David Vitter has demonstrated once again what a low-life hypocrite he is.
…Vitter has chosen to fight for BP and oil companies, which might not go over well in Louisiana under the circumstances. For another, Vitter has kept Brent Furer on the payroll.
Who’s Brent Furer? He’s the Senate aide who allegedly held his ex-girlfriend hostage, "threatening to kill her, placing his hand over her mouth, and cutting her in the hand and neck."
After drinking at a restaurant, the two returned to Furer’s Capitol Hill apartment, the report says. Furer "would not let her leave." He "pulled on her coat, which caused it to rip," then "pulled out a knife and stabbed [her] in the hand," the police report says.
Charging documents allege that Furer became angry when he found phone numbers for other men in her blackberry. He smashed her phone when she tried to call 911, the records say, and he shoved her to the floor when she tried to leave, then held his hand over her mouth and threw her on a bed.
Demopoulos told police Furer "uttered the words to her, ‘Do you want to get serious.’" Then, the arrest warrant states, Furer "grabbed an unknown object and held it under her neck. The suspect asked the complainant, ‘Do you want to die?’ The complainant replies and she stated, ‘No, I don’t want to die.’"
After a 90 minute standoff, Furer made her promise not to call police, and then allowed her to leave. She fled to a friend’s house, and was taken by ambulance to the hospital. A slash on her chin took eight stitches to close, the police report says.
Brent Furer now receives taxpayer money to oversee women’s issues for Sen. Vitter. I wish I were kidding, but there’s nothing funny about this.
Vitter is well aware of Furer’s transgressions. Vitter is also well aware of the fact that Furer has been arrested on four other occasions — three times for DUI, and once for cocaine possession. Indeed, at present, Furer remains wanted on an open warrant in Baton Rouge… [emphasis added]
First, Vitter must have used his influence to get Furer special treatment, so he could stay out of prison and continue to work for Dave after being convicted. I don’t know Louisiana law, but here in Oregon, Furer would have been convicted of at least Kidnapping I and Assault I, bringing 20 years with no time off for good behavior. He would be in prison at least until 2038.
Second, putting Furer in charge of women’s issues would be like putting Cheney in charge of energy policy.
I understand that since the source article was published, Furer has resigned. Both he and Vitter refused to comment.
Now, I of all people believe in giving someone a second chance. But first they have to take responsibility for their crimes and rehabilitate themselves. I see no evidence that he has. Evading an outstanding warrant is evidence that he has not.
If Vitter has any of the values he professes to have, I can’t imaging him being involved with this. Perhaps it’s the name. Could it be that Dave likes to diaper-crawl across the carpet and squeak, “Mein Furer”?
I have to admit, I did not not expect Obama to appoint David Petraeus to replace the Teabagger of the General set, Stanley “Bite me” McChrystal. Although I disagree with the policy implications of his choice, I have to admire the way put the GOP in a position where they cannot challenge his decision. without making complete fools of themselves.
President Barack Obama has accomplished what many might have thought impossible just a few hours earlier. He has fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his combat commander in Afghanistan, in such a way that not only will the general go unmissed but his name will likely soon be forgotten.
Obama’s decision to replace McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus is a stroke of brilliance, an unassailable move, politically and strategically.
On a political level, McChrystal has many fans inside Congress and the military, but Petraeus has orders of magnitude more. No one could accuse Obama of compromising the war effort, knowing that Petraeus is stepping in.
On a strategic level, while McChrystal designed the U.S. military policy in Afghanistan, Petraeus is its ur-architect. Petraeus literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency strategy while McChrystal was still running the black-bag hunter-killers of the special-ops command.
Petraeus has also spent the last year and a half as head of U.S. Central Command, supervising military operations throughout the Persian Gulf and central Asia, including Afghanistan. McChrystal has built relations with political and military leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Petraeus has been building the same relations, plus some.
Those who might have expected a scaling back in the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan will, and should, be disappointed. In his Rose Garden speech this afternoon, Obama made the point explicitly: "This is a change in personnel," he said, "but it is not a change in policy."
One of those who might be disappointed in this remark—and in the naming of Petraeus as McChrystal’s replacement—is Michael Hastings, the author of the Rolling Stone article that triggered this chain of events.
The last, and less-noticed, part of the article, which was called "The Runaway General," not only amounted to a critique of the whole idea of counterinsurgency but also suggested that President Obama bought into the concept, ensnared by the wily Gen. McChrystal, without grasping its full implications… [emphasis added]
I have to admit that when the Betrayus ad, came out, I was one of the ones who jumped on the bandwagon. I was wrong. Every six months for three years, GW ChickenHawk had slithered in front of the cameras to announce a brand new strategy, each with its flashy new name. Without exception, the only thing new had been the name. So when he trotted out David Petraeus, I had no reason so suspect anything different. In fact, Petraeus did stabilize the situation. US casualties are still down. US troops have been withdrawn from combat, and most will be pulling out soon.
I continue to oppose this war. I expect counter insurgency to fail for the same reasons I gave yesterday. As long as Petraeus is saddled with Karzai, he’s doomed. But if anyone can get us enough breathing space to get out, he can.
In Iraq, he bribed terrorists to stop being terrorists and join us instead. Ironically, to do the same thing in Afghanistan may be problematic, because the GOP activists on SCOTUS just ruled that strategy to be a crime.
Joe “BP” Barton was sorry for apologizing to BP before he wasn’t, before he was, before he wasn’t.
Earlier today, Joe Barton once again apologized to BP, Tweeting an article defending his apology under the header "Joe Barton was right." And just like last time, he swiftly retracted the apology, deleting the Tweet and retracting the reapology. This time, Barton’s spokesman is taking the blame, telling Greg Sargent that the office never meant to publicly promote the article on Twitter.
Without thinking about it much, I added a headline from one of the daily news clips to a website that is, in turn, linked to the congressman’s Twitter account. I won’t be doing that again.
The site in question is hxxp://repjoebarton.amplify.com/ [oil pig delinked], a public website that promotes Joe Barton and his policy views. So even if Barton’s office never intended to push the article defending his apology on Twitter, it’s obvious they were publicly promoting it at on Barton’s amplify.com site. And just like last time, now that it’s gotten attention, Barton’s office is trying to control the political damage.
It’s yet more evidence that Joe Barton meant what he said when he apologized to BP and that his retraction was about politics…
Like I have repeatedly said, Barton was never sorry. He was acting under orders from the GOP leadership. That’s why he’s still ranking member on energy and will not be removed.
Yesterday I started out exhausted, because I had been unable to sleep wearing the CPAP mask. I had to go wut to run errands and has several hours of work to get done for today. Nevertheless, I replied to outstanding comments, but got no visiting in. Today I have a board meeting and it’s my volunteer day at the prison. I may get a little done this morning, before I leave. Expect tomorrow’s articles to be up quite late, because I won’t even get home tonight until the time normally wake up to do research.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 3:55. To do it, click here. How did you do?
From TPM: Health care reform turned an important political corner. A Gallup poll released yesterday finds that, for the first time in months, more Americans say that the Affordable Care Act is a good thing than think it’s a bad thing.
The more it kicks in, the more GOP propaganda will die on the vine.
From Think Progress: Missouri farmer David Jungerman has raised the hackles of local residents with a politically-charged sign he’s placed on his “45-foot-long, semi-truck box trailer” on his farm. The trailer reads: “Are you a Producer or Parasite Democrats – Party of the Parasites.” Now, the Kansas City Star reveals that Jungerman has been the recipient of over a million dollars of federal farm subsidies since 1995.
Isn’t this typical for the Greed Of Parasite party? They love to accuse Democrats of exactly what they are doing themselves.
Last October, I questioned Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s fitness for command, but first an update.
President Obama plans to decide the fate of his top commander in Afghanistan Wednesday after a firestorm over remarks the general and members of his staff made that were contemptuous of senior administration officials.
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has prepared a letter of resignation, though President Obama had not made up his mind whether to accept it when they meet Wednesday morning.
“I think it’s clear that the article in which he and his team appeared showed poor judgment,” Mr. Obama said after a cabinet meeting Tuesday. “But I also want to make sure I talk to him directly before I make final judgment.”…
Here is just the conclusion of Michael Hastings’ article in question.
…Back in Afghanistan, less than a month after the White House meeting with Karzai and all the talk of "progress," McChrystal is hit by the biggest blow to his vision of counterinsurgency. Since last year, the Pentagon had been planning to launch a major military operation this summer in Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city and the Taliban’s original home base. It was supposed to be a decisive turning point in the war – the primary reason for the troop surge that McChrystal wrested from Obama late last year. But on June 10th, acknowledging that the military still needs to lay more groundwork, the general announced that he is postponing the offensive until the fall. Rather than one big battle, like Fallujah or Ramadi, U.S. troops will implement what McChrystal calls a "rising tide of security." The Afghan police and army will enter Kandahar to attempt to seize control of neighborhoods, while the U.S. pours $90 million of aid into the city to win over the civilian population.
Even proponents of counterinsurgency are hard-pressed to explain the new plan. "This isn’t a classic operation," says a U.S. military official. "It’s not going to be Black Hawk Down. There aren’t going to be doors kicked in." Other U.S. officials insist that doors are going to be kicked in, but that it’s going to be a kinder, gentler offensive than the disaster in Marja. "The Taliban have a jackboot on the city," says a military official. "We have to remove them, but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t alienate the population." When Vice President Biden was briefed on the new plan in the Oval Office, insiders say he was shocked to see how much it mirrored the more gradual plan of counterterrorism that he advocated last fall. "This looks like CT-plus!" he said, according to U.S. officials familiar with the meeting.
Whatever the nature of the new plan, the delay underscores the fundamental flaws of counterinsurgency. After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we’re picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.
I encourage you to read the article. This is just a tiny part. What it does, however, is demonstrate that McChrystal’s policy is failing.
Of course, we can depend on the GOP to blame Obama and the author, not the insubordinate general.
In response to General McChrystal’s seemingly insubordinate comments about President Obama, Vice President Biden and others, conservatives on the Hill are flirting with the idea of…getting McChrystal’s back. While almost no elected officials, save retiring Rep. David Obey (D-WI) are actively calling for McChrystal’s resignation, members of the GOP’s right flank are walking right up to the line of defending him.
"The thing that’s regrettable is that the whole thing with the magazine was released, because here’s a guy who’s undoubtedly the most qualified person to take on all these difficult things over in Afghanistan," Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) told reporters this afternoon. "It’s regrettable that it all happened through Rolling Stone, I think that’s the main problem there, and I still can’t figure out how that happened."
"I know him, I’ve been with him in the field, there’s no one as qualified as he is to run the show in Afghanistan," Inhofe added.
Over in the House, Minority Whip Eric Cantor chalked the whole thing up not to McChrystal’s questionable judgment as an officer serving under civilian rule, but to McChrystal’s (presumably understandable) frustration with the Obama administration… [emphasis added]
I can agree that McChrystal is frustrated, and I can understand that frustration. One of the prime maxims of a counterinsurgency strategy is that maximum possible success is directly proportional to the quality and integrity of the government being supported. In this case, that is the corrupt Unocal puppet that GW ChickenHawk installed, Hamid Karzai. Supporting a government with scant quality and zero integrity, McChrystal never had a chance. In this situation, he should have never pushed for a counterinsurgency strategy.
This is the first Special Comment of his I’ve seen, with which I do not completely agree. I’m more inclined to think Obama should fire him, although the notion of sending McChrystal back, as a whipped dog, to oversee the immediate withdrawal of all troops does sound sweet, too. Obama is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t. If he fires McChrystal, I expect McChrystal to be on the 2012 Republican ticket for President or VP. If he keeps him, he will further alienate his base, and the GOP will call keeping him an admission of incompetence by Obama. Also, I just don’t see how he can keep him without completely undermining the chain-of-command.
Obama’s mistake in all this was to appoint McChrystal at all. Back on 10/7/2009, I was writing in the context of McChrystal trying to box Obama in by presenting his strategy in the UK, before even discussing it with Obama, I was also discussing McChrystal’s role in covering up the death of Pat Tillman. Because Tillman’s letters home had been critical of the war, I thought it possible Tillman may have been silenced to protect the image of a Bush/GOP poster child for war. This is what I said:
I ask you this. How can we depend on this man, given his recent track record, to tell Obama the truth? Doesn’t his recent speech in the UK, trying to sell his plan, even before discussing it with Obama, reveal that he has an agenda of his own? Do you share my fear that this man will commit war crimes on his own, and that Obama will be blamed for them? Why is this man in command?
Was I right or was I right?
In conclusion, regardless what Obama does with McChrystal, it’s clear that the plan is not working. As long as we’re supporting a corrupt GOP puppet, no plan will work. It’s time to end the bleeding.
Ronald Reagan appointed some of the best judges money can buy… and in this case, has.
Today, Judge Martin Feldman, a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, sided with a drilling company which had argued that the Obama administration’s blanket, 6-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was illegal. The drilling company, Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, LA, claimed financial distress from the imposition of the moratorium. In the ruling handed down this afternoon, Judge Feldman agreed, writing that the administration made an “arbitrary and capricious” decision that would have an “immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country.” Like many judges presiding in the Gulf region, Feldman owns lots of energy stocks, including Transocean, Halliburton, and two of BP’s largest U.S. private shareholders — BlackRock (7.1%) and JP Morgan Chase (28.3%). Here’s a list of Feldman’s income in 2008 (amounts listed unless under $1,000):
BlackRock ($12000- $36000)
Ocean Energy ($1000 – $2500)
NGP Capital Resources ($1000 – $2500)
Quicksilver Resources ($5000 – $15000)
Hercules Offshore ($6000 – $17500)
Provident Energy
Peabody Energy
PenGrowth Energy
RPC Inc
Atlas Energy Resources
Parker Drilling
TXCO Resources
EV Energy Partners
Rowan Companies
BPZ Resources
El Paso Corp
KBR Inc
Chesapeake Energy
ATP Oil & Gas
In his opinion today, Feldman wrote, “Oil and gas production is quite simply elemental to Gulf communities.”…[emphasis added]
This guy’s portfolio could be the subject of a new book: Who’s Who in Cheney’s Office? Why didn’t he recuse himself? I think I know. He’s just a run of the mill, average, greedy, ideologue, corrupt, activist Republican judge.
The administration is appealing, and Salazar is rewriting the order.
Although it is not yet written in stone, it appears that the consumer financial protection area that comes out of conference will have most of the attributes we wanted.
Lawmakers on a special negotiating committee narrowing differences in the broader rewrite of financial regulation in generations agreed in principle Tuesday to create a new government agency to oversee credit products offered to consumers.
Senators on the conference committee late Tuesday accepted a host of House of Representatives amendments, all but clearing the way for creation of what will be called the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection to be housed at the Federal Reserve and partially funded by the central bank.
The panel would address several of the contributing factors to the U.S. financial crisis, especially mortgage lending, a root cause of the crisis. Big non-bank lenders and mortgage brokers, who together exploited gaps in federal regulation or located in states with weak local regulation, will now come under the purview of the bureau. Similarly, payday lenders who have had little direct federal regulation now will be under a regulatory microscope.
"Gaming the regulatory system will become totally something of the past," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a lead negotiator.
Patterned loosely after a similar panel in Canada, the Bureau Consumer of Financial Protection would be headed by an independent director who must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The bureau will get powers of autonomy to write rules for consumer protections for almost all lenders that extend credit to consumers.
In a victory for community banks and some smaller regional lenders, the bureau’s regulatory reach will be limited to lenders with assets of $10 billion or more. For those under that threshold, their appropriate regulator would still examine their consumer credit programs although the bureau would still write rules governing all lenders.
Although no provision is set in stone until the entire negotiation is over, and a couple of controversial provisions were set aside for more back and forth offers, participants from the House and Senate agreed that the new consumer panel will set rules for and police mortgages, credit cards, student loans, many car loans and even payday lending… [emphasis added]
With her tireless lobbying for an independent agency, Elizabeth Warren is the individual most responsible for getting it. She should be the first director.
…Vitter has chosen to fight for BP and oil companies, which might not go over well in Louisiana under the circumstances. For another, Vitter has kept Brent Furer on the payroll.
