Trolling for Bribes

Hamid Karzai is planning to ban the operations of private military contractors (PMCs, aka mercenaries) by the end of this year:

President Hamid Karzai is planning to sign a decree this week ordering the disbanding of all private security forces by the end of the year, his spokesman said Monday.

But it is not clear how the move, which would constitute an extraordinary change in the security makeup of the country, could be carried out. There are at least 24,000 private armed guards in the country, some foreign but most Afghan, and there is no immediately available alternative for the array of crucial tasks they perform.

This being Hamid Karzai, my guess is that this will not be fully implemented in time or in a consistent manner, but that is like saying the sky is blue.

As to the motivations for his doing this, I see three main policy goals here:

• An attempt to ameliorate some of the outrage among Afghan citizens who are the ones on the wrong ends of the Mercenary's bullets.
• He wants to ensure that whoever is allowed to continue will be people whom he has vetted as being supportive of him.
• Any mercenary operations allowed to continue will have to pay some sort of bribes to him and his family.

I am a cynic on such matters.

The Recent Comments Widget Still Appears to Be Fracked

It is still only updating intermittently,

Sorry.

A Few More People on the Right Side of 51 Park

And they are Democrats.

Senator Al Franken:

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is slamming conservative opposition to the Muslim community center project near Ground Zero in New York City -- the city where he formerly resided for many years -- calling the attacks against it "one of the most disgraceful things that I've heard."

And Congressman Charlie Rangel:

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) came out in support of the proposed Cordoba House Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero yesterday, saying that he's "kind of proud that they're sticking to their guns and saying this is where they would want to worship."

Also, lesser plaudits to Nancy Pelosi, who suggested that the anti-Islamic Center movement might be AstroTurf, though she walked it back a bit later in the day.

Great Google Moogly!

Click for full size

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It's been too ugly for too long
H/t Calculated Risk

Remember how I said that unemployment has been stuck between about 450,000 and 480,000 initial claims a week?

Well, not any more, today's numbers were up by 12,000 to ½ a million initial claims, with the 4 week moving average rose by 8,000 to 482,500.

Of course, since the article was written by a financial journalist, which means that they feel the need to be a cheerleader, and they are innumerate, they found someone to say that the 13 K drop, to 4.48 million, in continuing claims as, "an encouraging sign," but later they note that the number of people on emergency benefits, "increased 260,105 to 4.75 million in the week ended July 31." (the week prior to this one)

Let me explain this slowly for the financial journalists who might read this The people who are on continuing claims are in the 26-week window, if they go beyond that, they are no longer counter as having a continuing claim, they are counted as being on emergency benefits, so the falling number of continuing claims is not people getting jobs, it's people being unemployed even longer.

In any case, this is really grim. The already inadequate stimulus is winding down, and job losses are once again accellerating, and we have an election in 2½ months, and if the Republicans take power, they will drive the country even further into the ditch.

Yes, a half assed stimulus, which was then watered down by the dickwads in the Senate was such a good idea.

Deep Thought

Dick Armey created an Army of Dicks.^*

Jon Stewart does a good job teasing out the hypocrisy of the Congressman, former House Majority Leader, and über lobbyist Dick Armey casting himself as an anti-establishment foe of Washington .


Jon Stewart, Part 1 of 3


Jon Stewart, Part 2 of 3


Jon Stewart, Part 1 of 3

^*The Teabaggers.

No Prosecution for Photographing Unclothed Teens in Their Houses

Because when a school does it, it's OK:

Federal authorities announced Tuesday they will not prosecute administrators connected to a webcam spying scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district.

Prosecutors and the FBI opened an inquiry following a February privacy lawsuit accusing Lower Merion School District officials of spying on students with webcams on the 2,300 district-issued MacBooks. The lawyers who filed the lawsuit claim the district secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students, including images of youths at home, in bed or even “partially dressed.”

Zane David Memeger, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said he found no criminal intent in the alleged surveillance.

I cannot understand how there isn't a trial of someone involved in this.

I guess that the prosecutor decided that high school students have no right to privacy.

Earlier posts are here.

But Will They Roll on Bush and His Evil Minions&trade

Polish prosecutors are considering charging the former Polish President and PM with war crimes for allowing the CIA to operate gulags in their country:

Polish prosecutors are considering bringing charges of war crimes against the country's former prime minister and former president over allegations of secret CIA prisons.

Former president Aleksander Kwasniewski and former prime minister Leszek Miller, who held office between 2001 and 2004, may stand trial before the State Tribunal, a court specifically designed to try Poland's top officials, Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported on Wednesday (4 August).

The court's prosecutor wants to ask the speaker of parliament to initiate the criminal procedure against the two men. The case would first have to go to a parliamentary committee and then to the lower house of parliament, which would decide whether or not to press charges, the news report says.

One hopes that eventually we find someone who is willing to sing on this, and the Shrub and the Smiler will end up in the dock.

It does seem that this is all beginning to unravel, and perhaps we are near a point where revelations breed further revelation.