Olbermann reports on the White House actually writing General Petraeaus’s much awaited September report.

For months September has been cast as a pivotal time for determining the course of the war in Iraq, yet a top general now says a solid judgment on the U.S. troop “surge” there may not come until November.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno says he will need until at least November to assess the troop buildup in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno told reporters after a Senate hearing Thursday that he would need beyond September to tell if improvements in Iraq represent long-term trends.

“In order to do a good assessment I need at least until November,” said Odierno, a deputy to Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq.

Petraeus and other officials testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and briefed reporters on Thursday. Making strides toward security and political goals could take more time than first thought, they warned.

A stark assessment came via video link from the Iraqi capital when Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador, told the committee that Iraq is gripped by fear and struggling to meet security and political goals by September.

More at CNN

But of course he will. I doubt Murdoch would have went through all the trouble without some knowledge his desire to eventually control all information was in the bag.

A right-leaning Supreme Court and a FOX News stranglehold on information… can you say “GAME OVER”?

Dow Jones board signs off on sale to Murdoch

$5 billion deal still needs to overcome Bancroft family opposition

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire News Corp. has reportedly reached a tentative agreement to buy Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

NEW YORK - The fate of Dow Jones & Co. now rests with the Bancroft family, the company’s longtime controlling shareholders, who must decide whether to sell the publisher of The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., a global media conglomerate that owns Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox News Channel.

The board of Dow Jones said late Tuesday it was ready to sign off on Murdoch’s proposal to buy the company for $5 billion. However, the key remains with the Bancroft family, whose three dozen members have been deeply divided over whether to sell to Murdoch. The are expected to meet Monday to discuss the deal.
[...]

If the Bancrofts do sink the deal, it would surely result in a sharp drop in Dow Jones shares and the likelihood of shareholder lawsuits.
[...]

Family members have been concerned about the potential of the Journal’s coverage to be affected by corporate interests, and they initially rebuffed Murdoch’s offer, only to reconsider later. They insisted on, and received, a commitment to create an oversight board which must approve the hiring or firing of top editors at the Journal.

MSNBC.com

The average schmoe (like me) has figured out that they’re never going to “stand up”, so when will congress figure it out?

By By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — After spending $19 billion to train and equip 346,500 Iraqi security forces, the Pentagon doesn’t know how many of them are on the job or whether their weapons have been stolen or turned against American forces, according to a bipartisan congressional report that was released Wednesday.

It found that Iraqi security forces aren’t ready to take full responsibility for their country’s security and the central government of Iraq isn’t capable of funding and guiding them. It demands that the Pentagon do a better job of accounting for the Iraqis it’s trained and equipped.

“What we have found has been a lot of disappointment,” said Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass. The Iraqi forces are “nowhere near ready to operate independently.”

The report’s findings are likely to contribute to the debate on Iraq policy because they go to the heart of the issue of how the United States eventually can leave behind a country that’s capable of providing its own stability.

President Bush said in March 2006 that as Iraqi forces stand up, “we-ll stand down.” But as the number of Iraqis trained and equipped has increased, the violence hasn’t diminished and U.S. forces haven-t been redeployed.

More at McClatchy

Does ANYONE who testifies to congress tell the truth??? Let’s face it, these people don’t give a crap about poor people receiving legal aid. What they care about is padding their own pockets and living the high life. And what will be done about it? Nada……Nichts…….Niente…….Rien……..Niets. Just like nothing is done about Bush and Cheney’s abuse of power. This whole administration is riddled with abuse, fraud, incompetence, waste and a disregard for the voice of the people. It is truly a self serving government. By the politicians and their cronies, for the politicians and their cronies.

From YahooNews:

WASHINGTON - The president of the government’s legal aid program misled Congress when she denied that her first-class airfare to a conference in Ireland saddled the program with excessive costs, an internal report has concluded.

Legal Services Corp. is a congressionally financed program that funds local legal service organizations that provide free lawyers for the poor. West provided his report to Congress, and The Associated Press obtained it from lawmakers.

AP reported last year that top officials at the program, including Barnett, used limousine services, enjoyed $14 “Death By Chocolate” desserts and conducted board meetings in an upscale Washington hotel instead of the corporation’s headquarters board room. At the same time, poor people were being turned away for lack of resources.

Amid congressional criticism, the corporation changed its policies to curtail top officials’ spending. Among the excesses cited in the AP stories were Barnett’s cab rides during the same Ireland trip in June 2005.

The inspector general’s report determined that Barnett’s husband, Victor Barnett, intervened and directed Barnett’s executive assistant, Karen Dozier, to upgrade Barnett’s ticket to first class for her flight to Ireland. Victor Barnett does not work for Legal Services Corp.

The report included the transcript of Victor Barnett’s voice message to Dozier asking her to arrange the upgrade “so she can be comfortable and get some sleep that night.”

Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), R-Iowa, said, “It’s hard to see how it serves those who are down on their luck, and in need of legal aid, for the president of the Legal Services Corp. to take a charmed trip to Ireland, traveling first-class at taxpayer expense.

Allegations of vote fraud against republican professional hatemonger Ann Coulter have apparently been cleared… but with a twist:

From the blog Greatscat!:

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter has been cleared of allegations that she falsified her Palm Beach County voter’s registration and voted illegally - this, after a high-level FBI agent made unsolicited phone calls to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office to vouch for Coulter.

The caller wasn’t just any G-man. According to PBSO documents, he was Supervisory Special Agent Jim Fitzgerald, of the FBI Academy’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Va. - the closest reality gets to the serial-killer catchers on CBS’ Criminal Minds.

So why would an FBI profiler who went after the Unabomber take time from his busy day to even think about a municipal election snafu?

Fitzgerald is mum. But when the bureau heard about this from Page Two, it immediately launched an internal review of the agent’s involvement.

“We’re looking into it,” bureau spokeswoman Ann Todd said.

She declined to say whether Fitzgerald acted on his personal behalf or as an FBI agent or on someone else’s orders.

Special request: Any pro-Bush, pro-Limbaugh, pro-Coulter, (…etc) republican that may happen onto this site and read this story, would you please leave a comment, telling our other readers that this really is the America you want?

I’ve been waiting to hear more about these guys. Yesterday the Republicans were praising Gonzales for catching these guys. How about we praise the guy at Kinkos…..or better yet, hire him as Attorney General!

The US Justice Department has charged six immigrants in New Jersey with participating in an alleged terrorist plot to attack a heavily fortified US Army base in the state, according to federal court papers filed Tuesday. FBI officials say the accused-four ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, one Jordanian and a young man from Turkey who had all lived in the US for years-were planning to kill scores, if not hundreds, of US soldiers at Fort Dix.

The media and various political figures immediately parroted the government charges about a Muslim terrorist plot, adding that the fact the suspects had no known connections to a Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda, made them even more dangerous because they were a “new breed” of homegrown and loosely organized terrorists who were harder to detect. “This is a stark reminder that we cannot let down our guard,” said US Rep. James Saxton, a New Jersey Republican and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. “Today is proof positive that terrorists can be among us, even in suburban locations like Cherry Hill, N.J., and that Americans must stay vigilant.”

The six-Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22; Dritan “Anthony” or “Tony” Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; Eljvir “Elvis” Duka, 23; Serdar Tatar, 23; and Agron Abdullahu, 24-were ordered held without bail for a hearing Friday in a Camden, New Jersey federal court. Five were charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. military personnel; the sixth, Abdullahu, was charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigrants in obtaining weapons.

Defense attorneys for the accused have yet to present their side of the story. The only information about the alleged plot that has been provided has come from the prosecution and the FBI. From the indictment, however, it is evident that the case follows a pattern of similar highly publicized terrorist “conspiracies” pursued by the Bush administration, in which the chief instigator of the alleged plot was a paid government informant and agent provocateur who encouraged the operation, made arrangements to secure weapons and pressed ahead in the face of the caution and reluctance of the so-called jihadists.

As in a key previous case-the 1995 conviction of blind Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman-the US government used a former member of the Egyptian military to infiltrate the New Jersey group and tape record conversations with the alleged plotters and apparently play the central role in the supposed plot. While the indictment includes what are alleged to be the taped remarks of several of the six men-in which they declare their determination to kill US soldiers-it does not include what the informant might have said to provoke these responses.

A hint of the relationship, however, is included in what is presented as the transcript of recorded remarks, in which one of the defendants, Mohamad Schnewer, is quoted as telling the informant, “I am at your services as you have more experience than me in military bases and in life.”

Coninue reading at Global Research

BAGHDAD - U.S. and Iraqi officials chased reports Tuesday that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq was killed by rivals north of Baghdad. But U.S. authorities urged caution and warned that even if the claim were true, the death of the shadowy Abu Ayyub al-Masri would likely not spell the end of the terror movement in Iraq.

Reports of al-Masri’s death first emerged from the Interior Ministry, which said the al-Qaida leader was gunned down by rivals in his movement Tuesday at a bridge near Lake Tharthar just north of Baghdad, where the U.S. military believes al-Qaida operates training camps.

Later, however, ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said al-Masri’s death had not been confirmed. Another senior official, Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, told The Associated Press that “we are trying to investigate and confirm the report.”

More at YahooNews

Oh the poor baby. They’re picking on him. Making stuff up! It’s always someone else’s fault with these guys. I’ve read this so many times with them I don’t know whether to puke or laugh.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz lashed back at critics on Monday who he said were conducting a smear campaign against him and vowed he would not resign.

In a statement to a bank panel looking into whether he broke ethical and other rules in a pay-and-promotion deal he directed for his girlfriend, Wolfowitz said treatment of the issue had become “circus like.”

“The goal of this smear campaign, I believe, is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone, even if the ethics charges are unwarranted,” Wolfowitz said.

“And, I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest,” he said in the statement.

The former deputy U.S. defense secretary, whose legacy as an architect of the Iraq war has dogged his tenure at the bank, did not rule out the possibility he may eventually step down, but made clear he would not be forced.

More at Reuters

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren’t counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn’t include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. “If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory,” he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.

Others, however, say that not counting bombing victims skews the evidence of how well the Baghdad security plan is protecting the civilian population - one of the surge’s main goals.

More at McClatchy

Gee, whodda thunk! Just like they downplay any anti-war, anti-Bush demonstrations here in the U.S., now they’re downplaying Iraq demonstrations against the U.S. Just like they downplay the violence in Iraq. Just like they downplay the deaths in Iraq. This is one downplayin administration!

YUMA, United States (AFP) - The White House on Monday downplayed anti-US rallies in Iraq called by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and said such demonstrations were a hopeful sign of freedom.

“While we have much more progress ahead of us — the United States, the coalition and Iraqis have much more to do — this is a country that has come a long way from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein,” said spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Thousands of Shiites carrying Iraqi flags converged Monday in the holy city of Najaf as the war-torn country marked the fourth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

More at Yahoo News

Another day… same bucket of GOP crap.

Records: NYPD held GOP protesters longer

NEW YORK - Hundreds of protesters arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention were held for up to six times longer than those arrested on charges unrelated to the convention, according to city documents made public Thursday.

More than 1,800 people were arrested at the four-day convention at Madison Square Garden, where President Bush accepted his party’s nomination for a second term in office.

The legitimacy of the arrests was challenged on civil rights grounds in lawsuits brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of some of those detained.

A judge last month rejected the city’s effort to keep secret most of the files and videotapes documenting the arrests, leading to their release.

Christopher Dunn, associate legal director at the NYCLU, said the documents “reveal that the long detentions of the thousands of protesters arrested for minor offenses at the convention were the result of deliberate policy decisions by the NYPD.”
[...] NYPD Protesters held longer

Records show that arrested protesters on Aug. 31, 2004, were held an average of 32 hours before appearing in court, while those arrested on other offenses were held less than five hours.

“By refusing to release demonstrators with summonses and instead holding them to be illegally fingerprinted, the department all but guaranteed that protesters would be held for extended periods of time,” Dunn said.

Source: Yahoo! News

Bipartisan, my ass!

YOU, of that thirty’something-percent crowd. YOU, of the main’stream media. YOU DISGUST ME! Everything that is wrong with this country can be traced back to this president and, ultimately, to YOU, his enablers. What is the motivation? Is it sheer stupidity? Do you hate Americans so much you’ll be glad to see it all come to an end? Where does the hatred for your fellow Americans come from? Why does the very mention of the Constitution or the Bill Of Rights make you cringe and seethe with anger?

Where your anger originates, I do not know. Your actions are similar to those of the Howler monkey… You both bark and fling poop for no apparent logical reason.

Dems, Bush call on one another to be bipartisan

WASHINGTON (AP) – There’s hardly a topic these days on which President Bush isn’t asking the Democratic-controlled Congress to avoid “a reflexive partisan response.”

That’s certainly the case with Iraq, but it also applies to the domestic priorities of health and energy that he set in his State of the Union address.

“I have asked Congress to take several vital steps to address these issues,” Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. “Some members gave a reflexive partisan response.”
…

The president’s opening strategy toward Capitol Hill’s Democratic majority, as displayed most prominently in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, is to present himself as a leader taking the initiative to work across party lines. The hope is that Democrats will feel pressured to join him — or face public disapproval if they don’t.

But bipartisanship aside, Bush has also been showing a willingness to talk tough.

On a collision course with Congress over Iraq, Bush had strong words Friday for the lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who are lining up to support resolutions opposing his decision to send 21,500 additional troops to Iraq. Asked how he could go ahead with his plan without congressional support, he said bluntly, “I’m the decision-maker.”

Source: CNN.com

Nope. Not any more.

Canada compensates man U.S. deported to Syria

OTTAWA, Canada (AP) – Canada’s prime minister apologized to Maher Arar on Friday and announced the government would compensate him C$10.5 million (US$8.9 million) for its role in his deportation from the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured while held in prison for nearly a year.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper again called on the U.S. government to remove the Ottawa telecoms engineer from any of its no-fly or terrorist watchlists and reiterated that Ottawa would keep pressing Washington to clear Arar’s name.

“We think the evidence is absolutely clear and that the United States should in good faith remove Mr. Arar from the list,” Harper told a news conference in Ottawa. “We don’t intend to either change or drop our position.”

The U.S. government has repeatedly insisted it has reasons to leave the 37-year-old on its watchlists. The issue has grown into an unpleasant diplomatic row between the world’s largest trading partners and closest allies.

The Syrian-born Arar, who moved to Canada with his family when he was 17, is the best-known case of rendition, a practice in which the U.S. government sends foreign terror suspects to third countries for interrogation.

Arar thanked the Canadian government at a news conference Friday.

“The struggle to clear my name has been long and hard; my kids have suffered silently and I feel that I owe them a lot,” said Arar, who also thanked Canadians for standing by him.

“Without the support of the Canadian people, I may never have come home and I would not have been able to stay strong and push for the truth,” he said.

Source: CNN.com

I’m somewhat surprised by Bush’s SOTU last night. I went into it thinking it was just going to be “more of the same”. Well, it WAS just more of the same. But, he was so darn nice to Nancy Pelosi. And he showed a renewed level of confidence. I’m ready to give him another chance. So what if 5, 10, 15+ of our troops die in Iraq on a daily basis? Bush gave a really good speech. Were you not paying attention? He clearly stated that, as long as Democrats caved in to all of his demands and stopped whining… that he’d make an attempt at working with them. That’s more than fair!

If that didn’t convince you to jump on the Bush wagon, then maybe this will: Nancy Pelosi is rich. And she buys expensive clothes too!! She’s so unlike everyone else in that grand chamber last night. You gotta hate her (and love Bush!).

addendum:

Bush could have taken a piss on the American flag last night and these numbers still wouldn’t budge.