale, Said, "The people be served, and let fairness prevail."
He then left the room, to his team gave a nod, And the sound could be heard of a crumbling facade.
And we all did exclaim, as he faded from sight "Merry Fitzmas to all, and to all a good night!"
[SOURCE UNKNOWN, via Sam Smith, Prorev.com}
----
HAVE FAITH IN FEMA
As if the FEMA folks haven’t shown enough sinister loopiness, now comes the Faith-Based Mismatch. According to a New York Times piece, FEMA is using donations from foreign countries to pay a faith-based group, the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCR), to provide counseling to families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
This, of course, is a very bad idea. Even the UMCR official quoted sounds dubious: “We can’t work with 100,000 cases,” he told the Times. UMCR intends to team up with other groups, and hire 600 case managers, plus scads of volunteers, to generate a work force of 3,000. What are these people’s qualifications? Doesn’t say.
Of course, UMCR says it won’t proselytize, and, being Methodists, we might be able to believe that.
Still, this is a bad idea, and typical of the contempt the Administration holds for the notion of actually managing solutions itself as if it had been elected to do such a thing.
Even worse, the administration simply assumed that these foreign governments wouldn’t mind their money being handed over to the Methodists. Which countries? Well, Malta, which as I recall has more Catholic Churches per square foot than just about any other place. And Bahrain. And China. Those heavily Methodist lands. Oh—and the biggest donor, the United Arab Emirates. I can hardly wait for the announcement that the Saudis will be funding “cooking in emergencies” classes taught by the Hare Krishna. Or that the Palestinian Authority is funding Hasidic “Mitzvah tanks.” Oy. Vey.
Here’s the blog, but first, another installment of the short-running soap opera, Dear Diary
--
Dear Diary:
Recently, while on assignment in Texas, I was thinking about Harriet Miers, and how, like everyone around the president (including the president), she had had a religious conversion. Maybe I’d pondered too many biblical prophesies for one day, because I was slightly startled to receive this note from the Powers at my rather elegant hotel.
“Dear Valued Guest,
Perhaps you have noticed a number of crickets in the area as you arrived in Austin today.
This is the cricket migration season that runs through the summer months and ends in October and affects the entire Central Texas area. Crickets are usually active at night as they are nocturnal creatures. They prefer shelter in cracks and crevices and usually invade buildings seeking moisture. While many residents of Austin are familiar with the cricket migration, we realize that you, our valued guest, may not be. While we have taken all possible actions to minimize those occasions you will come across a cricket, should you have an encounter and require assistance, please phone the front desk. “
Well, Jiminey Cricket! It aint exactly a plague of locusts, but it would have to do…..
Out on the bar deck, where one self-satisfied fellow was lecturing an enthralled (or numbed) younger man on the marvels and pleasures of getting rich in real estate, every so often I would hear a shriek, followed by a mad stamping of boots, as if this were some kind of Anglo Hat Dance.
One final tip, Dear Diary: Please do not open your windows at night. ..Again, welcome to Austin and enjoy your stay!
FAITHLESS-BASED AID
Speaking of biblical matters, My friend Sam Smith over at Progressive Review has an item from The Humanist, which notes that it wasn’t only faith-based groups that helped out during Hurricane Katrina. Det. Sgt. Steve Schlicht of the Gulfport, Mississippi, police department coordinated relief activities with fellow Humanists.
I guess if news organizations are going to make such a big deal about help from those with connections at the top (Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, et al), they might note that some of those helping actually think, in a pinch, only humans routinely and predictably come through for humans.
ELECTORAL ELECTRICITY, ANYONE?
Perhaps you’ve heard that electronic voting systems won’t be ready in time for 2006 elections. Not with any degree of reliability or serious safeguards. So says the Government Accountability Office in a new report. Besides screw-ups with crucial voter-verified paper trails, there are incorrect software installations and even, get this, easily-guessed administrator passwords. Like “doofus,” perhaps.
What have any of us who bellyached about problems with balloting the last couple of elections done to remedy this? Surely if enough noise were made about the incompetence, we might see some urgent action taken. Honestly, if they could solve the Y2K year-2000 programming nightmare, they ought to be able to design and implement voting systems that are secure and reliable.
SUPER-APPRISE ME!
I read in the New York Times today that McDonald’s intends to start putting nutrition labeling on food packaging starting next year. That’s nice, but of course, by then, you’ve already got the darn thing in your hand, and, darn it, you’re hungry. Michael Jacobson, the healthy food advocate, wants the calorie, fat, carb, salt and such info on the big board, so you can intelligently comparison-shop.
I’ve got another solution. Remember those charts showing the monkey-to-man evolutionary process? Why not one where we can see, graphically rendered, the effects of daily consumption of various delicacies? One fish sandwich a day might, for example, show a relatively slim if slightly dazed person, suffering the early effects of mercury poisoning. One Bacon Sausage Quarter Ton Cheeseburger might be represented by Sumo Wrestler Siamese Twins. If anyone knows Jacobson, run that scenario by him. Bet he’d bite.
Muckraker Blogs From The Huffington Post Today....
KARL'S NEW WAR
Imagine you’re Karl Rove. You’ve got a possible indictment hanging
over your head, and the head of the Veep’s main guy, Scooter Libby, in
the CIA agent name leak case. Your Capitol Hill roach-stomper, Tom DeLay,
just had his mugshot taken following an indictment for laundering of
campaign contributions from corporations. Your White House head of
procurement, David Safavian, was recently taken away in handcuffs,
accused of lying about government dealings with his old friend the
lobbyist Jack Abramoff, another insider being investigated for, well,
just about everything.
Oh—and you’ve got a boss with plummeting popularity ratings, and troublesome prospects in next year’s midterm congressional elections.
Whew! So being as you’re Karl Rove, you do what Karl is always inclined to do in these situations: create a distraction. A big one. Big enough to suck the metaphorical wind out of the press room.
What’s big enough to compete with such odoriferously spectacular sleaze news? Not much. Except maybe another war. In other words, Wag the Dog.
Last Friday, I got a CNN “Breaking News” e-mail: President Bush calls for United Nations to convene after "deeply disturbing" report implicates Syrian officials in assassination. Of course it’s deeply disturbing that Syria’s leadership should be behind the bomb that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But it’s hardly surprising, since Syria has for decades meddled in Lebanese politics, occupied the country, probably had a hand in past assassinations in a country where such things are all too common. It was more or less a given that Syria was behind the assassination, with help from Lebanese insiders. The report simply confirmed those suspicions.
But Bush’s UN call is not without specific purpose. In fact, it’s likely part of a two-pronged argument that we’re about to hear: Syria is destabilizing the region at a crucial time, and providing safe haven to terrorists on their way into Iraq. Them’s fighting words, and before long, the media will be convulsed with a debate over yet another possible invasion. (And if you prefer threesomes, to Iraq and Syria, add Iran, about which we’re hearing more tough talk.)
It is highly doubtful that such an invasion will take place, especially given how stretched US military resources are, but it’s a sure bet that this represents the launching of a major political offensive.
That is, get everyone whipped up about the pros and cons of another invasion, including, especially, the costs, in dollars and lives. And, about the goals and appropriateness of the action. Almost by definition, news organizations must always place military issues and possible hostilities ahead of other matters. And the reality is that wars play better: it’s just too darned hard to explain to the public the intricacies of corruption cases – unless the corruption involves something we all get, like a blue dress that needs dry cleaning. Plus, resources, space and time are limited. So all of these creeping –gates, PlameGate, LobbyistGate, DonorGate, etc, can momentarily be shunted away to the inside pages where only the most hardy pay attention to them.
To be sure, an actual arrest and prosecution of someone of Rove’s ‘stature’ would lead the news. But don’t bet on it remaining the topic of conversation once a clarion call is sounded for America to again do its thing for global security. You and I may love to speculate about Scooter, and Karl, and their comrades, but the reality in middle America is far different. Last year, on a flight to Texas, I chatted with my seatmate, a seemingly well-informed software salesman, reasonably affluent, college-educated, moderate, who volunteered that he increasingly didn’t trust Bush. He saw me clutching a copy of the book, “Bush’s Brain,” about Rove. “Who,” he asked, “is that?”
If he and most Americans barely knew who Rove was then, imagine their interest in his fate, and those of even lesser visibility, as the drums of war sound again.
Just in time for Halloween, he's baaaaack......
Returning to a blog after a long absence (in my case, a pressing investigative project) is like returning from a long vacation: you wonder if anyone knew you were gone.
If you did, please write. It’s lonesome here in the digital tunnel.
Anyway, some thoughts on the news today, but first, the debut of a new occasional feature, in which I tell a story of no particular use to humanity, but one, I hope, that is at least mildly droll:
Dear Diary
I occasionally get asked to appear publicly, often as part of some kind of panel discussion. Usually, I have no idea why I am there. Earlier this week, I appeared on a panel before a group of expats from a small European country whose identity I won’t disclose here.
The topic of the discussion was, “Security in [XYZ country] in a Post-London, -Madrid and -Iraq Invasion World.”
Since I didn’t know much about the country’s security concerns, I expected to be charming and funny while leaning for substance on my two co-panelists, both nationals of the European country. And, for what it's worth, both nice enough fellows. Unfortunately, one, a correspondent for that nation's elite newspaper, was a mumbler. A woman sitting in front of him in the audience, kept repeating “enunciate – you must E-NUN-CI-ATE.” If my colleague got the message, I was not aware, and I had as much trouble as anyone in the accoustically-problematical space figuring out what he was saying -- and so was forced to come up with my own instant analysis of their domestic concerns.
My other co-panelist is a representative of one of the country’s most left-oriented political parties -- that is, when he is not at his day (and probably night and weekend) job as a managing director for one of America’s largest investment banks. I clearly understood what he said, but I couldn’t quite figure out how someone could be so immersed in the most ruthless aspects of the capitalist system and yet opining on the need to create a kinder, more egalitarian world. Then I remembered George Soros, who spent a lifetime messing controversially with global currencies, but in recent years devoted much of his fortune to fostering democratic institutions and political reform worldwide. Go figure.
There’s more to the story, Dear Diary, but I really must get to today’s news, so I will bid you adieu for the moment.
GUNS AND MATCHING CUFFS
Yesterday’s papers brought a report that the US government wants the Palestinians to bar any candidates who advocate violence. That makes sense, but, of course, equitably applied, it would bar Pat Robertson, the onetime presidential candidate who called for the liquidation of Venezuela’s president, from running again.
Speaking of liquidation, yesterday, Congress passed a bill protecting gun manufacturers from liability lawsuits – this despite the statistics showing howlarge a percentage of their products end up being used not in legitimate self-defense but in crimes and crimes of passion. Giving these companies legal haven reminds me of an ad I saw recently on television. It was absolutely unequivocal, and powerful, in condemning tobacco’s role in avoidable death and disease, and so I waited to see whether the sponsor was the Heart Association or the Cancer Society. It was neither. The sponsor was Philip Morris. The ad, I suspect, is part of one of these billion-dollar concessions required of tobacco firms, where they must tell people not to use their products as a condition for continuing to peddle them.
Anyway, the new protection for gun makers is part of a likely torrent of special interest legislation we can expect in coming months. With polls indicating that the GOP congressional majorities face big losses in next year’s elections, and with the Bush Administration and Tom DeLay under siege from investigators and prosecutors, there will be a rush to pay off those who funded the takeover in the first place. And who will, providentially, rise to the role of paymaster yet again.
Speaking of DeLay, the mugshot published in newspapers today of the former House majority leader is something to behold. It’s absolutely the nicest smile I’ve ever seen on DeLay, indicating perhaps that he thinks he’s going into the yearbook of good guys, not being booked and fingerprinted in connection with an alleged conspiracy to illegally funnel corporate monies into Texas campaigns. The whole point of the operation was to get around prohibitions on company funding in Lone Star races, thereby electing more Republican state legislators, who would – and did – reapportion Texas’s congressional districts in such a way that more Republicans could – and did – get elected to the House of Representatives. This elaborate strategy increased the Republican majority considerably, making it much easier to reward corporate interests -- like tobacco companies and gun manufacturers.
Got it? Okay, that’s it for the rebirth of the blog. See you soon.