This is the same Joe Lieberman who made impeaching Bill Clinton possible by tsk-tsking the Prez over an old affair, right?

Funny how he looks the other way when it’s Blackwater doing the screwing. At least Clinton didn’t spend any of our tax dollars for sex!

Sure is a good thing that the military budget has an exemption from the spending freeze.

Looks like they got an exemption from oversight as well.

Topic seems to be appropriate use of funds, so what is happening with the $26,960 that has already been raised toward the FDL Fire Dog Fund? It looks like a new fund starting at zero was created as of yesterday to raise $30,000 for the first three FDL Fire Dogs. So what’re the $26,960 that have already been raised going to be used for?

These private defense vendors must not be trying. The DoD itself can’t account for something like a quarter of its spending. Guess the private contractors need some practice before they get down to departmental speed.

Good question. I too am wondering what is going on.

The only reason Senator Lieberman is chairman of anything is because he was supposed to be the 60th vote. That was before he took it upon himself to in effect filibuster health care reform to death, and before the “filibuster-proof majority” became inoperative even in theory.

I guess now there’s no reason for Senator Lieberman to be chairman of anything.

Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security contractor of defrauding the government for years with phony billing, including charging for a prostitute, alcohol and spa trips.

This is a shock? Open the newspaper and look at what your local government or school board is accused of virtually every day. And they don’t have $600B to try to use up.

I guess now there’s no reason for Senator Lieberman to be chairman of anything.

*Now* there’s no reason?

Memo to US Gummint:

Can’t give me a no-bid contract? No problem, my bid is 99% will be returned in campaign contributions. I won’t waste any of the money producing anything of value.

I’m going to put this paragraph in my treasure chest:

For the past nine years, the terror pimps have demagogued any opposition to outrageous increases in defense spending as “hating America.” Meanwhile, the Bush Administration resisted any investigation into no-bid contracts handed out to big campaign donors without any experience by claiming it would compromise national security. If the priority was truly “fiscal responsibility” and not manipulating approval numbers, one would think the black hole they’ve been stuffing all the graft into would be a good place to start.

I saw that headline and read the article earlier today. There’s a bit of irony in Blackwater billing this as “Morale, Welfare, and Recreation” as when I worked in the Accounting Office while in the USAF, MWR was pretty much totally funded by “Non-Appropriated Funds.” That is, non taxpayer money (exceptions were the salaries of GIs who were actually running the NCO Clubs, Officer’s clubs, and the various recreational facilities on base.)

I guess Joe didn’t get the memo:

Jan. 26, 1998: Clinton forcefully repeats his denial, saying, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

Jan. 27, 1998: First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton says in a broadcast interview that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” is behind the charges against her husband.

this must be the “53% taxpayer waste” the washingtonpost/abc poll showed americans think…..funny, i may be over-simplifying and not have all my facts; but why is it most the waste comes from the gop’s military/industrial complex?

yes, the tea partiers have legitimate concerns; unfortunately, they are only interested in bumper sticker knowledge and are blaming the wrong party.

Thank you Jane! As usual, you put the spotlight where it needs to be.
The only chairmanship Senator Lieberman (D Israel) is entitled to, is the “Let’s find a way to give more money to my campaign contributors committee”.

Platitude Lost and Found: “Let us not make the perfect the enemy of the good.”

Xe and USA’s new logo – two for the price of one! Sex Not Bombs.. I bet it’s much cheaper, even on the fraudulent invoices.

At least when they are screwing they aren’t murdering and torturing innocent people.

As Erik Prince might say “Praise the Lord and pass the prostitute”

Now, everybody clear about the meaning of “level-of-effort, sole-source” contract?

Now that we know who is an actual DINO thanks to their own evidence (i.e. their lying lips) we no longer have to worry about that mythical 60-seat “supermajority” in the Senate, because you know 51 votes was never a majority in recent Amurkan politics, so it’s time for Joe to Go… strip him of his seat in the Caucus, strip him unceremoniously of his Chairmanship and all committee assignments and let him wander around the Sunday morning talk shows decrying the incivility of the DFH’s who worked for his downfall.

Lieberman deserves everything he gets from now on, and let’s all hope it’s not too much. Reid could toss this one out to the Progressive base at virtually no cost to himself, and point to it as “a tough leadership decision” and spin that for all it’s worth in his upcoming battle for his seat. Who knows, might actually gain him some traction from wimp to worthwhile.

Jane,
Thank you for all you do. I do not know where you find the time to do all the digging, but I really appreciate it.
I have said it before and now once again. Goodbye Joe, you gotta go…
Somewhere, anywhere, but no longer at the expense of the D’s and there are very few of those creatures left too.

How the hell is Sen. Joe Lieberman still chairman of Homeland Security? Joe flip flops more than a beached Chinese carp and is the number one fear and war monger on the HIll. He seems to be very unstable.

I read that the Russians run their entire military on a budget of approx. $70 Billion per year. Compare that to our approx. $800 Billion per year. The Russians have everything that we have, just less whores on the payrole.

Hookers and mercenaries, different goals with the same overall motivations. If the government can hire one group to kill then it’s only reasonable that they can hire the other group for something a bit less violent. Wonder if Xe’s stand on drugs is much different.

Joe is just following the rules -

from former GOP congressional staff member Luckstill:
“”If a Democrat is caught breaking the law, that’s justice,” he says. “But when a Republican is charged, it’s politics.”"
http://www.neilrogers.com/news/articles/2006031402.html

Prostitutes?

Okay! Waiting for yet another congressional hearing which will embarrass a few individuals and bring absolutely no substantive changes.

I suspect that they are sometimes done simultaneously.

No doubt they are all for performance enhancing drugs — of all stripes, shapes and colors

Fortunately they are studying under the tutelage of the masters of misplaced cash. Right now Miyagi is teaching Daniel to wax his car.

Running the program on our end, specifically the phone banking, voter ID and GOTV efforts.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Hamsher and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

So now we are finally gettin’ it, the threat to peace and security in the world is not in the fake Teabag movement or in the corruption and collapse of our political system…nope the threat is in the continuation of imperial corporate wars financed with the blood of hundreds of thousands of poor non-white people and the sweat and blood of our children and grandchildren. And before you go off on Obama as bein’ a tool of the corporate killin’ machine let’s compare Obama to JFK and NOT LBJ. We have the global mess we’re in because of the ascendence of the corporate security state beginnin’ in 1946 and the last time we had a President that recognized that fact and threatened to end the expansion of an American corporate war, that President was shot by the corporate security forces put in place with taxpayers money.

This is all about guns and butter and the only way we end this madness is to force healthcare, economic and tax reform through Congress and make the oligarchy choose between war or bankruptcy. We can NOT beat back the corporate fascist establishment unless we can create a split in the ruling oligarchy and the best way we do that is to split the Yankees from the Cowboys or the bankers from the oiligarchs.

Obama has pledged and stayed on a course to pull out of Iraq by this summer, if we can force the domestic legislation beginning with healthcare reform and a jobs program through this congress then we will have forced the public choice between more war and economic collapse. It’s simple political physics and the mass of people put together in the coalition that got Obama elected is enough to force this public choice IF we keep the heat on the right places and figure out who the fuckin enemy is before we shoot or make coalitions with ‘em.

Sister Hamsher, ever since I started participating in this community I have begun and ended my posts with reference to the war that is in fact the only threat to our survival as a nation and I’ve taken heat and redicule for it…now maybe we can all see that the only way we kill the beast that we have created that threatens us all is to use our mass to split it from itself and NOT to go lookin for political coalitions with the hyenas and scavengers that follow the beast.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE WAR STUPID!!

Yeah, unfortunately the slogan would be Sex and Bombs.

I’d sell tickets to watch the surgical removal of that gavel.
Whadaya bet hizzhonour stores the gavel right next to his prize-winning collection of TommyClancie ‘how-to’ manuals.

Which begs another question: Where oh where did little Tommy disappear to, of late? Last I recall, he was living large on the talkies right around the era of ‘Misadventure Accompliced’.

fame is fleeting fleacing in some quarters, it would seem.

Thanks for the tipple, Jane.

I read that the Russians run their entire military on a budget of approx. $70 Billion per year. Compare that to our approx. $800 Billion per year. The Russians have everything that we have, just less whores on the payrole.

Outspent by a factor of 11, I guess that’s why we maintain 11 aircraft carrier and they have 1.

I suspect the same is true of everything else, including hookers.

The tax-cut fetishists have been watching the so-called “entitlement” programs like a hawk, and there’s always some “fiscal responsibility” scold trying to take a scalpel to them.

Meanwhile, there’s a mountainous pile of cash fiercely guarded by terror pimps and nobody can look into where it goes or the terrorists win.

Where do you suppose the pay-offs and graft are going to look for a place to call home? Hmmm. Let me think real hard on that.

Funny how there’s a publicly listed Fortune 500 company like Xe, which is explicitly violence for hire, but sex for hire is illegal…

The BBC ran an excellent investigative piece on it’s program “Panorama” a while back. Alan Grayson, then an attorney specialising in these cases, explained how the Bush administration was handling whistle blower cases.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aCJ2qm5qzY&feature=related

These are civil cases. The Justice Department would sign on with the sole intention of triggering a total gag order on all parties involved including their attorneys. The Justice department them slowed the process down, essentially a dead stop, leaving the cases in limbo and allowing the companies in question to continue to bid on and receive lucrative government contracts.

Ending a particular war doesn’t stop the military industrial complex from flourishing, Norske, much as I wish it did. Wars end, and then they start another one. Anti-war activists have never been able to get at the financial underpinnings that make it so profitable to keep waging them.

Weapons and military equipment are a flourishing business in the midst of a recession, largely due to the fact that their client is the federal government. You’ve got to find a way to crack that nut, and appointing a lobbyist from Raytheon with a boatload of Raytheon stock to oversee pentagon spending policy is probably not the best way to start.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/pentagon-appointee-will-m_n_161295.html

Norske,
I have not forgotten what I promised about the Vietnam Wall.
Jane will have my hide if I hijack this thread so for the time being, there are two sources I would like to have you look for.
“To Heal a Nation” a book by Jan Scruggs and Joel Sverdlow and a video of the same name. It is about the effort to dream and finally accomplish the building of the Wall. Both are excellent sources and will go a long way to your decision to visit the Wall this coming Summer.
Jane, I apologize, we were on this the other night and my computer froze up and I wanted to help Norske.

This kind of stuff has been going on since forever. But thanks to Jane for digging it out and bringing it to the light of day. I worked very briefly for the US Army in Germany in the late 1970s (post Viet Nam) and saw a lot of junk there, and I was a peon in an army recreation center.

The DoD is just out to make tons of $$$$ for the corporate overlords. War is for making money. I agree w/Norske; it’s all about war. And our overlords waste not one instant “worrying” about loss of life and all that other touchy-feely hippie new-ager leftie junk. They could care less who gets killed, maimed, loses property, whatever.

Using our tax dollars to pay for sex is sort of soothing, on one level. At least in the act of sex, one *hopes* that violence is not avoided, although the sex act is certianly not mutually exclusive of violence in some cases.

Bush/Cheney wanted no one to peek behind the Halliburton/Xe curtain because of the all mega-bucks they were raking in. That’s been clear as day since the beginning. Didn’t most of us here know that even if 9/11 never happened, the Bush crime syndicate would find some other way to start a war in the Middle East. It was a done deal since Scalia signed off on the 2000 coup de etat. Money talks.

Teabaggers have some logical gripes, but they have been brainwashed by the vast rightwing conspiracy (Hillary is right, btw, mainly it exists thru Doug Coe’s C Street “Family” boys) to blame lefties for all the sins and ills of this world, and to be distracted by those incredibly shiny objects: abortion, teh dreaded gheyz, and abstinence only education for teens running rampant on hormones.

Joe LIEberman… I guess the corporate overlords demanded that he get this seat at the table, or he has some relationship with Rahm, I dunno. We here always knew what a total putz chump thief he is. Watching him almost fellate McCain during the campaign was far enough for me. Why include him in the Dem caucus other than to obstruct? Because seriously: what else was he there for? Certainly not to vote w/Dems (pathetic lot that they are).

Yes, the killing goes on, and it will continue to go on. And my tax dollars go for sex?? More Republic hypocracy on steriods. I note that Ensign & Sanford are both still in office with nary a peep from good christinist rightists, who froth at the mouth about Edwards.

Double standards & hypocracy rules, my friends.

War – huh? What is it good for? Our corporate overlords’ pockets.

Mercenary types probably mix up sex and violence more than the average person does. Add that to being away from family and the regular sexual mores and, viola! You’ve got a cocktail of depravity.

War has always been that way. American soldiers (or contractors) are no different.

Please define the contest more clearly for Round 2. For example, is it a contest to help worthy progressives who need help the most so we will have as many in Congress as possible? Is it a contest to determine which progressive is the best progressive ever and give him or her an award? Or is it a contest to see which progressives can do the best job keeping up with and schmoozing the online community and who have the best email lists already built up?

At the beginning, the contest was presented as something far closer to the first of these. By the end, it was far more the second and third of these.

Sorry for the OT. Is it ok to present several suggestions for Round 2 in a diary?

Citizen Hamsher:

Forcing various components of the military-industrial complex into conflict with each other is called POLITICS and if you read what I wrote I referred to the “political phyisics” of guns and butter or bankers and oiligarchs. LBJ attempted to satisfy both guns and butter and not only lost his presidency but lost the war and the following recession and economic dislocation that led to Reagan was history teachin’ political physics lessons. My greetings and salutations are not my solution to the problem, they are in fact tryin to draw attention to the fact that continuing war will bankrupt EVERYone including the banking and financial sector that becomes part of the political solution when threatened by the corporate Cowboys.

Keep the heat on in the congress on healthcare and jobs and force the banskters to choose their own fate…there is a point at which the cards can’t hold up the house.

How much of those “financial underpinnings” inadvertently find their way into the pocketbooks of members of Congress, Jane?

Why is it “impolite” and impolitic for the people to ask that question?

When it comes to war “profits” that would be the logical place to start, since it is Congress and only Congress that can then, being fully conscious and virtuous, pursue the larger question of who “benefits” … um … a trifle excessively from organized mayhem?

I know, sacred cows etc. etc.

The Question That Can’t Be Asked ….

DW

This is what happens when you have a fake war, with no real enemy except truth. Daily bombings and killings continue in Iraq, Afghanistana, Pakistan, etc. How much you see on the news? When Bush was the puppet Prez, this stuff was talked about daily. Not now. Guess those children and women overseas will be relieved to know they are no longer at risk of being raped or killed now that Obama is Prez and the wars are over. They aren’t over? Must be. Blogs and media rarely interrupt their daily coverage of Rethuglican idiocy and Democrap blaming to show any of it. We’ve went from shouts and screams of end the wars, to …meh…who cares we have to discuss Rethuglican obstructionism and Michelles new dress and the genius of Obama’s chess playing. Ya gotta admit how hypocritical it sounds to discuss American healthcare while bombing weddings and funerals in a foreign nation.

Remember, Norske, Eisenhower first entitled it: “The military-industrial-Congressional Complex” … but Congress objected, loudly and most indignantly.

I wonder why?

DW

Citizen AppleCanyon2:

Thanx Brother but my decision has already been made for me by the folks behind the names on the Wall, I’m goin the only question is when…and I remember the fight over buildin the monument and the resistence from “the greatest generation”…Jesus, if I ever run into that bastard Tom Browkow I’m gunna get arrested for [edited by mod]. I’ll look up your references, peace brother and now back to our regularly scheduled food fight.

Browkaw isn’t worth the snot that would be smeared on your knuckles, Norske.

He’s simply a little piss ant suck-up.

And the “Greatest Generation” … wasn’t.

DW

Good points. I have pondered whether some piece of the puzzle of this insane Kabuki show is to distract us from the war, secondarily. Primary reason is to keep the cash a-flowing into the fat-cats pockets, natch.

Just incidentally, ‘hookers’ are probably so-called because of Army of the Potomac, under Maj.Gen.Hooker’s, use of them for that army;
‘Popular legend has it that his name was permanently attached to prostitutes from his Civil War actions in rounding them up in one area of Washington. ‘
http://www.militarymuseum.org/Hooker.html

Ah yes, Ruth, there are many kinds of “legacy”…

I wonder what our times will leave behind for others to remember us by?

DW

Hookers? You mean of course CongressPersons, because no actual prostitute would want that bit of nasty business.

Before that they were often referred to under the rubric of “camp follower”. Back when armies scavenged the countrysides as they moved toward confrontations.

Most memorable phrase of the day; ‘Toxic assets’;
hopefully we can be the end of them if we can stick together, as ‘robber barons’ were most memorable for being routed by the New Deal when they caused the first depression – to regroup under right wing ideology and do it again.

Alan nice to have you back. You must enjoy it here, at least a little. Obviously wingnut sites do have a problem with diverse views from reality based sources.

But the vast right wing conspiracy was not about Clinton lying about sex. It was about impeaching him. Does it exist, sure the rightwingers control the government. It is obvious your side won corporate health care, corporate oil wars, and torture is still good to go. I am guessing you will also win the Republican war against more jobs. Congratulations.

You are wrong about my local newspaper. Government funds going to expensive meals does get printed when discovered. But we rarely if ever have public funded prostitutes, maybe that is normal for Texas.

Yes, temptingfate, we no longer scavenge the “countrysides” … we merely “rough” them up a bit.

Presumably, this is “progress”?

DW

Toxic assets and toxic waste …

Indeed, that could be our legacy.

(Summed up in the phrase, “We got ours, screw you! All of you, forever!” )

DW

Now we hire private contractors to give the troops out-of-date food and unpotable water, and use public funds to pay for their own hookers. There’s poetry in there somewhere.

At least in the eyes of the out-sorcerers …

“Out … source … damn Spot! … ya just pissed all over us again …”

What is America’s greatest export.

Bombs and the “behaviors” which attend them, especially “smart” bombs and other drones …

Yes, I can see our future, already …

Get yer contracts, red-hot contracts, right here, see the world and blow it to hell, get some ass too, the taxpayers won’t mind, and if they do, well screw ‘em.

And then, Amerika rode off into the sunset, as little people everywhere looked on with shock and awe.

Every time that I think that I’m beyond being shocked by the news… well, this is a gobsmacker.

These people have no sense of shame.
But I’ll bet they’re making plenty of campaign contributions to conservative and BlueDog Congressional members…

Of note is that the lawsuit was unsealed because the DOJ has made a final decision that is not going to participate in the suit.

Apparently it’s looking forward…

The DOJ does not wish to sully its reputation by being, in any way, associated with such despicable behaviors.

Standing up against Blackwater/Xe would cast the DOJ in a bad light.

Besides, Mary, what “the people” don’t know can’t possibly hurt them.

Unless it does.

DW

Blackwater billed government for prostitute

Well, as out commander in chief states:

I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth and I support the free market system.

But seriously, private armies are a horrible idea. How long before the chickens come home to roost and these private armies start to be agressively used on American soil? Welcome to the Banana Republic of the United States of America.

High class call-girls don’t come cheap…

Sounds like a pop song. With a really bad video.