Oh, to be young, dumb, and Republican. First Jenna and now this:

News4 has learned the son of a gun activist was arrested Wednesday night and charged with an apparent road rage shooting on the George Washington Parkway.

Police believe David Michael Keene, 21, shot a gun from a BMW on Sunday afternoon. The bullet shattered the window of a Mercedes Benz and became lodged in the driver's seat, just inches from the driver's head. [...]

News4 has learned Keene is the son of David A. Keene, who is on the board of directors for the National Rifle Association. Keene is also a conservative political consultant and lobbyist who has worked in the White House and in Congress.

I miss Chelsea! I want American leaders to have good kids!

{ 6:07 PM }

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Susan Sontag has written an important essay on the intricate relationship we have with images of human suffering (e.g., war photography) in the December 9 issue of The New Yorker. A sample:

Perhaps the only people with the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme order [i.e., gruesome combat horrors] are those who could do something to alleviate it – say, the surgeons at the military hospital where the photograph was taken – or those who could learn from it. The rest of us are voyeurs, whether we like it or not.

The essay is not online but there is an excellent introduction with links to other galleries of the imagery discussed.

With a new war likely on the way, her essay provides a timely set of insights into wartime suffering and how it is usually depicted, often manipulated, and never understood.

{ 3:17 PM }

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"If you set aside Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the safety record of nuclear is really very good." Outgoing Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, as quoted in The New York Times. Impeccable logic for our times.

That's like saying, "If you set aside support for the Taliban, the intelligence failures of 9/11/01, the anthrax attacks on Democratic senators, the casino-toilet economy, job loss for millions, the disappearance of billions of citizens' 401(k) and IRA dollars, the non-prosecution of accounting and corporate deviants, the Leave-No-CEO-Behind fundraising, untold damage to America's reputation internationally, the Pharmaceutical Homeland Security legislation, oil exploration in Alaska and the redrock Southwest, the incessant erosion of civil liberties, the parallel legal system for 'terrorists,' the continued existence and influence of Al Qaeda, and the Cheney-led secret energy cabal, the record of the Bush administration is really very good."

It's fun to watch corporate toadies fighting. However, no doubt the replacement robot will be worse than the original.

{ 9:54 AM }

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"I had first become concerned many months before the June 1972 burglary [Watergate] about the deliberate, systematic, and, unfortunately, extremely successful efforts of the President, Henry Kissinger, and a few subordinate members of their inner circle to conceal, sometimes by simple silence more often by articulate deceit, their real policies about the most critical matters of national security."

Stanley I. Kutler quoting Elmo Zumwalt's memoirs in Harper Magazine's extensive "Regarding Henry Kissinger".

{ 11:50 AM }

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One area in which conservatives and liberals can agree. From The Associated Press:

"Larger numbers of American people have realized that the ACLU is fundamentally a patriotic organization,'' executive director Anthony Romero said. There are now 330,000 dues-paying members, 50,000 of whom joined after the [9/11/01] attacks.

The group has been in the thick of legal challenges to the government's broadening anti-terror powers.

Last week, in response to an ACLU lawsuit, the government agreed to tell the group by mid-January which documents it is willing to release about its increased surveillance activities.

Especially notable among the new enthusiasts are conservatives who once thought the ACLU represented everything that was wrong with the left.

"They are very useful and productive force in jurisprudence,'' said Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill.

Conservatives such as Hyde are mindful of the history of an organization that was lonely in its defense of positions now accepted as universal: Blacks who suffered spurious prosecutions in the 1930s, Japanese interned in the 1940s, books banned as obscene now regarded as part of the literary canon. [...]

"When you have the highest ranking law enforcement official in the country saying either you're with me or against me, and that your tactics aid the terrorists, that rubs people the wrong way,'' Romero said.

That includes conservatives who bridle at government intrusions into privacy.

Whatever happened to the conservative calls for less, and less intrusive, government? Invasions of privacy will affect not only liberals, but also South Park Republicans, Log Cabin Republicans, and all the other cutely named (and unnamed) factions that have something personal to hide from the electronic gaze of Ashcroft and/or Poindexter.

No matter who's in power, liberal or conservative, some official is always disapproving of something you're doing – whether it's political, aesthetic, financial, or sexual – and that's why we Americans invest part of our identity in having this wonderful thing called privacy.

What kind of social hell are you waiting for? Join the ACLU. Right now.

{ 9:50 AM }

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Roberto Sebastian Matta Echaurren, artist. Born November 11, 1911; died November 23, 2002.

The world has lost a great visual imagination. We loved the show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and began a glowing review that we never finished and that has since vanished. Now he has vanished too.

His obituary and his art.

{ 5:59 PM }

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More D5E smoke from Lord Rumsfeld, Minister of Propaganda. From "The Military's New War of Words," in the Los Angeles Times:

...a summary of the strategic capabilities plan and a raft of other Pentagon and armed forces documents made available to The Times make it clear that the new approach now includes other elements as well: the management of public information, efforts to control* news media sources and manipulation of public opinion.

The plan summary, for instance, talks of "strategic" deception and "influence operations" as basic tools in future wars. According to another Defense Department directive on information warfare policy, military leaders should use information "operations" to "heighten public awareness; promote national and coalition policies, aims, and objectives ... [and] counter adversary propaganda and disinformation in the news."

Both the Air Force and the Navy now list deception as one of five missions for information warfare, along with electronic attack, electronic protection, psychological attacks and public affairs. A September draft of a new Air Force policy describes information warfare's goals as "destruction, degradation, denial, disruption, deceit, and exploitation." These goals are referred to collectively as "D5E." [...]

Since reporters cannot travel into parts of Iraq and other places in the region without military escort, what they report is generally what they've been told.

And when the information that military officers provide to the public is part of a process that generates propaganda and places a high value on deceit, deception and denial, then truth is indeed likely to be high on the casualty list.

That is bad news for the American public. In the end, it may be even worse news for the Bush administration -- and for a U.S. military that has spent more than 25 years climbing out of the credibility trap called Vietnam.

*It's much easier to control news sources when the FCC's overlord Michael "Son of Colin" Powell gives the thumbs-up to media monopolies. See the post below.

{ 5:22 PM }

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Watching the watchers, yet again. Let's all pause and consider the media cabal for a moment, shall we? Byrd's Brain provides a nice overview of the media ownership issues that face the FCC:

Colin Powell's son, Michael, is the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC traditionally has limited the number of newspapers, radio stations and television outlets that a company can own in any given metropolitan area. These rules have been relaxed over the past 5 years. Now Chairman Powell is interested in eliminating the restrictions.

Byrd's Brain points out that the deadline for public comments is January 2, 2003 (PDF file).

For Christmas, Republicans want unrestricted media monopolies in every market. Will you help them get their wish?

{ 4:55 PM }

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Enriching the suckups. Now political appointments come with a new perk: cash bonuses (Washington Post):

The White House has decided that several thousand political appointees across the federal government will be eligible for cash bonuses, abandoning a Clinton-era prohibition that grew out of questionable practices in the first Bush administration.

Administration officials said the policy shift, ordered by the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., earlier this year but never publicly disclosed, seeks to correct the inequity of political appointees' working side by side with civil servants who routinely receive bonuses.

The new policy is being instituted at many federal departments, and a few agencies have already begun distributing awards of several thousand dollars each to political appointees. For example, the Justice Department has given bonuses to political appointees who were deemed to have played important roles in counterterrorism* and the Sept. 11 investigation, officials said. [...]

For the first time in eight years, cabinet-level officials and agency chiefs have been authorized to approve annual awards of up to $10,000 — and possibly more — for the influential senior attorneys, policy advisers, confidential assistants and other appointees who are brought onto their political staffs. Awards can total $25,000 — or higher with approval from the White House.

Here's an extra fifty grand, Henry, for helping out with Pinochet, bombing Cambodia, and legitimizing the administration's lack of a grasp on Al Qaeda. In Junior's world, crime has a whole new payscale.

*In the private sector, the Vice President of Counterterrorism would be receiving a pink slip instead of a cash bonus after the fuckup of 9/11.

Former Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine? Former interim FBI director Tom Pickard? Did you receive your retroactive bonuses yet? Meanwhile, John O'Neill, the FBI counterterrorism expert who knew, is still dead, along with nearly 3,000 others.

Death for the competent, bonuses for the toadies. It won't fly as a slogan, but it's making a hell of a party platform and an administration policy.

{ 10:00 AM }

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"Henny Penny?" From FAIR via Cursor:

According to a transcript on the Department of Defense website, Rumsfeld told reporters:

"And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence*. You may recall that. And 'oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.' I went down that next day and said fine, if you want to savage this thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have."

A search of the Nexis database indicates that no major U.S. media outlets-- no national broadcast television news shows, no major U.S. newspapers, no wire services or major magazines-- have reported Rumsfeld's remarks.

Henny Penny? I'll give you the corpse? What exactly are the media reporting these days, besides Jennifer Lopez's diet?

*The new Pentagon group was created "to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations.”

{ 4:51 PM }

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Watching the watchers. What would Total Information Awareness of John Poindexter begin to look like? Cryptome starts the ball rolling with aerial photographs of his house and other personal information that deserves to be disseminated because, after all, he is a past convicted felon (via his Iran-Contra participation) and a present public menace (as Director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office). According to prevailing right-wing logic, because he does not consider himself a terrorist, this invasion of his privacy shouldn't bother him.

The original impetus for Cryptome's story was an article by Matt Smith in SF Weekly. Link via Boing Boing.

{ 9:22 AM }

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And Dynegy gets a new CFO too. What a coincidence! The very day I get interested in Dynegy again, here comes new CFO Nick J. Caruso.

I bet there's a lot of story behind the new CFO story. Since I'm getting hits from dynegy.com, here's an invitation: Email me your version of what's really going on at Dynegy (click "say hello" in the right column) and I'll post it here anonymously.

Let me know who's who on the board and what happened to all your 401(k) money.

{ 4:47 PM }

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Hello, Dynegy people! According to Google search terms that lead to you to this site (like "whistleblower," "Ted Beatty," and "Anthony Corrino"), lately you have been visiting here because of this post referring to the whistleblower story in The Wall Street Journal.

Retracing your steps, I googled the same terms and found the site dedicated to the case against the Dynegy 401(k) plan:

The Complaint alleges that during the Class Period the defendants breached their fiduciary duties when they were made aware of numerous facts that made Dynegy stock an inappropriate investment for the Plan. [...]

This case was filed against: Jane D. Jones, Robert D. Doty, Jr., Andrea Lang, Sheli Z. Rosenberg, Patricia M. Eckert, Charles E. Bayless, Michael D. Capellas, Glenn F. Tilton, Charles L. Watson, Stephen W. Bergstrom, Daniel L. Dienstbier, Jerry L. Johnson, H. John Riley, Jr., Joe J. Stewart, J. Otis Winters, Darald W. Callahan, and John S. Watson[...]

The above site, with the appropriate name of erisafraud.com, is apparently the production of a law firm:

Keller Rohrback and its co-counsel serve as lead or co-lead counsel in a class action on behalf of employees in 401(k) litigation involving the following companies: Enron, Providian, Williams Companies, Xerox, CMS Energy, Dynegy, Duke Energy, WorldCom and Lucent. Additionally, Keller Rohrback is involved in 401(k) litigation with respect to the following companies: Global Crossing, BellSouth, Conseco and Household International.

We are not affiliated with any of the parties, or their accounting firms or legal representation. We are just a guy who follows the story. So why do we care? Because corporate misbehavior has stolen a fortune from the small investors of this country, us included. Add to that a political environment which indicts an accounting firm (Andersen), protects its political-contributor clients (Enron upper management at large), and exacts restitution from neither, and the worst forms of corruption and financial mayhem become commonplace, as indeed they have.

Meanwhile, Lay's lawyer Michael Ramsey seems confident that his client will have "some pretty good answers" for charges against him, according to the Houston Chronicle. Unbelievably good, no doubt.

Never forget that privatization of Social Security was a scheme whose net effect would have been to siphon off even more than the billions already lost by normal people. A Republican scheme, that is.

All hat, no cattle, and the hat isn't even white.

{ 4:12 PM }

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All hail St. Bibiana, patron saint of hangovers. Here's hoping you had a nice holiday weekend after a rotten November.

Also known as St. Vivian, St. Bibiana is also the patron saint of epilepsy, epileptics, hangovers, headaches, insanity, mental illness, mentally ill people, single laywomen, torture victims, and the diocese of Los Angeles, California. [Link courtesy of the delightful and alluring mimi smartypants, who "firmly believes that beauty should be convulsive."]

{ 9:10 AM }

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