What's worse than a Turkish prison? Ask Kurdish restaurateur Ibrahim Parlak, and the answer will be the Department of Homeland Security:

"I've lost my trust and I've lost everything I have to the system," Parlak told The Associated Press this week through a telephone interview from the Calhoun County jail in Battle Creek, where he has been held since his July 29 arrest at the FBI office in St. Joseph.

He said he was treated better during his 18 months in a Turkish prison than he has been while in U.S. custody.

"It's worse than a Turkish prison," Parlak said. "It's sad, but it's true."

See also this and this as well as our first post about Parlak's plight.

{ 10:14 AM }

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Gypsy Rose Bush. Like a boy eager to get to the good part of his oral exam, Bush glossed over the morsels he wanted to bequeath to the American people and gained in intensity when he got to what he wanted to give to the "people of the Middle East." As he paused for emphasis, C-SPAN's camera cut to his stage mother Karen Hughes who silently mouthed the word, "Freedom," which he picked up right on cue, delighting her and the rest of the assembly. It was a proud moment for Karl Roves and stage mothers everywhere.

And yet it was all a waste of time. The backdrop of New York did not provide the national amnesia they hoped for. All the manipulations of all the stage mothers in the world cannot erase the brutal persistence of reality. The dead of New York, like the dead of Iraq, cannot be raised by the comforting lies of speechwriters.

The very fact that Osama bin Laden could have watched the speech last night invalidates every word of it.

{ 8:33 AM }

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Schrock and ow! This story deserves a hell of a lot more attention: Virginia Rep. Ed Schrock is co-sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, the second most conservative member of Congress as ranked by the National Journal, and a phone-sex-trolling secret fellator.

{ 5:41 PM }

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Now that the SwiftVets have been fully discredited and John Kerry's military record remains untarnished, we turn our collective attention to Cheerleaders for Truth.

{ 10:21 AM }

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Will the real selfish hedonist please stand up? Alan Keyes got it wrong when he called Mary Cheney a selfish hedonist. The real, undisputed champion of hedonistic selfishness is her father, Dick Cheney (WSJ, sub. req'd.):

Halliburton Co. said an internal investigation has uncovered documents indicating officials of a consortium it now leads discussed bribing public officials in Nigeria in order to secure a multibillion-dollar contract there.

The investigation centers on the construction of a gargantuan natural-gas liquefaction plant on the Nigerian coast, beginning in January 1996 and continuing today. A consortium led by a company later acquired by Halliburton won the lucrative contract, which will be valued at a total of $8.1 billion when the project is completed.

In the past 10 days, Halliburton says, its lawyers discovered notes written between 1993 and 1998* that suggest consortium executives discussed bribes to Nigerian officials to win their support and ensure that the consortium won the contract. Halliburton says it has turned over the evidence to investigators in the U.S., France and Nigeria, who already had been investigating the consortium. Halliburton declined to reveal the names and positions of the people who discussed the bribery scheme.

This latest disclosure by the Houston oilfield-services company comes amid questions as to whether the consortium created a $140 million slush fund that was funneled through a British lawyer named Jeffrey Tesler, who was a consultant to the consortium. Mr. Tesler is under investigation by a French magistrate, though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Mr. Tesler declined to comment on his role and, through his lawyer, has denied any wrongdoing.

Halliburton said it is unclear from the newest documents whether money actually was distributed either to local leaders or high-ranking government officials. At the time the notes were written, Nigeria was ruled by the military dictator Sani Abacha, whose regime was marked by centralized control and human-right abuses.

The documents, described as contemporaneous notes of conversations and meetings, indicate "people may at the time have been planning or contemplating the necessity of money for the purpose of making bribes. There is no way to read these materials and not be concerned about that," says James Doty, an attorney with Baker Botts LLP**, an outside law firm brought in by Halliburton this year to examine the matter.

The notes end in 1998, shortly after Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries Inc., which led the consortium through its M.W. Kellogg Co. unit. The consortium, called TSKJ, also includes France's Technip SA, the Snamprogetti unit of Italy's ENI SpA, and JGC Corp. of Japan.

The merger was overseen by Halliburton's then-chief executive, Dick Cheney, now the nation's vice president.

*Cheney was Halliburton's CEO from 1995 until 2000.

**James Addison Baker III was the man chosen by Dick Cheney to oversee the Florida recount for the BC2000 campaign. Given the ties to Cheney, how objective can this "examination" possibly be?

They can throw as much "compassionate" folderol at us as they can, but the facts remain the same: the only way the hedonistic greed of the Republican Party will more vicious or sinful than it is today is if the American people are foolish enough to give the country to these charlatans.

The GOP's true political base is an all-white country club in a Texas suburb. In other words, hell.

{ 9:44 AM }

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Politics and Jus' Stuff. Former Enron Chairman and CEO Ken Lay writes a fantastically self-serving "opinion column" in the Washington Post:

The legal case against me, standing alone, is a flimsy, hollow shell and reeks of politics.

Actually, Kenny Boy, thanks to your steadfast guidance, it was Enron that was the flimsy, hollow shell reeking of politics.

The legal case against you didn't purloin the life savings of your employees while simultaneously giving so lavishly to Bush-Cheney 2000. The full responsibility for that sleight of hand falls to your leadership of Enron.

Speaking of politics, what exactly did you secretly talk about with Cheney in those energy policy-setting meetings in March 2001? Why don't you release that information instead of behaving like a big ol' self-pitying crybaby in the Washington Post?

Motherfucker.

{ 11:56 AM }

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“This is what the Republican leadership does. They lie about people.”

{ 11:39 AM }

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I love the smell of Halliburton in the morning. Who's in charge? The one who writes the checks, that's who (WSJ, sub. req'd.):

Cheney, 63, served as chief executive officer of Houston-based Halliburton Co. (HAL) from 1995 to 2000. This year, Halliburton has been in the news repeatedly as the country comes under investigation amid questions about its Pentagon contracts and its accounting policies.

"We think it's becoming a real issue in the campaign," Kerry senior campaign adviser Tad Devine told reporters in August. "There is a vivid connection in the mind of voters between the enormous spending in Iraq and Halliburton," Devine said. "It is a very, very negative connection they are making."

[...]

While Cheney has officially left the firm, he continues to receive money in the form of deferred compensation. On his 2003 tax return, Cheney received $178,437 from Halliburton; Cheney elected to defer his compensation in 1999 to have it paid out in installments for five years.

Like a Bizarro King Midas, everything Cheney touches turns into a conflict of interest.

Let's not forget the close friendship of his golfing and barbecue partner, lying son of a bitch Ahmed Chalabi.

{ 9:15 AM }

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Outsourcing CEOs give themselves a raise. Average CEO compensation at the 50 companies outsourcing the most service jobs rose by 46 percent [!] in 2003 from a year earlier. (FindLaw)

On the other hand:

There were 35.8 million [American] people living in poverty last year, or 12.5 percent of the population. That was 1.3 million more than in 2002.

Children made up more than half the increase - about 800,000. The child poverty rate rose from 16.7 percent in 2002 to 17.6 percent.

More people lacked health insurance as well - about 45 million last year, or 15.6 percent, compared with 43.5 million, or 15.2 percent the previous year.

...during the years Bush has been in office, 5.2 million people have lost health insurance and 4.3 million have fallen into poverty.

If the average raise for an outsourcing CEO was 46 percent, it makes you wonder what the real extremists got away with.

Here's a slogan for the Kerry campaign: America deserves a raise!

{ 3:03 PM }

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Did Rudy Giuliani's speech reassure you or move you to support the Bush-Cheney ticket?

{ 2:47 PM }

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1,000

{ 4:51 PM }

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Witness for the persecution. When an editor of a major newspaper that consistently endorses Republican presidential candidates calls the SwiftVets a bunch of liars because he was there ("There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969. One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other."), can we just agree that they are liars and be done with it?

Note to Fox News: if you spent one-tenth of the time you spend on Kerry's Vietnam service investigating the military record of the Republican candidate, you might learn something.

{ 3:37 PM }

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