Category Archives: Politics & Government

Halliburton hauling ass

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HalliburtonHalliburton, the big energy services company, said today that it would open a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai and move its chairman and chief executive, David J. Lesar, there. The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as its incorporation in the United States.

Halliburton, which was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000, is currently in the process of spinning off KBR, its military-contracting unit, to focus on its business of drilling wells and maintaining fields for oil companies. The company did not say what implications the Dubai development might have for its Pentagon contracts. [New York Times]

How do I look? Is my swastika straight?

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Hitler FashionThey had a little Neo Nazi march in Columbia, Missouri, this afternoon (It’s been too darn cold to march against “jew communists” until the last week or so). About 20 marchers were met by throngs of students that cursed them and tossed eggs at them. One of our Missourinet reporters (Steve Walsh) covered the event and everybody’s favorite photojournalist, Bill Greenblatt, took some photos, including this one.

Several things about this photo caught my keen fashion eye. Note the Eva Braun wannabe in the center of the photo, with the little red Storm Trooper tie. This would suggest that the Neo Nazi Clothing Catalogue has a Ladies’ Department.

The guy that looks like he’s getting ready to mix it up with “Drunk Punk” appears to be wearing some sort of hand-tooled leather belt that you might get from your uncle for your birthday (maybe it reads “Sieg Heil!)

And what serious skinhead takes a little pussy bullhorn like that to a march. Come on. And were they up all night sticking on the swastikas or do they come pre-swastuck?

Every parade needs clowns.

For sale to the highest bidder

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Former Attorney General John Ashcroft approached XM Satellite Radio in the days after the merger was announced offering the firm his consulting services, according to a spokesman for XM. The spokesman said XM declined Mr. Ashcroft’s offer to work as a lobbyist for the company.

Mr. Ashcroft was subsequently hired by the National Association of Broadcasters, which is fiercely opposed to the merger. On its behalf he conducted a review of the effects on competition if the two satellite radio companies were allowed to merge and concluded the merger would have a significant negative impact on competition in the market and urged the current attorney general to withhold approval for the merger.

That tells you just about all you need to know about our former Attorney General.

Rooting for the home team

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Matt Taibbi responds to the accustation that liberals are “rooting” for failure in Iraq. Warning: Strong lanuage.

“I’m sorry, but the next pundit who whips that one out should have his balls stuffed down his throat. You cocksuckers beat the drum to send these kids to war, and then you turn around and accuse us of rooting for them to die? Fuck you for even thinking that. We’re Americans just like you. You don’t have the right to get us into this mess and then turn around and call us traitors. Your credibility is long gone on this issue; shut up about us. This is a catastrophe, not a baseball game. “Rooting” is a kid’s word; grow the fuck up.”

Hillary “In It to Spin It”

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Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi on HRC’s announcement she’s running for president:

“Had Hillary embraced head-on her undeniable role as an unwitting martyr/archetype for the modern professional woman, had she opened up her campaign by actually showing us what her private thoughts have been throughout all of these trying times, and what she might think the meaning of her journey has been or could be, she would have instantly established herself as an extraordinarily interesting and compelling story, at the very least. Instead, Hillary is clearly so spooked by the experience of not being taken seriously by the Beltway establishment that she’s gone overboard in the direction of being a typical Inside-Baseball, full-of-shit Washington hack, spraying cardboard cliches like machine-gun fire. She’s Joe Biden without the plugs.

It’s obvious that Hillary sees the pursuit of the White House by means of the tireless upchucking of hollow, computer-generated horseshit as the ultimate man’s game in Washington, and she wants to show she can play it with the big boys. So she’s slinging twice as much crap, twice as much bullshit. What she fails to see is that, while she’s playing the game right, the game is the problem, it’s a crock of shit. It would have been nice if she’d had the courage to be different, which she incidentally already is, by default. Instead, she’s choosing consciously to be just another lousy corporate politician — one who’ll deserve all the abuse she’ll get for playing by the wrong rules.”

“…the game is the problem, it’s a crock of shit.” Exactly.

Jon Stewart as value-added news aggregator

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I still try to watch one of the network newscasts each evening. But, increasingly, I rely on The Daily Show for the latest news.

Jon Stewart devoted over a third of one broadcast last week to Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Dick Cheney on CNN. Not only did Stewart go through numerous highlights from the interview, but the Daily Show staff gathered supporting video clips to provide context for the interview, using previous statements of position and policy to hold the veep accountable for the stuff he was saying now. You can watch the segment here if you missed it. [Eat the Press]

Matt Taibbi: The argument for more troops

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“The argument for more troops assumes that the troops we have there already are actively engaged in making Iraq secure, only there aren’t enough of them. What I saw was that our troops were mostly engaged in keeping themselves secure — and even that was a very tough job. The Iraq war has gone so wrong that it is no longer an occupation, no longer even a security mission. It’s just a huge mass of isolated soldiers running in place in a walled-off FOB (Forward Operating Base) archipelago, trying not to get shot or blown up and occasionally firing back at an enemy over the wall they can’t see. It’s lunacy. Adding more guys to it just means more lunacy. But our government has a high tolerance for that sort of thing, and I wouldn’t bet on it ending anytime soon.”

Mr. and Mrs. Edwards court bloggers

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Radio Iowa News Director O. Kay Henderson chatted with Mrs. John Edwards this afternoon about –among other things I imaging– blogging. Here’s a couple of excerpts from her post/transcription:

“It’s just a great medium and I’m really glad to have the opportunity to speak without having somebody say what I meant to say, you know, which happens whenever there’s a reporter between you — or even, honestly, your own press people — between you and the people you’re trying to get to listen to what you have to say.”

“Here’s what the Internet has to offer. It is a direct medium between people. There is no filter. There is no intervention and that is unparalelled. If you think back about the way we used to communicate in a democracy centuries ago where people stood in the town square, handing out pamphlets with their opinions on them — isn’t this the closest we’ve really come to that again? We’ve returned to that which is what we were based on, where people can stand on their little corner of the Internet, handing out their opinions to people who are willing to listen to them.”