Bloodbath on Hennepin Avenue

Lauren Tamayo leads Shelley Olds, Leah Kirchmann and Joelle Numainville around a corner in Minneapolis.


The Uptown Minneapolis Criterium is a popular feature of the 5-day, 6-event Nature Valley Grand Prix, one of the premier bicycle races in the US. On June 17, eighty-one ladies, including world road racing champion Giorgia Bronzini, from Placenza, Italy; Olympic champion Kristin Armstrong; US champion Shelley Olds; world record holder Lauren Tamayo; multiple world champion Amber Neben and US time trial champ Evelyn Stevens lined up at the intersection of 31st & Hennepin to make 28 laps around a neighborhood variously described as "trendy" and "chic", then crowded and noisy with cyclists, racing fans, al fresco diners and various breeds of dogs on leashes, all celebrating the end of the work week.

As is often the case, the women's race was an aggressive affair compared to the tame, predictable effort put forth by the men later in the evening. The powerful Peanut Butter & Company/2012 team was anchored by Armstrong, a four-time winner of the women's championship and leader by 23 seconds in the general classification standings after three stages. Other teams had taken aim at winning the stage, if not the overall leadership. Diadora Pasta rider Olds, who had won the NVGP general classification as a member of the Peanut Butter & Company/2012 team last year, attacked immediately with Amanda Miller of HTC and Leah Kirchmann of Colavita/Forno d'Asolo. They were soon joined by second-year sprint star Joelle Numainville and then powerhouse Lauren Tamayo. Eventually this group extended its lead far enough that Armstrong's place in the standings was threatened and teammate Tamayo dropped back to escort the US Olympic hopeful back to the front. The riders were making a right turn from Lake Street to Hennepin Ave. to get the bell for the last lap when disaster struck. Olds may have brushed a barrier and then struck another rider. The crash ultimately took 39 riders down, including some of the leaders.

Four competitors were taken to the hospital by ambulance, including Olds, Hillary Billington, Robin Bauer and Laura Ralston. Armstrong received road rash and an injury to her arm but walked away. During the time it took to sort matters out, remove broken bikes and send injured riders to the hospital, officials nullified the race, meaning that no results would apply, including points awarded for sprints. Two more events remain to be contested, a 76 mile road race around Menomonie, WI on Saturday and a gut-wrenching up hill and down 13 lap criterium in the St. Croix River valley city of Stillwater on Sunday.

The Twin's Season Is Over Already

If you're a Minnesota Twins fan, you're probably already aware that even though it's early June, there will be no play-off activity at Target Field in 2011. A steady march of key players to the disabled list has put the team in such a hole that they would have to win 63 of their last 96 games in order to reach 90 victories, a .656 pace that no team in the major leagues has done so far this season. Maybe next year.

RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE

Sadly, the great American movie musical has become as extinct as the dinosaurs. Fortunately, celluloid, and now digital recordings have preserved the work of some of the country's most talented entertainers. In 1947 Paramount Pictures released "The Perils of Pauline", a fictionalized account of the career of Pearl White, the star of the original silent film series of the same name. With songs written by Frank Loesser and starring the indefatigable Betty Hutton as Pearl White, this is one of the great musicals of all time. Watch and listen to the incomparable Hutton as she sings "Rumble":

It's only money. What's to get excited about?

latimes.com

Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say

U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion, sent by the planeload in cash and intended for Iraq's reconstruction after the start of the war.

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times

June 13, 2011

Reporting from Washington

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.

Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.

This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.

For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be "the largest theft of funds in national history."

The mystery is a growing embarrassment to the Pentagon, and an irritant to Washington's relations with Baghdad. Iraqi officials are threatening to go to court to reclaim the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, seized Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the United Nations' oil-for-food program.

It's fair to say that Congress, which has already shelled out $61 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for similar reconstruction and development projects in Iraq, is none too thrilled either.

"Congress is not looking forward to having to spend billions of our money to make up for billions of their money that we can't account for, and can't seem to find," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), who presided over hearings on waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq six years ago when he headed the House Government Reform Committee.

Theft of such a staggering sum might seem unlikely, but U.S. officials aren't ruling it out. Some U.S. contractors were accused of siphoning off tens of millions in kickbacks and graft during the post-invasion period, especially in its chaotic early days. But Iraqi officials were viewed as prime offenders.

The U.S. cash airlift was a desperation measure, organized when the Bush administration was eager to restore government services and a shattered economy to give Iraqis confidence that the new order would be a drastic improvement on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The White House decided to use the money in the so-called Development Fund for Iraq, which was created by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to hold money amassed during the years when Hussein's regime was under crippling economic and trade sanctions.

The cash was carried by tractor-trailer trucks from the fortress-like Federal Reserve currency repository in East Rutherford, N.J., to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, then flown to Baghdad. U.S. officials there stored the hoard in a basement vault at one of Hussein's former palaces, and at U.S. military bases, and eventually distributed the money to Iraqi ministries and contractors.

But U.S. officials often didn't have time or staff to keep strict financial controls. Millions of dollars were stuffed in gunnysacks and hauled on pickups to Iraqi agencies or contractors, officials have testified.

House Government Reform Committee investigators charged in 2005 that U.S. officials "used virtually no financial controls to account for these enormous cash withdrawals once they arrived in Iraq, and there is evidence of substantial waste, fraud and abuse in the actual spending and disbursement of the Iraqi funds."

Pentagon officials have contended for the last six years that they could account for the money if given enough time to track down the records. But repeated attempts to find the documentation, or better yet the cash, were fruitless.

Iraqi officials argue that the U.S. government was supposed to safeguard the stash under a 2004 legal agreement it signed with Iraq. That makes Washington responsible, they say.

Abdul Basit Turki Saeed, Iraq's chief auditor and president of the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit, has warned U.S. officials that his government will go to court if necessary to recoup the missing money.

"Clearly Iraq has an interest in looking after its assets and protecting them," said Samir Sumaidaie, Iraq's ambassador to the United States.
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According to available calculations, a billion dollars in $100 bills would weigh roughly 22,000 lbs. That means that a normal C-130J could crawl across the sky with about $1.64 billion in C-notes, not counting pallets, lunches for the crew, and toilet paper. In any event, the Herc will haul a lot of cash. During WWII, the "cargo cult" was established in the Pacific, where islanders believed the airplanes arrived with presents from a supreme being and attempted to attract airplanes with small airstrips and even aircraft "decoys". There's probably a similar feeling among the Iraqis, whose emirs and tribal chieftains have a continual courier shuttle running between Iraq and the banks of Europe and the US, deposting the $100 bills in accounts that will then be tapped for homes in Naples, Florida and London, Harvard tuition, well-bred race horses and plastic surgery.

Naturally, the story continues:
The U.S. watchdog on Iraq reconstruction is disputing a report quoting him suggesting that $6.6 billion in Iraqi oil money entrusted to U.S. hands may have been stolen.
The charge, if true, would make the theft of funds the largest in U.S. history, and has already angered Iraqis reportedly debating whether to sue over the missing funds.
The Pentagon refuses to endorse the charge that the disappearing dollars were stolen -- either by greedy U.S. contractors or others involved in its movement from U.S. holdings to Iraq. And now, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen said he never said that $6.6 billion in missing money was swiped.
"What we concluded in our previous audits is that it's been virtually impossible to account for what happened to that money," Bowen told Fox News in a telephone interview Monday, adding that criminal cases have led to the convictions of people who have stolen money from a special fund set up by the U.N. Security Council.
But Bowen said he did not mean to imply anything more when he answered a Los Angeles Times reporter's question about whether it would be serious if billions of dollars was stolen from the Development Fund for Iraq.
"I said, yes, it would be a very significant serious crime," he said. "So yes, the reporter was correct that some of it, and perhaps a lot of it, has been stolen. But we don't have a factual basis to reach that conclusion. What we said over and over again is that the lack of controls created vulnerabilities to fraud, waste and abuse."
Bowen did not say where the Los Angeles Times derived the $6.6 billion figure in question, a figure that he didn't use.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration airlifted to Baghdad a total of $12 billion that was carried by tractor-trailer trucks from the Federal Reserve currency repository in New Jersey to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland for reconstruction of the country.
Bowen said most of the money was deposited in Iraq's central bank for distribution to Iraqi ministries and contractors, but he doesn't know how much.
"Iraq could have it all," he said. "They probably do have most of it."
The Pentagon has been unable to properly account for the $2.8 billion that it controlled under the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which allowed military commanders to spend money for reconstruction projects. Bowen said the Pentagon's comptroller asked him last year to help audit the flow of money.
"More important, we're trying to work with the Iraq government to find out what happened to the rest of the money," Bowen said.
Bowen emphasized that the missing money is not U.S. taxpayer funds. The revenues in the DFI come from among other sources -- Iraq's oil and gas exports, as well as frozen Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the now-defunct, Saddam Hussein-era oil-for-food program.
But previous audits have shown the Defense Department didn't do a good job of tracking the money and Iraqi officials told The Los Angeles Times that under a 2004 legal agreement, Washington is responsible for the missing funds.
Iraq's chief auditor and president of the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit has warned Washington that Baghdad will sue if necessary to recoup the money.
"Clearly, Iraq has an interest in looking after its assets and protecting them," the newspaper quoted Iraqi Ambassador to the United States Samir Sumaidaie saying.
Bowen said the U.S. needs Iraq's assistance to obtain the bank data regarding the disbursal of the funds so that his office can close the books on jurisdiction over DFI by the end of the summer since it's been years since the U.S. has had control over it.
"We're going to account for it as best we can," he said.
Fox News' Justin Fishel contributed to this report.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/14/auditor-disputes-report-about-66-billion-in-iraq-money-being-stolen/#ixzz1PHwQD3gT

Ruler on Ice?

The 143rd Belmont Stakes, the third race in America's mythical "triple crown" series for three year olds is a 1 1/2 mile feat of endurance known as the "Test of a Champion". The winner was 24-1 longshot Ruler on Ice, followed by two other horses ignored by the bettors. The $2 exacta paid $928, the $2 trifecta $8,268 and the $2 superfecta totaled a cool $74,052. Until 6:41 pm EDT on June 11, 2011, nobody would have considered Ruler on Ice any kind of a champion. With a maiden victory at Delaware Park as a 2 year old and just a conditioned allowance win at Parx in Philadelphia during the current campaign, the Kelly Breen trainee had minimal qualifications for a race of this magnitude. In his previous effort, the Frederico Tesio Stakes at Pimlico, he was beaten by Concealed Identity, who went on to finish up the track in the Preakness. There were, however some factors that could have been twisted into positives for the horse. None of the entrants had genuine off-track credentials, which might be considered a plus. Most important, maybe, was an equipment change. Breen had been dissatisfied with horse's concentration in previous races. As he said, they had already gelded him, so they couldn't do it again. He decided to run him with blinkers for the first time. Normally, an equipment change before a big race is a negative, it indicates that the trainer is experimenting, attempting to come up with a recipe for success, that he doesn't have the horse where he wants him. And that was indeed the case for Ruler on Ice. No one can know if the sloppy track, the blinkers, Johnny Velasquez losing a stirrup on Animal Kingdom, or what else might have determined the outcome of the race. Or that if the race were run tomorrow the results would be the same. All we know is that on one rainy spring evening Ruler on Ice ran a mile and half faster than eleven other horses and put his name in the record books forever.

I wanted to do this TWICE this weekend

This sort of thing needs to happen more often:



American society has developed an increasing abhorrence of violence, except in spectator sports like football and ice hockey and ultra-technological warfare. The words, "We don't want anybody to get hurt" are often used in confrontational situations by law enforcement, who are happy to hurt people and consider it an occupational fringe benefit that only they can enjoy. But there are offensive people who are unwilling to listen to reason and only understand violence and concomitant pain. Mr. Eddie isn't just randomly running amok, he's administering much needed discipline at no expense to the rest of society. So, what's wrong with a little violence? Especially when it's so well deserved?

Another great example of somebody getting what they deserve:

A Disquistion on Government

John C. Calhoun 1782-1850

A few weeks ago some lamebrain that considers himself a student of the War of Northern Aggression realized that Lake Calhoun, adjoining the trendy Uptown district of Minneapolis, was named in 1820 after John C. Calhoun, then the Secretary of War and the individual that authorized the establishment of nearby Fort Snelling. He has proposed to the Minneapolis Park Board that the name of the lake be changed because Calhoun was an advocate of slavery. Who knows where this will go but it made the local media. Coincidentally, at that very time, I was reading Calhoun's "Disquisition on Government" and his "Discourse on the Constitution of the United States".

The popular perception of Calhoun today is that he was a retrograde states rightist and outspoken promoter of slavery. Both are true as far as they go, but the story is much more complicated than that.

John Caldwell Calhoun was born and raised in rural South Carolina and was the very epitome of the self-made man so important in American folklore. After graduating from Yale in 1804, Calhoun completed law school and was elected to the U.S. House in 1810, remaining a national political figure until his death forty years later, holding every major office except the Presidency itself. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected Calhoun as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft. No doubt the next Senate Committee tasked with a similar job will name John Kerry, Carol Mosely Braun, Barbara Boxer, and Teddy Kennedy shortly before the world comes to an end.

Calhoun's political ideas were rooted in the interests of the South, an agrarian society. He, and many others, believed that the United States was made up of British colonies that had banded together through the Articles of Confederation to achieve independence from Britain while retaining their own sovereignty. The US Constitution, adopted after much debate and acrimony, was, as historian Charles Beard pointed out, a means to insure the payment of War of Independnce debt, among other things, through a central government more powerful than that of any of the states. While the new constitution was eventually ratified by each of the states, there remained a substantial minority of the population that never intellectually accepted a lesser role for the states. Calhoun was a leader and spokesperson for these people, believing that every state had the right of "nullification", meaning that if a state found a federal law to be onerous it had the right to nullify that law and forbid its enforcement within that state. This concept was particularly directed at the federal protective tariffs used to finance the federal government in that era. The southern states, with little industry of their own, were forced to subsidize northern manufacturing to the detriment of their trade in raw materials with Europe. The federal government did cut tariff duties in response but never eliminated them entirely. During the first half of the nineteenth century slavery was legitimized by the US Constitution itself. Even abolitionists in the north had to admit that they could do little about southern slavery, except prevent its spread to new western territories. Slave state southerners could envision a future where they would be surrounded by new anti-slavery states and become even more of a minority nationally. Thus the argument between North and South was rooted in two different views of the ideology of republican government. The South felt that there was no single federal government with a power over individual states and that ultimately a state had the right to secede from the Union if it felt that to be necessary.

Additionally, Calhoun advanced the theory of the advantages of the "concurrent majority" as opposed to that of the "numerical majority". The latter is what we accept as normal today, where a simple majority of voters elect representatives and endorse government policies that affect all citizens. On the other hand a concurrent majority, as outlined by Calhoun, would be exemplified by our jury system, where decisions are made unanimously.

Lincoln, of course, did not agree with nullification and sent almost 3/4 of a million men and boys to an early grave to demonstrate his beliefs, in addition destroying so much Southern capital and property that the rebel states took almost a century to recover. By that time, Calhoun had been dead for over 15 years. He had no personal connection with War of Northern Aggression but his ideas were still poison to the industrial North. And government-sponsored education either ignores one of America's greatest statesmen or paints him as a villain, in addition to inspiring grommet-heads to remove his name from bodies of water.