Morning Update
by Steve
There is a new story out there which claims that Shooter was drunk, and keep in mind that given the medications he was on, only one beer would lead to significant impairment.
Murray Waas thinks that the White House authorized the leaking of classified information to Bob Woodward for his wet-kiss books on the president. This would explain Woodward’s downplaying of the Plame case.
Dubai Ports World wants to close the deal next week, but has offered to delay taking control over management of several East and Gulf Coast ports in the wake of bipartisan congressional opposition to the Bush Administration’s rubber stamping of the move. Likewise, the administration has now signaled that they would agree to start a new 45-day review period all over again, knowing that the decision to approve would be the same, but it isn’t clear that this will mollify Congress. Even though the company is an extension of a foreign government, lots of money will change hands in the next 45 days, and Viagra Bob Dole will see to it that lots of GOP incumbents get showered with cash to make this deal go through. That doesn’t change what I said yesterday: Democrats need to pounce on this next week when Congress returns and introduce resolutions to redirect money from Iraq supplemental appropriations towards the rejected requests of the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, and Customs Services for port of entry funds that have been routinely rejected by the GOP and Bush Administration these last four years. The real issue here is the total lack of attention by the GOP and this White House to improving port-of-entry security around the globe for goods headed to this country. And maybe someone should ask why John Negroponte’s secret intelligence agency rubber-stamped this deal without anyone knowing much about them or that decision. The New York Times’ lead editorial says today that after the way Bush has treated Congress these last five years, he deserves what he is getting now. And yet the Washington Post gives Bush another free pass for not knowing about the transaction until it was done. This would be expected, since the Post is on the Dubai payroll in more ways than one. And why should Congress believe anything Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt says, when he has already lied to Congress on this issue before? Lastly, note the contempt that Kimmitt and the Administration held Warner and his committee in yesterday.
As for Iraq, the carnage continues, with the Sunnis temporarily withdrawing from talks on a unity government until they receive an apology from the Shiites for the reprisal violence. A top Shiite political leader has appealed for unity, yet there are no signs as of yet that things will cool off.
On a related note, a Saudi oil refinery was targeted by bombers today, with differing assessments of the damage and impact upon oil production.
Remember when Congress swatted down John Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness program, and thought they had killed it? As many of you suspected, the Bush Administration lied and kept it alive and moved it somewhere else. It has been operating all along in this country, spying upon Americans.
Durable goods orders plummeted last month by the largest amount in over 5 years.
Mitchell Wade, one of the defense contractors accused of bribing Duke Cunningham has pled guilty today. Let’s see if he has a deal to turn over evidence on others.
Bev Harris’s BlackBoxVoting.org alleged yesterday that the 2004 presidential vote in Florida’s Palm Beach County was plagued with irregularities.
The IRS found that 3 out 4 churches, civic groups, and “charities” that were alleged to have engaged in improper political activity in the 2004 election, actually did so.
And yes, even Bloomberg has now noticed that Bush’s health savings accounts proposal is nothing more than another tax benefit for the rich.
Image courtesy of MSNBC.com