Oddly enough…

Oddly enough… 12 January 2009

Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, WAR!.
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Photo by Andy Molloy

… I landed on a photo of a cedar waxwing… along with a little post, at a Maine news site blog, and info on the tipsy angle…

Cedar and Bohemian Waxwings are foragers of fast food.

Possessing distinct black masks, flocks of the birds are spotted year round in Maine. Hanging on fruit trees, chirping in a choir of inebriated delight, the birds love to consume fermented berries. I’ve watched them drop 10 feet from limbs to the snow after exceeding the dozen berry limit. Shaken, but not stirred, the Waxwings perch atop a branch before taking flight. Then they ingest more berries.

Saturday a flock of Cedar Waxwings descended upon a bush loaded with ripe, red berries. They emitted the a soft “zeee-zeeet” summoning others to the party. I anticipated the usual brawl of wings flapping and beaks dripping with juice as a dozen Waxwings joined the vanguard.

Instead, a Waxwing erupted from the bush and flew in an arc over the Kennebec River, snagging a dragonfly in its beak.

In addition to the Flycatchers and Swallows residing along the Kennebec, Waxwings are veracious bug hunters. Some Waxwings ingested berries before pursuing the dragonflies emerging from the Kennebec.

The teetotalers appeared more successful.

*********

I also landed on about 20 minutes of an interview with Chomsky.. got in the middle so just a snatch of the whole over the radio.. seemed it was from about 2004, much conversation about the Central American wars waged by Reagan (and his very very low Gallup ratings, til the onset of the huge PR war at around ’92 to sanctify him), Negroponte, the millions of deaths we caused, the way in which we do not have to revise history, we simply don’t keep history of our transgressions, it is expunged in the very air space in which it happened, in a sense. I dated the interview by his mentioning that Negroponte was again on the scene. He called him the “New Pro Consul of Iraq”.

But Chomsky mentioned an astonishing quote he had “just read” in the NYT, and that it slipped by with no comment. An article on Kissinger, having been told by Nixon to expand the war to Cambodia, apparently gave the order as

“Hit anything that moves with anything that flies”.

Called it an extraordinary admission of genocide. Well, I certainly agree.

Sure sounds like Gaza, tho I am hearing from the BBC news that the bombing over night was lighter than it has been.

****

In other news, IOZ has a post up about a neo Calvinism cult, church, movement, who-the-hell-knows, up in Seattle.

You mean that absolution from responsibility and moral culpability via belief in predestination will encourage men to behave with hubris? Shocking. Just shocking.

Drawn from the NYT mag….

But what is new about Driscoll is that he has resurrected a particular strain of fire and brimstone, one that most Americans assume died out with the Puritans: Calvinism, a theology that makes Pat Robertson seem warm and fuzzy.

Why not get drunk on fermented berries or grab a dragonfly on the fly… so much better. I think.

Comments»

1. BooHooHooMan - 12 January 2009: Bernie for Breakfast. Judge to rule on whether to revoke his bail for trying to send out the last coupla 100 mil or so…

This is a knee slapper. LOL:
Gotta Love the NY Post ALL CAPS

MADOFF BLISTERED HIS SISTER
SCAMMED FOR ‘$3M’

Sondra Wiener, 74, “has nothing,” said one of her neighbors in the BallenIsles Country Club, a gated Palm Beach enclave where she and her husband, Marvin, live alongside such celebrities as Serena and VenusWilliams.

“She lost millions in this whole thing,” said a source who estimated her loss at $3 million.

{Whole I’s, 2’s, even THREE of ’em LOL}

In response to questions about their financial straits, Wiener’s son, David, said, “Yes, my family’s a victim. More so than anybody else. It’s very painful.”

All you can do is Laugh.
Where’d they get that Pud Pounder?! Central Casting?
– Send up someone to play the nephew. – > Extra Whiney <-

Wiener was one of five family members who received packages filled with pricey baubles allegedly mailed by Madoff and his wife, Ruth, on Christmas Eve. The riches were collected by lawyers in recent weeks.

😯

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2. marisacat - 12 January 2009: Well he should be in jail frankly… If he had sold drugs, he would be in jail and his penthouse would be confiscated, along with whatever else was seizable. Not sure that is a word, but … whatever.

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3. BooHooHooMan - 12 January 2009: Madoff ‘victims’ do math,
realize they profited

NEW YORK – The many Bernard Madoff investors who withdrew money from their accounts over the years are now wrestling with an ethical and legal quandary. What they thought were profits was likely money stolen from other clients in what prosecutors are calling the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Now, they are confronting the possibility they may have to pay some of it back.

The issue came to the forefront this week as about 8,000 former Madoff clients began to receive letters inviting them to apply for up to $500,000 in aid from the Securities Investor Protection Corp.

Lawyers for investors have been warning clients to do some tough math before they apply for any funds set aside for the victims, and figure out whether they were a winner or loser in the scheme.

Hundreds and maybe thousands of investors in Madoff’s funds have been withdrawing money from their accounts for many years. In many cases, those investors have withdrawn far more than their principal investment.….[ Indict THEM ! ]

😯 ut –
but with a great quote from Ilyas Khuri in mcat’s previous thread

“..the only rationality in the face of fire, brutality and desturction
is resistance.”

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4. marisacat - 12 January 2009: Times Online

Pressure grew on Israel to end the use of controversial white phosphorus yesterday as The Times saw more evidence of its deployment around civilian populations in Gaza.

More than 50 people with burns were taken into Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Yunis, in what the hospital director, Youssef Abu Al-Reesh, said was a massive case of exposure to white phosphorus.

“We don’t have the medical experience to judge these cases, but we searched the internet according to the cases we have, and it indeed confirmed that it’s white phosphorus munitions. I have been working in this hospital for ten years and I have never seen anything like this.”

The 1980 Geneva treaty says that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. It produces a thick white smoke when exposed to oxygen, but can cause severe burns and melt flesh to the bone if it comes into contact with skin. …snip…

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5. marisacat - 12 January 2009: We are so blessed. The Envoy of the Quartet…

TONY BLAIR is busy preparing for talks in the Middle East on a subject of global importance. The subject is not the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but climate change, in a speech to be delivered to a conference in Abu Dhabi sponsored by a Swiss bank.

It is just one of many money-spinning engagements that are expected to take his earnings to £15m by July, two years since his departure from Downing Street.

Blair is now facing serious questions over his commitment as a Middle East envoy to the quartet of the United Nations, United States, Europe and Russia.

In a significant measure of unease, a UN ambassador who sat on the security council until just a few days ago has publicly expressed his frustration over Blair’s conduct.

Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa’s ambassador to the UN, said that Blair was asked last October to address the council on his progress, but has not yet done so, nor has he set foot in Gaza.

…

“We wanted to know what Blair was doing in Gaza . . . we need to know what the quartet envoy is doing. He has never been to Gaza. It is now three months [since Blair was asked].”

Last week Gordon Brown let slip that his long-term rival was still on holiday – prompting Blair to embark on a flurry of broadcast interviews.
…

While performing his duties in the Middle East, Blair holds court at the American Colony hotel in east Jerusalem. He hires an entire floor of the hotel at a cost to the public purse of about £700,000 a year.

Despite the fighting in Gaza, Blair is expected to be awarded the presidential medal of freedom by George W Bush at the White House on Tuesday.

…

Blair ranks as the most expensive speaker in the world. His agents at the Washington Speakers Bureau typically charge $250,000 (£164,000) for a 90-minute speech.

He is also paid about £2m a year by JP Morgan Chase and a further £500,000 a year by Zurich Financial Services. The deal for his memoirs is worth a reported £4.6m. …snip…

And a very astute comment at the site:

Blair is an archetypical modern moral character as defined by Alasdair Macintyre in his book After Virtue-a Study in Moral Theory, (pub. 1982) i.e. someone who masquerades in an expertise which doesn’t exist. It’s all a cruel joke in making hollow claims from a pitiful record.

Albert, Biarritz, France

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6. marisacat - 12 January 2009: The “excuse game” is officially overdrawn at the bank. Comment to this post at TWN::

Posted by Cee Jan 10, 11:47AM –

Obama laughs in the face of his supporters yet again.

Wag,

He’s putting the architects of this nightmare in place to take the blame if they can’t or won’t clean up the mess they made.

Laugh at that.

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7. marisacat - 12 January 2009: False Dichotomy blog (really good blog btw), on Pelosi’s weekly presser last Thursday…

But wait, there’s more!

At this morning’s press conference, in response to another question concerning Gaza and whether she had spoken to any of Israel’s leaders regarding the (dis)proportionality of their military offensive, Pelosi reminded the troublesome journalist that “you’re talking about certain things from one perspective. There’s a picture of some good things that are happening on the ground there as well.”

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8. aemd - 12 January 2009: Bernard at MOA has a post about Jarch Management Group leasing land in Southern Sudan. Hmmm.

Some links, from the comments, on the deal from the Sudan and Ethiopian press.

More interesting links in the comments including one that Joe Wilson (yeah, that one) and Larry Johnson (that Larry Johnson?) involved.

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9. mattes - 12 January 2009: So much…

Bob Simon, and his friends with beautiful minds and beautiful lives sipping wine in tela vivi…not to be bothered..

I heard Israel bought no securitized mortgages. Hm. What did they know…and when did they know it….

BHHM…I always thought allah seems a bit more friendly than yahwah…I don’t remember massive genocide…but what do I know.

The ZOG propaganda machine is going all out. Every movie, documentary on “the meme” is playing on cable. I still see JElias MIA.[Mr. putting a human face on the IDF.]
Was he re-assigned.

I am reading a book now on some of the history, I so refuse to join the tribe. And so sad for my country.

There must be a better/more humane way to reduce our populations than to worship the gods of war.

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10. mattes - 12 January 2009: New onlive TV, interview on phosphorous in gaza right now:
http://www.livestation.com

Errbody Download Livestation Now Diary:

http://www.freespeechzoneblog.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2277

http://www.livestation.com

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11. aemd - 12 January 2009: My, isn’t this interesting….

“The first openly gay Episcopal bishop will offer a prayer at the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural event for President-elect Barack Obama.”

“Clark Stevens, a spokesman for the inaugural committee, said Robinson was invited because he had offered his advice to Obama during the campaign and because of his church work. When asked whether Robinson was included to calm the Warren complaints, he said Robinson is ”an important figure in the religious community. We are excited that he will be involved.’ ”

😀

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12. lucid - 12 January 2009: 11 – I doubt Pastor Driscoll from the Ioz post would approve.

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13. marisacat - 12 January 2009: 12

I read the NYT article on Driscoll to the end. Ugh. Very repressive, over all… and he brooks no dissent in his Neo Calvinism. The government must love all of these extra-repressive actors filling the stage.

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14. marisacat - 12 January 2009: LOL it’s all about headlines:

Obama preparing order to close Gitmo

By LARA JAKES – 38 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Advisers to President-elect Barack Obama say one of his first duties in office will be to order the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

That executive order is expected during Obama’s first week on the job — and possibly on his first day, according to two transition team advisers. Both spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Obama’s order will direct his administration to figure out what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held at Guantanamo.

It’s still unlikely the prison would be closed any time soon. Obama last weekend said it would be “a challenge” to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration.

In other news……………….. the senate is “nearing” a decision on Burris. Don’t give them any really big problems.

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15. marisacat - 12 January 2009: Martin Indyk speaks for the Arab world. The mind reels.

His narrative as the son of a Kenyan father, his childhood in Muslim Indonesia, his middle name Hussein, his rise to power as the first African-American president on his own merits without wealth or a famous name behind him — all that deeply impresses the Arabs.

Spiegel.

The short interveiw is hilarious. Esp as he could not cope with Finkelstein and Amy.

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16. marisacat - 12 January 2009: Not the best pic, but apparently the Germans are counting their zoo creatures as well. But they also examine them. (Probably the British do as well, just never caught it being said). Weight heighth length whatever pertains.

I get the impression off Kermit the Horned Toad that he is thinking, you are lucky I am in a good mood today.

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17. BooHooHooMan - 12 January 2009: Ruh rohs: Poll Results on DK

Do you support a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel?

Yes 2000 votes – 73 %
No 614 votes – 22 %
I think I can avoid taking a stand on this issue. 115 votes – 4 %

2729 Total Votes

Wow. Think of all those vacations cancelled. LOL
Not a bad shift though.

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18. marisacat - 12 January 2009: hmm Lenin has a post up. Israel wants to ban the Arab minority from standing in the coming elections.

The news is that Israel has banned Arab parties from standing in the upcoming elections:

Parliament spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country’s Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

This can’t be a complete surprise since a) there are many Israeli politicians who would like the chance to dispose of the Arab minority permanently, and b) there are always moves to repress Arab political expression during one of Israel’s periodic wars against, well, other Arabs.

He revisits some f the recent “transfer” language… and the broad clamp down on almost any dissent. hmm. And links to Jews Sans Frontieres, an anti Zionist group that likens it to a “herrenvolk democracy”… rather than an ethnocracy. Well, they said it.

One thing for certain, we have a big shift in the discussion.

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19. marisacat - 12 January 2009: Democracy NOW… Lanny Davis vs Neve Gordon.

NG: …Israel is creating a situation where basically all the doors in the Gaza Strip are closed except one door. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, said it. Israel has closed all the doors in the Gaza Strip again, except for the mosque doors. We’ve closed the school doors. We’ve closed the economic doors. We’ve closed the medical doors. And so, and then we’re surprised that we have to deal with Hamas….

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20. mattes - 12 January 2009: Leviev selling 51% of gov’t tower in Tel Aviv
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054583.html

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21. mattes - 12 January 2009: Olmert gives his version of that day:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

“She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour,” Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.
…
The United States, Israel’s main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

“In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour,” Olmert said

“I said ‘get me President Bush on the phone’. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care. ‘I need to talk to him now’. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

“I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour.”

Bush was in Philadelphia on January 8 talking about the no child left behind sham between 11am and 12am. The time difference between Israel and U.S. eastern is -7 hours. If Olmert called at 3:30 that would have been 8:30pm in Washington DC, not during any official speech in Philadelphia, but right before the Security Council meeting.

So Olmert is exaggerating his influence here – he did not get Bush to interrupt a speech, but he did get him to change a UN vote..

But the essence is clear. Israel called and the U.S. president did as he was told to do.

Dog, Tail, Wag, whatever …

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2009/01/tail-dog-wag.html

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22. marisacat - 12 January 2009: I am not sure I buy this whole story about the vote/Rice/Bush/phone call/abstain. For one, the wording was vague enough that as one wag put it, Mickey Mouse could vote for it. Meaningless.

All Israel is doing is propaganda, this and everything else as well…. I cannot imagine that Rice, who is as clsoe to Israel and to certain Israeli personalities as can be, would ever have gone into the UN without her marching orders. And would have been in agreement. I think this is a game for domestic political sale. Olmert to the domestic Israeli.

All Israel is doing these days is, with a wide brush, calling anyone who dares disagree a supporter of Hamas.

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23. marisacat - 12 January 2009: hmmm mmm zzzzzzzzz

Nancy Scola on ‘Soapbloxaggedon”. I still say the whole thing, from inception onward and including all of the recent fish flapping on the dock, stinks.

SoapBlox has long been a one-man band, the project of a programmer named Paul Preston. After this latest round of hacking, Preston had had enough and called it quits on SoapBlox. Jeffrey Toobin has a useful round-up of how SoapBloxaggedon went down in the New Yorker, but it’s enough to say that Preston’s move was poised to pull down about a hundred or so blogs in the progressive firmament — Open Left, Swing State Project, Pam’s House Blend, Calitics, and Blue Jersey among them. And not only did the breakdown threaten the site’s viability going forward, it threatened that most cherished of blog assets: archives. As Swing State’s DavidNYC put it about the day that SoapBlox died: “[I]t was a truly terrible morning.”

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24. mattes - 12 January 2009: Timing is suspect.

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25. Madman in the Marketplace - 12 January 2009: THE BEAST 50 MOST LOATHSOME PEOPLE IN AMERICA, 2008

50. Barack Obama

Charges: Beyond a few token acts of bipartisan marketing, Barry’s major duty in the Senate was to avoid legislating, so he could pretend Washington-outsider status and nullify attacks on his non-existent policy positions. That’s the thing about Obama and his candidacy: He was a blank slate, the pinnacle of vapid public relations—onto which the benighted masses may project their sincerest, yet unfounded, hopes in the wake of the worst administration in history. Couldn’t disown Rev. Wright, until he suddenly could, and then marred his first moments as president ahead of time by inviting a pastor whose advice to gays is just to refrain from sex for life. Promised not to run for president, then did; vowed to take public election funds, then didn’t; backed telecom immunity, then accepted the nomination at the AT&T sponsored convention; expressed displeasure with Clinton’s hawkish foreign policy and vote for war in Iraq, then named her as Secretary of State. And despite all that, he’s plenty affable. There’s nothing more loathsome than a likable politician.

Exhibit A: “Yes we can” is the “Just do it” of politics.

Sentence: Presiding over the decline of an exhausted empire.

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26. marisacat - 12 January 2009: “Closing Guatntanamo first week” is already a headline at the Guardian. Nor does it qualify the issue in the lower grafs…. LOL presented as “row back on Sunday, which is now corrected”.

You gotta love it.

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27. NYCO - 12 January 2009: 22. I agree with you on this. But Olmert must be really tone-deaf if he thinks such braggadocio is going to play well on the American street as well as it has in the past.

There’s going to be a pro-Gazan rally on my local college campus tomorrow, and I can tell that people are nervous about it. Lots of attempts at smoothing-over and official Kumbaya statements ahead of time. And this isn’t Berkeley by any means.

25. I read that bit too. I guess, in the end what astonishes me is that Americans really believe that they can get the kind of change they long for with nothing more than a ballot for the right person. No fuss, no mess. So easy.

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28. Madman in the Marketplace - 12 January 2009: Put something new up: Evil, Deluded … VERY American.

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29. marisacat - 12 January 2009: 28

If you want to see an example of what is wrong with the leadership of this country, and with what far-too-many Americans EXPECT from their leaders, attend this answer Bush gave to a question today about the abysmal government response to Katrina:…

Just hearing on the evening NBC naitonal news that anger spilled over in NO today, online at least, over his response in the presser, which I did catch this am. He was in classic Bush mode. Pity no Dem ever had the balls or the claws to really call him on anything. At all. OVer and over they agreed, with an overlay of PR.

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30. Madman in the Marketplace - 12 January 2009: I was listening to it on NPR … I’m not sure what disgusted me more. His fatuous answers, or the fawning laughter and applause from the “press” corps.

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31. Madman in the Marketplace - 12 January 2009: Rumsfeld Sued Over Guantanamo Suicides

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32. marisacat - 12 January 2009: You have to laugh. And this was noticeable some time ago.

The press corps, most of us, don’t even bother raising our hands any more to ask questions because Obama always has before him a list of correspondents who’ve been advised they will be called upon that day.”

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33. Intermittent Bystander - 12 January 2009: In her Occupier post of the other day, Marisacat included a reference to Hillary Mann Leverett – former director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, served in the US embassy in Tel Aviv, and spent considerable time in Gaza – and I did a bit of meandering for more about her and husband Flynt Leverett. In the process, I followed a link at hubby’s Wikipedia entry to a blog (seemingly inactive since March 08) called Our World in Balance. An October 2007 article there, called The Story of Leverett and Mann, includes a startling degree of (otherwise perhaps unsurprising) detail about the ways in which BushCheneyRumsfeldHadley and Company not only blew off but thoroughly sabotaged unprecedented opportunities for diplomatic negotiations with Iran (just before the Axis of Evil pronouncements) and likewise put the kibosh on Powell-led efforts to make progress toward peace in I-P. The Sharon story above reminded me again of the interview with Mann and Leverett. Here’s just a small snippet from that story – the action took place in 2002:

[Flynt] Leverett plunged right into a dramatic new peace proposal floated by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Calling for “full normalization” in exchange for “full withdrawal” from the occupied territories, Abdullah promised to rally all the Arab nations to a final settlement with Israel. In his brand-new third-floor office at the Old Executive Office Building, a tiny room with a very high ceiling, Leverett began hammering out the details with Abdullah’s foreign-policy advisor, Adel Al-Jubeir. When Ariel Sharon said that a return to the ’67 borders was unacceptable, Al-Jubeir said the Saudis didn’t want to be in the “real estate business” — if the Palestinians agreed to border modifications, the Saudis could hardly refuse them. Al-Jubeir believed he had something that might actually work.

But the White House wasn’t interested. Sharon already rejected it, Rice told Leverett.

At the Arab League meeting, Abdullah got every Arab state to sign his proposal in a unanimous vote.

The White House still wasn’t interested.

Then violence in the Palestinian territories began to increase, climaxing in an Israeli siege of Arafat’s compound. In April, Leverett accompanied Colin Powell on a tour that took them from Morocco to Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon and finally Israel. Twice they crossed the Israeli-army lines to visit Arafat under siege. Powell seemed to think he had authorization from the White House to explore what everyone was calling “political horizons,” the safely vague shorthand for a peaceful future, so on the final day Leverett holed up in a suite at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem with a group of senior American officials — the U. . ambassador to Israel, the U. S. consul general to Jerusalem, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Bill Burns — trying to hammer out Powell’s last speech.

Then the phone rang. It was Stephen Hadley on the phone from the White House. “Tell Powell he is not authorized to talk about a political horizon,” he said. “Those are formal instructions.”

“This is a bad idea,” Leverett remembers saying. “It’s bad policy and it’s also humiliating for Powell, who has been talking to heads of state about this very issue for the last ten days.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hadley said. “There’s too much resistance from Rumsfeld and the VP. Those are the instructions.”

So Leverett went back into the suite and asked Powell to step aside.

Powell was furious, Leverett remembers. “What is it they’re afraid of?” he demanded. “Who the hell are they afraid of?”

Much, much more at the link. An interesting read, even taking into account the complexities of the individual and institutional affiliations at play.

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34. Madman in the Marketplace - 12 January 2009: I like the comment right below that one:

How long will the Obama-friendly press corps, no matter how “deferential” and “eager to please,” tolerate such tight management?

They’ve liked it just fine for eight years … why stop now?

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35. marisacat - 12 January 2009: Flynt Leverett is part of the group that Steve Clemons of TWN is head of or whatever his title… Leverett had some big run in with the administration a year or more ago.. cannot recall it all now.

hmm doubt I could make the above vaguer or more disjointed… I am going to blame too little coffee and not enough roast chicken today… 😉 Lack of available warm cat compress as well…………………..

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36. Intermittent Bystander - 12 January 2009: Roast chicken does sound good. And in lieu of a warm cat compress, I can only offer a virtual (and therefore temperature-neutral) tree kangaroo.

BTW – State police finally did a presser today about the I-90 shooter (though even now, nobody is talking much about his all-white jumpsuit, etcetera, and his motives are still a mystery). The perp was apparently a 22-yr-old UPS worker from Hartford, with a juvenile record there but no current warrants out for arrest, and he is still comatose at Albany Med, and unlikely to survive. When the trooper pulled over the cab, the shooter-passenger apparently got an assault rifle out of a big duffel bag he had in the back seat, and the trooper and cab driver ran. Seems a few minutes of the guy fumbling with a trigger lock gave them time to take cover, and the trooper was able to call for backup, before the gunfight really got underway. Still no word on why he was coming to the Albany area, apart from vague references to his knowing people here.

Wonder if it was a drug-ring-related thing, a planned domestic-type hit, or something more complicated entirely, before it turned into (they say) a rampage-and-suicide-by-cop.

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37. Intermittent Bystander - 12 January 2009: Tree kangaroo photo (and highway rampage update) in the mod pouch, I think. . . . can definitely wait until roast chicken is consumed!

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38. marisacat - 12 January 2009: the I-90 is def a mystery… and being left that, it seems…

out of Moderation!… sorry!

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39. Intermittent Bystander - 12 January 2009: Thanks. Will let you know if further developments emerge. . . sounds like the state and locals are coordinating with Hartford authorities now, and I’m pretty sure the local press will do some snooping about the guy’s background and publish more as the investigation continues/allows. Doubt I’m alone in my curiosity . . . an out-of-the-ordinary gun incident, for the locale. We don’t go in much for highway shootouts hereabouts, apart from the occasional lazy assholes in deer season. Hope it doesn’t start a trend, needless to say!

My own highway-heavy days are winding down in a hurry, for better or worse. Had the pleasure of showing a recent college grad around the machines and barenaked minimals of a fraction of my previously hours-shrunken, responsibility-rich, so-called “demanding” “job” today, so he can “help out,” for roughly half my hourly rate, after I help crash the state unemployment website next week. Seemed a decent sort, but I assume he’s living with Ma and Pa to even consider the gig an opportunity.

On the bright side, my environmental footprint will go from the mukluk of Sasquatch to the snowboot of any given Northeasterner simultaneously. (Standard late-January wicked temp drop forecast for this week, too! No major precip, thank gawwwwwd.)

Please pass the chicken and fermented berries, eh?

Speaking of which, where is catnip? A Montreal friend just made it back from Kerala. Talk about a winter of extremes!

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40. marisacat - 12 January 2009: My own highway-heavy days are winding down in a hurry, for better or worse. Had the pleasure of showing a recent college grad around the machines and barenaked minimals of a fraction of my previously hours-shrunken, responsibility-rich, so-called “demanding” “job” today, so he can “help out,” for roughly half my hourly rate, after I help crash the state unemployment website next week.

Oh how awful IB! I am so sorry to hear that! And for years now people are left to train the half price replacement…

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41. marisacat - 12 January 2009: Angry Arab http://angryarab.blogspot.com/:

Thus spoke Nir Rosen

“Nir Rosen sent me this (I cite with his permission): “fucking israeli news, channel 1, they’re bragging about winning a golden globe award for an israeli film about the lebanon war as they are fucking destroying gaza”

Posted by As’ad at 12:21 PM

He’s also got a snip from JPost that a young settler has been officially in vited to the inauguration. Seems inevitable, somehow. Actually reading the Jpost article, what a complicated story. A dual, originally emigrated as a child from America, voted for McCain.

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42. Intermittent Bystander - 12 January 2009: Thanks. And for years now people are left to train the half price replacement…. Yeah, exactly. Nevertheless, in a tiny office, slightly testy metaphors involving outsourcing and Bangalore don’t seem to elicit clear recognition, let alone a laugh. I guess everybody’s an exceptionalist, when it’s focus-on-personal-survival time.

I’m sure tomorrow will be a better day.

Upsy-downsy time for so many, no guff.

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43. Intermittent Bystander - 12 January 2009: More waxwings. Dump Icarus as icon!

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44. diane - 12 January 2009: jeez intermittent, really sorry to hear that, I hope your in one of the states that pays unemployment at a more decent rate.

*******
Marisa
so glad I stopped by, thanks so much for the waxwing!!!!!! ;0)
I used to watch them all the time at a beautiful studio apt. (too bad I can’t say that for the landlordessa) I lived in for years, so sweetly passing berries to their neighbors, and never fighting over them….wonderful birds!

*******
The belly swiftly opens on our Trojan horse…..

per a ‘hardcopy’ WAPO article I read: Justices to re-examine race, Voting Rights Act …..it’s antiquated… don’t ya know……….

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45. diane - 12 January 2009: Intermittent (43)

You bohemian you! I wish you wings to fly over all the assholes and plenty tasty berries!

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46. Intermittent Bystander - 12 January 2009: 45- LOL! Thanks. Totally stylin’ boids, them waxwings, agreed.

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47. CSTAR - 12 January 2009: Coleman is a scumbag, but really what’s the difference?

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48. bayprairie - 13 January 2009: My own highway-heavy days are winding down in a hurry, for better or worse. Had the pleasure of showing a recent college grad around the machines and barenaked minimals of a fraction of my previously hours-shrunken, responsibility-rich, so-called “demanding” “job” today, so he can “help out,” for roughly half my hourly rate, after I help crash the state unemployment website next week.

i was unemployed for 6 months and two weeks back in 03. was scary as hell but i did come to greatly enjoy the additional time, in fact i think it ruined me and ive been a slacker ever since.

i hope something good comes out of it, for you, soonly.

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49. BooHooHooMan - 13 January 2009: Why Obama’s Oratory Is Vital – Anna Quindlen, Newsweek

So we can eat our words?

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50. BooHooHooMan - 13 January 2009: The World is Wrong to Condemn Israel – Susan Estrich, Creators

Cigarette- Susan?

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51. BooHooHooMan - 13 January 2009: Some gems from the Estrich piece via RCP, very pro forma:

….Dick Morris says this is the doves’ war, the last chance for the left-leaning government of Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak to…[ BEAT BEBE! – Dukakis 0’12! ]

….Politics is relative. From what I know, there are no doves in Israel. How can you be a dove when the rockets are landing 17 miles outside of Tel Aviv? You can fight or you can fight more. If Hamas can get away with murder, why should Iran fear at all?

I dunno Ms. Cancerstick? Why should Iran fear?

….No one likes seeing civilians suffer and die. No one likes seeing hospitals overrun, supplies running out, doctors near exhaustion. But terrorists

So rote, Estrich Gad, Dukakis was toast the day he hired her.

Roasted Toast set before a semi informed, rational 5 year old as “a treat!”….Estrich’s opener:

“Go back to the oven,” the woman in her hijab in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., yelled to the Jewish Americans demonstrating their support for Israel. “You need a big oven, that’s what you need.”

This is why I love Israel and always have. It is because Israel will never surrender to their hatred.

Israel is tiny. If you live in Massachusetts, as I did when I traveled there two decades ago, imagine Rhode Island being in the hands of those who are committed to destruction, sending rockets over your common border.

I dunno
Maybe only some kids have the joy of an Easy Bake Oven at home.

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52. marisacat - 13 January 2009: gnu post

LINK

…………….. 8) ……………

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53. BooHooHooMan - 13 January 2009: LOL– I missed this..
After Made-off, Who in the fuck gives Trillion Dollar cart blanche
to a young smugster named Kashkari?
Speaker of the House Rahmitin Diaz?

TPM-

Who’s Running TARP? You Might Not Wanna Know

Last week, Congress’s oversight panel for the TARP funds confirmed in a report that the Treasury Department essentially has no idea what banks have done with the astronomical sums they’ve been handed. As the New York Times reported back in October, many of those people are former execs at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street behemoth that used to be led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

{Snip}

Most prominent among those is Neel Kashkari, the 35-year old former Goldman VP who was appointed by Paulson in October as the interim head of the Office of Financial Stability (OFS), which is in charge of implementing the bailout. Kashkari’s role is said by the Times to have “evolved” after Paulson changed the original bailout plan, so that Treasury would invest money directly in troubled banks.

An excellent quick clip – Kashkari and Dennis Kucinich :
“A level of racketeering on a scale we’ve never seen ”

In the hearings Kucinich noted our industrial capital base has been devastated to the point of a National Security emergency.
So when you’re hearing it from a good peacenik like Denny…

$684 TRILLION Dollars in derivatives out there. A “financial tsunami” was how Dennis put it. The Europeans get it. Certain Sectarians nominally based in the US went to war, went broke, and are looking for more.

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