The Problem with Mainstream Journalism

An allegedly legitimate newspaper has no problem printing this (and I refused to show the image, it's that offensive). Oops, there go another couple of readers and the readership continues to shrink....

Definition of an Idiot: An Enabler who has Seen the Light of Truth too Late

A bigoted bias: A survivor of the Soviet Union knows nothing about democracy and the West; they have zero perspective and therefore an absolutely worthless opinion.

And here's today's exhibit in support.

Cutting Interest Rates for Big Lenders Helps the Sub-Prime Impoverished

Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. says customers are "running out of money."

Earlier this week, consumer juggernauts Home Depot and Wal-Mart reported softer than expected earnings.

Penned the New York Times, "the sober forecasts reverberated across Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index down by nearly 2 percent, with the Dow dropping more than 200 points. Shares of both Wal-Mart and Home Depot fell around 5 percent.

"Economists said the sluggish performance of the chains — Wal-Mart missed its profit forecast and Home Depot’s earnings dropped — could signal broader troubles in the economy."

Buried in the article was a sobering remark indeed: “Many customers are running out of money at the end of the month,” said H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of Wal-Mart.

Link and more.

Incredible Underreported News Story?? Another Advancement for the World's Greatest Health System

Is it only me or is this unbelievable? Poor person goes to the hospital, gets sicker because of a screw-up by the hospital, requiring further, additional care -- and Medicare refuses to pay for that extra care?

There's not something wrong with that??

The story is here.

Our Beloved Leader, Our Beloved Loser

Our Beloved Leader is sort of reminiscent of the denouncement of my, like, favorite comic book story ever, "Superduperman", from Mad comics: No matter how much power a creep has, he's still a creep.

Our closest ally publishes this:

Rove is leaving because there is nothing more for him to do; Bush is letting him go because he no longer has any use for him. His departure effectively marks the end of the Bush presidency - from hereon in Bush's tenure is about keeping the troops in Iraq and as many of his administration out of handcuffs as possible. Last week Fox News asked the neocon commentator Charles Krauthammer how much time Bush had to promote his agenda. "None," said Krauthammer. "It's over. There is no agenda."

But while the left loves to revel in Bush's woes, it invariably revels in the wrong woes. Bush's problem is not that he has failed on our terms - humanism, equality, peace and democracy - but that he has failed on his own.

True, his low approval ratings reveal a president approaching Nixonian lows. But then, unlike Nixon, Bush has never craved popularity. He pushed through most of his most pernicious legislation after having lost the popular vote in 2000. This is a man who understood 51% of the vote in 2004 as an overwhelming mandate. "I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals," Bush said. "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital. And now I intend to spend it. It is my style."

True, too, that the Iraq war is going badly. But then it has never been going well, and that has never seemed to bother him either. He has described himself as "the decider", but never "the contemplator". This too is his style.

In any case the Bush agenda was always more far-reaching than anything that can be accounted for by mere polls, war, or the loss of human life. The ultimate aim of his presidency was to realign American politics to cement a conservative electoral majority for a generation. The cornerstone of his domestic agenda was to build on the Republicans' traditional base of evangelists, southerners, white men and the wealthy, by winning over Catholics, married white women and a sizable minority of Latinos with a mixture of policies and pronouncements on immigration, homophobia, abortion and social security.

Bush did not create the partisan split in America; he inherited it, just as Al Gore would have if he had won the supreme court case in 2000. But while the split was broad (the difference was less than 5% in 13 states from New Mexico to New Hampshire), it was Bush who made it deep and rancorous.

For unlike Thatcher or Reagan he sought to achieve his ends not by exploiting division in order to forge a new, more rightwing consensus but rather to exploit new divisions in order to crush a growing consensus. The majority of the country was, for example, pro-choice and in favour of granting equal rights to gay couples in almost all areas. So the Bush administration chose to leverage gay marriage and late-term abortion - two issues that could act as a wedge - to rally his base. Crude in execution and majoritarian in impulse, it sought not to win over new converts but simply to mobilise dormant constituencies. His legacy will be rightwing policies - but not a more rightwing political culture.

That his agenda should have failed so completely should come as no surprise. The project was always, at root, a faith-based initiative. Following the Republican congressional victory in 2002 Rove was asked to comment on the fact that the nation seemed evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. "Something else is going on out there," he said. "Something else more fundamental ... But we will only know it retrospectively. In two years, or four years or six years, [we may] look back and say the dam began to break in 2002."

With no discernible material basis on which to build, this new majority at home and new world order abroad had to be fashioned from whole cloth. A Bush aide once ridiculed a New York Times reporter for belonging to "the reality-based community", which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality". "That's not the way the world really works any more," he said. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

So here we are studying. The coalition crumbled. In 2006 Catholics backed the Democrats; white women broke even. According to a Wall Street Journal poll, Americans would prefer the next president to be a Democrat by 52% to 31%. Meanwhile, the presumptive standard bearer for this new majority is treated like a pariah. As the Republican hopeful Mitt Romney pressed flesh in a restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, a few weeks ago, Muriel Allard said: "We need someone like him. They don't care about us over there." At a town hall meeting a couple of hours away in Keene, another Republican contender, John McCain, was asked last month if it wasn't time to put a "warrior in chief" in the White House rather than these "draft dodgers". Bush's name never came up. "Friends who were obnoxious in their praise for him just don't mention him any more," says Rick Holmes from Derry. "He's like the embarrassing uncle you just don't want to talk about."

A sense of doom among Republicans is palpable. A growing number of Republican congressmen - most recently the former house speaker Dennis Hastert - have announced they are to retire, or are considering it. "Democrats will win the White House [and] hold their majority in the house and in the Senate in 2008," the retiring congressman Ray Lahood told the New York Times.

There is even talk that Republicans might not invite Bush to their convention. "If they're smart, no," the Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio told Newsweek. "Especially if things don't change in Iraq, we'll have the problem the Democrats had in 1968 with Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam. The question becomes: where do we hide the president?"

Bush could run, but he can't now hide. Rove showed Bush how to win elections, but he couldn't show him how to govern. For the next year and a half he may need more than a feather pillow to get him to sleep.

Quote of the Day

It ain't all bad news. That just lies from the liberal media.

Another area in which Our Leaders are in fact succeeding with their Iraq fandango:

Maj. J. DeLaRosa, a media affairs officer for the Marines at the Pentagon, couldn't believe Reed received only the certificate.

"That's unacceptable. 'Out of stock'? That's like saying, 'We're out of ammo.' That's like saying 'The Marines are going to close tomorrow.' It just seems a bit weird," DeLaRosa said. "There have been a lot of guys wounded, but not to the point that we're out of medals."

Link.

Proof that the Surge is Working

All we have to do is keep surging indefinitely until the Iraqis decide to do their own work themselves instead of letting us serve them and die for them because of our gratuitous destabilization of their nation.

But Our Leaders' surge is clearly working -- and succeeding.

Two senators whose foreign policy bona fides carry significant weight with their colleagues are back from a fact-finding trip to Iraq, and the facts they've found won't come as a surprise: The "surge" is creating some "breathing room" for Iraqi politicians, but the politicians aren't doing much with the air they've been given.

Link.

Saving the Rich from Their Own Bad Investments by Making the Less Weel Off Pay and Pay and Pay....

Well, such has it always been and Our Leaders are the last people to break that chain....

Two years ago, William Stout lost his home in Allentown, Pa., to foreclosure when he could no longer make the payments on his $106,000 mortgage. Wells Fargo offered the two-bedroom house for sale on the courthouse steps. No bidders came forward. So Wells Fargo bought it for $1, county records show.

Despite the setback, Mr. Stout was relieved that his debt was wiped clean and he could make a new start. He married and moved in with his wife, Denise.

But on July 9, they received a bill from the Internal Revenue Service for $34,603 in back taxes. The letter explained that the debt canceled by Wells Fargo upon foreclosure was subject to income taxes, as well as penalties and late fees. The couple had a month to challenge the charges.

For those who struggle to pay their bills, who watch their housing payments rise out of reach with their adjustable-rate mortgages, who lose a job or who fall victim to illness, losing one’s home can feel like hitting bottom. But one more financial indignity may await as the fallout from the great housing boom ripples across the United States.

Link and more.

And Krugman:

On Friday, the Federal Reserve tried to quell this panic by announcing a surprise cut in the discount rate, the rate at which it lends money to banks. It remains to be seen whether the move will do the trick.

The problem, as many observers have noticed, is that the Fed’s move is largely symbolic. It makes more funds available to depository institutions, a k a old-fashioned banks — but old-fashioned banks aren’t where the crisis is centered. And the Fed doesn’t have any clear way to deal with bank runs on institutions that aren’t called banks.

Now, sometimes symbolic gestures are enough. The Fed’s surprise quarter-point interest rate cut in October 1998, at the height of the crisis caused by the implosion of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, was similarly a case of providing money where it wasn’t needed. Yet it helped restore calm to the markets, by conveying the sense that policy makers were on top of the situation.

Friday’s cut might do the same thing. But if it doesn’t, it’s not clear what comes next.

Whatever happens now, it’s hard to avoid the sense that the growing complexity of our financial system is making it increasingly prone to crises — crises that are beyond the ability of traditional policies to handle. Maybe we’ll make it through this crisis unscathed. But what about the next one, or the one after that?

And more Krugman:

Most of the proposals I've seen for dealing with the problems of subprime borrowers are of the locking-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone variety: they would curb abusive lending practices - which would have been very useful three years ago - but they wouldn't help much now. What we need at this point is a policy to deal with the consequences of the housing bust.

Consider a borrower who can't meet his or her mortgage payments and is facing foreclosure. In the past, as Gretchen Morgenson recently pointed out in The Times, the bank that made the loan would often have been willing to offer a workout, modifying the loan's terms to make it affordable, because what the borrower was able to pay would be worth more to the bank than its incurring the costs of foreclosure and trying to resell the home. That would have been especially likely in the face of a depressed housing market.

Today, however, the mortgage broker who made the loan is usually, as Ms. Morgenson says, "the first link in a financial merry-go-round." The mortgage was bundled with others and sold to investment banks, who in turn sliced and diced the claims to produce artificial assets that Moody's or Standard & Poor's were willing to classify as AAA. And the result is that there's nobody to deal with.

This looks to me like a clear case for government intervention: there's a serious market failure, and fixing that failure could greatly help thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Americans. The federal government shouldn't be providing bailouts, but it should be helping to arrange workouts.

And we've done this sort of thing before - for third-world countries, not for U.S. citizens. The Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s was brought to an end by so-called Brady deals, in which creditors were corralled into reducing the countries' debt burdens to manageable levels. Both the debtors, who escaped the shadow of default, and the creditors, who got most of their money, benefited.

The mechanics of a domestic version would need a lot of work, from lawyers as well as financial experts. My guess is that it would involve federal agencies buying mortgages - not the securities conjured up from these mortgages, but the original loans - at a steep discount, then renegotiating the terms. But I'm happy to listen to better ideas.

The point, however, is that doing nothing isn't the only alternative to letting the parties who got us into this mess off the hook. Say no to bailouts - but let's help borrowers work things out.

I Swear, the Last Word about Rove, I Hope

An analysis of what Karl did other than being Bush's brain is here: lies and slime. But what else can you do even in a weakened democracy when one is pimping the permanent minority party? Like the party who thinks sub-prime borrowers should be thrown out on the streeets so the lenders don't have to suffer from the risks of capitalism?

Once More, Another Final Post about Rove

Actually, much of this is another dirty post and mostly about Rove's adoptive father who was... well, really into piercings.... More about Rove the father is here (well, it's Wikipedia, so who knows...).

And here's a little:

His father, who had just died, was gay. Louis Rove had been a prolific smoker and died of lung diseases but he had loved his son and was very proud of his achievements. Although he was not Karl's biological father, Louis was the only father he had ever known because Karl's mother Reba had divorced very early in her son's life. In an interview with Wayne Slater and myself after he had guided the first Bush victory, Rove emphasized that he did not consider Louis his stepfather. "I don't call him Louis," he explained. "He's my father, my adopted father."

Nonetheless, Rove was decidedly circumspect when we asked him questions about his family. Louis and Reba Rove's marriage fell apart in 1969 during Karl's senior year of high school in Utah. Rove told us it was somewhat of a mystery but his father came home Christmas Eve and then returned to Los Angeles where he had taken a job as a geologist with Getty Oil. The family was supposed to move to LA with Louis at the end of the year. "But for whatever reason, that didn't happen," Rove told us. "My mother, who was very good at explaining things without explaining them, said it was not going to happen."

Karl seems to have inherited this particular talent from his mother. What he told us was fundamentally true; what he didn't tell us was the most important part of the story. Louis Rove had informed his wife that he was gay and that he was coming out of the closet and wanted a divorce. After he retired from his job in LA, Louis Rove moved to Palm Springs and befriended other retired gay men. He drank and socialized at the Rainbow Cactus and the Martini Burger and became part of a group of gay men who referred to themselves as "The Old Farts Club." According to his close friend of many years, retired insurance executive Joseph Koons, Louis Rove was one of the best people he knew and that both Louis and his son Karl were comfortable with the father's sexual orientation. Although Karl lovingly accepted his father as a gay man and treated Louis' gay associates with respect, Louis Rove's death was a private matter. His friends knew nothing of a memorial service and no death notice was published in the Palm Springs newspaper.

More here. And here.

At this point, I suppose I should point out that the stepfather was gay isn't the point. K.R.'s attitude towards it e.g. a complete willingness to engage in gaybashing. Also, as a parent, that the dad engaged in what could be characterized as extreme sex is an issue of concern. I mean, query whether this was crucial in making Karl a little demented himself (I mean, in his reckless disrgard for truth and sanity -- "extreme sex" would be far less perverse than what Karl and his cohort's done to American.)

Frank Rich ends his Farewell to Rove column with this -- what Rove wrought:

* * Ryan Sager, writing in The New York Sun, who put it best: "The face of the Republican Party in Iowa is the face of a losing party, full of hatred toward immigrants, lust for government subsidies, and the demand that any Republican seeking the office of the presidency acknowledge that he's little more than Jesus Christ's running mate."

That face, at once contemptuous and greedy and self-righteous, is Karl Rove's face. Unless someone in his party rolls out a revolutionary new product, it is indelible enough to serve as the Republican brand for a generation.

What Rove and Company has Wrought, Lowering Political Discourse to the Level of Dementia

The Fox Business Journal reports:

As a presidential candidate, Democrat John Edwards has regularly attacked subprime lenders, particularly those that have filed foreclosure suits against victims of Hurricane Katrina. But as an investor, Mr. Edwards has ties to lenders foreclosing on Katrina victims.

The Wall Street Journal has identified 34 New Orleans homes whose owners have faced foreclosure suits from subprime-lending units of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Mr. Edwards has about $16 million invested in Fortress funds, according to a campaign aide who confirmed a more general Federal Election Commission report. Mr. Edwards worked for Fortress, a publicly held private-equity fund, from late 2005 through 2006.

Asked about the matter, Mr. Edwards yesterday pledged that he would personally provide financial assistance to New Orleanians who are facing foreclosure by Fortress-affiliated businesses or have lost their homes already. "I intend to help these people," the former North Carolina senator said.

This is were the Republican perversity begins: Edwards' passive investment or rather the investment of a hedge fund in which he's invested is bad. (He is allegedly having the fund in question get him out of the investment in question.) (The perversity was first mainstreamed by Lee Atwater, whose protege Rove was. Rove then amped it up greatly, relying overly on false smears of opposing candidates. Which gets to the real reason that there can never be a true Republican majority: Republican positions are just too alienating. The best the demented radicals can do is eke out enough votes to stay in power. Of course, having the current Supreme Court and Diebold on their side helps where they can't otherwise eke out an electoral win with Rovian tactics. And of course, Big Media helps to a point, maybe; although it "help" has actually resulted in audience loss so who knows if they are really of any help.)

And as the Journal admits up front, this investment is putting fewer than three dozen people at potential risk.

Yet the Journal and the rest of the radical nutjob coterie has no propblem with Dick Cheney directly benefitting from his Haliburton investment.

Nor do the wingnuts have any problem with Our Leaders' "solution" for the sub-prime crisis: Lower an interest rate instead of, oh, ensuring that the sub-prime borrowers can do work-outs and rescheduling of their debts:

No matter that through its open-market operations, the Fed had flooded the money markets so that fed funds traded consistently under the official 5¼% target rate, prompting some observers to conclude that a stealth easing move already had taken place. If so, the easing brought no comfort to those who needed it most, and merely stuffed the pockets of those too timorous to part with any cash.

***

* * Lending to the strapped borrowers through the discount window won't bail out hedge funds and other speculators, as would the much-desired cut in the fed-funds target.

Meanwhile, by reviving the discount-window facility, which had fallen into disuse in recent years, credit would be directed to borrowers who can't get it elsewhere. And those loans would come at a price -- 50 basis points above the funds rate target, against collateral that gets a commensurate haircut.

Link.

Hopefully the Last about Rove

Amid all the sturm and drang -- okay, a lot of it was the usual Big Media fog of bullshit -- about Bush's brain's retirement, I thought that Rove's biggest sin, what he should be most reviled for, was all the stuff he did below the presidential level, the further debasement of politicking right wingnut style. Not to mention the not-unimportant query: How gone is he anyway?

Finally, I'm seconded, more or less. Josh Marshall:

Is it me or is the most remarkable thing about Karl Rove's resignation that it seems almost like a non-event? I had the feeling as the day wore on that all of us in the news and commentary business were trying to make it a big event. But somehow it just wasn't there.

Rove has been one of the two or three central, polarizing figures of the decade -- an often feared and hated figure among Democrats, at the center of most of the major political scandals of the Bush era, the architect (or so it seemed) of a Republican dominance slated to last a generation. Little more than a year ago you could find a half dozen newly-minted books on the shelves explaining the perpetual motion machine of right-wing dominance he had created. And yet today, when he resigns, I sense that no one really has much to say about it.

Yes, every politics or hard news publication has at least a couple articles marking the moment. But not with much ooomph or much to say.

In part this must be because Rove's departure seems unequal to his billing. It fits no one's expectations. He's certainly not leaving in triumph. And, for the moment, not in handcuffs either.

As I wrote years ago now, Rove's whole model of political advocacy and organization was built on a confidence game. Say improbable things are true often enough, and confidently enough, and the believing of it by enough people will make it so. The pyramid scheme, borrow-against-tomorrow nature of their game now seems exposed for all to see -- whether it's in the agony of Iraq or more prosaically in low state in which he appears to be leaving the Republican party. But judged in purely amoral, functional terms, for three straight elections, it was quite a run. It was only because of that improbable string of successes that many people, deep into the 2006 election cycle, still refused to believe what the polls were manifestly showing them.

I continue to think that there's an unrevealed factor behind Rove departure. But at this point it almost doesn't matter. This feels like a non-event because the story is already played out. The question of Iraq remains bitter and intense. But on the cynicism of Bush-Rove rule, its damage to the country and its destructiveness to the Republican party, across a broad swath of the electorate, it's difficult to find much of an argument. So really what is there left to say?

The Primary Job Responsibility of the U.S> Attorney General is to Lie

Link.

The Basis for Rudy's World View

It all revolves around what's good for his wallet, not the world. Kind of like Dick Cheney.

Our Beloved Leader: A Man who has his Priorities Straight

Idiot. No other word.

In August 2001, the president read a memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush didn't much care, telling his CIA briefer, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

In August 2007, the president read a style article in a mid-size newspaper about the clothes he wears in Crawford. About this, Bush cared very much.

What really gets George W. Bush riled up? Calling him a fashion victim.

Last week, Marques Harper of the Austin American-Statesman wrote a short piece about the president's sartorial style on his Texas ranch, where Bush is spending a two-week vacation. The article was reprinted Tuesday in a Waco, Tex., paper, and the leader of the free world was not pleased.

Harper received a phone call that morning from White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino, who, Harper told friends, said the president read the article and was unhappy about the way he was portrayed.

First, this comes just days after Karl Rove told Rush Limbaugh about the president's healthy, above-the-fray attitude about criticism in the media. Rove boasted, "The president is very good about saying, 'Look, we came here for a reason. We have an obligation on the country,' and press on by it. I'll be hyperventilating about the latest attack on him by somebody, and he'll say, 'Don't worry. History will get it right and we'll both be dead.' So it's a good, healthy attitude about how to take it." I guess that doesn't apply to his fashion sense.

Second, the article itself was entirely benign, noting that Bush has "opted to look more like 'Walker, Texas Ranger' than a sweaty, tough ranch hand." This mild remark in a brief article was enough for the spokesperson for the President of the United States to call a style reporter for a mid-size newspaper to convey the disappointment of the leader of the free world.

And third, I've heard rumors that George W. Bush is a charming fellow who's easy to get along with. Policies aside, he's supposed to be a "great guy." I don't buy it. Incidents like this one make the president sound temperamental and immature.

Indeed, if we take the White House pitch at face value, Bush is a tough guy, hardened by war, and unconcerned about pettiness -- unless the Austin American-Statesman says something vaguely derogatory about his clothes?

Link.

Our Leaders: Making Us Safer

Thank God George W. Bush is president!

Troops training for and fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are firing more than 1 billion bullets a year, contributing to ammunition shortages hitting police departments nationwide and preventing some officers from training with the weapons they carry on patrol.

An Associated Press review of dozens of police and sheriff's departments found that many are struggling with delays of as long as a year for both handgun and rifle ammunition. And the shortages are resulting in prices as much as double what departments were paying just a year ago.

"There were warehouses full of it. Now, that isn't the case," said Al Aden, police chief in Pierre, S.D.

Departments in all parts of the country reported delays or reductions in training and, in at least one case, a proposal to use paint-ball guns in firing drills as a way to conserve real ammo.

"You are not going to be as sharp or as good, especially if an emergency situation comes up," said Sgt. James MacGillis, range master for the Milwaukee police. "The better-trained officer is the one that is less likely to use force."

The pinch is blamed on a skyrocketing demand for ammunition that followed the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, driven by the training needs of a military at war, and, ironically, police departments increasing their own practice regimens following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The increasingly voracious demand for copper and lead overseas, especially in China, has also been a factor.

The military is in no danger of running out because it gets the overwhelming majority of its ammunition from a dedicated plant outside Kansas City. But police are at the mercy of commercial manufacturers.

None of the departments surveyed by the AP said it had pulled guns off the street, and many departments reported no problems buying ammunition. But others told the AP they face higher prices and months-long delays.

In Oklahoma City, for example, officers cannot qualify with AR-15 rifles because the department does not have enough .223-caliber ammunition _ a round similar to that fired by the military's M-16 and M4 rifles. Last fall, an ammunition shortage forced the department to cancel qualification courses for several different guns.

"We've got to teach the officers how to use the weapon, and they've got to be able to go to the range and qualify with the weapon and show proficiency," said department spokesman Capt. Steve McCool. "And you can't do that unless you have the rounds."

In Milwaukee, supplies of .40-caliber handgun bullets and .223-caliber rifle rounds have gotten so low the department has repeatedly dipped into its ammunition reserves. Some weapons training has already been cut by 30 percent, and lessons on rifles have been altered to conserve bullets.

Unlike troops in an active war zone, patrol officers rarely fire their weapons in the line of duty. Even then, an officer in a firefight isn't likely to shoot more than a dozen rounds, said Asheville, N.C., police training officer Lt. Gary Gudac. That, he said, makes training with live ammunition for real-life situations _ such as a vehicle stop _ so essential.

"We spend a lot of money and time making sure the officers are able to shoot a moving target or shoot back into a vehicle," Gudac said. "Any time we have a deadly force encounter, one of the first things we pull is the officer's qualification records."

In Trenton, N.J., a lack of available ammunition led the city to give up plans to convert its force to .45-caliber handguns. Last year, the sheriff's department in Bergen County, N.J., had to borrow 26,000 rounds of .40-caliber ammunition to complete twice-a-year training for officers.

"Now we're planning at least a year and a half, even two years in advance," said Bergen County Detective David Macey, a firearms examiner.

In Phoenix, an order for .38-caliber rounds placed a year ago has yet to arrive, meaning no officer can currently qualify with a .38 Special revolver.

"We got creative in how we do in training," said Sgt. Bret Draughn, who supervises the department's ammunition purchases. "We had to cut out extra practice sessions. We cut back in certain areas so we don't have to cut out mandatory training."

In Wyoming, the state leaned on its ammunition supplier earlier this year so every state trooper could qualify on the standard-issue AR-15 rifle, said Capt. Bill Morse. Rifle rounds scheduled to arrive in January did not show up until May, leading to a rush of troopers trying to qualify by the deadline.

"We didn't (initially) have enough ammunition to qualify everybody in the state," Morse said.

In Indianapolis, police spokesman Lt. Jeff Duhamell said the department has enough ammunition for now, but is considering using paint balls during a two-week training course, during which recruits fire normally fire about 1,000 rounds each.

"It's all based on the demands in Iraq," Duhamell said. "A lot of the companies are trying to keep up with the demands of the war and the demands of training police departments. The price increased too _ went up 15 to 20 percent _ and they were advising us ... to order as much as you can."

Higher prices are common. In Madison, Wis., police Sgt. Lauri Schwartz said the city spent $40,000 on ammunition in 2004, a figure that rose to $53,000 this year. The department is budgeting for prices 22 percent higher in 2008. In Arkansas, Fort Smith police now pay twice as much as they did last year for 500-round cases of .40-caliber ammunition.

"We really don't have a lot of choices," Cpl. Mikeal Bates said. "In our profession, we have to have it."

The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Mo., directly supplies the military with more than 80 percent of its small-arms ammunition. Production at the factory has more than tripled since 2002, rising from roughly 425 million rounds that year to 1.4 billion rounds in 2006, according to the Joint Munitions Command at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois.

Most of the rest of the military's small-arms ammunition comes from Falls Church, Va.-based General Dynamics Corp., which relies partly on subcontractors _ some of whom also supply police departments. Right now, their priority is filling the military's orders, said Darren Newsom, general manager of The Hunting Shack in Stevensville, Mont., which ships 250,000 rounds a day as it supplies ammunition to 3,000 police departments nationwide.

"There's just a major shortage on ammo in the U.S. right now," he said, pointing to his current backorder for 2.5 million rounds of .223-caliber ammunition. "It's just terrible."

Police say the .223-caliber rifle round is generally the hardest to find. Even though rounds used by the military are not exactly the same as those sold to police, they are made from the same metals and often using the same equipment.

Alliant Techsystems Inc., which runs the Lake City plant for the Army, also produced more than 5 billion rounds for hunting and police use last year, making the Edina, Minn.-based company the country's largest ammunition manufacturer. Spokesman Bryce Hallowell questioned whether the Iraq war had a direct effect on the ammunition available to police, but said there was no doubt that surging demand was affecting supply.

"We had looked at this and didn't know if it was an anomaly or a long-term trend," Hallowell said. "We started running plants 24/7. Now we think it is long-term, so we're going to build more production capability."

That unrelenting demand for ammunition will continue to put a premium on planning ahead, said Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who so far has kept his department from experiencing any shortage-related problems.

"If we have a problem, I'll go make an issue of it _ if I have to go to Washington or the military," Arpaio said. "That is a serious thing ... if you don't have the firepower to protect the public and yourself."

Link.

And here's another victory for making the world safer and more secure:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he has ordered the resumption of long-range strategic bomber flights, a return to a Cold War-era practice and another sign that the Kremlin is flexing its military might amid a deepening chill in relations with the United States.

Putin's decision comes a week after Russian fighter jets flew within a few hundred miles of a U.S. military base in Guam. On Friday, several pairs of Russian Tu-160 and Tu-95MC bombers were flying over Atlantic and Pacific waters, Russian Air Force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky told the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.

"We proceed from the assumption that our partners will view the resumption of flights of Russia's strategic aviation with understanding," Putin said while attending war games being held by Russian and Chinese armed forces near the Ural Mountains city of Chelyabinsk. The exercises marked the first time Russian and Chinese forces held war games on Russian territory.

"Starting today, such tours of duty will be regular," Putin continued. "Our pilots have been grounded for too long and they are happy to start a new life."

***

During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union regularly kept in the air strategic bombers designed to deliver nuclear weapons. With the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 and the economic troubles that followed, the Kremlin suspended regular flights of its long-range bombers and drastically cut back military spending.

Now, with Russia awash in cash generated by consistently high oil prices, Moscow has ratcheted up defense spending and sought to reassert its military prowess. In June, Russia tested a new cruise missile system and an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of penetrating American defenses.

In explaining his decision, Putin said that while Moscow stopped the practice of regular bomber flights after the Soviet collapse, other nations continued such missions - an apparent reference to the U.S.

"Unfortunately, not everyone followed suit, and strategic bomber flights by other states continue," Putin said.

Putin said about 20 bombers will be used to protect Russia's shipping lanes and territory within its economic zone.

Alexander Pikayev, a military affairs analyst with the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, called Putin's move a "quite significant change in posture for Russian strategic forces."

While Putin did not specifically refer to Washington in his remarks, Pikayev said the Russian leader's actions might also stem from the Kremlin's frustration with the Bush administration's plans for a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland.

The Mendacity and Lies of "Straight Talking" Loser John McCain

It's sad, having survived nearly six years of imprisonment by the North Vietnamese but the truth is that he is and always has been a pandering, hypocritical dope (who married well and became his father-in-law's puppet -- but that's another story). Yes, it's sad....

Except he really wants to be president, and what this country doesn't specially need now is to replace the current leadership with one as bad (or even possibly worse).

KIRAN CHETRY: It seems you've been painted as being a huge supporter of the president's Iraq strategy. Is that an inaccurate portrayal?

MCCAIN: It's entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, "This is going to fail." We've got to change the strategy to the one we're using now. But life isn't fair.

Poor John McCain. All he did was support the current Iraq policy every step of the way for five years and, for some reason, foolish Americans have come to believe he supports the president's strategy. How terribly unfair.

Look, this notion of who qualifies as a "critic" of the White House's war policy came to a head recently when far too many news outlets falsely characterized Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack as opponents of the war. Their support for Bush's strategy was given greater weight because the media and the GOP establishment told the public they have been war "skeptics." They're not -- O'Hanlon and Pollack supported the invasion, endorsed the so-called surge, and have consistently opposed withdrawal. (Ironically, Jon Stewart, the fake newsman, was one of the few to get this right.)

Similarly, we now see McCain characterizing himself as "the greatest critic of the initial four years." Perhaps it's best if we establish some kind of criteria for who counts as a "critic" and who counts as a "supporter."

Did you:

* endorse the invasion?

* buy into the Cheney vision of a quick, easy-to-resolve conflict?

* support the administration's position on every piece of Iraq legislation since 2002?

* consistently support the status quo? ("I'm confident we're on the right course" -- McCain, March 7, 2004)

* endorse the escalation policy?

* oppose any and all measures to include timelines, scheduled withdrawals, or enforced benchmarks?

If you're McCain, the answer to all six questions is "yes." With that in mind, you don't get to call yourself "the greatest critic" of the president's policy.

Link.

Poster of the Day

Link.

Message for the Day

Link.

Movie Spoiler: "Bourne Ultimatum" Ends with Total Bogus Fantasy

It could never, would never happen in the world in which we presently live. It's a complete and absolute fantasy. Unfortunately.