Almost every weekend for the last month, there has been an extra-ordinary announcement from the financial world and the White House. The financial system is rattling apart, and while the poor card player may blame his cards, the expert knows when there has been a crooked deal.

While Fundilicious Palin has been soaking up the airwaves, the Bush team has been ever so busy with their Going Out of Business sales: big deals for friendly arms merchants, a war in Pakistan - and at best upping the pressure, at worst preparing an attack on Iran. Fun times, eh? Let’s start with Iran.

While McSame runs around accusing Obama of wanting to "forfeit" Iraq, the Bushies are finalizing the negotiations for forfeiting Iraq by 2011. But the negotiations have hit a snag. The sticking point? The U.S. officials said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with al-Maliki on Wednesday to try to resolve the issue of legal immunity for U.S. contractors working in Iraq.

Alan Grayson (Blue America, FL-08) is exactly the kind of Democrat that we need.  Not a timid, cautious, capitulating, impeachment-off-the-table Democrat like the party leadership, but a don't-give-an-inch, take-no-prisoners, put-the-criminals-in-jail Democrat. Check out his great interview with Matt Stoller.

Since December 2003, the Democratic Policy Committee (DPC), which I chair, has held seventeen oversight hearings to examine waste, fraud, and corruption in Iraq. Last Friday, I held a hearing to investigate contractor KBR’s tragic failure to correct faulty electrical work at U.S. military installations in Iraq, even after the United States Army issued a bulletin stating that improper wiring by contractors had resulted in the electrocution deaths of several soldiers.

Sen. Byron Dorgan will join us here at FDL today at 11 am ET/8 am PT, for a discussion about one of the more infuriating issues of the last few years: contractor fraud and war profiteering. These are issues that Sen. Dorgan has worked long and hard to expose -- and for that, he deserves a lot of thanks. We hope you will join us later this morning for this discussion...

Froomkin = One. Of. Us. quoting Robert Brodsky, on Webb’s reaction to Bush trying to drag his feet on the Webb-McCaskill Truman Commission on war profiteering -- Webb immediately pushed back, criticizing the statement as an ‘impingement on the rights’ of Congress. Any questions?

The final discussion in the This Brave Nation series is up -- between Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein -- and like all the others, it is fascinating. And inspiring. But, in this case, there is also an enlightening moment where Tom and Naomi are talking about how much activity and organization there is online...and how little there is in the streets....

If you saw the movie Erin Brockovich, you know what exposure to a toxic chromium substance can do to the human body. And what lengths a company might go to to cover up exposure to a toxic chemical if, indeed, they knew about it.

Because knowingly exposing your employees to a highly carcinogenic chemical is not only unconscionable, it's also illegal in most jurisdictions.

Enter KBR in Iraq. And a hearing last Friday with the Democratic Policy Committee. Sen. Dorgan and Sen. Whitehouse were visibly disgusted at the facts ascertained during this hearing...

Well, just when you think you may have just ONE day in life where your snark can outdo reality, you find out how absurd the world has been made. And not in a good way. Blackwater's sense of tastelessness knows no bounds.