Jacob Freeze This is the sort of unbelievable fuck-up that I really want to see confirmed from multiple sources, and you can read all about it here, here, and here, and from many other sources, and it’s always exactly the same story.
Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the US promised for rebuilding has arrived.
NONE of the promised 1.15 billion in aid from the U.S. has materialized.
People are coughing, sniffling and their eyes watering. Quiet babies are the norm. Many have skin rashes and vaginal infections. There are several volunteer clinics, but usually only the very sickest are seen because so many people need help. The biggest camps now have some toilets, but not enough. Drainage is a big problem especially now during the rainy season.
Violence against women and girls is widespread. Women who go to the latrines at night are attacked. Some women talk of carrying rape babies. Others will do anything for the crudest abortion.
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Note: Obama isn’t personally blocking aid to Haiti, and if anyone blames Obama for this gigantic fuck-up, the way I blame Obama for this gigantic fuck-up, then they would have to make a case for something like depraved indifference or mental incompetence, and convince an impartial jury that there’s something that a reasonable and reasonably concerned person who was President of the United States could have done to move a significant amount of aid to Haiti in nine fucking months, in spite of the fantastic obstacle of one Senator blocking $5 million of a $1.15 billion aid package.
But a necessary followup vote on how to disburse the money has never taken place because a single lawmaker – Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma (above) – placed a secret hold on the bill for "further study." Coburn’s office did not respond to my inquiry, but The AP quoted his spokeswoman, Becky Bernhardt, saying, "[Coburn] is holding the bill because it includes an unnecessary senior Haiti coordinator when we already have one" – namely, U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten. The plan Coburn objected to would use $1 million a year for five years to pay for a U.S.-based staff of up to seven to coordinate the spending of rebuilding dollars with USAID and other agencies.
What to do?
How about writing the "senior Haiti coordinator" out of the bill, and re-introducing the rest of it?
How about appearing on TV from the Oval Office and naming Tom Coburn as an insane goddamned pig who is willing to sacrifice any number of lives to score a petty political point?
How about running DNC commercials non-stop with the face of Tom Coburn superimposed over hundreds of abused and brutalized women living under tarps (if they’re lucky!) and thousands of dying children?
How about instructing the Secretary of Defense to disperse $200 million from his discretionary slush-fund for immediate delivery?
The impoverishment of the agencies that should be part of a balanced national security policy is evident each February, when Congress begins to dish out the money available for spending—these are unobligated dollars known as discretionary funds. Among the agencies that receive support, the Defense Department crushes the competition for resources. Unlike State, the Defense Department is a manpower rich organization with a built-in domestic lobby. More Defense lawyers exist than Foreign Service Officers and permanent development workers combined. Years of personnel attrition have left many of our federal agencies bereft or outsourced—nowhere is this more obvious than in the organizations that should be partners on national security policy. Defense has the overwhelming slice of money and personnel. The defense budget is also not subject to the same level of congressional scrutiny and threat of cutbacks that other agencies must endure. This is partly because of Members’ mutually beneficial relationship with defense contractors—who lard every congressional district in the land with goodies. To be sure, taxpayers continue to subsidize billions of dollars worth of out-dated weapons programs developed specifically for the Cold War. But it is also because today’s toxic political discourse designates critics of the defense budget as “weak” on defense and hence easily marginalized. Because there is no rational debate about national security, both the guns and the butter end up in the military’s domain. The path of least resistance is an easy choice when the alternative is political attack and distorting, inaccurate labels. It is therefore not surprising when funding offsets are traded on the backs of other agencies.
The monetary imbalance became so dire in 2006 that the Defense Department anted up $200 million for State’s post conflict reconstruction activities.
The Pentagon can write a check for $200 million like you and I charge a burger at McDonald’s!
Would $200 million help Haiti right now? You bet your sweet ass it would!
And that’s only the beginning, that’s only a shadow of a shadow of a shadow of what Obama could have done already.
Jacob Freeze Republicans and tea-baggers are winning the public debate about “big government” with the argument that “big spending” has failed to reduce unemployment much below 10%, and why are Obama and the Democrats so pitifully ineffective at refuting the dim-witted rants of a mob of yahoos?
Paul Krugman analyzed Obama’s self-inflicted dilemma in a recent column.
Actually, the administration has had a messaging problem on economic policy ever since its first months in office, when it went for a stimulus plan that many of us warned from the beginning was inadequate given the size of the economy’s troubles.
You can argue that Mr. Obama got all he could — that a larger plan wouldn’t have made it through Congress (which is questionable), and that an inadequate stimulus was much better than none at all (which it was). But that’s not an argument the administration ever made. Instead, it has insisted throughout that its original plan was just right, a position that has become increasingly awkward as the recovery stalls.
And a side consequence of this awkward positioning is that officials can’t easily offer the obvious rebuttal to claims that big spending failed to fix the economy — namely, that thanks to the inadequate scale of the Recovery Act, big spending never happened in the first place.
The real story is clear enough in the graphic below, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, representing the total number of jobs in the USA month by month, in thousands.
The bottom falls out of employment beginning in August 2008, high-lighted in red, 460,000 jobs disappear between August and September, and month after month 550,000 jobs vanish between September and October, then 720,000, then 670,000, and so on until November and December 2009, when the bleeding finally stops, and very modest growth ensues.
This is the story Democrats should have been telling, over and over and over and over, on every talk-show and at every press conference. Bush/Cheney cut the throat of the American economy, Obama’s stimulus stopped the bleeding, and now we need another transfusion.
But Obama pretended that his original stimulus was just exactly right, and now Democrats don’t have a story to tell.
Jacob Freeze Old news from Afghanistan, December 30, 2003…
Rob Furlong of the Canadian Army used a TAC-50 to execute a confirmed 2430 meter (2657 yard) shot in Afghanistan, setting the world record for the longest successful tactical shot in combat.
The TAC®-50 McMillan Tactical Rifle package as shown above is available for delivery anywhere at the bargain price of $9,999, including a Night Force 32×56mm Mil-Dot sniper-scope at no additional cost! And best of all…
The bolt action TAC-50 in 50 BMG is legal for civilians to own in all states in the U.S. except California!
One well placed round in an engine block will stop a vehicle. The 50 BMG will penetrate most commercial brick or concrete walls.
You can kill a truck with that thing! It shoots through brick walls!
The two-man Canadian team, coupled with American Sgt. Zevon Durham of Greenville, S.C., made the kill from 2,430 metres, or nearly 2 1/2 kilometres, on the second shot.
The first shot blew a bag from the hand of their target, an Al Qaeda fighter walking on a road.
“He didn’t even flinch,” said Bill, who spoke on condition that his real name not be used.
“We made a correction and the next round hit exactly where we wanted it to. Well, a bit to the right.”
But a little more research reveals that the story of these Canadian snipers got way more fucked up, and after another long-range kill-shot…
It should have been a moment of pride for the Canadian army. Five of its most talented snipers – men trained to kill without remorse, then turn around and kill again – did exactly that. They destroyed al-Qaeda firing positions, saved American lives and tallied a body count unmatched by any Canadian soldier of their generation. U.S. commanders who served alongside the snipers nominated all five for the coveted Bronze Star medal. “Thank God the Canadians were there,” is how one American soldier put it.
Yet days later, their heroics on the mountain would be overshadowed by suspicion, including stunning allegations that one sniper, in a subsequent mission, sliced himself a souvenir from the battlefield: the finger of a dead Taliban fighter. Military police launched a criminal investigation, but uncovered nothing but denials. As the months wore on, there emerged so many conflicting accusations and supposed explanations that no charges were ever laid. Even Rob Furlong’s record-breaking shot became lost in the confusion.
Kill-shot, mutilated corpse, no charges, no end in sight, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, sound and fury, signifying nothing…
Jacob Freeze 
Jacob Freeze Now isn’t that a deceptive headline!
Because of course Wachovia charged the drug cartels a lot of money to launder $378 billion for them.
“No charges” only applies to the legal consequences of laundering $378 billion for drug-lords.
Wachovia admitted it didn’t do enough to spot illicit funds in handling $378.4 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007. That’s the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history — a sum equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.
“Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” says Jeffrey Sloman, the federal prosecutor who handled the case.
That sounds like a very serious crime to me, especially when you consider that…
Since 2006, more than 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related battles that have raged mostly along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border that Mexico shares with the U.S. In the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, 700 people had been murdered this year as of mid- June.
Wow.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the bankers who funded so many murders were charged as accomplices, and according to U.S. Code Title 18 Section 2(a)…
Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal.
Aid the offense, and you’re as guilty as a principal, which is to say…
The bankers are just as guilty of thousands of murders as the trigger-men.
But that’s only black-letter law, and for bankers, black-letter law is replaced by…
Hee-haw law!
For bankers, American law is just a pathetic joke!
After a 22-month investigation, the Justice Department on March 12 charged Wachovia with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to run an effective anti-money-laundering program.
Five days later, Wells Fargo promised in a Miami federal courtroom to revamp its detection systems. Wachovia’s new owner paid $160 million in fines and penalties, less than 2 percent of its $12.3 billion profit in 2009.
If Wells Fargo keeps its pledge, the U.S. government will, according to the agreement, drop all charges against the bank in March 2011.
No charges! Not for the bank, and not for any of the executives who laundered $378 billion for the drug-cartels!
Did they know what they were doing?
“As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk,” the bank admitted in court. “Despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business.”
From 2004 to 2010, more than 22,000 people were murdered by the drug-lords that Wachovia financed!
No charges! No law for bankers!
Hee haw!
Jacob Freeze From the New York Times…
After nearly seven months of deadlock, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, took a decisive step toward winning a second term, gaining the endorsement of a Shiite bloc that had until recently opposed returning him to power, officials from his party said.
Mr. Maliki’s party, State of Law, and another Shiite party with ties to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr shut out a third, the Iraqi National Alliance, and its contender, Adel Abdelmehdi, in negotiations within the Shiite bloc, alliance officials said Friday.
Who is this Moqtada al Sadr with his Mahdi Army whose support for Maliki may finally allow the suffering Iraqis to form a new government after almost seven months of futile negotiations since the parliamentary elections March 7, 2010?
He’s the driller!
Death squads connected to the Mahdi Army, as well as to other Shia and Sunni groups, capture and execute civilians in cold blood, sometimes dragging them out of hospitals or government ministries. Corpses turn up on the street with acid burns on their backs, or electric-drill holes in their knees, stomachs and heads.
“The Americans will arrest the Sunni young men only and clear the way for the Mahdi Army to work their electric drills on people’s bodies,” Khalid Aziz, 35, told IPS.
Moqtada’s ascendance as a maker of kings in Iraq is exactly the outcome predicted by Jacob Freeze, “the prophetic wonder-man of political blogging,” only ten days after the indecisive election, in his blog from March 17, 2010.
Imbecile Americans Empower Brutal Anti-American Fanatic
If you want to cast a vote that says “I hate America,” there is nobody in the world you could vote for and say “I hate America” more clearly than you can say “I hate America” by voting for Moktada al-Sadr, and Moktada al-Sadr just swamped all other parties in Baghdad, in an election that’s supposedly the triumphant outcome of our genocidal occupation of Iraq.
Congratulations, imbeciles! You just spent at least a trillion dollars and killed more than 1,000,000 Iraqis and more than 5000 American soldiers to make a brutal anti-American fanatic the king of Baghdad!
Harharharhar!!!
This is what the imbecile George W. Bush created in 2003!
This is what the imbeciles John Kerry, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton, and 26 other Democrats and 48 Republican Senators voted for in 2002!
This is what the imbecile Senator Barack Obama voted to fund in 2005 and 2006 and 2007 and 2008!
This is what the imbecile President and Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama has been commanding for the last 14 months!
