Shorter Gonzales Hearing

(CLICK PICTURE TO READ)

Fredo's Failing Memory

“I now understand there was a conversation with myself and the president."

-- U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, testimony before the
U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee
(AP, April. 19, 2007)

From the reliably very conservative National Review:

It has been a disastrous morning for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The major problem with his testimony is that Gonzales maintains, in essence, that he doesn’t know why he fired at least some of the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys. When, under questioning by Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, Gonzales listed the reasons for each firing, it was clear that in a number of cases, he had reconstructed the reason for the dismissal after the fact. He didn’t know why he fired them at the time, other than the action was recommended by senior Justice Department staff.

Later, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham returned to the subject. “Mr. Attorney General, most of this is a stretch,” Graham told Gonzales. “I think most of them [the U.S. attorneys] had personality disagreements with the White House, and you made up reasons to fire them.” Gonzales disagreed but had nothing to support his position.

Throughout the morning, Gonzales insisted that he is the man in charge of the Justice Department, and accepted responsibility for the firings, but his testimony suggests he had little idea what was going on.

That's the benign judgment of Gonzales' friends. Imagine what the less forgiving assessments are.

Gonzales; Judgment at Noon

If you were watching the Gonzales hearings on C-SPAN 3, as the noon break started and reporters gathered around Senate Judiciary Committee members, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) was overheard saying: "In fact, Gonzales is less qualified than the U.S. attorneys he fired."

Virginia Tech and the Immune Response

Cho Seung-Hui walked into a Virginia gun shop five weeks ago, put down a credit card and walked out with a Glock 19 handgun and a box of ammunition. He paid $571.

-- Brisbane Times, April 18, 2007

Greg Palast:

[W]hat we saw at Virginia Tech was just a concentrated node of a larger, nationwide killing spree that goes on day after day in the USA. Eighty-thousand Americans take a bullet from a hand gun in any year. Thirty-thousand die. That’s one thousand shooting deaths off-camera for each victim at Virginia Tech.

* * * The President is, “saddened and angered by these senseless acts of violence.” But will our senseless and violent President do anything about it? He already has: On July 29, 2005, the US Senate passed, then Bush signed, a grant of immunity from lawsuits for Walther, Glock and other gun manufacturers.

Now, corporations that make hand-guns can’t be sued for knowingly selling firearms to killers. Like that? No other industry has such wide lawsuit immunity — not teachers, not doctors, not cops — only gun makers.
* * *
In every state in America, a bar owner is liable to lawsuit if a bartender serves too many drinks and a customer dies in an auto accident. Hand a chainsaw to a child, you’re in legal trouble. Until Bush signed the 2005 protect-the-gun-makers law, the same common law against negligent distribution applied to firearms.
* * *
Do the gun manufacturers know their .22’s are being used for something other than hunting long-horned elk? Every year, the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency sends 800,000 requests to the gun companies to trace weapons found at crime scenes. As Fox’s attorney told me, criminals are a much-valued, if unpublicized, market segment sought out and provisioned by these manufacturers.

But they’re safe, the gun-makers, even if we aren’t, because of Bush’s immunity law.

Jane Smiley:

[G]uns have no other purpose than killing someone or something. All the other murder weapons Americans use, from automobiles to blunt objects, exist for another purpose and sometimes are used to kill. But guns are manufactured and bought to kill. They invite their owners to think about killing, to practice killing, and, eventually, to kill, if not other people, then animals. They are objects of temptation, and every so often, someone comes along who cannot resist the temptation -- someone who would not have murdered, or murdered so many, if he did not have a gun, if he were reduced to a knife or a bludgeon or his own strength. I wish that the right wing would admit that, while people kill people and even an "automatic" weapon needs a shooter, people with guns kill more people than people without guns do.

McCain Tours Pet Food Store

Having just returned from a congressional fantasy-finding trip to Iraq and fresh from what we reported was a meal in the Green Zone cafeteria only slightly marred by a fews bombs, Sen. John McCain (R-Pollyana) toured a New Hampshire pet store yesterday, accompanied by over a hundred heavily armed Reserve officer veterinarians.

At a press conference staged soon afterwards Sen. McCain declared, "The media has not been reporting the good news about America's pet foods. I just finished eating some and I have to say it tastes real good. Take it from me: American pet food is as safe as a Baghdad market."

Shorter Gen. Sheehan

Shorter WaPo op-ed: When asked to be the 'War Czar', much as I would love to serve my country again I said no because the Bush administration has broken our foreign policy and has no idea how to fix it.

-- Gen. John J. Sheehan, USMC (ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic and Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Command

Wolfowitz Responds to Bank Board

UPDATED BELOW
Sunday's World Bank board meeting ended with a whimper, not a bang. But if you pierce the "bureaucratic language" larding the statement released at the end of the weekend, it's pretty clear a large majority of the World Bank's board wants to be quit of Paul ("Leave the corruption to me") Wolfowitz.

As Steve R. Weiseman reports for the New York Times:

The rebuke of Mr. Wolfowitz came in the form of bureaucratic language in a series of sentences in the board’s communiqué that asserted “the current situation is of great concern to all of us,” an unusually blunt statement for a circumspect institution.

“We have to ensure that the bank can effectively carry out its mandate and maintain its credibility and reputation as well as the motivation of its staff,” the committee said. “We expect the bank to adhere to a high standard of internal governance.”

Though the language was indirect, the message it sent was unmistakable, according to officials who have been meeting in Washington the last few days. “Words like ‘concerned,’ ‘credibility’ and ‘reputation’ are pretty unprecedented for a communiqué from a place like the World Bank,” said an official involved in the drafting of the statement.

Thing is, Wolfowitz has only one master -- Dick Cheney. And he isn't even on the World Bank board.

So, "Wolfowitz, responding at a news conference, vowed to stay on at the bank... ."

UPDATE
Monday am

Shorter NY Times editorial: Paul Wolfowitz is corrupt, so how can he effectively pursue the World Bank's campaign against corruption? He has to go.

World Bank Staff Discovers Blogger

A new blog popped up overnight. It's called "Wolfowitz Must Resign."

Kind of wimpy, don't you think? "Wolfowitz Should Be Fired" is still available.



There's another interesting Wolfie corner of the internet. You wouldn't know it from the bland title, but Bank Information Center.com has been running a "Wolfowitz Watch" for some time. Their archived Wolfowitz articles leave no doubt his tenure as WB president has been a disaster for many more reasons than his indulgence in sex and lies.

'Concrete Canyons' on the Beach

"The developers are trying to water down the definition of a hotel room to allow them to build and sell condos by calling them hotels."

-- William H. Griffith, April 14, 2007

Bill Griffith, a veteran board member of the agency that governs Pensacola Beach for 14 years, has an op-ed in Saturday's PNJ. Subject: the pending effort to redefine county ordinances to permit beach "hotels" to start cross-dressing as condos.

Griffith's article is a call to action, written in a noble attempt to get the public involved. "The voice of the beach-going public needs to be heard," he says.

There is a classic struggle afoot on Pensacola Beach -- the interests of developers against the interests of the community. So far, the developers have caught the ears of the Escambia County commissioners, and they have already won concessions.

Pensacola Beach has enjoyed a very diversified and successful development under the watchful eyes of the Santa Rosa Island Authority. The resulting mix of single-family homes, condos, churches and a school blends well with hotels, restaurants and shops to produce an enviable year-round beach community.

Key to this successful development has been the 1988 Land Use Plan, a residential building cap of 4,128 units (including condos), and a definition of a hotel room to differentiate it from a residential condo unit. William H. Griffith is a 39-year beach resident and served on the Santa Rosa Island Authority for 14 years.

Condos are attractive to developers because they can make more money, more quickly than they can building a hotel. But no more condos can be built on Pensacola Beach because of the residential building cap, which has been met with existing and planned units. So the developers are trying to water down the definition of a hotel room to allow them to build and sell condos by calling them hotels.

I think most Escambia County residents would prefer that we keep Pensacola Beach as an accessible public playground, and not a "concrete canyon" of condominiums.

Griffith undoubtedly is right. Most tourists as well as the overwhelming majority of locals would much "prefer" low-rise beach development with liberal access to the natural splendors of Pensacola Beach. Few want to see us imitate "Miami where almost every new hotel during the past 5 years have been built in this manner as a condo-hotel," as "Anonymous" commented at the end of a post here last week. (From internal evidence, we'd hazard the guess that Anonymous' real name is "Anonymous Developer.")

But it's also true that few locals in these parts have sufficient courage or commitment to speak out or work against predatory developer plans. We're not sure why. Maybe they've spent too many decades under the yoke of unresponsive county government. Maybe it's a corollary consequence of Florida's notoriously poor educational system.

Tourists are even less likely to object; they rarely learn about rapacious development until the deed is done, and in any event have no vote in the matter -- except with their wallets after the fact.

In the end, probably the only effective way to preserve some semblance of a Pensacola Beach that doesn't look like Miami is if the business community -- restaurateurs shop owners, condo associations, and other tourist-dependent entities -- band together to preserve the best of Pensacola Beach. To do that, they'll have to pay attention to the details, and at the moment the detail that's most important, paradoxically, is deceptively diminutive. As Griffith says:

I believe a definition of a hotel which allows flexibility for developers, but preserves the true nature of a hotel, is needed to keep Pensacola Beach the diverse, healthy beach community that is it.

If you agree, email Grover Robinson, commissioner for District 4 which includes Pensacola Beach. Or visit his web page to telephone or write.

Every Day is Groundhog's Day for Bush

Glenn Greenwald is collecting the repetitive scenes:

I feel -- in this vaguely intuitive sort of way -- as though there is some kind of a pattern buried within this set of facts, but as much as I search, I just can't quite figure out what it might be... ."

Read the rest and see if you can spot the shadow of some underground, dirt-dwelling creature.

Sex, Lies, and Wolfowitz

UPDATED BELOW I, II
The London Financial Times broke the story Thursday that there is written proof World Bank president and Iraq war criminal Paul Wolfowitz lied at least twice about who feathered the nest of his paramour with unprecedented job promotions and salary raises to $193,000 per year, tax free. Reported FT:

Paul Wolfowitz personally directed the World Bank’s head of human resources to offer Shaha Riza, a bank official with whom he was romantically involved, a large pay rise and a promotion as part of an external secondment package, according to two sources who saw a memorandum written by the bank president.

The memorandum, which according to two sources was dated August 11 2005, specifies in detail the terms that Xavier Coll, the World Bank’s vice-president for human resources, should offer to Ms Riza, who was subsequently seconded to the US State Department.

The memorandum sets out the salary that Ms Riza is to be paid, the arrangements for her promotion, and the basis on which her subsequent annual pay increases are to be calculated. In addition to the two sources who saw the memorandum, and who recounted its contents in detail, the Financial Times has spoken to three other sources, who also attested to its existence.

In short, Wolfowitz engineered the whole pay package for his mistress. Thus cornered, he responded yesterday with the kind of nonsensical PR cant that's so much in fashion these days: he takes 'responsibility' he says, but he doesn't mention accepting real consequences. In his "public apology" he says only "I made a mistake for which I am sorry."

We've said it before: taking responsibility while evading accountability is meaningless. The moment you hear some pol say he's "sorry" but he doesn't resign, you know someone's throwing sand in your eyes.

Paul Wolfowitz is so brazen he can't even come clean when he's apologizing. It wasn't "a" mistake he made. It was a whole series of deliberate, unlawful, and self-aggrandizing decisions which he's been trying to cover-up ever since he got caught.

First, there was the favoritism. He rejected out-of-hand nine qualified applicants who had been interviewed, reviewed and approved for the job by World Bank authorities. Then he handed the position to his main squeeze, Shaha Riza, who hasn't been vetted by anyone but him -- on a casting couch, no doubt.

That's sex discrimination in any nation's book. You can bet some of those "nine qualified applicants" will soon be bringing suit against the World Bank unless the board of directors takes drastic action at once.

Second, there's the matter of discrimination in wages and benefits. Wolfowitz set things up so that he's Ms. Riza's direct supervisor. That means he retains responsibility for evaluating her performance and awarding her promotions and raises on the basis of job performance. Right? Well, yeah, for everyone except the woman he sleeps with. She plays, the World Bank pays, and Wolfie gets laid.

Finally, there is Wolfowitz' contemptible efforts to blame others. That's always a tricky business when you're near the top of the food chain and the field of candidates above you is so narrow. But Wolfowitz tried anyway.

Late last week, a "spokesman" for Wolfowitz stated that the grossly excessive pay hike for Ms. Riza was granted "by the World Bank Board of Directors." Almost immediately, "inside sources from the Bank ... stated unequivocally that this was not the case, that Board members only learned of the raise from news reports, and that the members are furious."

A few days ago Wolfie switched targets and had "a senior Bank official" claim that it was "the ethics committee of the board" who had approved his mistress' pay package. But the committee chairman fired back:

Members of the Ethics Committee of the Board, the relevant body that would have approved the raise, which has triggered allegations of nepotism at the Bank's highest levels, say that they knew nothing of the salary hike, according to the Washington-based Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organisation.

The new revelation appears to be at odds with the line maintained by officials in Wolfowitz's office... .

What a surprise. Another gonnoff from the Bush administration caught lying.

Most recently, as an op-ed in today's WaPo notes, it's been disclosed that Wolfowitz also gave two other "loyal Bushies" -- both of them political hacks with no particular educational or professional qualifications -- lifetime World Bank employment contracts for about a quarter million dollars each per year:

Kevin Kellems, an unremarkable press-officer-cum-aide who had previously worked for Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, pulls down $240,000 tax-free -- the low end of the salary scale for World Bank vice presidents, who typically have PhDs and 25 years of development experience. Robin Cleveland, who also parachuted in with Wolfowitz, gets $250,000 and a free pass from the IRS, far more than her rank justifies. Kellems and Cleveland have contracts that don't expire when Wolfowitz's term is up. They have been granted quasi-tenure.

Kellems is Dick Cheney's former press flack. Cleveland was staff assistant to Wolfowitz in charge of "post-war Iraq planning" -- so you can figure out how smart she is.

Given Wolfowitz' corrupt management style and the fact that Kellems and Cleveland came as a package, you have to wonder who they're sleeping with. There's no wondering who's getting screwed, though: the World Bank, the nations it's supposed to serve, and U.S. taxpayers.

UPDATE I
Friday am

Late Thursday, the World Bank's board of directors released a damning 7-page report and 102 pages of attached documents pertaining to l'affaire Wolfowitz. In a just world, his goose would be rightly cooked. Remember, though: the U.S. government exercises effective control of the World Bank's board of directors.

UPDATE II
Friday pm

The non-profit watchdog group, Government Accountability Project, has discovered that Wolfowitz' love interest, Shaha Riza, "was turned down twice" for a promotion "because Riza lacked the professional qualifications necessary for a GH level position as a Communications Adviser... ." That action was taken by "the Communications Network Sector Board (Comnet), the appropriate authorizing body. "

Apparently, they weren't sleeping with her. But once Wolfowitz went to bat for his bedmate, she got the promotion and was given "a title held by only one person in Comnet -- Shaha Riza."

McCain: "Eat in Baghdad"

Sen. John McCain (R-Dementia) strolled briefly through the Iraq Parliament cafeteria today in an effort to prove that Americans are “not getting the full picture” of what’s going on in Iraq.

"Sure, eight were killed this morning," he told reporters. "But what about the food, huh? You should be writing up how good this falafel is."

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)

"We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard … and too damn cheap."

-- Kurt Vonnegut, suggested carving into a wall of the Grand Canyon, as a message for flying-saucer creatures.

If You Can Find Better Analysis.... Buy It

HT to Kevin Drum and especially Miami native Steven Benen's Carpetbagger Report.

Kevin has fun by asking, Who said this?

"We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car.... I hardly recognize this country anymore.

The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions.

That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?"

If you can find a better analysis ....... aw, forget it. Go ahead and buy this book anyway.

Life Imitates Comedy

Oh my. This is truly a classic moment in the history of American government. A reader of Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo has quite the catch:

JP wrote in, so on the mark, saying this article in the Post reads like a joke piece...

"The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation."

"Authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies?" As Josh asks, "Don't we elect that person every four years?"

It has been said that life imitates art. Not with George W. Bush. It imitates The Onion: