I was about to comment in amazement about a prominent public official in Mesa, Arizona saying something smart, but then I found George Gascón’s bio at the end of the op-ed and realized he only moved there a year ago.

Okay.

How nice to have the Making Light folks here with us today.
Love your place Teresa!

Okay.

Hugh @ 119

Being an American, I’ve not heard of ‘commissions’ on gov’t contracts? How does that work exactly? /s

10% in Pakistan.
20% in Saudi Arabia.

In Nigeria, Equatorian Guinea and Angola one may dicker a bit.

All I can say is the strategy of the Project for a New American Century has worked brilliantly.

America has never been more beloved in the world and our economy has never been stronger and the nation has never been as united.

-GSD

Yes, I agree completely that that PNAC is achieving all of its goals. They just don’t happen to be the ones you say they are.

1) “America has never been more beloved” should be replaced with the Bush understanding of the role of the despot in an imperial regime. Oderint dum metuant “Let them hate, so long as they fear.” Attributed by Seneca to the playwright Lucius Accius, and said to be a favourite saying of Caligula’s and now Lil’ George’s as well.

2) “Our economy has never been stronger” is a statement made by the military-industrial complex enjoying unprecedented profitability and privatization of the public treasury. Truly, a revolution in the practice of war is underway, and seemingly unstoppable by civil society or any foreign adversaries. Never before in the history of the world has any nation spent $1 Trillion per year fighting a noun.

3) “(T)he nation has never been so united” in its collective willingness to turn a blind eye to the criminality of its leadership. Congress declares impeachment to be “off the table” in the face of the most outrageous war crimes, war profiteering, illegal torture, illegal wiretapping and corruption in the history of the nation. A craven media turns a blind eye to government crime for the sake of “access” and morsels of gossips from those in power; completely abdicating its role as a watchdog on the government. Finally, the public is in a sultry and stubborn mood deciding to kick the weak and kiss the behind of the mighty. What unites this society today is its complete insanity. I think we acquired this from the Middle East.

It’s interesting, yes. The county in northeastern KY where my grandfather was born and raised (and his father and grandfather too) had Irish and German immigrants, as well as some from Russia. It’s not an urban area, even now.
Tancredo’s grandparents were immigrants from Italy – I think of him as an ‘I’ve got mine, now raise the drawbridge’ kind of person (Clarence Thomas is another, in a different way).

OT..Thugs don’t want to stress air travelers:

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.
(snip)

link

Then add in the fact that recent TSA tests show that in most airports, screeners are missing 70 percent of (fake,hopefully!)bombs and components.

got nuthin’ to say, really. not that that’s ever stopped me from posting before. but today, just “hello.”

Time-zones World Clock.

And how do you like them apples:

”We want Russia to be strong– strong in 21st-century terms, not just with a strong independent center, but with strong independent institutions, an independent judiciary and legislature and independent civil society with a free media and vibrant non-governmental sector,” [Rice] said.

Laughable. (Same link as my 131.)

you’re giving me stitches!