Ken Lay Avoids Jail

Yes, OK, I admit it. It's a cruel headline. I'm sinking to the level of the right. But it's just human nature:

Sorry, Nicky, human nature-
Nothing I can do!
It's...
Schadenfreude!
Making me feel glad that I'm not you.

Or maybe it's that I'm still laughing from Cats Who Look Like Hitler. But MSNBC is reporting that former Enron CEO Ken Lay has died of a heart attack.

If I weren't so sure that the frothing gasbags on the right are going to start screaming "LIBERALS KILLED KEN LAY!!!" (and if you encounter one before I do, please leave the link in the comments), I'd say that it's sad that the case against Ken Lay has in essence resulted in the death penalty -- or maybe it's not. Now, I have no sympathy for the Enron traders who raked in millions while starving California of electricity losing their life savings because of the chicanery of Messrs. Lay and Skilling, but I do feel badly for the secretaries, the clerks, the janitors, cafeteria staff, and other low-level employees who thought they were being loyal to the team, only to find that the coach had stolen everything from them.

But if Ken Lay had had a conscience and a soul, perhaps he might not have ended up like this.

I'd like to believe that other corporate robber barons will learn from this, but somehow I don't think they will.

Why net neutrality is important

...because if sites like Cats That Look Like Hitler have to pay in order to load, the world might as well stop spinning on its axis.

Wednesday Kitchen blogging, or Eat My Dust

I'm off from work this week, and of course the project isn't going as quickly as I'd hoped. Yesterday I spent hours sanding the corner tape job I did on the cabinet soffits:



...and more hours cleaning up the resulting dust.

Of course, once you get started, you think about what you're going to do next. Our kithen is an L-shape, with a drop-in cooktop next to the wall, and this completely pointless and intrusive bump-out holding a wall oven and three cabinets:



My eventual plan is to line the long wall opposite the work area with more cabinets so I can sacrifice the three cabinets on this bump-out, then replace the cooktop with a real range when I have a new countertop installed.

And now, by popular demand, here is the World's Ugliest Kitchen Floor:



Can you imagine anyone looking at this and thinking, "Gee, that's pretty!" -- even in 1975?

Today it's rainy and humid, and I am off to apply primer to the entire mess.

What the media rean't telling you about the North Korea missile launch yesterday

Greg Palast:

George Bush is upset, distraught, that North Korea has fired a missile that could reach Alaska — carrying a nuclear warhead.? Well, Mr. President, you have only yourself to blame.

In case you can’t recall, your intelligence chiefs ordered US agents to curb their investigation of A.Q. Khan, head of Pakistan’s bomb-building program.? There was mounting evidence Khan was selling his nuclear and missile material technology to Libya and North Korea.
The reason for the spike order, the “back off” directive, was that the investigators had tracked the source of funds for Mr. Khans flea market in fissile material to Saudi Arabia.? Apparently, Team Bush did not want to make the Saudi’s uncomfortable by exposing their payments to Khan.

We reported this on BBC in November 2001, based on informants within the top levels of our intelligence agencies, men unhappy with politicians who would have them avert their gaze.

Interesting reading on the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network here.

Our nation's self-styled King George

Editorial, San Francisco Chronicle:

Americans did not undertake a revolution against the reign of King George III to create a government that would spy on its citizens, torture enemy combatants, detain suspects without charges for extended stretches on an island beyond reach of U.S. law, invade foreign countries without just cause and attempt to edit not only the press -- but laws that have been duly crafted and approved by our elected representatives in Congress.

This nation is veering too far from the course of its Founding Fathers. Two hundred-thirty years ago, the Declaration of Independence reproofed that a government's power is "derived from the consent of the governed." Those words ring true today.

If Americans are ceding too many freedoms under the guise of a war on terrorism -- which, by its nature, may never officially end -- it is because their absence of outrage is taken as a nod of assent.

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not doing so to commission an annual party. They were making a covenant with history that requires day-to-day vigilance to defend the liberties it asserted. Honor them by speaking out.

Let's look again at what they said; at what caused the American Revolution that we celebrate today:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes [My note: like presidential blowjobs]; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

[snip]

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

[snip]

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

[snip]

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Indeed.

"the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it"

Nick Kristof, on freedom of the press:

... so far there is no evidence that the banking story harmed national security, and I'm sure that editors of this newspaper, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal weighed their responsibilities seriously, for they have repeatedly held back information when necessary. In contrast, the press-bashers have much less credibility.

Take Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Roberts has criticized The Times, but he himself is responsible for an egregious disclosure of classified intelligence. As National Journal reported in April, it was Senator Roberts who stated as the Iraq war began that the U.S. had "human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein."

That statement horrified some in our intelligence community by revealing that we had an agent close to Saddam.

No responsible newspaper would risk an agent's life so blithely. And The Times would never have been as cavalier about Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as the White House was. The fact is, journalists regularly hold back information for national security reasons; I recently withheld information at the request of the intelligence community about secret terrorist communications.

More broadly, the one thing worse than a press that is "out of control" is one that is under control. Anybody who has lived in a Communist country knows that. Just consider what would happen if the news media as a whole were as docile to the administration as Fox News or The Wall Street Journal editorial page.

When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.

[snip]

So be very wary of Mr. Bush's effort to tame the press. Watchdogs can be mean, dumb and obnoxious, but it would be even more dangerous to trade them in for lap dogs.

The desire of the American people to be fat, dumb, happy, and oblivious to the crimes of their leaders does not trump their obligation to be informed.

Hey, Bush voters! You were PUNK'D! And by Osama Bin Laden, no less!

Anyone who voted for Bush in 2004 ought to feel pretty damn silly:

On Oct. 29, 2004, just four days before the U.S. presidential election, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden released a videotape denouncing George W. Bush. Some Bush supporters quickly spun the diatribe as “Osama’s endorsement of John Kerry.” But behind the walls of the CIA, analysts had concluded the opposite: that bin-Laden was trying to help Bush gain a second term.

This stunning CIA disclosure is tucked away in a brief passage near the end of Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders. Suskind wrote that the CIA analysts based their troubling assessment on classified information, but the analysts still puzzled over exactly why bin-Laden wanted Bush to stay in office.

According to Suskind’s book, CIA analysts had spent years “parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, [Ayman] Zawahiri. What they’d learned over nearly a decade is that bin-Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. …

“Their [the CIA’s] assessments, at day’s end, are a distillate of the kind of secret, internal conversations that the American public [was] not sanctioned to hear: strategic analysis. Today’s conclusion: bin-Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.

“At the five o’clock meeting, [deputy CIA director] John McLaughlin opened the issue with the consensus view: ‘Bin-Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President.’”

McLaughlin’s comment drew nods from CIA officers at the table. Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, suggested that the al-Qaeda founder may have come to Bush’s aid because bin-Laden felt threatened by the rise in Iraq of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; bin-Laden might have thought his leadership would be diminished if Bush lost the White House and their “eye-to-eye struggle” ended.

But the CIA analysts also felt that bin-Laden might have recognized how Bush’s policies – including the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the endless bloodshed in Iraq – were serving al-Qaeda’s strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.

“Certainly,” the CIA’s Miscik said, “he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years,” according to Suskind’s account of the meeting.

As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts drifted into silence, troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. “An ocean of hard truths before them – such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin-Laden would want Bush reelected – remained untouched,” Suskind wrote.

One immediate consequence of bin-Laden breaking nearly a year of silence to issue the videotape the weekend before the U.S. presidential election was to give the Bush campaign a much needed boost. From a virtual dead heat, Bush opened up a six-point lead, according to one poll.

Now, whether Bin Laden was just operating on reverse psychology (which worked like a charm, and indeed is still working, as Americans justify no end of crimes and violations of Constitutional law by this Administration in the name of the so-called "war on terror") or if he and Bush are in cahoots, the tough stance of each benefitting the other, remains to be seen.

But the fact of the matter remains: anyone who voted to elect George W. Bush in 2004 played right into Osama Bin Laden's hands. The old boy couldn't have been any happier if they'd given him a present. And indeed, they did.

And by the way, in case you thought that the "hunt for Osama" is still on? It isn't. The unit whose mission was the hunting down of Osama Bin Laden and his top deputies was closed last year.

Happy 4th of July.

UPDATE: Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's wife is claiming that Al Qaeda leaders sold out her husband in return for letting up the search for Osama Bin Laden:

Al-Qaida leaders sold out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to the United States in exchange for a promise to let up in the search for Osama bin Laden, the slain militant's wife claimed in an interview with an Italian newspaper.

The woman, identified by La Repubblica as al-Zarqawi's first wife, said al-Qaida's top leadership reached a deal with U.S. intelligence because al-Zarqawi had become too powerful. She claimed Sunni tribes and Jordanian secret services mediated the deal.

Al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, died June 7 in a U.S. airstrike outside Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad.

"My husband has been sold to the Americans," the woman said in an interview published Sunday. "He had become too powerful, too troublesome."

She was identified only as "Um Mohammed," which means "mother of Mohammed" and would be a nickname, not her full name. The Rome-based newspaper said the interview was conducted in Geneva and described her as Jordanian and about 40 years old.

In Jordan, Al-Zarqawi's eldest brother, Sayel, said the family had not been aware of the woman's whereabouts for about two years.

"I think a secret pact was struck whose immediate goal was his death," she told the newspaper. "In return, the American troops promised to ease, at least momentarily, their hunt for bin Laden."

While Bush was promising today to keep feeding more American kids into a meatgrinder so he doesn't have to tell the parents and wives and siblings of the ones who died already that they died for the lies and failure and hubris of their commander-in-chief, let us not forget his words from the March 13, 2002 press conference:

And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.