In July of 2010, two dozen members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus led by Michele Bachmann co-sponsored a resolution announcing support for Israel "to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force." So, Tea Partiers must have been shocked - shocked! - to learn that Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers underwriting their "movement," were also in business with Iran. As it turns out, the Kochs are merely following Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney among the Republican luminaries caught up in dirty deals with Tehran.

Twenty four years after Ronald Reagan sent a Bible, a cake and U.S. weapons to the mullahs in Tehran, Bloomberg News reported that, in the words of a former employee, the Koch brothers in likely violation of the American sanctions used "every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else."

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism...

Internal company records show that Koch Industries used its foreign subsidiary to sidestep a U.S. trade ban barring American companies from selling materials to Iran. Koch-Glitsch offices in Germany and Italy continued selling to Iran until as recently as 2007, the records show.

The company's products helped build a methanol plant for Zagros Petrochemical Co., a unit of Iran's state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co., the documents show. The facility, in the coastal city of Bandar Assaluyeh, is now the largest methanol plant in the world, according to IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado-based provider of chemicals, energy and economic data.

In response to the allegations, Koch spokesperson Melissa Cohlmia said, "During the relevant time frame covered in your article, U.S. law allowed foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies to engage in trade involving countries subject to U.S. trade sanctions, including Iran, under certain conditions," adding that Koch has since stopped all of its units from trading with Iran.

If this story sounds familiar, it should. Just change the company to Halliburton and the CEO's name to Dick Cheney.

As the New York Times explained in March 2010, even as the Obama administration was seeking tougher UN sanctions to press Tehran into curbing its nuclear program, "of the 74 companies The Times identified as doing business with both the United States government and Iran, 49 continue to do business there with no announced plans to leave."

The federal government has awarded more than $107 billion in contract payments, grants and other benefits over the past decade to foreign and multinational American companies while they were doing business in Iran, despite Washington's efforts to discourage investment there, records show.

That includes nearly $15 billion paid to companies that defied American sanctions law by making large investments that helped Iran develop its vast oil and gas reserves.

Among the U.S. contractors also profiting from Iran was Halliburton, which pocketed $27.1 billion from American taxpayers between 2000 and 2009:

Halliburton, former Vice President Cheney's old company, provided oil and gas drilling services to Iran through foreign subsidies. After a political furor erupted over the work, the company announced it would do no new business in Iran, and it exited the country altogether in 2007. While still operating in Iran, Halliburton won huge contacts from the federal government, including a no-bid contract to restore Iraq's oil sector, as did its subsidiary at the time, Kellogg Brown & Root.

As Perrspectives detailed four years ago, Halliburton had side-stepped the U.S. sanctions regime in place against Iran since the 1990's by using a Cayman Islands subsidiary. And what should come as a surprise to no one, CEO Dick Cheney opposed those very sanctions until, of course, he became George W. Bush's Vice President.

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John Amato and I frequently Monday morning quarterback the news shows and the pundits invited on to represent the "left" side of the conversation. Most of the time, I'll admit, we're puzzled by how that particular person is considered on the left (Joke Line, I'm looking at you). John has done some media training and I'm just dipping my toes into the media appearances (you can hear my segment discussing the Sunday shows on The Nicole Sandler Show live every Monday at www.radioornot.com or check out the podcasts) because we both feel so passionately that we need strong, unapologetic liberal voices out there to pierce through the right wing noise.

So I'm thrilled that we're seeing high visibility liberals like Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas on This Week on a semi-regular basis. For years, it wouldn't have happened.

But after watching this clip, the substance of which Heather discussed on Sunday, I want to speak to a fatal flaw in appearances like Arianna's and Markos's.

As I expected, both of them did their homework and were armed with facts to support their side. That's what we do: we present facts and hope that the other side will observe the rules of debate. But look who they were debating. Do you honestly think that Liz Cheney is going to argue fairly? Of course not. She lies right in the faces of Markos and Arianna (and more importantly, the viewer who may not have those facts in hand) when she says it's absolutely not true that Halliburton was fined millions of dollars for defrauding the federal government. Note how Arianna laughingly says she can't wait for Politifact (a supposedly non-partisan fact-check organization through the St Petersburg Times) for their verdict on her factual accuracy. As of this writing, more than 36 hours from the broadcast, and Politifact has remained suspiciously silent on Liz Cheney, but only too happy to go after Markos for a slip of the tongue that he immediately acknowledged afterward.

So clearly, having the grasp of the facts and/or counting on the anchor/fact check organization to expect truthfulness from their guests doesn't work. Nor does expecting Liz Cheney and George Will to be fair, and not dismissive, as they trot out the strawman that liberals even blame the demise of the Gore marriage on Bush, something Liz Cheney thinks she read on Daily Kos. All snide insinuations to dismiss, belittle and render non-credible everything else they say.

Well, liberals, let me tell you right now: It's time to put away those Marquess of Queensbury rules. Stop smiling as they lie to your face. But don't get caught in some distraction (the last vestige of a Republican scoundrel: focus on some picayune aspect and steer the conversation away from anything of substance for which they have no defense). Keep hold of your head, your calm and your facts and cut them off at the knees, rhetorically speaking.

There's no reason, for example, why Liz "Spawn of Satan" Cheney should have any credibility to appear on these shows. She is a veteran of an administration widely considered the worst in modern history and of the department that pushed a foreign policy that has failed us, at the cost of thousands of American deaths, tens of thousands of devastating injuries and one trillion dollars of American taxpayer money. Her latest gig is at the head of a think tank formed with another neo-conservative (Bill "I'm always wrong" Kristol) to push a failed foreign policy that has been soundly rejected by the American people and to throw as much crap at our current president to see what sticks. That's it: she is on TV to push for more destruction. Why the hell aren't we impeaching her credibility by pointing out this FACTUAL information?

C'mon, Markos and Arianna, she's done nothing to earn your (or the audience's) respect. She feels no compunction about belittling you on air. Stop being polite. Be honest. And make that torture-apologist, war-mongering shrew and her partisan-motivated propaganda talking points radioactive on these shows.

From Pat Bagley:

Investigators zero in on a defective piece of work from Halliburton...

Click here for full size image. h/t JekyllnHyde

Open Thread below.

(H/T to Driftglass.)

Just when you think Halliburton couldn't be any more blatant, and Congress members couldn't be any more corruptible, it gets worse. No, we don't need publicly funded campaigns! Nope:

As Congress investigated its role in the doomed Deep Horizon oil rig, Halliburton donated $17,000 to candidates running for federal office, giving money to several lawmakers on committees that have launched inquiries into the massive spill.

Gee, I wonder why. Do you suppose they simply want them to let them know there'll be no hard feelings if they should find Halliburton at fault in some way? I'm sure it's something like that.

The Texas-based oil giant’s political action committee made 14 contributions during the month of May, according to a federal campaign report filed Wednesday — 13 to Republicans and one to a Democrat. It was the busiest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008.

Of the 10 current members of Congress who got money from Halliburton in May, seven are on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath.

They just want them to know they're behind them 100% as they do their jobs!

Halliburton’s political contributions in May are the highest they’ve been since September 2009, when the PAC also gave $17,000 in donations. In fact, the last time the company gave more than $17,000 in one month was when it donated $25,000 during the heat of the presidential campaign in September 2008.

I've often told people that instead of the netroots funding candidates, I'd rather see all that money go to hiring our own lobbying firm. Because then we could pay them off, too: to be honest.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced a federal investigation of the Deepwater Horizon incident today.

Federal agencies, including the FBI, are participating in the probe and "if we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be forceful in our response," Holder told reporters after meeting with state and federal prosecutors in New Orleans.

The Justice Department has already demanded that the companies involved in the spill, including BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton Co., preserve records related to the accident.

It's been a long time coming. I don't think anyone has doubt there were corners cut and regulations ignored in this case.

But what bothers me is the report that I happened upon shortly after I heard about Holder's press conference.

Via Bloomberg:

BP Plc has decided not to attach a second blowout preventer on its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico and efforts to end the flow are over until the relief wells are finished, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Thad Allen, who spoke at a press conference today.

So, I have a few more questions that are unanswered by this little blurb.

• When was the decision made to scrap the effort on the second valve?
• Was the decision related to news there would be a criminal investigation?
• Was the decision related to orders not to destroy evidence down there on the ocean floor?
• If BP's decision is unrelated to an ongoing criminal investigation, what specific factors caused them to abandon the effort?

If I find answers, I'll let you know. It's all too coincidental for my taste.

Update: This is from BusinessWeek:

BP Plc said it won’t be able to stop the flow of oil from a gushing well in Gulf of Mexico until August when a relief well can be finished, and in the meantime it will divert as much of the oil as it can to surface ships.

The diversion strategy, unlike capping the flow, is subject to disruption by tropical storms and hurricanes.

(snip)

BP is preparing for storms by installing a free-standing riser pipe later this month that will terminate 300 feet below the water’s surface. The pipe will have flexible coupling to allow tankers to depart ahead of a hurricane and safely return when seas have calmed, BP said today in a statement. The oil company didn’t say what happens to the flow of oil if the ship has to disconnect.

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ProPublica: Gulf disaster puts the spotlight on a regulator with a mixed record

The Talking Dog: We're seeing comparisons of the Obama Administration's reaction to the Gulf Coast mega-spill to the Bush Administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Maybe there's a point in that, but I'm hard-pressed to see what it is.

Consortiumnews: How Rev. Moon's snakes infested US. Now, the unabashedly right wing Washington Times is for sale

PERRspectives: Republican Party Animals

We are respectable negroes: When smart people say stupid things

Some Guy's Blog: Documentary Film of the Day: Note By Note - The Making of Steinway L1037...

Jaysus:

The surface area of a catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill quickly tripled in size amid growing fears among experts that the slick could become vastly more devastating than it seemed just two days ago.

Frustrated fishermen eager to help contain the spill from a ruptured underwater well had to keep their boats idle Saturday as another day of rough seas kept crews away from the slick.

President Barack Obama planned a Sunday trip to the Gulf Coast to see the damage.

As Rachel Maddow has explored, this is going to have an impact on coastal life reminiscent of Katrina -- all bad. Indeed, with no end of the pollution in sight, and the spill having reached such massive size already, it's conceivable that not only will the entire Gulf of Mexico, and all its coastal areas, be rendered lifeless and unusable for generations, but that the entire Eastern Seaboard will be awash with oil as well.

It's already looking like this will be one of the largest manmade environmental catastrophes in history. And that's saying something.

Of course, the right-wingers are trying to find some way to blame President Obama for this mess.

And while it's true that Obama's announcement last month favoring some new offshore projects is now looking woefully misbegotten, let's not forget where this disaster came from: the world of Halliburton and Dick Cheney and his secret energy talks.

Indeed, this oil spill is a clear product of Republican "small government" philosophy: the belief that you could and should "free the market" to drill anywhere at any time, and with as little regulatory oversight, including both environmental and safety standards. That's how BP talked the government into letting it drill at such great depths with as little surety that a blowout would not occur as it did, nor with any reckoning of the potential consequences of a blowout.

Consequences that are just about to hit our shores. Quite literally.

The spreading stench of oil, money and destruction off the Louisiana coast should be enough reason for anyone to protest opening more wells offshore. In case it's not, let's just put an end to the myths that offshore drilling is safe, government regulation is bad, and this particular disaster is "Obama's Katrina". It's not, no matter what the AP's Calvin Woodward alleges.

The political subtext of the crisis was clear and increasingly on people's minds, whether from a federal office deploying oil-containment booms or from a Louisiana parish awaiting yet another sucker punch from the sea.

Will this be Obama's Katrina? Should the federal and state governments have done more, and earlier? Did they learn the lessons of the devastating hurricane?

Well, yes. They did. If it weren't for the Obama administration, none of us would know that the flow of oil into the sea was 5 times the rate reported by BP. It was, after all, the federal government experts who exposed the true leakage rate.

On Wednesday night, she reported the findings of federal experts that up to 5,000 barrels a day were leaking from the well. BP had estimated only 1,000. As well, the company told the Coast Guard a new leak had been found. Obama was briefed on these developments on Air Force One while returning at night from the Midwest.

True to form, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, and every other right wing hack has jumped right on the bandwagon.

Problem is, it's just not true. The Wall Street Journal has some interesting facts to contradict this set of Frank Luntz/Karl Rove talking points.

Halliburton is directly linked to the failure causing the spill and explosion.

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn't known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast.

Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which was leased by BP PLC, the British oil giant.

Concerns about the cementing process—and about whether rigs have enough safeguards to prevent blowouts—raise questions about whether the industry can safely drill in deep water and whether regulators are up to the task of monitoring them.

The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week. The disaster, which killed 11, has left a gusher of oil streaming into the Gulf from a mile under the surface.

It's not the first time for Halliburton, either.

Halliburton also was the cementer on a well that suffered a big blowout last August in the Timor Sea, off Australia. The rig there caught fire and a well leaked tens of thousands of barrels of oil over 10 weeks before it was shut down. The investigation is continuing; Halliburton declined to comment on it.

Meanwhile, the devastation spreads.

Offshore, cleanup workers struggled to contain an oily sheen spreading from a well ruptured by the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon exploration platform. Coast Guard officials estimate that some 42,000 gallons of crude continue to leak into the Gulf of Mexico each day. Remote submersibles have so far failed in an effort to close the shattered well's blowout valve, which should have shut off automatically. Boom crews plan to begin burning collected oil on the Gulf's surface as early as Wednesday. - Mother Nature Network

The failed blowout valve? It was manufactured by Cameron International. One look at Cameron's board should tell you all you need to know. They're all Bush/Cheney contractor cronies, here and around the world.

Offshore drilling has been put forward by the Obama administration as one prong of a multi-prong approach to ending our foreign oil dependence. With thousands of barrels of oil spilling offshore, perhaps it's time for the administration to reconsider opening more wells to companies willing to overlook consistent records of failure like Halliburton's.

Natural disasters like Katrina are devastating and unpreventable. The best we can do is be prepared to deal with the fallout, including levees unable to handle the stress of a Category 5 hurricane. The government failed the people of New Orleans and allowed the aftermath of Katrina to devastate New Orleans. This disaster is a man-made mess, beginning to end, engineered by corporate interests. It isn't anyone's Katrina. It's just chapter two of the war waged on our coasts by Bush, Cheney, and their gang of corporate cronies.

Update: Media Matters has a timeline of the Obama administration's response.

I think Marcy Wheeler makes the single most compelling argument here about the precedent of a private health insurance mandate:

And for those who promise we’ll go back and fix this later, once we achieve universal health care, understand what will have happened in the meantime. The idea, of course, is to establish some means to get people single payer coverage (before Lieberman, this would have been through a public option or Medicare buy-in) and, over time, expand it.

In fact, this bill will move toward single payer, too–though not the kind we want. For the large number of people who live in a place where there is limited competition, this bill will require them to get health care through the oligopoly or monopoly provider. It’ll work great for the provider: they will be able to dictate rates. But the Senate bill allows these blossoming single payer providers to keep up to 25% of the benefit in profits and marketing costs, and pass little of that benefit onto citizens. If we make private corporations our single payer, how are we going to convince them to cede control when we ask them to let the government be the single payer?

The reason this matters, though, is the power it gives the health care corporations. We can’t ditch Halliburton or Blackwater because they have become the sole primary contractor providing precisely the services they do. And so, like it or not, we’re dependent on them. And if we were to try to exercise oversight over them, we’d ultimately face the reality that we have no leverage over them, so we’d have to accept whatever they chose to provide. This bill gives the health care industry the leverage we’ve already given Halliburton and Blackwater.

It’s the 9.8% tithe that bothers me the most. But for those who think we can fix it, consider this, too. If the Senate bill passes, in its current form, it will mean that the health care industry was able to dictate–through their Senators Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson–what they wanted the US Congress to do. They will have succeeded in dictating the precise terms of legislation.

Now, that’s not the first time that has happened. It certainly happened on telecom immunity. It certainly has happened, repeatedly, on Defense contracting (see also Randy Cunningham). But none of these egregious instances of corporations dictating legislation included a tithe–the requirement that citizens pay corporations to provide their service, rather than allowing the government to contract the service.

This is a fundamentally different relationship we’re talking about–one that gives corporations vast new powers. And the fact that–with one temper tantrum from Joe Lieberman–the corporations were able to dictate the terms of this new relationship deeply troubles me.

When this passes, it will become clear that Congress is no longer the sovereign of this nation. Rather, the corporations dictating the laws will be.

I understand the temptation to offer 30 million people health care. What I don’t understand is the nonchalance with which we’re about to fundamentally shift the relationships of governance in doing so.

We’ve seen our Constitution and means of government under attack in the last 8 years. This does so in a different–but every bit as significant way. We don’t mandate tithing corporations in this country–at least not yet. And it troubles me that so many Democrats are rushing to do so, without considering the logical consequences.

Because we've outsourced so many functions that used to be handled by federal and/or military employees, we've also lost control of outcomes like this:

Contractors working for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan are fouling the nests of U.S. soldiers with pollution, poisoning the troops in the very bases meant to be their sanctuaries.

That's the central allegation in a new set of lawsuits filed in Nashville and elsewhere across the country. The legal actions name as defendants the controversial contracting firm KBR Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root), as well as Halliburton Co., of which KBR used to be a subsidiary, and a Turkish general contracting firm, ERKA Ltd.

"These for-profit corporations callously exposed and continue to expose soldiers and others to toxic smoke, ash and fumes," says the complaint filed in Nashville on Friday, which asks for damages on behalf of two Tennessee soldiers. "These exposures are causing a host of serious diseases, increased risk of serious diseases in the future, death and increased risk of death."

The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, describes "burn pits" at U.S. bases in both military theaters that contain "every type of waste imaginable." Reading like a postmodern version of Jonathan Swift's Description of a City Shower, the catalog of rubbish in the pits includes:

"Tires, lithium batteries, Styrofoam, paper, wood, rubber, petroleum-oil-lubricating products, metals, hydraulic fluids, munitions boxes, medical waste, biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles."

"Flames shoot hundreds of feet into the sky" as the huge pits are set ablaze, the Nashville lawsuit claims.

Noting that "burning plastics emit dioxins, which are known to cause cancer," the complaint accuses the defendants of negligence, battery and inflicting emotional distress. Saying an estimated 100,000 soldiers and contract personnel may have been harmed by the smoke from the pits, the plaintiffs want the court to force KBR and the other companies to cover future medical expenses and pay other compensatory damages.

I wonder who the human corpses were? And why were they burned?