The Strident Centrist Blog

Bill Perry, a 101st Airborne Division veteran who shot and killed four men within seconds during the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War, doesn’t buy the story that the three-shot group in Pat Tillman’s forehead was fired by an M-16 on full automatic from a range of 30 yards or so. Here’s what he tells us via OpEd News:

There was NOTHING CLOSE to a “Shot group” on any of these men. Their wounds reflected their flailing & flying bodies as I blew them away.

A “Shot group” on Pat Tillman’s forehead indicates ONE shot killed him, and then he was “double checked”, then “triple checked” at POINT BLANK range, to make sure he was dead. ( 3 shots = “Shot Group” )

When the 1st shot hits something like a head or arm, it swings wildly BEFORE the 2nd or 3rd shot can hit it. A “Shot group” indicates the head was up against something ( like the ground ), and the shots were fired on “semi-auto”, NOT full automatic.

R. J. Hillhouse at The Spy Who Billed Me has the scoop on what’s behind the administration’s tap dancing around what it was that had the top floor of the Justice Department as well as the Director of the FBI prepared to resign en masse in March, 2004, when Gonzo and Andrew Card tried to maneuver John Ashcroft into signing off on it while under sedation in the ICU:

The data mining controversy isn’t about the US government spying on Americans. It’s about the government using big corporations as a Constitutional workarounds to spy on Americans. It’s not the government that actually sifts through our emails and phone records but companies such as Lockheed Marin, Raytheon, SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton and their subcontractors.

. . .

The potential for abuse is tremendous, and, just like with corporate involvement in the President’s Daily Brief, there are no serious mechanisms to guard against this. And some of the very same tools they’re using for data mining could be adapted to monitor for misuse. Of course, abuse on the level of the Administration using corporations to conveniently ignore US law needs Congressional oversight.

Emphasis by R. J.

A week ago today Cindy Sheehan and others, including former CIA officer and now anti-Iraq war activist Ray McGovern, met with Congressman John Conyers. After an hour-long discussion the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee apparently took umbrage at the fact his visitors told him his walk didn’t match his talk, and had them arrested.

Today, McGovern gives his side of the story on Larry Johnson’s blog under the title “John Conyers Is No Martin Luther King“. Below the fold is the text of a letter that McGovern left with Conyers stating the views of him and the other members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS): (more…)

I (or rather “Resident”) got a mailing from my Republican Congressman the other day announcing, among other things, his schedule of Town Meetings that will take place the week after next, assuming that Congress has adjourned by that time. For the first time I’m thinking of attending one of them with the intention of putting in my two cents’ worth. Hence, I’ve been mulling over what I might say, most especially how to limit it to a succinctness that enables me to get my point across before I feel the hook around my neck.

I’m not going to detail here, at least not yet. But in the process of thinking this out has led me to realize that had not invaded Iraq and made such a mess of it, the electorate in 2006 would most likely have retained a Republican Congress, and therefore the assault on the Constitution would not have gained the traction that it has over the past few months. Instead, maybe, just maybe, the country will survive the assault without too much damage to our institutions of democratic government. It’s by no means certain, however, and it’s not going to happen without people taking the responsibility upon themselves to make it happen. One small way I plan to help in this effort is by showing up at Ramstad’s Town Meeting and telling him and everyone else there that this independent, centrist voter who used to vote for him regularly, and did so as recently as 2000, will almost certainly never again vote for anyone running for anything on the Republican ticket. My father’s beloved Republican Party has become a subversive organization, far more dangerous than any such one listed on the infamous Attorney General’s list of the 1950s.

Shelley at Retrospectacle has an informative post up on the neurochemistry of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD).

R. J. Hillhouse, the proprietor of the blog The Spy Who Billed Me and author of Outsourced, a recently published novel about military and intelligence contractors, appeared this past week on the alternative radio public affairs program Democracy Now. Here’s an excerpt from the rush transcript, in answer to the question of Why Fiction:

Because I found that there were things that could only be written about in fiction. It’s amazing for someone who has lived in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to find that in this country we’re in a similar place. In the repressive regimes, literature has often played the role of bringing things to light that could not otherwise be discussed. And I found that there are some things that are going on in the intelligence community or things that are going on with our government with relationships between corporate and government that it was only safe to discuss under the guise of fiction. So it’s an unusual transformation that a novelist would actually be ahead of media in this. I mean, it is the norm for me to be contacted each week by people from New York Times, Washington Post and others to try to learn about what’s going on in outsourcing. So it’s very strange as a novelist that I actually have moved ahead of that.

Hillhouse is carving out a place on the media landscape as the go-to person on the implications of outsourcing, good, bad and neutral. Earlier this month she had an Op Ed piece in the Sunday WashingtonPost , and more recently in The Nation.

From the New England Journal of Medicine:

Since he was adopted by staff members as a kitten, Oscar the Cat has had an uncanny ability to predict when residents are about to die. Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families. Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone.

I wouldn’t bet against it. His saving of Ahmadinejad’s political ass, that is. An article in Foreign Policy lists the ways the President of Iran’s popularity is tanking as his country’s economy goes down the tubes, and that only George Bush can save him:

In fact, the only thing that could save him now is the United States. Nobody knows this better than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As his support within Iran has evaporated, he has cranked up the anti-American rhetoric, and the U.S. military has publicly accused the Pasdaran of arming insurgents in Iraq and even Afghanistan. At this point, the only way Ahmadinejad can revive his flagging fortunes is by uniting his country against an external threat. U.S. officials adamantly maintain that Washington is committed to using diplomacy to resolve the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program and its aggressive role in the region. Yet pressure is mounting in some branches of the Bush administration to take military action against Iran. That pressure should be resisted. For military action would give Mahmoud Ahmadinejad exactly what he wants most: job security.

Considering how adept the Cheney administration has proved itself at playing in to our adversaries’ hands over the past six and a half years there’s plenty of room for optimism. Or pessimism, depending on your perspective.

WaPo Headline: “Bush Will Temporarily Hand Reins To Cheney” The real question is, when Cheney has his next heart procedure, will he hand the reins of the Vice Presidency to Bush?

That’s the name of a program that FairVote Minnesota is putting on next Tuesday morning, July 24, on the campus of Hamlin University in St. Paul. FairVote MN is a non-partisan organization whose mission is to promote the use of Instant Run-off Voting, an alternative to the dominant first-past-the-post voting that is a major causal factor in the current American political dysfunction.

The program will include demonstrations of IRV and a panel discussion featuring, among others, Tim Penny, former Democratic Congressman from Minnesota’s 1st district and Independence Party candidate for governor in 2002. Had IRV been in place in Minnesota that year, it is very likely Penny would have been elected.

Since the web announcement doesn’t include as much detail as the email sent to FVM members, here are the geographic details:
Hamlin University, Law & Grad Schools Conference Center, 1536 Hewitt Ave, St. Paul 55104.