Damn Job

Ok... Yes, the LP has been busy lately... I was busy busting my ass to try to get a job. Well it took 4 months and 5 days. Granted 2 weeks were holidays and I was very sick for 2+ weeks. WELL BABY I'M BACK!

Update.. Every Democrat has come forward for the Presidentals. Republicans are kinda on the DL but we'll see.. (besides Romney- but he is a bastard and I don't count him) I went to the cattle call. It was inspiring. Hilliary and Obama are fighting already.. wow that too long. cough. Edwards is still my boy. He is hiring.

Britney Spears has lost her mind.


Yep thats about it for the LP tonight. Catch you all soon.


~LP

I'll vote for your baby face

Sen. John Ried Edwards, your baby face makes me hot for the presidential race. Edwards is my preliminary pick for president ....below are my reasons why in no particular order…

1. He’s smmaht. Edwards was a trial lawyer.

2. Minority vote. Edwards is one of the few white powerful politicians that is talking about the culture separation between white and black. He also formed the One America Committee to fight poverty.

3. American dream. Edwards was the first person in his family to go to college. He’s bachelors degree is in textile technology. His father worked in a textile mill and his mother worked in a post office.

4. Sympathy vote. His first born son died in a freak car accident when he was 16 in 1996.

5. His wife. Elizabeth Edwards discovered that she had a lump in her breast a week before election day in 2004. The day after the election Elizabeth was diagnosed with breast cancer. She is now in remission. She has also talked openly about her weight issues.

6. He’s attractive. Yes, American’s do take attractiveness in consideration.

7. He is rich…. He isn’t from old money, he is a self made man who can use that money to run for president.


~LP

Stanford Law Prof Lessig's Code 2.0 is online and free

You know, after a long, hard day of final exams, sometimes you just want to pour yourself a very large drink and read a good book. Sadly, these times tend to come at the end of the semester, when student loan funds are running low and one's budget is tight. You can afford a very large drink, or a new book - but not both.

Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig wants to help you. (Actually, he's probably never met you, doesn't know you, and cares not one whit about you - but stay with me here.) He's just released his new book, Code 2.0, on the Intertubes for free as a PDF file. It's all about internet governance structures - both legal and technical. I'm just starting it now, but I've Lessig's Free Culture (also available for free), and found it to be a cracking good read. That one's about the need for copyright reform - but it's really interesting, trust me.

Both books are released under a Creative Commons license, which is an absolutely splendid and remarkably progressive scheme for media licensing that I have neither the time, nor the patience, to explain in detail. The Creative Commons website can do that better, anyway. It's worth a look, if for no other reason than that it's got a large library of other free, creative-commons licensed books.

Anyway - thanks to Lessig and the Creative Commons, I can print out a good book for free, and blow the book-buying money on booze. Is that great or what?

Outsourcing the Commander-in-Chief

Paul Krugman has a great response to President Bush's comment that he won't "out-source" his responsibilities of commander-in-chief. This was in response to questions about why the President won't simply adopt the ISG's recommendations for moving forward in Iraq. The Krugman link is behind the NY Times times-select firewall but here's an excerpt:

That’s pretty ironic. You see, outsourcing of the government’s responsibilities — not to panels of supposed wise men, but to private companies with the right connections — has been one of the hallmarks of his administration. And privatization through outsourcing is one reason the administration has failed on so many fronts.
For example, an article in Saturday’s New York Times describes how the Coast Guard has run a $17 billion modernization program: “Instead of managing the project itself, the Coast Guard hired Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, two of the nation’s largest military contractors, to plan, supervise and deliver the new vessels and helicopters.”
The result? Expensive ships that aren’t seaworthy. The Coast Guard ignored “repeated warnings from its own engineers that the boats and ships were poorly designed and perhaps unsafe,” while “the contractors failed to fulfill their obligation to make sure the government got the best price, frequently steering work to their subsidiaries or business partners instead of competitors.”
In Afghanistan, the job of training a new police force was outsourced to DynCorp International, a private contractor, under very loose supervision: when conducting a recent review, auditors couldn’t even find a copy of DynCorp’s contract to see what it called for. And $1.1 billion later, Afghanistan still doesn’t have an effective police training program.
In July 2004, Government Executive magazine published an article titled “Outsourcing Iraq,” documenting how the U.S. occupation authorities had transferred responsibility for reconstruction to private contractors, with hardly any oversight. “The only plan,” it said, “appears to have been to let the private sector manage nation-building, mostly on their own.” We all know how that turned out.
On the home front, the Bush administration outsourced many responsibilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. For example, the job of evacuating people from disaster areas was given to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America. When Hurricane Katrina struck, Landstar didn’t even know where to get buses. According to Carey Limousine, which was eventually hired, Landstar “found us on the Web site.”
It’s now clear that there’s a fundamental error in the antigovernment ideology embraced by today’s conservative movement. Conservatives look at the virtues of market competition and leap to the conclusion that private ownership, in itself, is some kind of magic elixir. But there’s no reason to assume that a private company hired to perform a public service will do better than people employed directly by the government.
In fact, the private company will almost surely do a worse job if its political connections insulate it from accountability — which has, of course, consistently been the case under Mr. Bush.

....

So what happens now? The failure of privatization under the Bush administration offers a target-rich environment to newly empowered Congressional Democrats — and I say, let the subpoenas fly. Bear in mind that we’re not talking just about wasted money: contracting failures in Iraq helped us lose one war, similar failures in Afghanistan may help us lose another, and FEMA’s failures helped us lose a great American city.
And maybe, just maybe, the abject failure of this administration’s efforts to outsource essential functions to the private sector will diminish the antigovernment prejudice created by decades of right-wing propaganda.

Why I Don't Like Rahm Emanuel

Stuff like this. I know he's a Democrat and I know he's some sort of power broker but one of the reasons I don't like the Delays and the Hasterts and the Bushes and the Roves is the win-at-all-costs attitude they bring to the table. This includes lying to the general public, which when the truth is revealed only serves to taint all public servants. This in turn leads to a general malaise about government, which tends to reinforce the entire premise of the modern Republican party. So, if you care about this country, stop lying and supporting liars.

Maliki on the way out?

Obviously rumors are a dime a dozen in Iraq but this bears some pondering. If Juan Cole comments on it, I'll post a link.

Handwringing

There are two parts to the ISG. And depending on who you are, you've been emphasizing one or another part. There is the analysis section and there is the recommendation section. Supporters of the war emphasize the recommendation section and try to ignore the analysis section. The recommendations are no guarantee to success in Iraq. Everyone knows this because there are no good options left. So no recommendations are going to seem "wise" and a key to "victory." That's why it will be relatively easy for die-hard supporters to trash the report. All they need do is keep the focus off the analysis.

Those who oppose the war, conversely, will stick to the sections of analysis that clearly state the wretched conditions and utter failure of our policies. They will use that analysis to support the notion that since there are no good options left, it's best to cut our losses and simply leave. Something the ISG report does not come out and state (though you could make an argument).

And then there are those on the fence. And this is where the debate really turns. These are the people who are unable to accept the magnitude of suffering we have wrought and the magnitude that is still left to play out, regardless of what we do, because of what we did.

I think we need to leave. But I accept that in leaving tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, will die before the violence is settled. I accept that Iraq may very well be worse when it's all said and done than what it was before Saddam ran the place. But I also accept that the longer we stay, the further we get from stability. I also accept that the longer we stay, the more our military suffers, the weaker we get, the more dangerous the world gets, the less we are prepared to deal with new threats, the more it will cost in human suffering and national treasure.

There are no good options left. Own it and pick your poison.

Britney, please keep your clothing on

I know this isn't very political or is it? Britney please for everyone sakes keep your clothing on. I am tired of hearing about her lack of underwear problem on CNN, it's very distracting. How am I supposed to analyze the Iraq war and the news about the mother who microwaved her baby when I see news about Britney Spears vagina?

For every politician and other humans, hear this plea... please god woman put some underwear on, you have 2 kids.


~LP

TPM Series - The Investigators

Over at talkingpointsmemo.com, in their Muckracker section, they are profiling the Senate and House chairmen who will have investigatory powers in the upcoming congress. Here's the link to the article on Senators Patrick Leahy (Judiciary) and Carl Levin (Armed Services). Here's the link to the article on Rep. Henry Waxman (Government Reform) and Senator Joseph Lieberman (Homeland Security and Government Affairs). And finally, here's the link to the article about Senator Jay Rockefeller (Intelligence) and Rep. Silvestre Reyes (House Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence).

While I don't believe there will be an impeachment in President Bush's future (President Cheney, anyone?), I do believe the Dems need to shed some light on exactly what the government has been doing the past six years. These people are the ones who bear that responsibility. I don't expect a whole lot from Senator Lieberman but Rep. Waxman is a bulldog.

Changes are good

The Graveyard is still a young blog (less than a week old!), so expect to see some tinkering every now and again as we figure out what works for us. I've added a blog roll to the right. If we go through a dry spell, with minimal posting, feel free to browse through those.