Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

Apparently, while Dick Cheney was at the helm of oil exploration giant, Halliburton, raking in the dough his company engaged in the same economic strategy as Enron. In fact, the toothless SEC is investigating the ‘fuzzy math’ Halliburton used when cooking its books.

In a statement Tuesday night, Halliburton said the S.E.C. was investigating a change in its accounting practices that enabled the company to postpone possible losses of hundreds of millions of dollars. Halliburton did not reveal the change to investors for more than a year after instituting it.

This is too funny. I forgot Rev. Sun Moon owns the conservative The Washington Times. This is kind of like how Rupert Murdoch owner of right-wing Fox News is a big supporter of the oppressive Communist Chinese government.
All I want is some consistency. Is this too much to ask?

At Tuesday night’s celebration of the Washington Times’ 20th anniversary, its founder, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, gripped a podium at the Washington Hilton and delivered an impassioned, hour-long evangelical sermon in Korean saying he established the newspaper “in response to heaven’s direction.”

During the sermon, he set the course for the Times’ next 10 years: “The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God.” Later, he added: “The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world.” …

The charges were not helped by allegations of former reporters, who say stories were changed to favor conservatives; by editors who quit, claiming church tampering; or by obscurity surrounding the paper’s finances. It has been years since many of those incidents, though, and five years since Moon’s last mass wedding in Washington, which inevitably pulled the Times into scrutiny. For the past few years, the Times has enjoyed a relatively Moon-free zone.

Obviously, objectivity is nearly impossible. The best course is to dislike both sides.

“The above figure represents U.S. military spending since the start of Fiscal Year 2001. Every minute the United States spends another $589,802 on the military, 51.3% of the discretionary federal budget.”

When I just checked it, it was up to 504 billion and counting. Watch money being pissed away on better ways to kill poor and innocent folk. View the Military Spending Clock.

Found a few good things you can read for free online. Sometimes it’s hard to find good stuff.

• The Best of Extra! from Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting Read some choice selections online from their bi-monthly magazine. Right now you can get a year’s subscription for 21$.
• Read Gore Vidal’s The Decline and Fall of the American Empire in its entirety online.

From here:

So, you thought you would help the cause by going out and registering to vote on election day. You’ve been patting yourself on the back ever since,until the day you got called up for jury duty. Now you’re asking yourself, why in the world did you do it? Nobody wants to serve juror duty, right? I mean, you may actually have to send someone to jail, or something worse, and regardless of the charges, you’ll be aiding and abetting our unfair justice system. Right?

Wrong! This may be the best opportunity you’ll ever get to directly make a difference. Jurors not only have the duty to decide guilt or innocence, but also the “equity”, or “inequity”, of the law for which the defendant is accused. This means you have the RIGHT to acquit a defendant based upon YOUR ideas of right and wrong, fairness, and your own conscience. If you feel that the laws against marijuana possession are unjust and unfair, and you are summoned for jury duty to determine the fate of someone accused of possession, then it is your RIGHT to vote for acquittal, regardless of the judge’s instructions.

Found at Etheltheblog via Buzzflash:

Mr. Rumsfeld has no intention whatsoever of firing General White over this phony Crusader flap. Mr. White did exactly what he was supposed to do and trained to do – he shilled for corporate America. The Carlyle Group, the corporate entity where old Republican war mongers (including George Bush Sr.) go to die, bought United Defense Industries. This purchase would and could only be valuable if the Army bought the Crusader system, price tag 11 billion and counting. General White then hyped the Crusader and its likelihood of being commissioned. This caused United Defense Industries stock to jump. The Carlyle Group then sold a huge block of the stock and netted over 200 million dollars. After that, Carlyle, nor White, nor Rumsfeld could care one way or another about whether the Crusader was built or not. Their buddies had already made their dough and some other suckers were left holding the bag. A move straight out of the Enron playbook.

Senate Panels to Investigate Pricing of Energy: Bush’s pals at Enron worked hard to lift money from Californian taxpayers. I think Bush can say goodbye to winning California in 2004.

Rummy effectively offered up a scapegoat today in order to keep scrutiny off Army Secretary Thomas White. White, glad to have the heat off and glad to still have his cushy job, has this to say:

“I am personally and professionally disturbed by the preparation of these so-called talking points that I find–frankly–offensive and insulting to the Department of the Army and the Department of Defense,” White said in a statement. “I have made clear within the Army that this action was repugnant and contrary to the interests of our troops and country.”

Chavez on the coup from the Washington Post:

But Chavez said members of the military unit responsible for guarding the president arrested four foreigners who were firing on the crowd from the Hotel Ausonia, less than a block from the presidential palace. Chavez said the men, who were found with high-powered rifles, were released the next day by the provisional government. Police have said that at least five of those killed were shot in the head from above.

“I have no doubt that I would have been killed had I gone out into the streets that day — Chavez killed by a bullet from the people,” he said. “That was the idea behind this. This march was looking for deaths.” …

Since his return, Chavez has spoken to a number of world leaders, including Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Mexico’s Vicente Fox, Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. All offered their congratulations, he said. But Chavez has yet to hear from any State Department official more senior than Ambassador Charles Shapiro.

Good bits from here and there:

1. Backing for Palestine state increases in US
2. The American Empire’s plan to invade Iraq with 250,000 soldiers.
3. Sharon’s plan is to drive Palestinians across the Jordan Moving or killing 2 million arabs.
4. Israel to refuse cooperation with UN Trying to block Jenin massacre investigation.
5. Bush Seeking to Squeeze School Loan Program We can’t all be Yaley blue-blood, draft-dodgers.