Say Anything Blog

12 BILLION IN CASH, LOST IN THE DESERT

Yea. Look at those pallets of $100 bills. Wow. I bet that money was free. It happened during Bush so it couldn’t have been taxpayer money.

The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.
The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.

In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.

Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. “The numbers are so large that it doesn’t seem possible that they’re true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?”

So… did we loose this money? You could argue that we paid for a temporary peace for PR reasons, in order to account for SOME of the cash, but then it’d cut against your ‘freedom and democracy’ narrative about Iraq. Decisions decisions…

Also, I think a ‘tonne’ is two ‘tons’. Anyone know the deal with the British ‘tonnes’?

What? A joke right? Nope.

A 33-year-old Jackson man accused of growing marijuana in his apartment could get up to life in prison if convicted.

In the case of Ronald Christopher Sekul, the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics intends to ask prosecutors to apply a law called the “kingpin” statute, MBN Director Marshall Fisher said.

The statute can be applied to Sekul’s case because he allegedly had a drug operation for longer than 12 consecutive months and had more than 10 pounds of marijuana, Fisher said.

Sekul was arrested Wednesday for allegedly growing 4-foot marijuana plants in the back bedroom of the fourplex he lives in at 1510 Myrtle St., according to MBN.

He is out of jail on $50,000 bond.

“It was a pretty sophisticated operation,” Fisher said.

And I thought I had cool neighbors! WOah.

Wow.

We don’t?

Should we?

What should we make it?

Esperanto?

Researchers say a medicated tampon could reduce period pain.

Victim In Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck

So we had a horrific shooting the other week in Texas. A dozen Army guys got shot up by another Army guy who went nuts from a combination of asinine, archaic religion; a looming deployment to greater Asia to fight all of the sect-based wars we are involved in over there; a steady parade of mentally and physically (severely) injured soldiers who he was ‘counselor’ for, psychoanalyzing, etc; and probably a few other reasons, including but not limited to sexual repression, genetic causes, brain tumors, general stupidity, and/or his extremely conservative ideology.

In the immediate aftermath of this tragic event, nearly all the partisan commentators and public figures wasted no time making themselves seem like sniveling f**king idiots.

On the one hand we had to hear about how it was ultimately the Democrats fault for their “politically correct” social policies which include, putatively, promoting minorities with less skill and qualification ahead of white males with more skill and/or qualification. On the other hand, we had to hear about how this was a mental problem related to the lack of oversight and control in the military and the negative effects that time in the military has on mental health.

Wow. We’re dealing with a bunch of disrespectful 12-year-olds here, on both sides of the aisle. While clearly no political party in the US is responsible, even a little, for the shooting, all possible efforts have been made to blame political parties, policies, terrorist groups, and generally any groups that one has become accustomed to blaming nowadays.

The line from the right is that each person is rational and, moreover, they make free and rational choices for themselves. This is the model that our government is built on more-or-less; at least its atomic parts. So why, when blaming is tangentially politically precipitous, do all politicians seek to strip the agency of individuals in order to blame their actions on each others policies? The road that this begins to take us down doesn’t end with the same nice model of the free individual, needless to say.

When does this conduct, as a widespread and prevalent mode-de-l’emploi, become severely problematic?

Did this begin with all of the refusals, on both sides, to take responsibility for anything bad? Despite the lack of responsibility of anyone but the shooter in the Ft Hood shooting, the shooting has been blamed on countless groups. These arguments only go through if one is using unfree, unrational individuals in their models, in their ascriptions of responsibility, and so forth. How can we support the death penalty for this shooter if we actually blame a political party or faction for his actions?

From the nytimes…

The Army has added to their ranks in recent years, as the number of soldiers with the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder has climbed to 34,000. But the [Ft Hood] shooting has raised a pressing question: Who counsels the counselors? Dr. Moore and other therapists who have worked in the military or for Veterans Affairs said that mental health evaluations of therapists themselves were virtually nonexistent.

“I have worked with the Army, the Navy, the V.A., and I’m not aware of any formal, systematic process to evaluate professionals,” said Dr. Andy Morgan, a psychiatrist at the National Center for P.T.S.D.

At Walter Reed, where Major Hasan was in training until recently, Lt. Col. Brett Schneider, a psychiatrist, described a complicated system of checks and balances, including a training committee with superiors and civilians who evaluate residents and mental health staff members.

“There is a lot more built into the processes to keep tabs on each other,” said Colonel Schneider, who spoke on the condition that he not be asked any questions about Major Hasan. “If somebody is starting to get to the point where these things are a problem, there are a number of ways we can intervene.”

Generally, though, the military, like many large civilian employers, relies on self-evaluation and voluntary employee-assistance programs.

“Once training is over, you’re basically on your own,” Dr. Paulus said.

A couple days ago I accused Boehner of lying about GOP inclusiveness. Quoting from here, I found this:

The Republican National Committee and its campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, switched quickly to endorse Hoffman on Saturday after previously being strongly behind Scozzafava. And on Sunday, Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, and Minority Whip Eric Cantor , R-Va., pledged to help Hoffman secure a seat on the Armed Services Committee, on which McHugh had been the ranking member.

“Doug Hoffman has our full support for the next available seat on the House Armed Services Committee so he can best serve the interests of Fort Drum and the troops and military families of New York’s 23rd Congressional District,” the two leaders said in a statement.

The race has emerged as a major skirmish in the “battle for the soul of the Republican Party,” between pragmatists who say the party’s setbacks in 2006 and 2008 recommend recruiting more moderate candidates in regions, such as the Northeast, that have turned strongly Democratic, and conservatives who argue that the party’s path of recovery is via strict adherence to the Republicans’ conservative national platform.

Boehner acknowledged Sunday that the situation in New York’s 23rd District race is “pretty unusual,” but said the message remains that Republicans accept “moderates in our party.”

I think Boehner is licking the boot of the moderates, these socialist-lights. You better bounce the guy from your cherished movement as he is clearly trotting on the slippery slope to fatigue-wearing Maoism.

Check the headlines. It affected my morning commute, but luckily I was only 15 min late. I have a lot to say about this, but am in a work-heavy period, so it will have to wait.

These SEPTA folks make $60k/year. That’s a lot in Philly. They want more, so the thugs are holding the city hostage.

I say let em keep striking. Forever.

How many people who make less than that, who get no benefits, will loose their jobs because they rely on this train service? The east-west line in Philly is the busiest subway in the world. The economy sucks, we are all making sacrifices. Why are the SEPTA employees being so selfish?

Get out the firehoses.

Here.

When asked whether Scozzafava’s decision sends a signal from the party to other GOP moderates who may be pondering seeking elective office, Boehner stressed, “We accept moderates in our party and we want moderates in our party. We cover a wide range of Americans.”

Ah, but we know the calls for the RINOs to be purged are mounting. Boehner’s comments are more wishful and forward-looking than truthful. Anyone with eyes, ears, and a brain attached to them knows that the intolerance of diversity among the right is being increasingly enforced through strong informal sanctions by their enraged, flat-earther base.

The other hilarious element here is the argument from principles. The principles or this hard-right demographic are as fluid as water. These folks went from hard-core Bush boosters to denigrating everything Bush did in just over a year. Principles? What principles?

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)—Nine more U.S. banks, all owned by the same Illinois holding company, were closed Friday by regulators, and the FDIC said Bank of Minneapolis would assume their deposits.

The closings brought the 2009 total to 115—the first year since 1992 that more than 100 banks have gone under.

The banks as of Sept. 30 had combined assets of $19.4 billion and deposits of $15.4 billion, the FDIC said.

The deposit insurance fund will take an estimated $2.5 billion hit, the FDIC said.

Updated competition laws are what we need.

Enforced and updated that is. This is a non-partisan issue - Updated and enforced anti-trust/competition are a necessary measure to maintain and protect the market.

If we discuss compensation of CEOs we are missing the point. Get out the hatchet. In an environment when neither the government or the companies involved have incentive to properly assess value, the least we can do is update and enforce our competition laws. Without accurate information, access to the market is pointless. It merely becomes a venue to get robbed. Competition laws, and serious ones, will prevent the sort of inefficiencies and theft that accompany large government or sector domination by a single private entity or two.

What do you think they will call the new parties when the Republicans fracture into two parties? What will the main platforms be?

We all know there will be a dangerous, fascist, Christian-moralizing-assclown party. They will intervene in your living will and advanced directive wishes. They will send money around the world to buy guns for all the foreigners who will use them on us a decade later. They will seek control of women, decrease their positive rights, and so forth. They might even try to ban sinful vices of various sorts.

Hopefully there will be a structural conservative party that emerges with some principles to put forth that aren’t based on 2000 year old religious texts and moralizing myths. One worth engaging who knows how to make arguments and why to make the arguments that they do make. Small government, non-interventionist, live-and-let-live, and not concerned with social issues and federal moralizing.

That would be a nice counter-balance right about now. Not a bunch of assclowns screaming about Chairman Mao.

When will the party address their schizophrenia which ramps up daily? How much crying will accompany the split? How long before it happens?