THAT, in a google search on the text string "butt-humping"MaterSheet-rockers have their own peculiar craft-humor.
03-27-2007, 03:17 PM
It's not good to have a humped butt. If you stripe the center of your butt first, your hump will be more noticeable. Stripe the sides of your butt 1st, let dry, then stripe the center of your butt with a 10" knife. You can only give the illusion of taking the hump out of your butt.
The average U.S. automobile, traveling 10,000 miles a year on pure ethanol (not a gasoline-ethanol mix) would need about 852 gallons of the corn-based fuel. This would take 11 acres to grow, based on net ethanol production. This is the same amount of cropland required to feed seven Americans.
If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States.
"In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them."
"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"
" I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. "
"In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own."
"No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. "
"The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through."
"There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle."
The Buncombe County (N.C.) Sheriff’s Office arrested activists Mark and Deborah Kuhn in West Asheville Wednesday morning after a complaint that the couple was desecrating an American flag. They say a deputy invaded their home and used excessive force.It's my sincerest hope that the people abused by this pig-shucking piece of crap cop--the Kuhns--sue the fascist, rathole Sheriff’s department into penury.
Contrary to the putative evidence that there is none, I have for a long time believed that the long-term, overarching goal of USer/Western policy in the Middle East oil patch has been, in effect, to sponsor and encourage conflict between the various nations and religious factions, on the theory that the Shii’a and the Sunni factions of Islam in the Persian Gulf will--sooner than later--descend into open, wide-spread, bloody, internecine, sectarian strife.
I don't get the NYTimes, in any of the ways 'get' may be interpreted. But TruthOutdotOrg does (at least in the instrumental sense), and they kindly brought my attention to a recent iteration of my long-held opinion:
UPI (Via TruthOut dot Org)
Burbank, California - Michael Moore said Thursday that the Bush administration has served him with a subpoena regarding his trip to Cuba during the making of his new film, "Sicko."
The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who appeared Thursday on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," said he was notified about the subpoena at the network's studios in Burbank, Calif.
"I haven't even told my own family yet," Moore said. "I was just informed when I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me."
Moore filmed the trip as part of his film comparing the U.S. healthcare system with government healthcare systems in other countries.
He took three Sept. 11, 2001, emergency rescue workers to Guantanamo Bay "because I heard the al-Qaida terrorists we have in the camps there, detained, are receiving free dental, medical, eye care, the whole deal, and our own (Sept. 11) rescue workers can't get that in New York City."
At 9:45 am, MDT, today (7/27/07, CE), these were the headline links for stories atop the YahooNews feed:• South Korean hostages alive in Afghanistan; Release urgedDid I inadvertently tie my tinfoil too tight this morning, or is it possible that these actually ARE the intersecting and interlocking vectors of 'reality' and that, in important ways, each story illustrates and illuminates each other in ways that implicate for us the reasons that so-(and inaptly)-called 'po-mo' critics regard reality as textual?
• Suicide bomber kills 13 at Pakistan's Red Mosque; Photos
• India and U.S. announce nuclear cooperation deal
• Thousands homeless as Asian monsoons continue; Floods
• Exposure to Agent Orange linked to high blood pressure
• Rising ozone levels from pollution could stunt plant growth
• Goldberg and Shepherd in final negotiations to join 'The View'
Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.
The documents also contain details describing how Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign officials, and at least one individual who worked for White House political adviser Karl Rove, planned to stop minorities residing in Cuyahoga County (Ohio, where Cleveland is) from voting on election day.
The efforts to purge voters from registration rolls was spearheaded by Tim Griffin, a former Republican National Committee opposition researcher. Griffin recently resigned from his post as interim US attorney for Little Rock Arkansas. His predecessor, Bud Cummins, was forced out to make way for Griffin.
Another set of documents, 43 pages of emails, provided to Truthout by the PBS news program "NOW," contains blueprints for a massive effort undertaken by RNC operatives in 2004, to challenge the eligibility of voters expected to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Pennsylvania.
One email, dated September 30, 2004, and sent to a dozen or so staffers on the Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC, under the subject line "voter fraud strategy conference call," describes how campaign staffers planned to challenge the veracity of votes in a handful of battleground states in the event of a Democratic victory.
Furthermore, the emails show the Bush-Cheney campaign and RNC staffers compiled voter-challenge lists that targeted probable Democratic voters in at least five states: New Mexico, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Voting rights lawyers have made allegations of so called "vote caging," against Republicans previously. These emails provide more evidence. One Republican operative involved in the planning wrote "we can do this in NV, FL, PA and NM because we have a list to run against the Absentee Ballot requests, and should."
If elected president, you and your family will be entitled to free government health care, courtesy of the fine doctors at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. But nearly 50 million of your constituents will go without any medical care at all -- and 18,000 of them will die during your first year in office simply because they lack health insurance. As the head of the government, how can you take advantage of its health care services, but deny it to so many citizens?
All candidates should pledge to take whatever health care is available to the least fortunate American. Right now, that's nothing. Hopefully as president, they'll have to make it something.
“It is in justice that the ordering of society is centered,” wrote Aristotle. If so, Alberto Gonzales is a f–king anarchist.I must disagree:“I believe that justice is instinct and innate; the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as the threat of feeling, seeing and hearing,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. If so, Alberto Gonzales is blind, deaf, dumb, and unfeeling to a sociopathic extreme.
EVERY effort these mo-fos have made since day 1 has been with the end in view of undermining, sabotaging, and undoing any and every institution and/or instrument of 'democratic, republican' self-government by which the People might resist or reject the designs of their would-be corpoRat Masters. They have done it by destroying the faith of the people in ANY government by their repeated, egregious and exaggerated performances of incompetence and roguery.After watching the Busheviki for the last 7 years, it would require a person with a deep commitment to political autonomy, and to government of, for, and by the People to resist the temptation to just say 'fuckit,' and resign from the field.
Yes We Are Soo Fucked.There's really nothing wrong with the country that a million angry people encamped around the ShiteHouse, with pitchforks and torches, couldn't cure.
I have reached the realization that even our most heroic efforts at this point (and really for quite awhile now, maybe since 2000) can accomplish nothing more than triage and damage control. The ruination of this country is a done deal, nearly complete. In my opinion we might as well let the bastards have what they think they've won and save our energy for.... other things, as they've succeeded in destroying the legal means by which we're so feebly attempting to limit their depredations.
They want a new world order, I say lets give it to them. One which offers them no protections at all, in which they must try to enjoy their stolen luxuries in fear of their lives, and crucially, one without the backing of a corrupt superpower,would seem only fitting. There are only so many walls and even the strongest can keep out the dispossessed for only so long..
(H/t to my younger, ol' Santa Fean pal Margot.)
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer, 7/23/07WASHINGTON - Frustrated by delays in health care, a coalition of injured Iraq war veterans is accusing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment (snip)...The delays are unconscionable, although utterly predictable; as are the bureaucratic stratagems designed to disqualify--or at least to discourage--the injured from care and continuing benefits to which they are entitled. This has been a pattern in VA "veterans' care" at LEAST since the mid '60s', when veterans of VietNam started going crazy from PTSD which the VA insisted was not the fault or consequence of their service.
...In the lawsuit, (plaintiffs) note that government investigators warned as early as 2002 that the VA needed to fix its backlogged claims system and make other changes.
Yet, the lawsuit says, (ex-VA Chief) Nicholson(--who recently resigned his post--) and other officials still insisted on a budget in 2005 that fell $1 billion short, and they made "a mockery of the rule of law" by awarding senior officials $3.8 million in bonuses despite their role in the budget foul-up.
Today, the VA's backlog of disability payments is now between 400,000 and 600,000, with delays of up to 177 days to process an initial claim and an average of 657 days to process an appeal. Several congressional committees and a presidential commission are now studying ways to improve care.
According to a recent NewsHour report, for every person who's actually been killed in this war, there are 16 wounded and injured, and this is an unprecedented number. In Vietnam, for example, there were 2.6 injuries for every fatality, and in Korea there were 2.8.
The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the President nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways. The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning—a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes—but by the consequences of defeat. As President Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America."
Sara, blogging on Corrente has excavated a lump of complete, Holesale Asshattery by some smug, smoothly bejowled pundit from Seattle--Sean Connelly by name--and his 'gracious' remarks on the occasion of Howard Dean's withdrawal from the '04 campaign, having been hounded ("screamed") thither by the "SCUM" for having had the effrontery to say he'd "investigate" dangerously increasing media concentration.
Roberts, pictured to the Right (naturally), made the startling (if you've not been paying attention) claim in the middle hour of yesterday's show.
Study shows racial disparities in prisonDES MOINES, Iowa - Blacks in the United States are imprisoned at more than five times the rate of whites, and Hispanics are locked up at nearly double the white rate, according to a study released Wednesday by a criminal justice policy group.
The report by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based think tank, found that states in the Midwest and Northeast have the greatest black-to-white disparity in incarceration. Iowa had the widest disparity in the nation, imprisoning blacks at more than 13 times the rate of whites.
Such figures "reflect a failure of social and economic interventions to address crime effectively," as well as racial bias in the justice system, said Marc Mauer, the group's executive director.
Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut and Wisconsin incarcerated blacks at more than 10 times the rate of whites, the group said, citing Justice Department statistics from 2005. Vermont had a ratio of 12.5, followed by New Jersey with 12.4 and Connecticut with 12.
States with the lowest black-to-white ratio were Hawaii, with 1.9, Georgia with 3.3 and Mississippi with 3.5.
In Iowa, blacks are imprisoned at a rate more than double the national average. For every 100,000 people, Iowa incarcerates 309 whites and 4,200 blacks, the study said.
Paul Stageberg, administrator of the Iowa Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning, said the results are not surprising, but the causes are subject to interpretation.
He said the state's disproportionately high black arrest rates are likely linked to high poverty rates among blacks and lower educational achievement.
In 2001, a governor's task force released a report that said 24 percent of Iowa prison beds were occupied by black inmates even though blacks comprised just over 2 percent of the state's population.
The group that compiled Wednesday's report made several recommendations such as reviewing federal drug laws and giving judges more discretion to decide sentences rather than imposing mandatory minimum prison terms.
Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are slowing their drive to revamp the nation's voting systems, aides said yesterday.You betchum, Red Ryder!!!
Under pressure from state and local officials, as well as from lobbyists for the disabled, House leaders now advocate putting off the most sweeping changes until 2012, four years later than planned.
Overhauling voting systems before next year's presidential election had once been a top Democratic priority, primarily to allow greater accountability and be certain that all votes registered on computerized touch-screen systems were counted. But state and local elections officials told Congress they could not make the changes in time for the balloting in November 2008, particularly in light of the extra workload involved in preparing for next year's much-earlier presidential primary season.
Confronted by similar concerns, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Senate Rules Committee, said she had already decided against seeking any major changes in voting equipment before 2010.
"My sense is there's no way to get this thing in place by the election of 2008," Ms. Feinstein said. "Without adequate time, we could cause real problems in the election."
Senate Democrats say that stretching out the timetable could increase their chances to win enough Republican support to put the changes into law.
House Democratic officials say they are now working on compromise legislation that could allow hundreds of counties in 20 states to simply add tiny, cash-register-style printers to their touch-screen machines for the 2008 and 2010 elections, while waiting for manufacturers to develop better technology by 2012.
House officials said the compromise would ensure that all voting machines nationwide would have some kind of paper trail in 2008 through which voters could verify that their ballots were properly recorded and that could be used in recounts. Under the plan, New York, which has delayed replacing its old lever machines, would be the only state that would have to change its entire voting system by November 2008.
In May 2001, just days before Cheney unveiled his long-awaited National Energy Policy, FERC entered into confidential settlements with Williams in which the company forfeited $8 million it was owed by California's grid operator for power Williams sold into the marketplace at inflated prices. Williams did not admit any guilt for the power plant shutdown and, on orders from Cheney, FERC agreed to keep details of the settlement sealed. FERC later entered into a similar settlement with Reliant. The company agreed to forfeit $13.8 million it was owed by California's grid operator, did not admit to any wrongdoing, and FERC kept the details of the settlement confidential.Moreover, FERC kept California officials in the dark about the nature of the state's claims that its wholesale electricity market was being manipulated. Hebert is now the vice president of external affairs for Entergy in New Orleans.
For former Governor Gray Davis, the illegal behavior by energy companies like Williams that federal energy regulators discovered, then covered up, during a time when the former governor had said publicly he believed such behavior had taken place, is beyond disturbing.
Instead of protecting the interests of consumers, FERC's primary job, Hebert toed the White House line and together with Cheney, Hebert had come out publicly to say that Davis should immediately order the California Public Utilities Commission to relax environmental restrictions on the permitting process related to power plant construction and raise electricity rates to keep utilities Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison from becoming insolvent. The insolvency issue was due to the fact that the utilities were paying higher prices for power than it was legally allowed to charge its customers under the state's deregulation law.
Who'da EVER suspected the vice-criminal would be implicated in such things?
As The Providence Journal reported, Jim Miklaszewski not only took $30,000 from the Chamber of Commerce in apparent violation of his employer's policy on paid speaking engagements, the NBC correspondent then proceeded to call presidential candidate and former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) a "loser" for attempting to defend a pricey haircut.Scandalous? Like that money-grubbing, venal, corrupt piece of shit gives a fuck?
It's reasonable to assume that John Edwards' economic policies -- his focus on poverty and health care and the growing gap between rich and poor, and his proposed solutions to these problems -- aren't very popular at the Chamber of Commerce. Edwards, for example, has said he would repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in order to pay for his health care proposal, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lists making the Bush tax cuts permanent first among its tax policy priorities. And in 2006, the U.S. Chamber gave nearly five times as much money to Republicans as to Democrats.
Put simply, an NBC correspondent took $30,000 from the business lobby to give a speech -- then, during the speech, he attacked a candidate whose policies the lobby opposes. This is deeply unethical, to say the least.
As Edwards embarks on his poverty tour this week, it's fitting we call upon the media to stop their endless stream of personal, negative, and often absurd attacks against progressives and return their focus to where it belongs: the issues. As a respected and influential journalist, Miklaszewski has a reputation to uphold as a serious and objective source of information on air and off. Calling a presidential candidate a "loser" over a haircut would be absurd enough. Doing so after taking $30,000 from special interests opposed to that candidate is scandalous.
Retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson conducts war games for the U.S. military. Based on a number of recent games, he predicts Iraq would split along ethnic and sectarian lines, with Kurds, Shi'ites and Sunnis occuping different parts of the country.
Reuters reports, "Tokyo Electric Power Company shut down three major generators at the world's biggest nuclear power plant after a powerful earthquake in Japan on Monday caused a brief fire in one of the units, company officials said."I'm pretty sure this is gonna be taken for bad news at Avila Beach, CA, where a big nuke plant sits almost astride an earthquake fault line.
In Los Angeles, home to some of the most violent, dangerous cops in the country (LA County Sheriffs are notoriously heavy-handed), it's these folks: mostly young, male, armed with video cameras, they shadow the cops, and stay alert for abuses.(So-Called) Democrat Nelson Restores Funding for CheneyA "moderate?"
"The White House scored a win Thursday on Capitol Hill after moderate Senate Democrat Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) broke with his party to restore funding for Vice President Dick Cheney's office. The 15-14 vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee came after the House last month narrowly rejected a companion bid to punish Cheney in a continuing battle over whether he is complying with national security disclosure rules," reports The Associated Press.
Sound familiar?
Blackwater manager blamed for 2004 massacre in FallujahWhen four Blackwater USA security guards were ambushed and massacred in Fallujah in 2004, graphic images showed the world exactly what happened: four men killed, their bodies burned and dragged through the streets. A chanting mob hung two mutilated corpses from a bridge.
Since then, Congress and the families of the murdered private security contractors have been demanding answers: Why did the lightly armed and undermanned team go through the heart of one of Iraq's most hostile cities? Why did the two teams sent out that day have four members, not the usual six?
Some answers can be found in memos from a second team for Blackwater operating around Fallujah on March 31, 2004.
Blackwater, based in North Carolina, sent two squads through Fallujah without maps, according to memos obtained by The News & Observer. Both of the six-man teams, named Bravo 2 and November 1, were sent out two men short, leaving them more vulnerable to ambush. The November 1 team went into Fallujah and was massacred.
The Bravo 2 team memos, in emotional, coarse and damning language, placed the blame squarely on Blackwater's Baghdad site manager, Tom Powell.
"Why did we all want to kill him?" team member Daniel Browne wrote the following day. "He had sent us on this [expletive] mission and over our protest. We weren't sighted in, we had no maps, we had not enough sleep, he was taking 2 of our guys cutting off [our] field of fire. As we went over these things we new the other team had the same complaints. They too had their people cut."
Over on HuffPost this am, there is a long discussion about the possibility/potentiality of Al Gore running (and winning) the next 'election.' The author, Steven Weber, seems to think that the prayers and sighs of the yearning, fearful, desperate electorate will somehow induce the reluctant former VP to join the fray.Violent weekend in Iraq kills over 220Story like this makes me glad I'm not French.
By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer
(2 hours, 31 minutes ago)
BAGHDAD - Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence that claimed more than 220 lives, including 60 who died Sunday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.
The calls reflect growing frustration with the inability of Iraqi security forces to prevent extremist attacks.
The weekend deaths included two American soldiers — one killed Sunday in a suicide bombing on the western outskirts of Baghdad and another who died in combat Saturday in Salahuddin province north of the capital, the U.S. command said. Three soldiers were wounded in the Sunday blast.
Sunday's deadliest attack occurred when a bomb struck a truckload of newly recruited Iraqi soldiers on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing 15 and wounding 20, a police official at the nearest police station said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Also Sunday, two car bombs exploded near simultaneously in Baghdad's mostly Shiite Karradah district, killing eight people. The first detonated at 10:30 a.m. near a closed restaurant, destroying stalls and soft drink stands. Two passers-by were killed and eight wounded, a police official said.
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 8, 2007; Page A03
The White House has decided to defy Congress's latest demand for information regarding the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys, sources familiar with the decision said yesterday. Such an action would escalate the constitutional struggle and propel it closer to a court showdown.
Senate and House committees have directed President Bush to provide by tomorrow a detailed justification of his executive privilege claims and a full accounting of the documents he is withholding. But White House counsel Fred F. Fielding plans to tell lawmakers that he has already provided the legal basis for the claims and will not provide a log of the documents, the sources said.
Both Noquarter and Firedoglake have recently had up posts in which they labelled GOPuke presidential aspirant Fred Thompson as a "mole," for his service to the GOP in telling the Nixon Whitehouse the inside details of the Senate Watergate Committee, on which he sat as a minority counsel.The History Boys
In the twilight of his presidency, George W. Bush and his inner circle have been feeding the press with historical parallels: he is Harry Truman—unpopular, besieged, yet ultimately to be vindicated—while Iraq under Saddam was Europe held by Hitler. To a serious student of the past, that's preposterous. Writing just before his untimely death, David Halberstam asserts that Bush's "history," like his war, is based on wishful thinking, arrogance, and a total disdain for the facts.
by David Halberstam August 2007
Many of America's most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than four years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins.
The media watch group FAIR (where I'm an associate) has performed a public service in the latest edition of its magazine, Extra. The organization's activism director, Peter Hart, drew on FAIR's extensive research to assemble a sample of notable quotations from media cheerleading for the Iraq invasion.
I went to the FAIR website, but couldn't find the source to which Solomon refers; it is possible the article, being current, hasn't made the archives yet.
Washington - President Bush this month is giving an obscure White House office new powers over regulations affecting health, worker safety and the environment. Calling it a power grab, Democrats running Congress (say they) are intent on stopping him.
The House voted last week to prohibit the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from spending federal money on Executive Order 13422, signed by Bush last January and due to take effect July 24. (Ed: Ah yes, the 'power of the purse'.)
The Bush order requires federal officials to show that private companies, people or institutions failed to address a problem before agencies can write regulations to tackle it. It also gives political appointees greater authority over how the regulations are written.
The House measure "stops this president or any president from seizing the power to rewrite almost every law that Congress passes, laws that protect public health, the environment, safety, civil rights, privacy and on and on," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., its sponsor.
"OIRA has quietly grown into the most powerful regulatory agency in Washington," the House Science investigations subcommittee, chaired by Miller, said in a report in April.
The administration contends Bush's order merely strengthens a similar directive issued by President Clinton in 1993 giving the White House budget office oversight of federal agency rulemaking....
Bush's executive order:Critics say this will create a new bottleneck delaying the issuance of guidelines needed to comply with federal regulations.
- Requires agencies to identify "market failures," where the private sector fell short in dealing with a problem, as a factor in proposing a rule. The White House regulatory affairs office is given authority to assess those conclusions.
- States that no rulemaking can go forward without the approval of an agency's Regulatory Policy Office, to be headed by a presidential appointee.
- Directs each agency to provide an estimate of costs and benefits of regulations.
- Requires agencies to inform the White House regulatory affairs office of proposed significant guidance documents on complying with rules.
Did Darth "You Don't Know Dick" Cheney promote the war for private gain?New U.S. data show how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of the war-torn nation.By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer -- July 4, 2007
The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government's capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.
More than 180,000 civilians - including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis - are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.
The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq - a mission criticized as being undermanned.
"These numbers are big," said Peter Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar who has written on military contracting. "They illustrate better than anything that we went in without enough troops. This is not the coalition of the willing. It's the coalition of the billing."
The numbers include at least 21,000 Americans, 43,000 foreign contractors and about 118,000 Iraqis - all employed in Iraq by U.S. tax dollars, according to the most recent government data.
The array of private workers promises to be a factor in debates on a range of policy issues, including the privatization of military jobs and the number of Iraqi refugees allowed to resettle in the U.S.
But there are also signs that even those mounting numbers may not capture the full picture. Private security contractors, who are hired to protect government officials and buildings, were not fully counted in the survey, according to industry and government officials.
The companies with the largest number of employees are foreign firms in the Middle East that subcontract to KBR, the Houston-based oil services company, according to the Central Command database. KBR, once a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., provides logistics support to troops, the single largest contract in Iraq.
Middle Eastern companies, including Kulak Construction Co. of Turkey and Projects International of Dubai, supply labor from Third World countries to KBR and other U.S. companies for menial work on U.S. bases and rebuilding projects. Foreigners are used instead of Iraqis because of fears that insurgents could infiltrate projects.
KBR is by far the largest employer of Americans, with nearly 14,000 U.S. workers. Other large employers of Americans in Iraq include New York-based L-3 Communications, which holds a contract to provide translators to troops, and ITT Corp., a New York engineering and technology firm.
Just because you can drive a truck into the wilderness does not confer upon one the absolute right to do so. Given what is known about their effects, they should be banned from all public lands.
If you're gonna do it, under the present circumstances, the ONLY appropriate way to display it is: inverted, formerly the international maritime signal for desperate problems aboard, and at half-staff, signifying mourning (for the Constitution and the 3500 dead soldiers and marines killed so far in Iraq).
Spent the weekend with friends grooving on the annual Taos Solar Music Festival, where I 1) smoked some righteous weed, 2) heard some killer charts, 3) got up-to-date on many of the latest advances in solar technology and 4) conducted some of the best people-watching in the world. TSMF attracts important and popular performers. I heard Big-Head Todd & The Monsters, Paula Cole, Los Lobos, William Topley (a brit who has the resonances of Long John Baldry, though not as funny), and The John Butler Trio, along with a few lesser lights. Others there, though I didn't hear them, included Robert Mirabal, Michael Franti, Riders in the Sky, and Ottmar Liebert. I think, for a band, the trick to getting the crowd with you in a festival setting is to play 'shuffles' (think The Dead's "Trucking")...(Critical aside: BigHead Todd has a large, avid, enthusiastic following. His music sounds not that much different from Dave Matthews or Hootie: the Doobies on steroids.)
