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Our Mad Mad World: On Buddy's Bemusings |
Category: Opinions 5 comments
27 Jun 2007 @ 00:57 by quinty : What struck me as interesting 27 Jun 2007 @ 09:34 by jazzolog : Ka-Ching Our wheel of fortune version of the I Ching I guess. Let's remember that in the reality of the Free Marketeers, things around the "war" are improving. Profits are up and the cash is flowing in. We don't always know where the money goes, but who cares? We know it goes to somebody in the marketplace out there, and they are by definition good guys. It'll all get spread around eventually...and the shit will feed the fields. Grass will grow in the desert, and the waters of Babylon will refresh the sand. Global warming? Bring it on. Isaiah's prophecies are fulfilled. The Messiah is at hand. What, me worry? 
Specialist Loren Brinson, 21, of the HHC 1-5, First Cavalry Division, sits guard at a small JSS setup in a Sunni district in western Baghdad. The dummy (left), once used to draw sniper fire, was discarded after insurgents realized the ruse. (Photo by Ashley Gilbertson) 28 Jun 2007 @ 09:27 by jazzolog : More On Profits Here's Robert Scheer Tuesday~~~ The Banality of Greed By Robert Scheer As the Iraq war that Vice President Dick Cheney created continues to shred American—and many more Iraqi—lives, further documentation has emerged proving that, even during failed wars, the merchants of death profit. No company has profited more from the carnage in Iraq than Halliburton, which Cheney headed before choosing himself as Bush’s running mate. One shudders at the blissful arrogance of this modern Daddy Warbucks, who sees no conflict of interest over the blood-soaked profits garnered by the once-bankrupt division of the company that left him rich. This week’s evidence of the continuing corruption of Halliburton and its subsidiaries profiteering from contracts costing American taxpayers an unbelievable $22 billion stems from a report by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. The report, only one of many about Halliburton’s recently severed subsidiary KBR, focuses on work done in Baghdad’s super-secure Green Zone. While parent company Halliburton insults U.S. taxpayers by relocating its headquarters to the tax shelter of Dubai, subsidiary KBR has been spun off to focus more directly on the American military contracts that form the core of its operations. Those operations have already produced a litany of condemnation by congressional and administration oversight bodies, and the June 25 report hardly details the company’s most egregious activities. However, the Green Zone, the site of this latest instance of taxpayer fleecing, is instructive because, safely removed from the risks of battle, it deprives these war profiteers of their favorite excuse: that construction in a battle zone is inherently more costly. While KBR’s Green Zone shenanigans covered by this report may seem small in comparison with the enormous waste attendant to the U.S. reconstruction program in Iraq, they are illustrative of the feeding frenzy that has fueled the American effort. The corrupt reconstruction project has left a wasteland of failed energy, water, educational and political reform plans. As report after report details, garbage is not collected, hospitals are not staffed, schools close soon after they are opened and factories sit idle in shocking refutation of the vaunted efficiency of the United States’ political economic model. KBR’s role in this fiasco is easily exposed by a basic Google search, beginning with a stop at the website of Henry Waxman, the California congressman who heads up the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Waxman deserves a Medal of Freedom for trying to figure out what happened to those $22 billion that KBR received but are now lost to U.S. taxpayers, as well as to the once hopeful but now bitterly disillusioned Iraqi people. Indeed, six months ago, the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., termed the high level of official corruption in Iraq the “second insurgency,” stating that the siphoning-off of U.S. dollars is a major source of funds for the anti-American fighters in the country. It was estimated that last year upward of $100 million in stolen oil funds went directly to the insurgents. In the context of that horrid record of waste and corruption amid the destruction of Iraqi society in which “democratic nation building” transmogrified into fascist mayhem, KBR’s antics in the Green Zone seem petty. But the fact that KBR played loose with our tax dollars even in the safety of the Green Zone is evidence of the company’s contempt for the sacrifice of U.S. taxpayers. For example, concerning KBR’s mismanagement of the fuel distribution program, the inspector general wrote: “We found weaknesses in KBR’s fuel receiving, distributing and accountability processes of such magnitude that we were unable to determine an accurate measure of the fuel services provided.” Yet, it was paid for by American taxpayers. Or, take the extra $4.5 million spent on the company’s food service and the cost of billeting 90 percent of KBR personnel in single quarters, as opposed to the doubling-up practiced by regular Army folks. That was chicken feed compared with other examples of taxpayer rip-offs, as revealed in one case by the Army reducing payments to KBR by $19.5 million following Waxman’s first “fraud, waste, and abuse hearings.” It is hoped that there will be other efforts at forcing accountability for the billions of dollars that have been spent to advertise the efficiency of the United States’ free-enterprise model to a skeptical Mideast public. It is claimed by American officials that KBR’s accountability issues are being addressed. In one instance cited, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad—a spiraling enterprise well on its way to becoming a nation-within-a-nation akin to the Vatican in Italy—announced that, as a means of avoiding food theft, its personnel would no longer be allowed to bring large bags into the eating halls. Such sacrifice for the mission of securing Iraqi freedom. [link] 
Ten minutes before he was killed, Sergeant Freeman L. Gardner Jr. was assigned to watch this street as bulldozers cleared debris feared to conceal IEDs. (Photo by Ashley Gilbertson) 28 Jun 2007 @ 17:35 by quinty : Keynesian economics at work? Though this time lubricated by corruption in the White House? Bush has upped the annual "Defense" budget by more than two hundred billion since he took office. And that's not counting the price for the war and other peripherals. Private is better than public: what a neat supposition to bandy when considering distributing the public treasure out to your corporate friends. There two kinds of Socialism, of course. The corporate category is fine and well since it doesn’t matter if big business exploits the public trust. And the taxpayers’ money is well spent. Spending it, though, on the humble taxpayer for his needs becomes that other kind of Socialism, the bad kind. And a drain on the worthy’s purse. What would Warren G. Harding have done if he had had an expensive, unending war along with Teapot Dome to exploit? Though the go go twenties were well underway when he took over the presidency. And the so-called “progressive era” had been put aside for a form of progress Wall Street truly could understand. Oh, yes, the Democrats have their scandals. Blow jobs, lying about their own needless wars, cronyism, a variety of cover ups: even a little of old fashioned graft. Eisenhower was reasonably honest. But since Harding we have had Nixon, Reagan, and now Bush. And there are those who feel nostalgic for Nixon and Reagan. After Bush, who wouldn’t? So what is it with these Republicans, who put “family” and corporate values first? And often call themselves “Christians?” Though they seem to do a great deal of projection and are comfortable with twisting the truth. Even as others die. (When the significance of that photograph is absorbed it becomes very moving. And multiply it by thousands..... ) 1 Jul 2007 @ 17:41 by culture and health Rep 4peaceoutreach @67.68.147.56 : war its called a waste of tax payers expense money that the government took from the American people and many more soldiers has fallen into the sands of Iraq to be barred with lies from dear ole uncle sam and the number of 4000 dead sum odd soldiers are now laying dead in Americas ground because they were brain washed and lead it was there freedom to fight against the insurgents that had caused the attack of 9/11 that they the insergents there self will not come and fight on Americas soil. 4why the reason is we are in Iraq "Now look what happen in Scotland and England has caused a flow of violence there that thinking fighting there enemy's there they were not able to make harms way from the shores from Iraq and Bali I feel now there are a lot of counter intelligent s are being used with technologies to counter act with Islamic fractions. that are in other countries and that who are living in Europe. every body are not all bad its those who are just "Mad" if we could only change the course history and make it better for the children of our society they would not grow up to hate other ppeople or make war with other when they grow up Other entries in Opinions 24 Mar 2008 @ 20:50: Is it time? 4 Mar 2008 @ 21:24: Writers Take Sides 4 Feb 2008 @ 19:45: Citizen McCain 31 Jan 2008 @ 19:53: The King of Mountebanks? 14 Jan 2008 @ 19:59: "Yes We Can" 21 Nov 2007 @ 23:59: An Easy Solution Missed 6 Oct 2007 @ 20:17: Bringing Back the Fairness Doctrine 12 Jul 2007 @ 23:14: Fighting them there instead of here 6 Jul 2007 @ 23:16: Year One of the Roberts Court 21 Jun 2007 @ 23:37: Pete
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26 Jun 2007 @ 23:56, by Paul Quintanilla