http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/commen ts/wikileaks_nails_the_wild_lancet_scare/

* And lots of WMD were found after all: “WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results”

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continue d-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/

To be clear:

1. These aren’t the caches of wmd people thought existed, but they do disprove there were “no WMD in Iraq”. And you can’t store caches of chem wmd anyway, because they degrade rapidly – they must be stored as precursors, of which tons of caches were found. And all evidence gathered post-war shows that Saddam would have become a wmd threat – that he would have restarted programs in the near future, so it’s really here nor there whether he actually had caches of the stuff. So if you thought Saddam was a future wmd threat, you were correct.

2. None of this “proves” we should have invaded Iraq, especially if the reason not to is isolationist, for lack of a better word.

The massive economic stimulus package President Obama pushed through Congress last year is coming in on time and under budget – and with strikingly few claims of fraud or abuse – according to a White House report to be released Friday. Shocking!

(This headline must have replaced the earlier one: “Washington Post republishes White House press release, including cheap shots from Republicans drinking slurpees”

Let me translate:

1. We are nearly on schedule, already blowing 70% of the $787b with a tiny bit of evidence of recovery if you really, really stretch it (but no evidence of new jobs.)
2. With $212b, we temporarily propped up collapsing state budgets so they won’t collapse until next year or maybe the year after! 3. We even spent about 10% ($77b) on those promised “shovel-ready” projects. That’s enough that we don’t consider this program a bait and switch.
4. “Only” $12 billion of that (2% of total) has received
“complaints” as fraudulent. Those who wasted and stole the rest have not complained about it.
5. The White House’s economic model forecasted 3.5mm jobs would be saved. The CBO confirms that the model still says that 3.5mm jobs were saved.
6. Even Stan “the man” Soloway, representing government
contractors, thinks the program was great and that government contractors should get even more money.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/likely-terror-attack-dry-run-exposes-danger ous-tsa-missteps/

Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill, one much larger than the BP spill that then appeared to be underway. “Our system can handle 400 cubic metres per hour,” Weird Koops, the chairman of Spill Response Group Holland, told Radio Netherlands Worldwide, giving each Dutch ship more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill.

To protect against the possibility that its equipment wouldn’t capture all the oil gushing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch also offered to prepare for the U.S. a contingency plan to protect Louisiana’s marshlands with sand barriers. One Dutch research institute specializing in deltas, coastal areas and rivers, in fact, developed a strategy to begin building 60-mile-long sand dikes within three weeks.

The Dutch know how to handle maritime emergencies. In the event of an oil spill, The Netherlands government, which owns its own ships and high-tech skimmers, gives an oil company 12 hours to demonstrate it has the spill in hand. If the company shows signs of unpreparedness, the government dispatches its own ships at the oil company’s expense. “If there’s a country that’s experienced with building dikes and managing water, it’s the Netherlands,” says Geert Visser, the Dutch consul general in Houston.

…

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

When ships in U.S. waters take in oil-contaminated water, they are forced to store it. As U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the clean-up operation, explained in a press briefing on June 11, “We have skimmed, to date, about 18 million gallons of oily water–the oil has to be decanted from that [and] our yield is usually somewhere around 10% or 15% on that.” In other words, U.S. ships have mostly been removing water from the Gulf, requiring them to make up to 10 times as many trips to storage facilities where they off-load their oil-water mixture, an approach Koops calls “crazy.”

The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer — but only partly. Because the U.S. didn’t want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berns. According to Floris Van Hovell, a spokesman for the Dutch embassy in Washington, Dutch dredging ships could complete the berms in Louisiana twice as fast as the U.S. companies awarded the work.

…

http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/17/how-to-make-brownies-pentagon
The Pentagon’s brownie recipe is 26 pages long. Just
grab a copy of document MIL-C-
44072C
and gather your ingredients: water that conforms to the “National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (Copies are available from the Office of Drinking Water, Environmental Protection Agency, WH550D, 401 M Street, S.W., Washington, DC 20460),” and some eggs in compliance with “Regulations Governing the Inspection of Eggs and Egg Products (7 CFR Part 59),” and you’re ready to go

Now that nearly all the TARP funds used to bail out Wall
Street banks have been repaid, the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stand out as the source of the greatest taxpayer losses.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, in
the wake of the housing bubble and the unprecedented deflation in housing values that resulted, the government’s cost to bail out Fannie and Freddie will eventually reach $381 billion. That estimate may be too optimistic.

Last Christmas Eve, Treasury removed the $400 billion
cap on what the government might be required to invest in these two GSEs in the future, and this may tell the real story about the cost to taxpayers. In typical Washington fashion, everyone has amnesia about how this disaster occurred.

…

One chapter in this story took place in July 2005, when
the Senate Banking Committee, then controlled by the Republicans, adopted tough regulatory legislation for the GSEs on a party-line vote-all Republicans in favor, all Democrats opposed. The bill would have established a new regulator for Fannie and Freddie and given it authority to ensure that they maintained adequate capital, properly managed their interest rate risk, had adequate liquidity and reserves, and controlled their asset and investment portfolio growth.

Why does it seem that all of the untold stories reflect very badly on the Democrats? It’s nice to be the “good guys”.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/23/general-motors-economy-bailout-opinions -columnists-shikha-dalmia.html?boxes=opinionschannellatest

Of course, the Obama administration is spinning for GM now too.

“I had no contact with the governor or his office and so
I was not aware of what was happening, ” Obama told reporters today in Chicago. “It’s a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that, I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment.”

If so, he willfully lied about it:
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/09/obama-i-never-talked-to-blagojevic h-about-the-senate-seat-axelrod-yes-he-did/

Axlerod: “I was mistaken when I told an interviewer
last month that the President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject.”

The subpoena says:

President-elect Obama also spoke to Governor Blagojevich on December 1, 2008 in Philadelphia

Details from subpoena:
http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/The-Six-Secrets-You-Need-to-Kn ow-From-the-Blagojevich-Filing-91848634.html

1. Obama may have lied about conversations with
convicted fraudster Tony Rezko
2. Obama may have overtly recommended Valerie Jarret for
his Senate seat
3. A supporter of President Obama may have offered quid
pro quo on a Jarrett senate appointment
4. Obama maintained a list of good Senate candidates
5. Rahm Emanuel allegedly floated Cheryl Jackson’s name
for the Senate seat
6. Obama had a secret phone call with Blagojevich

But there’s an update at the last link. Looks like the cleanup team is moving in: Judge calls emergency meeting over redaction errors . Nevermind: They accidentally released the intra-office joke subpoena!