Needlenose

As you undoubtedly know by now — especially if you’ve had the misfortune to be near a TV tuned to a cable news station in the past 24 hours — al-Qaeda appears to have made another half-hearted plea for relevance, somewhat harebrained in keeping with most of its latter-day attempts at U.S. terrorism (“Let’s send packages with protruding wires from an Arab country to Jewish synagogues in America… no one will suspect a thing!”).

For a demonstration how professionals operate when they want to undermine a democracy, see the Washington Post today:

… new political groups have sprouted like mushrooms in the final weeks of the 2010 campaign, dumping tens of millions of dollars into House and Senate races and, in many cases, avoiding the need to tell voters who is funding their activities.

The frenzy is possible largely because of federal rulings making it easier and more advantageous to set up “super PACs” […] with no limits on fundraising or spending. More than three dozen super PACs and other political groups began spending money for the first time within the past ten days, according to a Washington Post analysis of FEC records.

The surge underscores the outsized role played this year by independent interest groups, which are expected to spend as much $500 million on the midterms. Some political committees are so new they don’t have to reveal details about their backing until after the election; others operating as nonprofits will never have to disclose their donors.

The story by Dan Eggen is accompanied by a broader piece on the radical-right Supreme Court that has enthusiastically facilitated this situation:

Almost from the moment Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the bench five years ago, the court’s conservatives have acted systematically on their deep skepticism of campaign spending restrictions. They repeatedly have questioned the ability of Congress to restrict the role of wealth and special interest involvement in elections without offending the First Amendment guarantee of unfettered political speech. . . .

. . . [Trevor] Potter, now president of the Campaign Legal Center, which supports campaign finance reform [said,]“Citizens United put a Supreme Court good-housekeeping-seal-of-approval on corporations being allowed in elections.”

. . . “While American democracy is imperfect,” [dissenting Justice John Paul] Stevens wrote in his 90-page opinion, “few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, but colleague Antonin Scalia took up his pen to specifically answer Stevens.

“To exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy,” he wrote. “We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate.“

I’ll bet you never knew that the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence to enshrine the dominance of “the principal agents of the modern free economy,” rather than that silly nonsense about all men being created equal.

I’m sure, though, that future history books will correct this oversight.  Just as soon as education is privatized, just like our elections have been.

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Guest post from Spy Buddy:

“Jim Hightower recently wrote about parasitical hedge fund managers (http://www.jimhightower.com/node/7280). Hightower makes a great point that hedge fund managers are crying because Obama wants to close a tax loophole enabling government to tax hedge funds at a 35% rate (a rate that applies to ordinary income) rather than at the 15% it gets today.

I am surprised hedge funds are being so vocal and calling attention to themselves. Like cockroaches, I thought this group may want to avoid the public spotlight due to their latest ventures.   The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/18/the-new-tax-man-big-banks_n_766169.html) reported that hedge funds, and of course the banks we the taxpayers bailed out, are now creating companies that purchase from local governments the right to collect delinquent taxes on properties, many in distressed housing markets. These companies pay overdue real estate taxes then can and do legally collect the debt and levy fees, often outrageous fees. I don’t think collecting on a debt is a bad but charging sky rocketing fees is. This practice often results in property owners find their fees growing beyond recognition into thousands of dollars from originally owing just several hundred dollars.”

Screw the teabaggers, here is the hottest new political party:

Tip of the ‘Nose to Film Critic Buddy!

Aaaaacck!

What a complete fucking moron.  You’d think if  you were heading into the debate that would make or break your election chances, and you were planning to mouth off about the Constitution, you’d at least try reading the damn thing, right?  Or at least the First Amendment?

Unluckily for her, she’s not running in a dumbshit state(1,2,3) like Arizona, where her ignorance would undoubtedly have vaulted her ahead of Harry Reid.

(1) Arizonans think bringing guns in bars is a good idea

(2) Arizonans keep voting for McCain

(3) Arizonans having a good time

"Happy Birthday, Mr. Ratzinger..."

Guest Post from Spy Buddy:

What do Achmadinejad and the Pope have in common?  They’re both bonkers about Carla Bruni  (Is her music that bad?)! Its one of the few topics the Pope and a conservative Iranian newspaper have in common. An Iranian paper called her a prostitute and the Pope would not meet with her because of her nude photos.

I can understand why the Iranian paper has a hard with Bruni, the paper clearly reflects the Iranian regimes misogynistic views – but the Pope?  Instead of insulting Carla, the Pope should diss her husband (whom he has met) due to his causing such human misery by shipping back gypsies to Romania and Hungary or take the moral high ground and actually address the criminal role the Catholic Church played in covering up priestly child molestation.  Apparently it’s much more meaningful to condemn a naked woman than dealing with real such as finding soltutions to alleviate people’s hardship and misery.

McNerney did us all a great favor a few years back and kicked Pombo’s ass out of the House.  Now he’s running neck and neck against a massively financed reactionary candidate, David Harmer, who (among other extremist views) wants to abolish our public school system.  McNerney needs your help again to stop the GOP juggernaut, so contribute or volunteer ASAP to stop the re-infestation of California’s Congressional District 11.

Don't bother calling the cops honey, I've got Sharia on my side!

UAE’s highest sharia court says it’s okay to beat your wife and kids – provided you wear a wife-beater shirt while doing it!  Although in their defense (at least against hypocritical US reactionaries), I believe paddling kids is legal everywhere in the U.S., whereas the UAE figures Allah’s only okay with it until puberty, so at least a their kids beating policy seems a smidgen better.

(Via the White House.)

(NOTE: This is a re-written version of the post below, updated to reflect a NY Times story that appeared online after I posted it.  It originally appeared at Firedoglake.)

You’d think the American government would be happy that Iraq’s post-election political process — which has been a perpetual-immobility machine since last spring’s parliamentary elections — is finally starting to inch forward.

But you would be wrong.  In a story from Sunday with the bland headline of “U.S. Presses Iraqi Leaders to Broaden Coalition” (yeah, what else is new?), the New York Times buries this detail after the lead paragraph:

The administration has sought and received assurances that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki will not offer the followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr positions in charge of Iraq’s security forces in exchange for supporting Mr. Maliki’s bid for a second term in office, according to officials familiar with negotiations now under way.

. . . The Sadrists’ surprising support of Mr. Maliki, only weeks after opposing his nomination, raised alarms in Washington and gave new urgency to the efforts to persuade Mr. Maliki to include the country’s other main factions in a new government.

The article goes on to quote U.S ambassador James Jeffrey as saying the Obama administration wants “clarity on whether the Sadrist movement is a political movement or it is an armed militia which carries out political objectives through violent means.” In fact, though, the Sadrists could soon be both.

Reports to this effect have been cropping up in the fine print of news stories for a few days now.  Last week, the Associated Press reported:

A leading member of al-Sadr’s movement said their demands include as many as six of the 34 Cabinet-level ministry posts, possibly the trade ministry and one post linked to security operations.

Meanwhile, Sam Dagher wrote for the Wall Street Journal:

A senior leader in Mr. Maliki’s party said Mr. Sadr’s movement had demanded key ministries [and] a 25% quota of all government jobs, including in the army and police.

Whatever “assurances” the Obama administration has received that these deals won’t come to fruition are likely to be illusory.  Although his regime has accomplished little else, Maliki has shown expertise in finding or creating loopholes in any rules designed to limit his power–in fact, that is why the prime minister has had such a hard time finding any allies since March.

And here lies the real explanation of why Sadr, who at one point seemed to be the political figure most opposed to Maliki’s re-nomination, become the first major leader to officially endorse him.  The conventional wisdom credited the turnabout to pressure from Iran, but the truth has more to do with cold-blooded horse-trading within Iraq.

Any added power the Sadr faction gains over its previous participation in the government will come at the expense not of Maliki, but of the Sadrists’ erstwhile allies in the short-lived Iraqi National Alliance, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), who named a would-be prime minister (Adel Abdel-Mahdi) with support from the Sadr bloc just a month ago.

Having followed Iraqi politics for a while, that was the announcement that surprised me.  You see, ISCI and the Sadrists have had a feud that dates to before the U.S. invasion and has erupted into violence on several occasions since 2003, usually in regard to ISCI’s control of key Muslim shrines in Najaf and Karbala.  In fact, Maliki came to power as an unknown in 2006 due to Moqtada’s determination to keep the prime minister’s job from going to… Adel Abdel-Mahdi of ISCI.

That history appears to be repeating itself now.  Because, with Sadr’s supposedly secured backing, Abdel-Mahdi and ISCI went hat in hand to other major factions (Iyad Allawi and the Kurdish parties) looking for further support in deposing Maliki — only to have the Sadrists go back to the prime minister and cut a deal that threw ISCI under the bus, leaving their powerful ministries (ISCI had been in charge of the army, police, and finance ministries since the 2005 elections) up for grabs.

Those ministries, and the power they represent, appear to be what Sadr was angling after all along.  I’d say, “cue the Scott Joplin piano music,” if it weren’t for the grim implications of what a Sadr-influenced army and police force might have in store for the Iraqi people.

Cracks finally appear to be forming in the perpetual-immobility machine that has been Iraq’s post-election political process since last spring’s nationwide elections.

This morning, Qassim Abdul-Zahra of the Associated Press reported:

The Sunni-backed political coalition that narrowly won the most votes in Iraq’s parliamentary election appeared Sunday to be giving up its demand for the premiership, boosting the Shiite prime minister’s drive to keep his job.

. . . “We have reached a position that we don’t care anymore about posts,” said Sheik Adnan al-Danbous, a Shiite who is close to Iraqiya chief Ayad Allawi. “Posts are not as important to us as having participation in decision-making.”

. . . “We don’t mind if al-Maliki is the prime minister, but we have to have a decision-making post,” al-Danbous told The Associated Press.

What Abdul-Zahra refers to as a “stunning turnabout” from Iraqiya’s months-long refusal to have anything to do with a Maliki-led government signifies that Allawi is beginning to accept that he’ll be Iraq’s Al Gore, as I dubbed him when his slate won a narrow plurality in the spring elections.

It’s no coincidence that this shift happened just days after Moqtada as-Sadr’s similar about-face caused his faction to back current prime minister Nouri al-Maliki (joined by some smaller allied Shiite parties).  By bringing him within one more key bloc of having a parliamentary majority, the Sadrist endorsement gave Maliki the leverage needed to tell Iraqiya to get on board or miss the train of government power — and the resulting patronage opportunies — completely.

Not that Iraqiya is likely to get the “decision-making post” the Allawi aide mentions as a fallback demand.  In an interview on Friday, Maliki told the Jane Arraf of the Christian Science Monitor that he was offering to create a new National Council for Strategic Studies as part of the cabinet, and put Allawi in charge of it.  But this gambit has been tried before, and failed.  Although his regime has accomplished little else, Maliki has shown expertise in finding or creating loopholes in any rules designed to limit his power… in fact, that is why the prime minister has had such a hard time finding any allies since March.

So why did Sadr, who at one point seemed to be the political figure most opposed to Maliki’s re-nomination, become the first major leader to officially endorse it?  The conventional wisdom has credited the turnabout to pressure from Iran, but I think that view is too shallow.  What Iran wanted was to keep a coalition led by Iraq’s Shiite religious parties in power, and that was always inevitable — the main reason the stalemate over creating a government has dragged out so long is that despites the Sadrists’ fervently voiced objections to Maliki staying in power, they really had nowhere else to go.  It was just a matter of what price they would demand for coming on board.

That price, according to various reports (which, despite a denial in the CSM interview from Maliki, are likely accurate), is that Sadr’s supporters will run substantially more influential ministries than they did the last time they were in the government… including a key role in the army/police forces.  This added power will come at the expense not of Maliki, but of the Sadrists’ erstwhile allies in the short-lived Iraqi National Alliance, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), who named a would-be prime minister (Adel Abdel-Mahdi) with support from the Sadr bloc just a month ago.

With that tentative backing in hand, Abdel-Mahdi and ISCI went hat in hand to Allawi and the Kurdish parties looking for further support in deposing Maliki — only to have the Sadrists go back to the prime minister and cut a deal that threw ISCI under the bus, leaving their powerful ministries (ISCI had been in charge of the army, police, and finance ministries since the 2005 elections) up for grabs.

It’s not really that surprising when you understand that ISCI and the Sadrists have had a feud that dates to before the U.S. invasion and has erupted into violence on several occasions since 2003, usually in regard to ISCI’s control of key Muslim shrines in Najaf and Karbala.  In fact, Maliki came to power as an unknown in 2006 due to Moqtada’s determination to keep the prime minister’s job from going to… Adel Abdel-Mahdi of ISCI.  That history appears to be repeating itself now, even if it was preceded by a thoroughly convincing head fake on Moqtada’s part. (Cue Scott Joplin piano music.)

Of course, you’ll note that in these tales of political maneuvering, there’s precious little to be said about actual government policies, much less the benefits to ordinary Iraqis that should be the goal of such policies.  As with politics in so many other countries, that seems to be an irrelevant concern to the supposed leaders of Iraq.