David Broder. Who will rid us of this unprincipled minion of the beltway elites?

Glen Greenwald in Salon today. (G.G., perhaps the only reason to look at Salon)

"...To justify the absolute immunity he wants for government lawbreakers, Broder describes the Bush era as

One of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States."

"But that's easy to say now that the Bush presidency is over and the evidence of its criminality so undeniable. But Broder never said any such thing while it was all taking place, when it mattered. In fact, he did the opposite: he mocked those who tried to sound the alarm about how radical and "dark" the Bush presidency was and repeatedly defended what Bush officials were doing as perfectly normal, unalarming and well within the bounds of mainstream and legitimate policy.

(snip)

"More than anything else, Broder's column illustrates the Central Creed of Beltway Culture, which should be memorialized on plaques throughout that city:

When poor and ordinary Americans who commit crimes are prosecuted and imprisoned, that is Justice.

When the same thing is done to Washington elites, that is Ugly Retribution."

Sweet....Sooooo sweet.

Go Tribe!

It is hard to shake off something as deeply ingrained as a HATRED baked into one's marrow at an early age. Even the nuns at St Colman's Parish school taught us that a healthy Yankee hatred was good for the soul.

I think I've given up pretty much all those old hatreds as I age. Except this one essential hatred. I have maintained, even deepened, my abiding hatred for the Yankees. They deserve nothing less and nothing more.

So, today's 14-run top-of-the-2nd-inning performance by the Tribe, in Yankee Stadium--the new in-your-face Yankee Stadium, that has them so deep in hock they'll never get out of the hole--is too sweet for words.

Go Tribe.

Sheesh. Front Page of NYT

Disney Expert Uses Science to Draw Boy Viewers
by Brooks Barnes

Kelly Peña, “the kid whisperer,” is helping the Walt Disney Company to reassert itself as a cultural force among boys.

ENCINO, Calif. — Kelly Peña, or “the kid whisperer,” as some Hollywood producers call her, was digging through a 12-year-old boy’s dresser drawer here on a recent afternoon. Her undercover mission: to unearth what makes him tick and use the findings to help the Walt Disney Company reassert itself as a cultural force among boys.

Ms. Peña, a Disney researcher with a background in the casino industry, zeroed in on a ratty rock ’n’ roll T-shirt. Black Sabbath?

“Wearing it makes me feel like I’m going to an R-rated movie,” said Dean, a shy redhead whose parents asked that he be identified only by first name.

Jackpot.

Ms. Peña and her team of anthropologists have spent 18 months peering inside the heads of incommunicative boys in search of just that kind of psychological nugget. Disney is relying on her insights to create new entertainment for boys 6 to 14, a group that Disney used to own way back in the days of “Davy Crockett” but that has wandered in the age of more girl-friendly Disney fare like “Hannah Montana.”

Click the link to read the rest of this report on anthropology...if you have the stomach for it.

This subdivision is toast...

Nice sunny Spring day in Pabst Farms...

...a place that advertised itself early on with the arrogantly dismissive boast:
Everything else is just a subdivision

Something new: two houses, side-by-side, sporting "for sale" signs. And there are at least six others among the few that have been built and occupied, in the past three years that are being offered for sale. One of them is a F.S.B.O.

This one is "For Sale"...
...Or, you could rent it, if you like.
Agents always tell those who come to look at a vacant property that the previous owner was transferred suddenly to a new job in Charleston or some other unlikely place.
But this is a story I heard first-hand last fall. A guy in a white pickup came to install my new DSL service, here in Waukesha. He said that he was losing his P.F. house to foreclosure, that he and his wife had moved to Pabst Farms in 2006, thinking that they could make out pretty well--as flippers--in the hot market. He went on that his business had gone flat, and that his wife's income had been likewise halved.

They were in default, trying to sell, looking at the inevitability of foreclosure. Now, it is probably bank-owned and "for rent"--that's what it says on the little white part of the sign.
(click tho photo to enlarge)

I don't think high speed intercity rail makes sense at this moment in time....

...Not that it never did make sense. And not that it never will...

Listen to Jim Kunstler make a strong case in a conversation with Jebediah Reed of The Infrastructurist, for the need to start with the abandoned/deteriorated rail roadbeds we have, and add to them, to create a great deal more stimulus bang for the stimulus buck.... And for building new rolling stock that isn't necessarily the state-of-the-art level of high tech. Just good intercity rail that will move both people and goods....

JR: So we’re starting a major new round of investment in our national infrastructure. Can we agree that’s a good thing?
JHK: Well, for instance, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to devote a trillion dollars to fixing up the highways. I mean the days of “happy motoring” in this country truly are behind us. We should be planning for a period when energy resources are much more scarce. Throwing that kind of money at roads is not the way to go about doing this.

How would you be doing it?
I don’t know that I would undertake a spending program like this at all. That said, I’m a pretty strong advocate of repairing the national rail system. It’s obviously not the answer to everything. But it would certainly put a lot of people to work doing something that’s meaningful for society. The infrastructure is out there, waiting to be fixed. I’m pretty adamant that we shouldn’t be going the path of high-tech, maglev, high speed rail at this moment, because we need to prove that we can do this at the Hungarian level before we try to proceed past that.

That doesn’t sound very ambitious.
I perceive one our biggest problems being techno-grandiosity. We are so full of ourselves and so sure that technology is going to rescue us and that we’re so good at it that we can defeat every problem that faces us. It’s a fatal hubris, and it’s subscribed to by an awful lot people who have something to say about the course we take in this country.

In the past, you’ve been critical of Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute on similar grounds.
Don’t get me started on Amory Lovins. His basic program for hypercars promotes car dependency. Why do that unless you think we’re going to continue as a car dependent society? That’s why the highway infrastructure thing is so bad, because we’re not going to be able to continue the way we’ve been going. The car is not going to vanish overnight, of course. But it’s certainly going to become a problem as people develop resentments because they can no longer afford to participate in it [as oil prices rise over time].

But you think the answer with rail is to keep it very simple.
Absolutely. The infrastructure is already out there! The track beds are there! And you need an entirely new track corridor for high speed rail, because the high speed trains can’t deal with the curves in the existing tracks. The idea that we would have to create a whole new set of right-of-ways is nuts when we’re not even utilizing what we have. Another thing to keep in mind is that we’re going to be facing a lot of adversity in the years ahead, and we are a culture that will require psychological reassurance. We should have a project that’s achievable. We need to demonstrate to ourselves that we’re still competent.

And the simple version of the national rail buildout would do that.
This rail project is ideal for that purpose. As I’ve said, we’ve got the tracks, and the rolling stock is pretty easy to get. You could argue that GM should be making this stuff. But it’s terribly important that we fortify ourselves psychologically so we have some faith in our ability to face all the other really important challenges that lie in front of us.

A lot of smart people are warning that if we’re going make this kind of enormous national investment, it would be a political disaster for Obama not to have some very tangible things to show for it.
Well, 2009 could turn out to be a politically rocky year. It’s really not clear how things are going play out in terms of the energy picture, the oil picture, and the picture for finance and capital. I’m afraid what’s really going on here is that a huge amount of capital is gone and is never, ever coming back again in any form.

If that’s true it would have been nice to have converted more of it into real and useful things while it was around — like, say, a good national rail network and a better electrical grid.

I read a real estate soothsayer today: "Housing Market has bottomed; good time to buy, because interest rates are low..."

It is a good time to buy,

• IF you have a 20% downpayment
• IF your credit score is above 740
• IF you can sell the house you're in now
• If your income/employment is secure
  

MarketWatch has an article looking at the fact that many Americans are one or two paychecks away from financial ruin:

“A MetLife study released last week found that 50% of Americans said they have only a one-month cushion — roughly two paychecks — or less before they would be unable to fully meet their financial obligations if they were to lose their jobs. More disturbing is that 28% said they could not make ends meet for longer than two weeks without their jobs.

And it’s not just low-income earners who would find themselves financially challenged. Twenty-nine percent of those making $100,000 or more a year said they would have trouble paying the bills after more than a month of unemployment.

Meanwhile, more than four in 10 respondents told pollsters in a recent Pew Research Center study that job-related issues were the nation’s most important economic problem.

“Since October, mentions of other major economic issues have declined, as the public is increasingly focused on the job situation,” according to the Pew study.

Since July, the study noted, there was been a striking spike in the numbers of families making $100,000 or more who said it was difficult to find local jobs — 73% compared with 40% eight months ago.”

Read the above carefully. 1 in 2 Americans are 2 paychecks away from massive financial trouble. 1 in 4 would be on the financial edge after 2 weeks only. These are fully employed people.
Read the rest

Strange stuff from Wis DOT....

A few weeks ago, one of the principals of Pabst Farms Development participated in an open forum on the progress of the development, particularly the "upscale" regional shopping mall proposed as whipped topping for the dead-in-the-water Pabst Farms Subdivision.

Daniel Warren (in addition to being one of the big dogs at Pabst Farms Development is President of the Waukesha Water Utility Commission AND President of the Waukesha School Board) was quoted twice in the Waukesha Freeman saying to the group that WisDOT had spent "five to six million dollars already" on the new diamond interchange to be added to Oconomowoc to accommodate all the shoppers and upscale residents who would soon be flocking there.

The audience included lots of skeptical Oconomowoc citizens, grown weary and cynical over empty promises and hallucinated "hopeful signs" that the upscale mall was actually going to happen. They were looking for news about who was signing up to open stores--some reality to balance the baloney about Bonwit-Teller, Lord & Taylor, Ikea (that's upscale?) pipe dreams that had been floated early in the game.

"Five to Six Million Dollars," already spent on the interchange, this was big news, considering that the project has been put on hold, delayed, assigned a low priority, and--in most observers' realistic estimation--abandoned. I called the local DOT Communications pro, located in Waukesha. Who should answer but Dennis Shook, former Waukesha Freeman scribe, cut loose from that superb daily fishwrap several years back, in one of their regular purges.

Shook is a garrulous guy (and I'm not shy). So, there was a bit of small talk We reminisced briefly about some of the Freeman glory days. Then, I asked him where Warren got his information, whether he could confirm it. Shook said that his information was that "four to six million" had already been spent on the interchange; he mentioned something about the high cost of "grubbing". We shot the breeze a bit more, then I hung up.

A few hours later I sent him this e-mail.

"I talked with you earlier this morning. And, now I have a request. Will you please do some digging and provide more precise figures than the ones you offered this morning.

"As I recall it, I asked you whether Daniel Warren, quoted twice in the Waukesha Freeman, was correct in saying that "five or six million" had already been spent on the Pabst Farms interchange. Your response was that "four to six million had already been spent.

"I'd like to be able to quote you on a precise figure. More precise numbers, broken down by category, distinguishing among dollars spent, allocated, contracted, disbursed or any other useful category that DOT uses.

Thank you in advance."

To which Shook replied:

Dear Sir: I was unaware that you were quoting me at all. As you did not identify yourself, you should not use my comments.

Dennis A. Shook
WisDOT, SE Regional Office
Regional Communications Manager
141 NW Barstow St.
Waukesha, WI 53188
(cell) 1-414-750-2395

To which I replied:

The only thing I'm interested in is the figures on what has been, to date, "spent, allocated, contracted, disbursed" on the work defined and identified as Sawyer Road/Hwy P diamond interchange upgrade.

Everything else we discussed was just small talk. Mr. Warren, one of the Pabst Farms principals, appeared to have an official source for his statements. I am interested only in getting the same information that Mr. Warren has.

I would appreciate your getting those figures for me, as I am aware it is public information and available to the public.

Jim Bouman

I let this sit for a week and a half, thinking that Shook was working on it. When nothing arrived, I called his supervisor in Madison. The supervisor lit a fire under him. Seemingly, he had persuaded himself that I didn't mean it; or, that his retroactive declaration of "Off the record" held water.

Today I got this:

Dear Mr. Bouman:

Thank you for your inquiries on the Highwa P/Interstate 94 interchange. Here are the answers I was able to collect:

*To date, WisDOT has spent $8.8 million, broken down as : $1.4 million for design, $5 million for real estate acquisition, and $2.4 million for clearing and grubbing (including the crossover).

*WisDOT does not have a final project cost because the project size has yet to be determined.

*No other funds have been spent on the project or allocated to it.

Hope this helps. Thank you.

Dennis A. Shook

At long last, it is revealed: The reason Dennis Shook got canned from the Waukesha Freeman.

In most circumstances, a pink slip from Freeman editor, Bill Yorth, could be spun as advantageous to a job-seeker: too objective, insufficiently devoted to right wing causes, inclined to analytical thinking, determined to use the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law to get the facts, literate...lotsa stuff in short supply among journalists these days.

He's Civil Service, now. He's got Marty Beil backing him up. Dennis has settled in for the long haul. He'll retire as a WisDOT bullshit artist.

...this paean to the inherent nobility of the common man

This past weekend saw the Milwaukee Symphony presenting--under the direction of departing Maestro, Andreas Delfs--three pieces, beginning with Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man.

Before the music started, I enjoyed reading Roger Ruggeri's Program Notes. Long the principal bassist at the Symphony, Ruggieri has been writing--for decades--witty and knowledgeable introductions and short histories of the music, in the Encore program. He's an engaging writer, does great research and often adds a little-known fact about how the music came into being.

Here's what he wrote about Copland, the naming the Fanfare and how the date of the 1943 debut performance was chosen.

Notes by Roger Ruggeri © 2009

Aaron Copland
b. November 14, 1900; Brooklyn, NY
d. December 2, 1990; New York City
Fanfare for the Common Man

Composed in 1942 for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, this 3-minute fanfare was first performed by them and their Music Director, Eugene Goossens on March 12, 1943. Scored for four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum and tam tam, the work has been performed many times by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra...

Evoking the essential American spirit with the ringing sonority of brass and percussion, Fanfare for the Common Man was written in response to a commission for a patriotic fanfare for the opening concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s 1942-43 season.

Copland recalled: “…The music was not terribly difficult to compose, but working slowly as was my custom, I did not have the fanfare ready to send to Goossens until November. I had some difficulty with the title. The piece has been Fanfare for the Common Man for so long that it is surprising to see on my sketches that other titles were considered: Fanfare for a Solemn Ceremony, for the Day of Victory, for Our Heroes, for the Rebirth of Lidice, for the Spirit of Democracy, for the Paratroops, for Four Freedoms.…After I decided on Fanfare for the Common Man and sent the score to Goossens, I think he was rather puzzled by the title. He wrote, ‘It’s title is as original as its music, and I think it is so telling that it deserves a special occasion for its performance. If it is agreeable to you, we will premiere it 12 March[*] 1943 at income tax time.…”

In these days, when bitching about the injustice of taxation is glorified as the height of patriotism, it makes me think of my old friend, Bob Overs, whose advice on being a good citizen was simply: "Pay your taxes cheerfully and always, always vote".

* Not until 1955 was the due date of Federal Income taxes moved from the Ides of March to April 15.

Soda Bread

The teaspoon is there merely as a size reference. I found two iron skillets--8 inch and 6 inch--at an estate sale. Makes two loaves from the typical recipe-- which was sized to the heirloom 10 inch skillet.

Have never understood where midwestern folk on St. Patrick's Day come up with the notion that Corned Beef and Cabbage is Irish fare.

And green beer? Sheesh!

Here's the recipe. Won the prize* the Irish Fest/Red Star Yeast Baking contest in 1994.

4 C. Flour
1 T. Baking Powder
1 t. Baking Soda
1 t. Salt
All sifted together

2/3 C. Sugar creamed with 2 T. Butter; with 2 small (1 large) Egg added.

1 C. Raisins, steamed with 1/4 C. water.

1 1/2 C. Buttermilk

Sugar/butter/eggs in the bottom of a big mixing bowl, dry ingredients on top of that, buttermilk and raisins added gradually as it is mixed with a big wooden spoon. Stop with the buttermilk if it is getting too wet. Turn into lightly greased pan(s). No need to knead. Top should look craggy in the pan--before and after the baking.

Bake 50 to 70 minutes at 350 degrees in pre-heated oven 'til a toothpick comes out clean.
Turn it out of the pan immediately to cool on a rack.


* First Prize was a Belleek platter, which was a beautiful and treasured piece...until they annealed the image of fookin' Paddy McFest to it.

Journal Company in the tank...

Yesterday, Morningstar, was able to report on the basis of inter-day fluctuations in price, that the stock of Journal Company, (JRN)--publishers of the increasingly fetid daily Milwaukee Journal Sentinel--had shown a gain of 10%.

Whoopee!

Then we teased out the details. After opening at just about $0.43 per share, someone bumped the price by a nickel and induced this amazing ten percent increase in valuation (not for long, though; the price then retreated to forty cents at the end of trading.

Ten percent of squat is diddly squat.

One might predict that soon Patrick McIlheran, Mabel Wong and David Haynes--right wing troika of opinion--will be looking for a rexograph or mimeo machine to put out their increasingly tone-deaf nonsense.

From the Diplomatic pouch...direct to the President's desk (eyes only)...

Barry:

Everything under control here in Jerusalem.

Everyone who matters is happy.

Back in a few days; I have some ideas for your health care project.

Hil

This letter from the rabble in a neighborhood near the Wailing Wall was thrust rudely into my hands just as I was receiving a warm, gratitudinous smooch from Shimon Peres.

click here to read the letter.

Send 'em the Bedbug Letter.

Atul Gawande for Surgeon General, Health Czar, some kind of key leadership role in the establishment of universal access to health care....

Atul Gawande, MD is a surgeon, an experienced hand in presidential policy making and program implementation, a New Yorker magazine staff writer, an utterly engaging public speaker, persuasive as all get-out, a pragmatist, on and on.



He looks like he could have got his start in Bollywood, though he's a native of Athens, Ohio.

I don't know whether he's been approached about a health administration position in the Obama government. If not, he should be, particularly since Sanjay Gupta is rumored to be backing away from a possible appointment to the position of Surgeon General.

Here's his website, starting with the biography page. Next thing to click is articles.

I recommend his most recent New Yorker article, then the ones on "Checklists" and "Piecework".

Backwards and forward

“Politics is like driving. To go backward, put it on R. To go forward, put it on D.”

by True Majority in the Daily Kos.

This is the week, in small towns, when farmers sit down with bankers...

Jim Kunstler at CFN asks an unsettling question about the collapse of lending and the number of farmers who will look (as they have always looked) like pretty iffy borrowers as they go to their bankers for production loans.

The net effect of the failures in banking is that a lot of people have less money than they expected they would have a year ago. This is bad enough, given our habits and practices of modern life. But what happens when farming collapses? The prospect for that is closer than most of us might realize. The way we produce our food has been organized at a scale that has ruinous consequences, not least its addiction to capital.
Now that banking is in collapse, capital will be extremely scarce. Nobody in the cities reads farm news, or listens to farm reports on the radio. Guess what, though: we are entering the planting season. It will be interesting to learn how many farmers "out there" in the Cheez Doodle belt are not able to secure loans for this year's crop.

When I am elected president, I will...

Mr. President:

We know you are busy. And, Cuba is not at the top of your list.

Changing the Cuba Travel Ban and the Embargo are complex. Frankly, we understand that you have your eye on the collapse of the economy and winding down George Bush's wars. And Congress will be needed to change these. We'll wait.

However, with no more than a minute of your time and a signature you can fulfill the promise you made in Miami before a packed house in Little Havana. George Bush created cruel and nasty new rules that affect hundreds of thousands of Cuban families in the U.S. and Cuba. It was done in a minute with nothing more than a presidential signature. You need only undo the damage --with a presidential signature. No need to think about it; you've already made the decision and announced it. You did it over a year ago when you said:

When I am elected president, I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island....

A promise is a promise....

NY Times front page typo with an extra twist...

In a story about formerly highly paid middle class and upper middle class strivers reduced to working janitorial and phone monkey jobs, the Times reporter quotes one of them on the psychological adjustment which is just as difficult as the financial one, with their sense of identity and self-worth upended.

It has been like peeling back the lawyers of a bad onion," said Ame Arlt, 53, who recently accepted a position as a customer service representative at an online insurance-leads referral service in Franklin, Tenn., after 20 years of working in executive jobs. "With every layer you peel back, you discover something else about yourself. You have to make an adjustment."

That's in the front porch edition. It got corrected early on-line.

Just a few days ago I was assembling a pot roast with the usual complement of eight whole onions. It was surprising how many of them were bad--lawyer after stinking lawyer hiding beneath the perfectly formed and unblemished outer layer.

Enough to make you cry.

The proposed Pabst Farms interchange will be a huge waste of money...

It is not needed. There is plenty of access to new development at the gateway to Oconomowoc with the existing interchanges.

Click on this Aerial photograph link. When you get there, click on "satellite view," and choose "show labels". Look for the 2 interchanges--the proposed upgrade is to the one at Sawyer (Hwy P) .

Two things to note. At costlyway speeds on 1-94, the Hwy P intersection and Summit interchange are mere seconds apart, a few feet more than a mile apart.

Moreover, Hwy P already has on- and off-ramps for traffic coming from and returning to I-94 east of Oconomowoc. Turning this into a $25 million diamond interchange is unnecessary. And anyone traveling east on 94, wanting to go to Pabst Farms, Aurora Hospital or the businesses associated with PF is already perfectly well served by the existing Summit Avenue (Hwy 67) interchange.

Anyone approaching from the west would be crazy to pass Summit in order to exit at P. The hospital doesn't show on this dated photo, but is being built now near the small lake next to Summit and just south of I 94.

There was never much to be gained from the DOT construction at Sawyer Rd in the heady days when everyone predicted success for Pabst Farms and allied developments.

And there is a lot less to be gained, now.

POLICE BLOTTER Waukesha Police Department

I've never actually seen a "Police Blotter". But, this is what the Waukesha Freeman published today, seemingly, their "take" on what our local police are doing:

MONDAY Feb 16, 2009

11 a.m. – A woman reportedly wanted transients who were living in her backyard in the 1100 block of Whiterock Avenue to be removed after they lit a fire.

1:24 p.m. – A drunk who was found in the transit center in the 200 block of East St. Paul Avenue was reported as not looking in good shape.

1:47 p.m. – A male was reported for trying to start fires in an elevator in the 200 block of Barstow Street.

2:09 p.m. – A suspect was reported held down at gunpoint after a foot pursuit near Garfield Avenue and West Wabash Avenue.

5:33 p.m. – A woman who just arrived at her house in the 2900 block of Rolling Ridge Drive reported that someone may be in her home. The house was found to be empty.

5:42 p.m. – A suspicious man was reported sitting in a vehicle in the 1800 block of Milky Way Road. He told police he was watching turkeys.

It's hard to tell what's going on here: Is this merely the the worst reportorial hash from the worst reportorial (and editorial) hash-house in Wisconsin?

Or is it a realistic view of what the local cop shop is doing on an average day?

During the recent budget-making by the Waukesha Mayor and City Council, the No. 2 in the Police Department submitted an analysis of the frightening state of understaffing in the Department.

He said a lot, and gave a lot of comparative statistics.

But it all boiled down to this.

"We need an additional 42 uniformed officers to adequately protect the people of Waukesha".

Hey, It's National Brotherhood Week

The National Conference of Christians and Jews (which later morphed into the National Conference for Community and Justice, cleverly finessing the problem of changing their initials) once sponsored a week-long National Brotherhood Week, held generally during the third full week of February (cleverly cross-ruffing Lincoln's Birthday into the special week) from the 1940s through the mid-1980s.

The irony of the assassination of Malcolm X on the first day of National Brotherhood Week (cleverly landing also on Lincoln's Birthday) in 1965, inspired the Tom Lehrer song "National Brotherhood Week," and crystallized the state of race relations in the United States.

Lehrer--surviving today, well into his 80s--gave up on singing and performing his wickedly trenchant tunes in early 1970s. There is an urban legend that Lehrer gave up political satire when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973. He did say that the awarding of the prize to Kissinger made political satire obsolete.

It's hard to believe that this cabaret performance was even a little bit edgy. But the 1960s are light years from today's standard fare. Lehrer had an interesting and notable career in academia (mathematics) and musical comedy.

Pentagon explains why they keep going to the poisoned well...

Josh Marshall at TPM discovered that Laurie Mylroie, wacko conspiracy theorist who connected Saddam Heussein to virtually every terrorist attack against since the '93 World Traded Center bombing, has been writing analytic pieces for the Department of Defense, as late as Oct., 2007.

....about the selection process for ONA researchers, a DOD spokesperson said in a statement:
"All aspects of researchers and research institutions are considered, with an 
emphasis on obtaining the widest range of possible intellectual approaches in order to provide a fully balanced approach to the analysis of future developments."

And how did the Pentagon use Mylroie's Iraq reports? Says DOD: "These reports were part of a multi-scope research effort to identify the widest possible range of analysts whose expertise was likely to generate insights and concepts which would contribute to Net Assessments on-going work to develop and refine trends, risks, and opportunities which will shape future (2020) national security environments."

Don't ya just love that special brand of rarefied Pentagon bafflegab bullshit?

It is time to begin cost cutting in the Pentagon. Re-assign thousands of careerist wimps whose reason for existence is to get serial desk jockey promotions leading to retirement gigs in the right wing think tanks and with weapons contractors.

Makes you wonder what Judy Miller is up to these days. Probably the same kind of honest work her pal, Laurie, is doing.