who you gonna call?

From today’s NYT:

In a hastily convened meeting in the conference room of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the two men presented, in the starkest terms imaginable, the outline of the $700 billion plan to Congressional leaders. “If we don’t do this,” Mr. Bernanke said, according to several participants, “we may not have an economy on Monday.”

I don’t know about you, but I find this paragraph outrageous. Ben Bernanke’s hysterical proclamation—or threat, depending on how you read it—is in quotes, and it seems to have multiple sources confirming it, so I have to believe the Chairman of the Federal Reserve actually said this—and that just blows me away!

This is the man we have entrusted with setting US monetary policy, with keeping a hand on the rudder, with backstopping our entire economy, and the best he can offer at a time of “crisis”—a crisis that any casual observer could have seen coming at least a year ago—is essentially a slightly more serious rendition of the "Dogs and Cats" speech from Ghost Busters.

Honestly, if I’m Pelosi, I consider throwing him out of my offices and telling to come back with his resignation. (I know, Pelosi can’t fire the Fed Chair—but you get my drift, right?) This is a shock doctrine holdup, plain and simple, and if you didn’t suspect it before, this scene makes it imminently obvious now.

That any competent person in Bernanke’s position wouldn’t have started conversations before it got to this point, and that he wouldn’t have come in with multiple options, well in advance of a drop-dead date, is completely unconscionable. That the Speaker, the Senate Majority Leader, the chairs of both houses’ Banking Committees, and, most of all, the President of the United States hasn’t come out and said as much is unacceptable.

And, worst of all, of course, is that the President, the Senate, and, soon, I expect, the House are all set to reward this pathetic performance.

I think all of America has been slimed.


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

well of course they are. . .

Weapons for Iraqis Are Missing, Study Says
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 — The Defense Department cannot account for 190,000 weapons, including more than 110,000 AK-47 rifles, issued to Iraqi security forces, a new report by government investigators says.

The study, issued last Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, also said that because of missing and incomplete records, the United States military cannot confirm that Iraqi security forces received 135,000 pieces of body armor and 115,000 helmets.

The report is not the first to criticize Defense Department procedures for tracking equipment distributed to Iraqi forces by the department. A report last October by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found major discrepancies in American military records involving hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces.

Since 2003, the United States has spent about $19.2 billion to equip and train Iraqi forces, the G.A.O. report said, and recently the Defense Department requested another $2 billion.

Now, that’s the whole story as published in today’s New York Times. I was just alerted to the story by a BBC radio report. But, I notice that the GAO report was released last Tuesday—almost a week ago—so, I gotta ask, why are we just hearing about this?

I also gotta ask: Hey, Congress, you gonna do anything about this? Henry? Nancy? Harry?

And, I’ve also gotta ask: When will we ever learn?

adding a little color this summer?

Yesterday’s LA Times featured a story about how Democrats (and the activists that love them) are planning on making this summer the Summer of Iraq (cue music).

WASHINGTON — Democratic congressional leaders, whose efforts to force a withdrawal from Iraq were stymied last month, plan a summer of repeated Iraq-related votes designed to force Republican lawmakers to abandon the White House before the fall.

. . . .

"The debate on Iraq will continue," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said last week. Pelosi, who in March helped push Democrats to embrace a withdrawal of American combat forces, has pledged that the House will vote on numerous measures aimed at ending the war.

My first thought was, “Wouldn’t it have just been better to continue full-bore with the spring offensive to shut down this war?” My second thought was, “Gosh, for Iraqis, and the troops over there, and for all of us here that have been paying attention, every day of every season has been ‘of Iraq’ for the past four years.” But then I settled on another thought. . . .

If the Democrats goal is to split Republicans away from the Bush Administration on the Iraq issue, well, I admire the effort, but, as recent votes show us, it’s a heavy lift. However, the issue where congressional Republicans seem to have no problem standing up to and against the White House is immigration. I mean, honestly, nothing dries up a rubberstamper’s inkpad like the threat of adding a little color to the American envelope.

So, what if Democrats made one of their front-and-center “all Iraq, all the time” bills a piece of legislation designed to, on an emergency basis, quickly allow for, and even facilitate, a massive up tick in the numbers of Iraqi refuges allowed into the United States? What if the Democrats say the mayhem necessitates that a humane nation take care of the people whose lives we’ve disrupted? What if they propose a resettlement to the US of, say, 20,000, or 50,000, or even 100,000 Iraqis?

Granted, even 100,000 is a drop in the bucket compared to the million Iraqis that will be displaced this year because of this conflict, but even 20,000 is a massive improvement over the 68—yes, sixty-eight—that have been relocated to the US this year. It is possible that 4 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes since the start of Bush’s war, surely Bush’s country can make room for a small fraction of those poor people.

That would be the argument, anyway (one I actually believe).

Now, I understand that both President Bush and his rubberstamp Republicans are both opposed to the idea of increased Iraqi resettlement for their own selfish reasons, so you won’t necessarily get a divided vote out of the GOP caucus—but imagine the floor speeches! Who wouldn’t like to hear a variety of Republicans try to gracefully meld immigration reform with Iraq war policy? Whose heart doesn’t quicken at the prospect of seeing the odd elephant chase its own tail in an attempt to find just the right way to stand on being helpful to our Iraqi brethren while safeguarding our white race, oh, I mean, our nation’s borders?

And how about the pickle in which this would put Senator and presidential wannabe John (asshole) McCain? He’s pro immigration reform and pro-escalation. . . and now, pro-fifty-years-war.

I know that the Democratic leadership has a lot to do to get back on offense this summer, but I can think of few better ways than to take two issues that have the backing of two-thirds (or more) of Americans (ending the Iraqi occupation and liberalizing our immigration policy), and hold them up to show whose on the side of the voters. . . and who is on the other—the Republican—side.