IT'S TAKEN A WHILE BUT DANA MIBLANK FINALLY DISCOVERS THERE'S SOMETHING A LITTLE OFF ABOUT CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O:
No, preezy is making me queasy because his nonstop campaigning is looking, well, sleazy – and his ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn't have killed Osama bin Laden is just the beginning of it.
In a political culture that long ago surrendered to the permanent campaign, Obama has managed to take things to a new level. According to statistics compiled for a book to be published this summer, the president has already set a record for total first-term fundraisers – 191 – and that's only through March 6.
WHEN YOU APPLAUD A TODDLER THROWING TANTRUMS AND BREAKING RULES, YOU RAISE A SPOILED CHILD.
CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O IS THE PRESS CREATED NEWBORN. DANA MILBANK'S NIPPLES MAY FINALLY BE SORE BUT HE SHOULD HAVE TAKEN BARRY O OFF THE TEET LONG AGO.
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
Starting in the US with a jury verdict. Levi Pulkkinen (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) reports
a federal Jury in Seattle has returned a verdict "late Monday" which
found Catholic Community Services wrongly terminated Grace Campbell's
employment upon learning that the Washington National Guard sergeant had
been ordered to deploy to Iraq. It is against the law to fire someone
because they are being deployed or will be deployed. The Uniformed
Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act is among the legislation
that forbids this. However, at a February 2nd House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee hearing,
many witnesses and House members seemed unaware of this fact. There
was talk of the need for a law. No, there is only the need for
education of that law and enforcing that law is the quickest way in the
world to educate employers about it. They start having to pay hefty
fines, they'll suddenly learn that law.
Gordon Thomas Honeywell LLP represented Grace Campbell and they've released the following statement:
A federal jury today in Seattle awarded $485,000 to Washington National Guard Sergeant Grace Campbell and found that her employer had engaged in willful discrimination and harassment based on her military service. In 2008, Sergeant Campbell's
civilian employer Catholic Community Services fired her from her
position of ten years when it learned that she was set to deploy for
active service in Iraq. After her termination, Sergeant Campbell served in Iraq from October 2008 to August 2009, returning home to the Everett area without civilian work.
Catholic
Community Services' hostile treatment of Campbell began in 2006 after
she returned from active duty at the U.S. Mexican border. During
Campbell's activation, her position with CCS was left unstaffed.
Campbell's manager and her co-workers resented Campbell's absence and
the increased workload. Upon her return, Campbell's manager and
co-workers began a systematic campaign of harassment and discrimination
that included threats by Campbell's manager to fire Campbell if it was
learned that she had volunteered for duty.
Campbell
complained repeatedly to multiple levels of management at Catholic
Community Services about the discrimination, but it continued unchecked.
In an effort to find relief, Campbell made a complaint to the Employer
Support for Guard and Reserve (ESGR), the Department of Defense national
committee tasked with providing support to the Guard and Reserve in
their civilian employment. In December of 2006, a retired Naval Reserve
Commander with ESGR met with Campbell's managers in an attempt to
resolve the problems Campbell was facing at work. Despite ESGR's
involvement, the hostile treatment of Campbell continued on into 2007
and 2008.
In February 2008, Campbell told CCS co-workers that she was preparing to deploy to Iraq later that year with the Washington National Guard 81st Brigade. On March 20, 2008, Catholic Community Services fired Campbell.
Campbell's attorneys James W. Beck and Andrea H. McNeely,
Partners at Gordon Thomas Honeywell, are pleased with the verdict.
"This was a situation which never should have occurred," said Beck. "Sergeant Campbell
told her employer about the ongoing discrimination on at least three
occasions, but there was never any formal investigation or decisive
action to stop the treatment." The Uniformed Services Employment and
Reemployment Rights Act ("USERRA") prohibits harassment, discrimination,
and retaliation against Guard members related to their service. "This
is a vindication of the rights of Grace Campbell
and those like her who make sacrifices in their civilian lives to serve
their country," said McNeely. "Moreover," said Beck, "when the time
came at trial for CCS to produce a key document that it claimed was
central to its reason for terminating Campbell, the company had
destroyed the document." After a two year job search, Campbell is now
employed as a receptionist with the Department of Social and Health
Services in Seattle.
What
happened is not an isolated incident, it's happened across the country
and unless businesses realize it's much smarter to settle out of court,
look for more reports on jury verdicts against companies who have
illegaly fired people because they were deployed or were going to be
deployed. Again, firing someone for a military deployment is against
federal law.
Elsewhere, Kuwait wants justice as well. The Kuwait Times reports,
"Kuwait yesterday 'stressed need' for Ira'qs continuing regular
deposits in the UN war compensation fund in line with relevant
international resolutions. Kuwait stressed the need for continuation of
reuglar deposits in the Compensation Fund, as provided for in UN
Security Council Resolution 1956 (2010), of five percent of the proceeds
from all export sales of petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas
of Iraq . . ." This position was made clear by Khaled al-Mudhaf who
addressed the Governing Council of the United Nations Compensation
Commission yesterday. al-Mudhaf chairs the Public Ahtority for
Assessment of Compensations for Damages Resulting from the Iraqi
Agression. (Kuwait also has a successful international race car
driver by that name and a World Champion Trap Shooter by that name --
the latter of which competed in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics.) The amount
still owed, according to al-Mudhaf's statements, is $16 billion.
The
remarks are not just a call for billions to be paid, they're also a bit
of realtiy for Nouri al-Maliki, prime minister and chief thug of Iraq.
In the lead up to the March 27th Arab League Summit in March, Nouri
made efforts to establish ties to Kuwait and Kuwait ended up standing by
Nouri at the Summit, the only major country that did. Over half the
heads of state of Arab countries refused to attend with some, like
Qatar, making a public statement that this was an intentional boycott.
But Nouri had Kuwait and some Arab officials whispered to the press that
Kuwait was prostituting itself. If that were true, it would appear
that Kuwait has now made clear to Nouri the bill for a paid escort. If
the whisper was a slur against the reputation of Kuwait, then
Nouri's still learned that all his visits and public woo-ing didn't mean
a thing. This also hurts
26 April 2012 –
The United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC),
which settles the damage claims of those who suffered losses due to
Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, today made a total of $1.02 billion
available to six successful claimants.
The
latest round of payments brings the total amount of compensation
disbursed by the Commission to $36.4 billion for more than 1.5 million
successful claims of individuals, corporations, Governments and
international organizations, according to a UNCC news release.
Successful
claims are paid with funds drawn from the UN Compensation Fund, which
is funded by a percentage of the proceeds generated by the export sales
of Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products.
The
Geneva-based UNCC's Governing Council has identified six categories of
claims: four are for individuals' claims, one for corporations and one
for governments and international organizations, which also includes
claims for environmental damage.
The
Commission was established in 1991 as a subsidiary organ of the UN
Security Council. It has received nearly three million claims, including
from close to 100 governments for themselves, their nationals or their
corporations.
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey (Pravda) weighs in
calling international compensation a "joke" and insisting that Iraq has
been treated unfairly due to the fact that there's "no mention of
cross-drilling of oil, tapping into Iraqi fields, there has been no
mention of compensation payable to Iraq, and other countries, for the
invasion by NATO countries." On the topic of big money, AFP runs
today with the report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction's report that US taxpayer dollars may have gone to Iraqi
insurgents, resistance, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, etc. This is the topic
Eli Lake (Daily Beast) was reporting on yesterday,
"A 2012 audit conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction (SIGIR) and released to the public on Monday found that
76 percent of the battalion commanders surveyed believed at least some
of the CERP funds had been lost to fraud and corruption."
Yesterday, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction released April 2012: Quarterly Report To Congress.
As the report notes, the US State Dept is spending $500 million of US
taxpayer dollars on training the Iraqi police for the 2012 Fiscal Year.
Let's talk about that training:
AFP reports they're on a US military base being retrained. BBC reports:
"A programme has been under way for more than a month for comprehensive
assessment and re-training of all national police unites -- a process
called by the Americans 'transofrmational training.'" James Hider (Times of London) reports
that since 2004, "US forces have been re-training the Iraqi police, but
the programme has had little impact" and that a "survivor of Monday's
mass kidnapping . . . described how half a dozen vehicles, with official
security forces markings on them, pulled up and men in military
fatigues rounded up all the Sunnis in the shops."
That's not today. That's from the October 4, 2006 snapshot. Let's drop back to February 8th:
We covered the November 30th House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the MiddleEast and South Asia in the December 1st snapshot
and noted that Ranking Member Gary Ackerman had several questions. He
declared, "Number one, does the government of Iraq -- whose personnel we
intend to train -- support the [police training] program? Interviews
with senior Iaqi officials by the Special Inspector General show utter
didain for the program. When the Iraqis sugest that we take our money
and do things instead that are good for the United States. I think that
might be a clue." The State Dept's Brooke Darby faced that
Subcommittee. Ranking Member Gary Ackerman noted that the US had already
spent 8 years training the Iraq police force and wanted Darby to answer
as to whether it would take another 8 years before that training was
complete? Her reply was, "I'm not prepared to put a time limit on it."
She could and did talk up Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Interior
Adnan al-Asadi as a great friend to the US government. But Ackerman and
Subcommittee Chair Steve Chabot had already noted Adnan al-Asadi, but
not by name. That's the Iraqi official, for example, Ackerman was
referring to who made the suggestion "that we take our money and do
things instead that are good for the United States." He made that
remark to SIGIR Stuart Bowen.
Brooke Darby
noted that he didn't deny that comment or retract it; however, she had
spoken with him and he felt US trainers and training from the US was
needed. The big question was never asked in the hearing: If the US
government wants to know about this $500 million it is about to spend
covering the 2012 training of the Ministry of the Interior's police, why
are they talking to the Deputy Minister?
After
8 years of spending US tax payer dollars on this program and on the
verge of spending $500 million, why is the US not talking to the person
in charge ofthe Interior Ministry?
Because
Nouri never named a nominee to head it so Parliament had no one to vote
on. Nouri refused to name someone to head the US ministry but the
administration thinks it's okay to use $500 million of US tax payer
dollars to train people with a ministry that has no head?
There's
no mention in the report that the Iraqi government is matching that
$500 million with $500 million of their own. That may be one of those
facts we have to wait to find out about "later this year," to quote
another section of the report. Going through "Iraqi Funding" notes many
efforts but not on police. And yet last December 7th,
Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconsturction,
specifically raised that required matching fund when he appeared before
the House Oversight and Government Reform's Nationl Security
Subcommittee.
US House Rep Raul Labrador: So what other problems have you found with the police development program, if any?
SIGIR
Stuart Bowen: Several. Well, Mr. Labrador, we pointed out in our audit
that, one Iraqi buy-in, something that the Congress requires from
Iraq, by law, that is a contribution of 50% to such programs,has not
been secured -- in writing, in fact, or by any other means. That's of
great concern. Especially for a Ministry that has a budget of over $6
billion, a government that just approved, notionally, a hundred billion
dollar budget for next year. It's not Afghanistan. This is a country
that has signficant wealth, should be able to contribute but has not
been forced to do so, in a program as crucial as this.
To
be clear, this isn't optional. To be even more clear, the White House
should never have committed $500 million without Iraq having met the
matching fund requirement -- required by Congress.
Where is the oversight?
It's not coming from the press.
Eager to flaunt both ignorance and incompetence Kareem Raheem, Aseel Kami and Angus MacSwan (Reuters) and AFP
ran with the 'official' figures provided by the Iraqi government for
deaths due to violence in the month of April. The death toll is 126.
That's based on figures from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of
Defense and the Ministry of the Interior.
That's
what the incompetent wire services told us. They forgot to tell you
that the Ministry of Defense has no minister -- Nouri never nominated
anyone so he could illegaly take charge of it -- and the that Ministry
of the Interior has no minister -- for the same reason.
And the Minister of Health?
This
may be the worst demonstration of press whoring in Iraq currently.
Salih Mahdi Motalab al-Hasanawi held that post in Nouri's first term and
holds it in the second term and is falsely described as "a Shi'ite
Muslim, but independent of any political party." That's not how you
describe him -- though the press does and he does on his Facebook page.
Reality: In 2009, he joined what political slate? State of Law.
Nouri's State of Law. He's not independent. He may not be a member of a
political party (Nouri's political party is Dawa) but he chose to join
-- in September of 2009 -- Nouri's State of Law. He belongs to a
political slate, he is not independent.
So
Nouri's flunkies issue some figures and whores in the press who don't
have the self-respect or training to do what a reporter does runs with
those awful lies. They make no effort to provide alternate counts or
any context at all. They simply take dictation and say, 'This is what
offiicals say.' It's whoring, it's not reporting.
The IBC count is 290 for the month of April. (Click here for screen snap.)
Iraq Body Count tracks reported deaths in the press and notes that
their count is not a complete count. Once upon a time, the press was
happy to provide the IBC count, now they just whore.
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