Surprise!

WikiLeaks on Friday released a 2006 State Department cable detailing the Bush administration's strategy for undermining Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez by supporting alleged pro-democracy groups.

  The Hill

Exactly what Chavez was saying and Bush was denying all along. Of course, it’s possible that the only people in the world who believe that “pro-democracy groups” in other countries are not working with the CIA are Americans.

[Then-Ambassador William Brownfield wrote: S]trengthening democratic institutions [...] “represents the majority of USAID/OTI work in Venezuela

When, ostensibly, USAID is for civilian aid in foreign countries where aid is needed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Poor Joe Biden Can't Afford a Furlough

[Joe] Biden plans to take a pay cut if members of his staff are furloughed as a result of the sequester, his office said Friday.

“The vice president is committed to sharing the burden of the sequester with his staff,” a spokesperson for the vice president said in an e-mail.

But the White House has not yet announced plans to furlough employees who work in the West Wing and or for the vice president's staff, creating a potentially awkward disconnect among top administration officials.

[...]

Unlike some members of the Obama Cabinet, he is not independently wealthy.

  The Hill

And we’re supposed to feel badly about that? How many federal employees taking a furlough are independently wealthy? How many are making what Joe Biden is making?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Featherfest

Galveston Island celebrates the flocking of migratory birds every year with the annual Featherfest activities. I don't know if the birds I've seen the last few days are migratory, but it's the first time I've caught sight of either. I've been throwing seed out all winter and saw some beautiful European starlings a few months ago, but mostly little sparrows and the ever-present pigeons and grackles. The grackles have gone elsewhere, but the pigeons gather at 7:30 am every morning on the wires and eaves, and as soon as I walk out the door, they come to the yard. (Sometimes I think they follow me to work. :-))

At any rate, yesterday morning I saw a purple finch in the palm tree by my back steps.  It was tres jolie.  He looked like a little sparrow that had been dyed red for Easter.  I didn't have my camera, so here's an internet picture:

I also saw a little brown bird with a yellow mask.  I tried Googling that and didn't find it.  Google returned mostly small yellow birds with black masks.  I found this:

but that isn't it.

I tried looking up all birds with yellow, and it's possible that it was a hooded warbler, although I didn't notice yellow on the belly, and the mask was very neatly drawn, and I think had a white ring around it.  I saw another small yellow bird this morning, but fleetingly, and its underbelly was indeed yellow, but I couldn't see its face.  I thought immediately of a finch, and it may have been.

Anyway, the bird in question had a mask like this hooded warbler, but the bird was otherwise all buff colored.  The internet pictures of the female show a similar bird, without the black head, but still looking quite yellow.  The immatures don't seem to have a distinct mask.  So....I don't know.

A couple of years ago about this time, my sister and I watched a small flock of screaming-brilliant blue birds in the yard where I was living.  I think we decided they were indigo buntings.  It was more secluded than where I am now, and I'm not expecting to see them again, but that would be a real treat.  It was once. 

Just, you know, in case you care to know.

And Another Reason...

President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans.

  NYT

Is he really Charlie Brown?  Or is he the Manchurian Candidate?

For the love of Pete.

Speaking of Reasons He Shouldn't Be President...

"You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it's probably not rising to your No. 1 concern," Mr. Obama said. "And if people think, well, that's shortsighted, that's what happens when you're struggling to get by."

This is the argument we get from the oil companies, the extraction industries, and all the politicians they have sublet over the past 40 years -- that environmental concerns are the province of the liberal elites, as though small farmers are not being killed by drought, small businesses being killed by what's killing the small farmers, and small homeowners along both seaboards being killed by increasingly massive storms. The interested parties have done a good job selling this bag of manure to the American people. To see a Democratic president making essentially the same argument [...] is more than simply distressing. [...] Climate change [...] touches everything, including people's personal economies. And there is a huge propaganda apparatus in place to convince the public that the problem doesn't exist at all.

[...]

And if the president approves that damned pipeline, the acceleration may go into the red zones.

[...]

There will not be that many jobs created and the oil, assuming it's not spilling out all over Nebraska, will be headed to China.

[...]

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that not a single one of our major institutions, within government or without, is capable of confronting this problem. And if we can't, that's rather the ballgame, isn't it?

  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Now His Sexist Slip Is Showing

[Recently, President Obama called…] California Attorney General Kamala Harris “by far, the best looking attorney general.”.

[...]

This is hardly the first time Obama has been smarmily sexist under the guise of paying a compliment. In the same New York magazine story on Christine Quinn in which Mayor Michael Bloomberg was notoriously quoted saying, “Look at the ass on her,” Obama got a pass for a more politely phrased brand of creepiness. According to the piece, Obama said to a Republican legislator, 32-year-old Nicole Malliotakis, that she didn’t look a day over 23. Quinn promptly joked that Malliotakis should become a Democrat, and the president chimed in, “Come on, honey! I said you’re pretty! I said you look 23!”

  Salon

So, okay, this doesn’t really make him stand out in the world. People seem to think nothing of commenting on a woman’s looks, whereas it rarely comes up in regard to men who aren’t in the entertainment business. But it does make him too clueless to be president. Among other admittedly more pressing reasons he shouldn’t have the job.

[W] omen, above all, are subject to a can’t-win calculus in which the desires of men, rather than their objective qualifications, determine how they’re treated — for better or worse. It applies wherever women exist in public, even when looks are entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand.

[...]

Almost as obnoxious as the men talking about how put-upon they are by p.c. harpies who aren’t interested in the unsolicited feedback — positive or negative — were the supposed liberals talking about how we should all just chill out. This was the position of the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart, who pointed out that Obama and Harris are friends, that this wasn’t tantamount to “luridly cat-calling a woman he doesn’t know,” and who finished up with an exhortation to “lighten up, people.”

Yes, the fact they are friends makes it okay for him to say those kinds of things.

Then again, I think we are within reason to conclude that he doesn’t think much of her attorney skills if that’s the compliment he came up with.

UPDATE: Okay, maybe we can’t say that. Here’s the full quote:

"You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you'd want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake.

“She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country -- Kamala Harris is here. (Applause.) It's true. Come on. (Laughter.) And she is a great friend and has just been a great supporter for many, many years.”

  LA Times

Really, he should have stopped while he was ahead.

Trading Places

A heinous act of wanton slaughter, committed on 5 October 2011, dominated Chinese news for months. Two Chinese cargo ships were found adrift on the Mekong River, a major trade route for China, near the Thai-Burmese border, with 13 Chinese crew members brutally killed, summarily stabbed or shot with their hands bound behind their backs and their mutilated bodies dumped in the water.

[...]

The suspected mastermind of the massacre was quickly named by the Chinese: Naw Kham, the Burmese leader of the largest drug trafficking gang in the so-called Golden Triangle [...] . A major manhunt for Naw Kham ensued [but] it proved exceedingly difficult to find him because he was hiding in the vast mountainous jungles of Laos.

[...]

On at least three occasions when the Chinese were convinced they had located him, they were unable to secure the cooperation of government and local police officials quickly enough or overcome the protection of local villagers, who engaged in firefights with police forces trying to apprehend him. That enabled Naw Kham to disappear across the border into the jungle of Myanmar.

[...]

The Global Times noted that "some analysts had even said the hunt for Naw Kham could be as difficult as the hunt for Bin Laden."

[...]

As a result of these obstacles, the Global Times reported back in February, China seriously considered using a drone strike in Myanmar to kill him: "an unmanned aircraft to carry 20 kilograms of TNT to bomb the area". That option was rejected because, the report said, the Chinese were intent on capturing him alive and trying him in court.

[...]

In April of last year, the Laotian police, acting in concert with the Chinese, apprehended him as he attempted to flee.

[...]

"Mr. Liu, whose antinarcotics bureau runs a fleet of unarmed drones for surveillance in China's border areas, insisted that the idea [of a drone targeted killing] was shelved because of legal restraints."

[...]

"'We didn't use China's military, and we didn't harm a single foreign citizen,' [said Mr. Liu].”

  Glen Greenwald

We opened ourselves up to this - other countries that we decry for their human rights abuses and lawlessness showing the rest of the world that they are more concerned with those things than we are.  Of course, as long as we have the baddest military and weaponry on the planet, I guess we don't have to care what the rest of the world thinks.

And That Is Just Insulting

President Obama will return 5 percent of his salary, retroactive to March 1, in a move intended to symbolize solidarity with federal workers being furloughed as part of the sequester, a White House official said Wednesday.

[...]

The president's salary is $400,000 per year -- a 5 percent pay cut over 10 months represents just under $17,000.

  The Hill

Who thought this was a good idea?

“The president has decided [...] to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester."

Sacrifice. $17,000 one time. Out of $400,000.   His share's a little lighter than theirs, I'm guessing.

Earlier this week, the White House announced that 480 staffers who work at the Office of Management and Budget have received furlough notices requiring that they take unpaid days off due to the sequester. Employees were also told to curtail travel and limit the use of office equipment and mobile wireless Internet cards.

But press secretary Jay Carney would not confirm whether members of the West Wing staff would also receive notices.

So, that’s a ‘no’, then.

Even some senators are giving up 20%. Okay, five senators.

The Senate last month passed a measure urging members of the upper chamber to forgo 20 percent of their salary during sequestration. Most senators, however, are keeping quiet on whether they will follow through.

  The Hill

So that’s a ‘no’, then.

[I]n a survey of Senate offices by The Hill, only [Lindsay] Graham [who’s idea it was] and Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) have indicated they would give up some of their take-home pay.

[...]


Senators make $174,000 annually. To fully comply with the Graham measure for a complete calendar year, members would return $34,000 to charity or the Treasury.
[...]

Several other senators said they already donate generously to charity.

Kind of misses the point, doesn’t it?

Graham mentioned the example of Ashton Carter, the deputy Defense secretary who told a Senate committee in February that he would voluntarily forgo 20 percent of his salary if his employees were subject to furloughs because of sequestration.

The Pentagon on Tuesday announced Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will also follow suit by writing a check to the Treasury.

Who advised Obama to give up only 5% when everybody else, making a good deal less than he does, seems to be forking over 20%. Sure makes him look cheap. But not as cheap as Nancy Pelosi.

“I don’t think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters in February. “I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”

What a twat. I’m sorry. I can’t think of a nicer name for that. And, if they were rewarded according to their dignity, they would be working for free.

And this guy is…

An aide to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said he has never accepted a Senate salary and instead gives his pay to the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga, which distributes it to local charities.

As he should.

Corker is worth at least $19.6 million, according to financial reports from 2011.

Okay. But most of them are millionaires, and they take the salary anyway. Because they should be rewarded out of respect for the work they do, if you ask the twat.

Sequestration Exemption

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees will take a pay cut because of this year's $85 billion in automatic spending cuts, including about 750,000 at the Pentagon alone. Air traffic control towers are being closed, unemployment benefits are being reduced and the White House has even cancelled tours.

Congressional offices aren't escaping the sequester. They've had to reduce office budgets, and some members have said they may have to lay off staff.

But lawmakers themselves won't take a pay cut because member pay is completely exempted from the sequester.

  The Hill

Of course it is.

The Reagan-era law exempted some programs from the sequester, including elements of Social Security, interest on the debt and federal Pell grants. (The law also exempts the president’s pay, which is the reason President Obama’s pay won’t be hit by the sequester.)

Congressional salaries are not explicitly exempted, but according to experts familiar with the issue, the law was written in way that makes them exempt. For example, the law says federal “accounts” are subject to the sequester, and defines “accounts” as items that are appropriated by Congress.

Lawmaker salaries are not appropriated by Congress, so they don't get treated as an account for the purposes of sequestration.

[...]

Congress did not appear to try to amend the way the sequester works when it passed the Budget Control Act, probably because few thought the sequester would happen.

Yeah, sure. That’s why.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oil Is Bustin' Out All Over

Or - the pelicans' revenge.

On March 27 - in Minnesota. On March 31 - in Arkansas.

I don't know the immediate cause of "the incident." Maybe a mole burrowed through the pipeline. Maybe a seam burst. But I can tell you the general causes of "the incident." One general cause of "the incident" is that energy companies, and their partners in the various extraction industries, lie. They lie about jobs, and they lie about the environmental impact of what they do, and they lie at full volume when something goes radically wrong with the stuff about which they've previously lied. They lie for a living. They lie as a perfect demonstration of what they are, and they lie as an essential part of their overall business model. And they lie without consequence, knowing they can buy their way out of any situation in which their lies do actual harm. And they lie in service to their fundamental public-relations strategy which is, basically, Trust Us.

[...]

TransCanada is no different from Exxon, which is no different from Shell — which, as kindly Doc Maddow has been pointing out, is having the devil's own time keeping track of its wandering oil rigs in the Chukchi Sea. It lied. It lies. It will lie again. (Also, as we always point out on this issue, there's already one Keystone pipeline, and it's already leaked all over the landscape.) That is what the president is being asked to invite into the country. Just so we're all still clear — which, apparently, cannot be said any more of several rivers in Arkansas.

  Charlie Pierce

[Since June 2010, TransCanada] has seen twelve oil spills from its brand new, state-of-the art pipeline — with one “six-story geyser” dumping 21,000 gallons of oil in North Dakota.

  Esquire

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.