Reality-Based Engineering: 2006/05

Rep. Jefferson And ABSCAM

Why does the story of William Jefferson sound eerily like the ABSCAM sting of 1979-1980?

Kenny-Boy: Jailbait

Superior Diary On 21st Century Inflation/Stagflation Worries

I wish I had the time to delve into stuff like this. We're headed for trouble. I hope everybody's out of most of their debt and have kept their mortgage debt-to-income ratios relatively low (25-30%) and decided not to be house-poor (50+%). Anybody remember stagflation?

Sterling Burnett: Just a Big Fat Bully

Aravosis, C&L and DarkSyde are all over this guy. Direct from Thinkprogress. Goebbels? If he's going to compare Gore to Nazis just to smear him, well, I guess I can call him a fat bully.

Lee Iacocca: More Than Just The Mustang Man

Nice pdf article on his values and priorities...oh yeah, bushbot bashing :-)

Craig from Craigslist Has a Blog

And, yup, he's a lib.

Bipartisanship: House, Senate Leadership Agree FBI Raid Was Precident-Setting

Why is it only now that this gets Frist's and Hastert's attention?

DailyKos Followup On AG Gonzalez Wiping With 1st Amendment

Read up, y'all.

W: Pot Calling The Kettle Black

If that ain't a kick in the pants. So, Bolivia eroded democracy by democraticlly electing a guy president? Or, are you just sore that he nationalized the natural gas fields?

NSA Specifically Tracking WaPo, NYTimes

It gets worser and worser.

UPDATE May 22nd - this Brian Ross (ABCNews) clip from CNN's Sunday show on the above story that he broke last week.

From C&L: wowsers

Just read it.

Please Tell Me Why Gonzales Wipes With the 1st Amendment?

I mean, really people.

Gen. Hayden: Total Skipjack

Please, spin 9/11 some more so that we can get more a-scared and believe that your de facto Total Information Awareness program (killed by Congress in 2003) would have prevented 9/11. Good gravy. We already know that it was much more incompitence than anything else.

GOP Not Trusted To Do Anything

WaPo speaks.

National Security Letters

Brian Ross of ABC News is reporting that National Security Letters are being used to target reporters - are they really terrorists?
Federal law enforcement sources say the National Security Letters are being used to obtain phone records of reporters at ABC News and elsewhere in an attempt to learn confidential sources who may have provided classified information in violation of the law.

Heath Insurance Woes

Evil-doers.

Remember The White House Plumbers

This era should sound like a familiar story to the cast of characters from the Nixon era, since many of them were there (Cheney, Rummy, etc.)

Shrub Sez: "We ain't listenin' "

No shit Sherlock, but you're cataloging every single call made since September 2001. Now BellSOUTH says that they didn't provide this information to the NSA:
BellSouth said in a statement that it doesn't contract with the National Security Agency to supply customer calling information.

So, it didn't contract with them. They looked through their contracts. Oooh, don't you just want to believe them?

Bill Of Rights Drizzle-Down

Interesting quick post at dailykos regarding the 10 amendments and the watering down of them over the past several years. Of course, I personally think that the 1970's Supreme Court giving corporations 1st Amendment rights was the beginning of the downfall. I'll find a link later.

UPDATE: Here's the link to something that shows what I'm talking about. Start looking at the timeline around 1975-1976. That's when the Supreme Court decided that advertising was free speech for any company, de facto granting companies 1st amendment rights that previously only individuals enjoyed (save the media). You can use this google search as well.

NSA Contracts To Listen To Every Phonecall In USA

Holy Fuck. Only Quest declined to do this. at&t, Verizon and BellSouth are selling your phonecall records to the government.

Update: Dubya to talk to the country today at noon to lie to us about the illegal wiretaps program, which we now know is a plan to catalog each and every phonecall made in the United States. More here, here and here. And here and here and here. Aravosis tells us that verizon wireless says they they are NOT part of this shitstorm.

I don't know about you, but I just don't believe this fucking guy. Hell, I stopped believing his sincerity in 2003, knowing full well that I didn't agree with his intentions. But this is the last fucking straw. And you know that the shit is hitting the fan when he goes on TV the same day this hits. He's on right now.

More updates: Senator Kerry and Rep. Conyers already have kos diaries up.

Colbert Double-Dip [bumped]

[Update MayDay - I added a link to the title for a brand-new site called "Thank You Stephen Colbert". More links are now added below to this burgeoning issue. Supposedly even C-SPAN has cut it from the rebroadcast. And I KNOW that they have kept in the comedians bits before (I recall Bill Maher being particularly off-color with Clinton post-Lewinsky and it stayed in, including a couple of "bullshits" here and there as well.]

[Update 05/02/06 - AMERICABlog notes that dubya didn't like the bit one bit.]

[Update 05/04/06 - More on this from Dan Froomkin via AMERICABlog.]

One of the shows I do not get to see, sadly...

This C&L link is from a recent espisode where Colbert rips Bill Kristol and asks him how the whole PNAC takeover of the world thing is doing, seeing as that he's a founding member...and how somehow that may have given some reporter some backbone to discuss what is blantantly out there with super wingy John Bolton.

And this one Colbert slams the bushbots at the White House Correspondents dinner Saturday night...and I guess there are already responses to his satire from that night.

You Tube links here (1), (2), (3) for the videos. Editor & publisher.com comments on the story. Daily Kos posts here on the subject. Searches here and here. AMERICABlog post here.