Who's Running The Show?

Everything you need to know about the relationship between Israeli Prime Ministers and American Presidents in the 21st Century is explained here.(h/t BooMan)

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.

Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.

The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.

"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

Nice to know Ehud Olmert is running America's foreign policy personally to the point where he can brag about it openly to the rest of the world.

Name another country's leader who would be allowed to make the entire US State Department make a 180-degree turn and then get to rub our faces in it publicly like this, and I'll leave Israel alone.

But it seems to me that Ehud Olmert almost feels sorry for Condi making that cease-fire resolution when he knew full well the US would never vote for it...because he controls that vote on anything having to do with Israel.

Just a thought, isn't having a foreign leader completely controlling our foreign policy towards that foreign leader's country, you know, illegal?

Void-ovich

Here in the Cincy area, the impending retirement of GOP Senator George Voinovich has been all but a done deal. Today, that deal is done.

Voinovich announced his retirement this morning after a weekend filled with speculation that he was planning to step aside.

"This has not been an easy decision for us," Voinovich said of he and his wife. "I still have the fire in my belly to do the work of our nation, but after serving the next two years, it will be time to step back and spend the rest of our time with our children and grandchildren, siblings and extended family and friends."

Even as Voinovich's decision went public, former Rep. Rob Portman was moving to consolidate support behind his candidacy for the Republican nomination. Portman has already reached out to House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) to make clear he would run, and reportedly will unveil Mercer Reynolds, the finance chairman of President George W. Bush's reelection race, as his lead money man. A formal announcement by Portman is likely by the end of the week.

Malkinvania declares personal victory over her arch enemy, the hated Republicans old white guys people who refuse to put Muslims in concentration camps, and Cap'n Crunch gives us the brilliant analysis of how Republicans "can’t afford too many more retirements if the Republicans expect to make a comeback in 2010" which is like saying "We can't let the other team score too many more touchdowns" when you're down 35-3 at the half.

Voinovich isn't a terrible guy for a Republican. He had his moments as mayor of Cleveland and Governor of Ohio before he became Senator, and he actually spoke out against Iraq once or twice (and most famously spoke out against John Bolton's nomination as UN Ambassador.) Of course, he didn't actually do anything about Bush's illegal crap...but then again a hell of a lot of Democrats fall in to that category too.

Still, this leaves the seat wide open for the Dems to pick up in 22 months.

The Rich Are Truly Different From You And Me

...mainly because they can afford better legal representation, like Bernie Madoff.

A U.S. magistrate judge on Monday, has allowed Bernard Madoff to remain free on bail.

Guy steals $347 bucks in an armed robbery, he's a blight on humanity and has to be denied bail because we're tough on crooks. Guy steals tens of billions, he's clearly not a flight risk. He doesn't have the means to go anywhere.

Last Guy Out Of The Press Room Hit The Lights

Bush's final press conference (as President, I'm hoping it's the last time he's on my TV ever) was...interesting.

In a nostalgic final news conference, President George W. Bush defended his record vigorously and at times sentimentally Monday. He also admitted many mistakes, from the "Mission Accomplished" banner during a 2003 Iraq speech to the discovery that the alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that he used to justify war didn't exist.

After starting what he called "the ultimate exit interview" with a lengthy and personalized thank-you to the reporters in the room who have covered him over the eight years of his presidency, Bush showed anger at times when presented with some of the main criticisms of his time in office.

He particularly became indignant when asked about America's bruised image overseas.

"I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light," he said.

Bush said he realizes that some issues such as the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have created controversy at home and around the world. But he defended his actions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including approving tough interrogation methods for suspected terrorists and information-gathering efforts at home in the name of protecting the country.

Why is anyone surprised at this? A petulant child mouthing "I'm sorry" so he can get dessert.

What's Taking Them So Long

The JPost is reporting that Israel would stop bombing the bejeezus out of Gaza, but those horrible Hamas folks are under pressure to reject the generous Israeli cease-fire from (deep breath) IRAN.

Iran is exerting heavy pressure on Hamas not to accept the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire with Israel, an Egyptian government official said on Sunday.

The official told The Jerusalem Post by phone that two senior Iranian officials who visited Damascus recently warned Hamas leaders against accepting the proposal.

His remarks came as Hamas representatives met in Cairo with Egyptian Intelligence Chief Gen. Omar Suleiman and his aides to discuss ways of ending the fighting in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas representatives reiterated their opposition to a cease-fire that did not include the reopening of all the border crossings into the Gaza Strip, Hamas spokesmen said on Sunday.

The spokesmen said Hamas voiced its strong opposition to the idea of deploying an international force inside the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian official said that the two Iranian emissaries, Ali Larijani, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, and Said Jalili of the Iranian Intelligence Service, met in the Syrian capital with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ramadan Shallah.

"As soon as the Iranians heard about the Egyptian cease-fire initiative, they dispatched the two officials to Damascus on an urgent mission to warn the Palestinians against accepting it," the Egyptian government official told the Post.

Reactions from the right range from this article indicating joy at the impending end of Hamas to jubilation over a clear and total win for the IDF to a capital reason for Israel to attack Iran as soon as possible.

The possibility that a hardline Israeli newspaper is running a story that just happens to indicate total victory by reporting second hand info from Egypt on what Iran is up to regarding Hamas might be propaganda of some sort has of course not occured to anyone.

Early Warning

Although it's patently obvious in both the talking points themselves and the fact they are straight from the RNC, if you want to know what the GOP Village talking points on Obama are going to be, check Politico.com on a Sunday.

White House reporters for The New York Times predict that the market collapse will force President-elect Barack Obama to abandon for now many of his campaign promises.

If his stimulus plan "doesn’t work out, he may very well be a one-term president,” said Jeff Zeleny, who covered Obama’s campaign. “It’s hard to imagine that he could be reelected if the economy’s in the exact same position four years from now.”

“A lot of the things he said on the campaign trail you can now dispense with,” said correspondent Peter Baker. “For the moment he has to focus on the economy.”

The reporters, gathered at a Sunday afternoon panel at the New York Times Center in New York City, largely concurred with the assessment that turning around the economy now trumps the issues Obama focused on from the stump until the market meltdown in August.

Baker suggested Obama would tackle smaller-scale issues related to his major agenda items as a kind of political “down payment” on his promises, for now would retreat from even some of his firmest pledges.

“You’re not going to see universal health care, I don’t think, this year,” Baker said. “You’re not going to see a cap on carbon emissions, as he has promised, probably, this year.”

And for all of his campaign trail talk about collective sacrifice, Baker observed, Obama has seemed reluctant to call for austerity in a challenging economic moment.

“He hasn’t asked anybody for sacrifice,” Baker said. “His whole economic package is about giving things to people.”

So yeah, the insufferably liberal NY Times has not only decided Obama now owns the economy, but the Village has already declared Obama a one-termer before he has even been sworn into office. Think about that. Politico is certainly trying to become the one-stop shop for Village Idiocy in the 21st century, and it is well on its way of being the fastest way to metagame GOP talking points into a nice, portable lump of crap. It's a convenient way for wingnuts, Village Idiots, and "sensible pundit types" to sit around and share their collective disdain for all things progressive. Clucking their tongues, wondering where he went wrong, resigning him to Jimmy Carter status, already doing the post-mortem on his term...and he's not even President yet. Gotta love our "liberal media".

As Mel Brooks said in Robots, "See a need, fill a need." Unfortunately the problem is in Washington there's a need for all the preening Village centrists to hear themselves speak ad nauseum.

Historical Parallels

Over the weekend, George Will compared Obama's apparent decision not to go after Bush to Ford's pardon of Nixon. For once, I completely agree with the man, it's exactly like pardoning Nixon.

"With regard to investigating the Bush administration, he's made the decision that Gerald Ford made with regard to pardoning Richard Nixon, which is your presidency can be swallowed up by the past arguments or you can go forward. That's very sensible," Will said.

History was somewhat kinder to Ford than it will be to Obama should Bush not suffer any consequences, however...and even then Ford was rewarded with a brutal economy and only 29 months in the Oval Office.

It was often said that Ford did the right thing for the country in 1974, but all he really did was leave the door open a generation later. If Ford had not pardoned Nixon and the whole stinking mess had gone to jail, that would have ended the career of one Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and certainly would have been the end of Nixon's White House Chief of Staff -- a fellow by the name of Dick Cheney.

I'm Going To Need A Few To Repair The Irony Detector

Joe the Plumber, loose in Israel as a war correspondent for Pajamas Media, seems to think he and other war correspondents shouldn't actually be corresponding.

I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer–and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers.

I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.

I'm gonna leave the response to this one to Tbogg.

I know we should ignore Wurzelbacher but he's the piñata of stupid and every time you whack him he disgorges more idiocy and then the right wingers have to clutch this idiot child ever tighter to their chicken-breasted bosoms.

The life lesson Joe's bringing out of a two-week plus slaughter of Palestinians inside a massive wall is that the entire journalistic world should be downright ashamed of acknowledging that there's any other valid viewpoint other than "Israel and/or the United States has any and every right to defend itself by destroying as much of the Islamic world as it sees fit."

I'd weep, but in order to have that kind of emotional investment I'd have to get past the monolithic idiocy of the right first.

[UPDATE] Jesse Taylor at Pandagon skewers Joe' employers.

Bob Owens compares Joe to Stephen Crane, dynamo war correspondent and author of The Red Badge of Courage. Because as we all know, The Red Badge of Courage was written after a highly publicized week-long publicity junket where Crane stood around and asked bizarre, pointless questions with his mouth gaping open, and then filed a dispatch declaring that he shouldn’t be allowed to do the job he was being paid to do.

But there is an obvious fear among so many members of the media so defensively and preemptively dismissive of “Joe the Plumber” trying his hand at reporting. Deep inside, they must wonder if an Ohio plumber could really be much worse than the so-called professionals we already have. There lies the fear that underlies those mocking Wurzelbacher in the media. It is a bruise to their egos when they realize that almost anyone can do what they do.

Here’s the thing: political blogging is built in no small part on the idea that many journalists do their job poorly, and therefore we need better reporters who do their job more competently. This is deeply undercut by the idea that journalism is a job babbling simpletons can do so long as they’re conservatives. How to solve this dilemma?

Apparently, more simpletons.

Makes sense to me. When you're devoted to spewing out mindless idiocy, you turn to idiots to make sure the job's done right.

StupidiNews!

• Golden Globe award winners this year include 'Slumdog Millionaire', Kate Winslet, and the late Heath Ledger.
• A 17-year old in Virginia is dead after police tasered him.
• Israel's political leaders want to wind down the Gaza war, but military leaders want more time.
• This year's Detroit Auto Show is an exercise in humility.
• Digital TV faces a ton of problems with next month's national conversion...and even more problems if the conversion is delayed as some want.

Not So Fast

The reality of what Obama's going to choose to do as President as far as cleaning up Bush's mess on torture from a legal standpoint is beginning to sink in, as Steve Benen points out.

Specifically, Obama explained, "When it comes to my attorney general he is the people's lawyer... His job is to uphold the Constitution and look after the interests of the American people, not to be swayed by my day-to-day politics. So, ultimately, he's going to be making some calls, but my general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed looking at what we got wrong in the past."

On a related subject, Obama wasn't sure if he'd be able to close Guantanamo within his first 100 days, but made his position abundantly clear about what will happen to the notorious detention facility: "We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our constitution. That is not only the right thing to do but it actually has to be part of our broader national security strategy because we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values."

Obama also made clear his discomfort with the administration's interrogation policies: "Vice President Cheney I think continues to defend what he calls extraordinary measures or procedures when it comes to interrogations and from my view waterboarding is torture. I have said that under my administration we will not torture."

But when? The longer Gitmo remains open, the more Obama loses on being able to make a sea change, a clean break, with Bush's failed policies...and the more of a chance Bush has of getting away with it.

Don't be surprised if 100 days turns into 200, or 500, or never. We'll still be in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gitmo in 2012, and Obama will say we're of course moving forward.

[UPDATE] What Digby said.

But I would suggest that Obama contemplate one little thing before he decides to try to find "middle ground" on torture. It is a trap. If he continues to torture in any way or even tacitly agrees to allow it in certain circumstances, the intelligence community will make sure it is leaked. They want protection from both parties and there is no better way to do it than to implicate Obama. And the result of that will be to destroy his foreign policy.

If the man who represents the second chance this country's been given around the world to repudiate the horrors of the Bush years is revealed to have perpetuated the same horrors, his credibility and foreign policy will be in shambles. And there are many people buried in the intelligence and military establishments who would be happy to make sure that happens.

Damned if he does support Bush's policies, damned if he doesn't...and when he decides to walk down the middle of the road, that's when he gets hit by the bus.

The difference of course is if he makes a choice, one is clearly the right thing to do, and the other damns all of America as torturers and thugs.

[UPDATE 2] The Double G weighs in and lets Obama have it.

Let's emphasize what Obama is actually saying about why he can't close Guantanamo right away. Here is his answer when asked if he'd close Guantanamo in the first 100 days:

It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize and we are going to get it done but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it's true. And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.

What he's saying is quite clear. There are detainees who the U.S. may not be able to convict in a court of law. Why not? Because the evidence that we believe establishes their guilt was obtained by torture, and it is therefore likely inadmissible in our courts (torture-obtained evidence is inadmissible in all courts in the civilized world; one might say it's a defining attribute of being civilized). But Obama wants to detain them anyway -- even though we can't convict them of anything in our courts of law. So before he can close Guantanamo, he wants a new, special court to be created -- presumably by an act of Congress -- where evidence obtained by torture (confessions and the like) can be used to justify someone's detention and where, presumably, other safeguards are abolished. That's what he means when he refers to "creating a process."

Amazingly, when discussing the same topic, Obama vowed that "we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values." How? By creating a new court just for accused Islamic radicals that allows us to use confessions and other evidence that we obtained through torture? That sounds like exactly the same "message about our values" that we've been sending.

Obama has to make a choice here...either we don't torture people or we do. All the rationalization in the world doesn't change that basic, black and white choice. Either we torture Muslims or we don't.

That single choice will either bring America back from the brink, or push us over into the dustbin of broken Empire.

Who Benefits?

Much sound and fury is being made of the NY Times article this weekend involving a story about Bush turning down an Israeli request for bunker buster bombs for a raid against Iran several months ago.

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.

This account of the expanded American covert program and the Bush administration’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the record because of the great secrecy surrounding the intelligence developed on Iran.

Several details of the covert effort have been omitted from this account, at the request of senior United States intelligence and administration officials, to avoid harming continuing operations.

So who exactly benefits from the leak? Not Bush, that's for sure. His reputation as a belligerent warmonger has been cemented in time over the last seven years, beyond rehabilitation with 10 days left in his term.

Most likely the Bushies are sending across the bow of Iran. The one thing Bush was adamant about in 2008 was not allowing Israel to use Iraqi airspace. With Iraq being under UN mandate, not even Bush would risk that.

But that mandate expired on Dec. 31, 2008. It's not like Iraq has an air force or anything. This is pretty much a warning to Iran.

The question is now what Obama will do about Israel.

Let It All Burn Down

I've said time and time again that as much as I gripe about Obama, the other side purely hates him and wishes to see him destroyed with such rancor that they would rather see the economy annihilated than to see his stimulus plan pass. To them, this is just the opening salvo in Armageddon. Steve Benen discusses this over at Washington Monthly.

Apparently, the base won't be truly pleased unless congressional Republicans, in the face of a drastic economic crisis, opposes any government effort to stimulate the economy at all. Michelle Malkin has begun calling a rescue package the "Generational Theft Act of 2009." Don Surber believes Obama's plan, tax cuts and all, is "evil."

Oh my.

This is the same group of people that refuse to bat an eyelash when Bush autohrized torture, illegally spied on American citizens, killed untold thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now Pakistan, and turned the executive branch into a playground for civil rights abuses and powermongering.

But we're supposed to believe Obama's stimulus plan is more "evil" than all those combined. To the wingnuts, everything they don't like is merely a rehash of the battle over immigration reform in 2005-2006. They believe they can hold the line and excorciate anyone who dares oppose them, whipping up a faux populist uprising with scare tactics. They mean to brutally crucify anyone who crosses the picket line and goes with Obama on this program. "We'll make them pay," the wingnuts promise.

But the difference this time is the fact the Democrats are in charge. Elections have consequences. The Right is scrambling for relevancy, and the wingnuts are howling now that they have been reduced to a meaningless dull roar from the peanut gallery.

So, the wingnuts preen like Snidely Whiplash, twirl their moustaches, and promise dire consequences for the country unless the GOP listens to them NOW.

When enough of the GOP starts ignoring the wingnuts, they are through. The wingnuts know this. They have drawn the line here, because if the Republicans cross it with Obama, they are done and gone.

And finding out you're expendable, like millions of Americans who lost their jobs last year and the millions who will continue to do so because of Bush's policies, is a rough, rough thing.

[UPDATE] And unless I miss my guess, the number one target of the wingnuts crying "traitor!" is going to be the man Obama beat...John McCain.

Reverting to the role of Republican foil that made him an unpopular figure for many conservatives, John McCain argued on Friday that historical circumstances should compel his GOP colleagues to work closely with Barack Obama.

"There are not many times in history," he said, "that a president has come to office with as many challenges as the president-elect does and that's incumbent then upon all of us to try and do all we can to work with him."

Appearing on Fox News for one of the few times since losing the election, McCain offered a supportive assessments of the president-elect's agenda. He acknowledged the need to pass a stimulus, but said he would reserve judgment until he saw the final package.

"All I can say to you is that I want to see the stimulus package I want to see what it does, I want to see what kind of provision it has in it," he told Neil Cavuto. "I think the president-elect is going to marshal public opinion. Right now his approval ratings and hopes of the American people are very high," he later added.

I almost feel sorry for McCain. They are going to crucify him on the right, and I bet they will actively work for his defeat in 2010. "No More McCains" will become their battle cry.

Not Stimulating Enough

Obama's domestic economic team of Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein have put out the estimates of the effect of Obama's stimulus plan on the economy. The Kroog calls it too little, too late.

The key thing if you want to do comparisons is to note that I made estimates of the average effect over 2009-2010, while they do estimates of effect in the fourth quarter of 2010, which is roughly when the plan is estimated to have its maximum effect. So they say the plan would lower unemployment by about 2 percentage points, I said 1.7, but their estimate may actually be a bit more pessimistic than mine. They have the plan raising GDP by 3.7 percent, but that’s at peak; I thought 2.5 percent or so average over 2 years, again not much difference.

So this looks like an estimate from the Obama team itself saying — as best as I can figure it out — that the plan would close only around a third of the output gap over the next two years.

One more point: the estimate of what would happen to the economy in the absence of a stimulus plan seems kind of optimistic. The chart above has unemployment ex-stimulus peaking at 9 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and coming down through the year; the CBO estimates an average unemployment rate of 9 percent for 2010, so the Obama people are more optimistic than the CBO, and a lot more optimistic than I am.

Bottom line: even if I use the Romer-Bernstein estimates instead of my own — there really isn’t much difference — this plan looks too weak.

Personally, I think the estimates of the worst-case scenario unemployment rate of nine percent are far, far too optimistic. Businesses have done everything they can to keep from having to lay people off...and we're going to see quite a bit of them go over the edge in 2009 and have no choice but to lay off a healthy chunk of their employees. This in turn is only going to stall out the economy even further. I don't think even Krugman is giving enough weight to the fact that Americans buying things is the singular engine of our economy, and Americans aren't buying, we are screwed.

Worst case scenario is closer to 12 or 13%, with a real unemployment U6 number of twice that. I think we're going to come awfully damn close to those numbers, and that it will take well into the end of next decade for us to recover. By then America will be a very different country. It took us 16 years and a World War to get us out of the last Depression.

And by that time, the world will have passed us by. America is Britain, circa 19th century. Who will rise to take our place, Russia? China? India? Who knows.

The decline of the American Empire is upon us.

A Dozen In The Back

Another bloody New Year's Day police shooting in America, by cops to a black man, this time in New Orleans.

The New Orleans man, 22-year-old Adolph Grimes III, traveled to his grandmother's home near the French Quarter in order to celebrate New Year's Eve with his fiance and their 17-month-old son. Three hours after arrival, around 3 a.m., he was found dead a block from the front door.

The Orleans Parish coroner said Grimes was shot 14 times, including 12 times in the back.

"This violence has to stop. My child's death will not be meaningless. He did not die in vain," said Grimes' mother, Patricia Grimes.

An editorial in The Times-Picayune said the shooting "demands answers."

Despite the fact that the seven officers involved in the incident have been reassigned, Superintendent Warren Riley has refused to answer "fundamental questions" about the shooting and maintains that Grimes fired upon his men first.

Several dozen people protested the New Orleans Police Department on Thursday morning to demand justice for Grimes' death.

A mix of people walked paced in front of a police station carrying signs with slogans like "Down with the government" and shouting to passers-by "You could be next!"

A group of black ministers and advocates has called for the department to be purged of "trigger-happy" officers and the Grimes family's attorney, Richard Jenkins is certain an investigation will show rogue cops and sloppy police work.

"I just think it was some bad officers who were out there and imposing their will on the community," Jenkins said.

Two things.

One, you get shot in the back, it suggests your back was to the person with the gun and you're in the process of getting away. If Grimes was running, I'm thinking it would take one, maybe three bullets max in the back to bring the guy down under any circumstances. Seven officers were involved in the shooting. It's entirely possible all seven fired two shots at Grimes and hit. It's entirely possible all seven officers had an open shot at Grimes and were all shooting at the same time...but twelve bullets at pistol range on a target moving away suggests to me Grimes was shot, fell face down, and then an officer or two emptied his gun into Grimes's back.

Two, the worse the economy gets, the more of this we're going to see in America's cities. If the national average of the "real unemployment rate", what the Labor Department calls the U6 number, which is the collection of all the folks out of work, no longer looking for work, or underemployed, is now at 13.5%, then there are places in America where that number is much, much higher. I'm betting NOLA is one of them. There are places in this country where hope and change cannot come fast enough.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition

• Another 3 hour pause, another day of Israeli tanks shelling Gaza.
• Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon faces 12 counts of bribery and fraud.
• The UN is calling for an investigation into possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
• Obama says his stimulus jobs plan could create or preserve 3 to 4 million jobs, 90% in the private sector.
• US drivers are holding onto their older cars longer, meaning 2009 could be even worse for dealers.