Oil For Food Investigation Dragging Along Nicely

Josh Marshall has a nice piece on Judith Miller's article on Paul Volcker's investigation of the Oil For Food scandal.

From Miller's piece...

Mr. Volcker said his panel had not yet received the original list of oil vouchers supposedly awarded to diplomats and United Nations officials, which was published by an Iraqi newspaper several months ago. Nor had he determined how his panel would vet such documents to see if they were forgeries, he said.

Yes, you read that correctly. They haven't received the original list of oil vouchers. They've got 15 million pages of documents, but not the most important document of all. Meanwhile, the list published by the Iraqi newspaper has been circulating around the Internet for months now. Considering Volcker will probably never get a credible list (considering pretty much the only places he can get it would be from the Iraqi paper or from our in-hiding friend Ahmed Chalabi) and has no way of determining whether what he does get is credible or not, where the hell can we expect this investigation to go?

Wonderful. The program was supposed to help get the Iraqi people the food and medicine they needed. Instead, powerful politicians (including Saddam Hussein and his political allies) lined their pockets with billions of dollars and will probably never be brought to justice.

Overheard On The Street

Guy #1: So whaddya think about this Obama guy?
Guy #2: We shoulda nuked Afghanistan. Why are we still there?
Guy #1: No, no, no. I said "Obama." He's a black guy. He's running for Secretary of State or something.
Guy #2: He ain't never gonna beat Colin Powell.

It's times like this when I'm reminded that for every person who is into politics, watches the news and reads up on political blogs, there are hundreds of chuckleheads like these guys walking around.

Maybe we should put something together like an "Adopt a Chucklehead" program where people who have an inkling of what's going on in the world identify their least politically knowledgeable friends and bring them to a roundtable discussion or something...

Let's Lose This Crap

There are a lot of issues that merit being a part of the national agenda, but many of them still aren't getting the attention they deserve. North Korea is making strides toward becoming a serious rogue nuclear threat. The U.N. Oil For Food scandal has seemingly been swept under the rug. And what about those Iranians and their nuclear pursuits? Ask your buddies who don't read blogs what they know about this stuff and you're likely to draw blank stares. But ask them what they know about the Laci Peterson case and they'll drone on for hours.

Hey, I'm just as upset as the next guy that innocent people are being kidnapped or killed (or both), but these types of things happen all the time. People are kidnapped every day in this country. And murders happen every day. But for some reason, particularly when the victim is young, attractive and female, the press wants to follow the story from the missing persons report all the way through the sentencing of the perpetrator and beyond.

I want to see kidnappers and murderers brought to justice as much as the next guy, but this in-depth news coverage is distracting us from the real issues. Sure, get the word out if someone is abducted and help is needed from the public at large to track them down, but quit this nonsense about dedicating time every day to covering sensational murders where the victim just happens to be young, female and cute. No more Laci Peterson, no more Lori Hacker. Just drop it.

Weekend Highlights

Camped right on the beach this weekend in Montauk at Theodore Roosevelt County Park. What a nice time. Craig, Jen and Kayla let us stay in their new 31' camper, which they parked right next to Dennis and Cami's camper. We were literally right on the beach. Some highlights...

• I caught some fish. On Sunday morning, Dennis, Craig and I were sitting in our beach chairs when we looked down the beach and saw the birds diving. So we threw the poles into Dennis' Jeep and took off down the beach. On my first cast, I got a hit right away, but the fish didn't seem to be fighting much. I reeled it in and it was a nice fluke - a keeper. Dunno how I caught him, since I was using a spoon and not anything a fluke would normally be interested in. Must have been luck. Within about 15 minutes I landed three nice size bluefish. We took the fish home and cooked fillets on the barbecue. The fluke turned out great. The bluefish wasn't all that great, though, but not bad.
• Sara and I met the crew at the campground. We would have gotten the Corvette stuck on the beach, so we parked it up by the check in station and started carrying our bags down to the beach. We walked about a half mile down the access road to the beach - I was expecting to see a tiny campground with maybe 8 or 10 camping spots. We get down to the beach and look left and there are maybe 3 or 4 trailers there. Then we look to the right and see trailers all the way down the beach, as far as the eye could see. It reminded me of Cape Canaveral during the shuttle launches - nothing but campers for miles. Thankfully, Craig drove by in his truck within about 10 minutes and gave us a ride. Otherwise, we would have been walking down the beach with our stuff for miles.
• Craig, Jen, Dennis and Cami sang Happy Birthday to me on Saturday night. They even got me a cake, which was delicious. As special bonus gifts, I got a Montauk fleece (size: XXXL) and a handmade card from Kayla.