TODAY'S TOPICS: Gore, Human Rights, CIA Tapes, Energy Bill, Olbermann, Stop the FCC, Blackwater, Impeachment
“Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government.”
--Archbishop Tutu
“I am not an official and I am not bound by diplomatic niceties. So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth: My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. You can feel anger and frustration and direct it at the United States of America. Or you can make a second choice, you can decide to move forward and do all of the difficult work that needs to be done and save a large open blank space in your document and put a footnote by it."
--Al Gore in Bali
What bugs me about this is not the fact that the modern Republican Party doesn’t really care about actual governance. This is hardly news. At this point, it’s an exhausted organization so bereft of ideas that it really doesn’t have much choice except to follow a policy of obstruction to its logical, nihilistic conclusion.
But why does the media have to play along? It’s nice that the Times ran this story, but it would be nicer if the media simply reported what was happening on a regular basis…. If Republicans have adopted a strategy of simply blocking every piece of legislation that makes it to the floor of the Senate — and everyone agrees that they have — then we should be regularly seeing headlines that say “Republicans Block ______ “
And while we’re at it, if Dems wanted to make Republicans actually filibuster, that might be helpful, too.
--Kevin Drum on the GOP filibuster machine
VIDEO SECTION
Stop Big Media! Watch another brilliant action video by The Free Press. And then take action by sending their email, and providing a photo to put on their “wall”:
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/ownership/i7xbse84l686jet
MORE..
In just five days, the Federal Communications Commission plans to open the floodgates of further media consolidation across America.
If FCC Chairman Kevin Martin gets his way, your community will be inundated with even more mass-produced celebrity gossip and infotainment, and less local reporting and quality journalism: more of the the junk news that is making us sick.
Together we can stop them. We blocked them in 2003, and today we need you to show Washington that you don't want more media consolidation. To do it, we're building a "Wall" of opposition: your photo next to thousands of others, standing shoulder to shoulder against Big Media. We're going to deliver this Wall to the FCC. Add your name now.
Help Build the Wall Against Big Media
Watch this short clip of Gore addressing the climate change conference attendees in Bali. Apparently he drew the most applause when he “reminded delegates that President George W. Bush has only one year and 40 days left in the White House.”
Unfortunately, the news coming out yesterday regarding the polar ice caps is grim. I’ll let Gore give you the scoop, but we’re talking maybe even less than a decade before they’re completely gone during the summer. And Greenland is melting just as fast, if not faster, with the new data showing a whopping 7 degree increase in average temperature in just the past 15 years. And as that ice melts, our sea levels rise.
And then there’s this: “Michael Steele, a geophysicist and oceanographer at the University of Washington's Polar Science Center, said his group's temperature measurements in the Chukchi Sea, between the north coasts of Alaska and Eastern Siberia, has shown a continuing surface warming trend for the past 100 years.
But this year sets a record, he said. Throughout the sea, he said, the water temperature was 6 degrees warmer than the historical average, and nearly 3 degrees warmer than the historical maximum. In one northern part of the Chukchi, the water temperature actually reached 9 degrees warmer than average - a high never before observed,” he said.
Amazing…sad…
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70567/
Olbermann’s “Worst”…some great stuff on Thompson, Romney and O’Reilly:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/13/countdowns-worst-persons-freddie-willard-the-frank-burns-of-news/
Olbermann’s “Bushed” series continues…adding 3 more to the 47 identified administration scandals to date:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/13/countdown-bushed-on-blackwater-commutation-gonzo/
Another Olbermann “Bushed”
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/14/countdown-bushed-on-lunatics-contempt-more-blackwater/
And Dan Abrams continues his excellent series “Bush League Justice”. Watch:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/13/bush-league-justice-partisan-corruption-of-the-doj/
Another Giuliani scandal! From C&L: “Keith Olbermann talked with The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington on Thursday’s Countdown about the latest in a string of scandals surrounding Rudy Giuliani. Apparently, Rudy’s law firm made millions of dollars, possibly illegally, lobbying on behalf of a software company that developed data mining programs that kept huge databases on millions of Americans, getting the company’s owners in front of Vice President Cheney, the FBI and other high ranking White House officials just one month after being hired.”
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/13/countdown-rudy-giuliani-made-millions-lobbying-for-data-mining-company/
Jack Cafferty asks the question: “How much influence should corporations have over energy legislation?” You probably all saw the sad news that the Dem bill fell one vote short of cutting off ANOTHER GOP filibuster. Makes me want to scream…meanwhile we watch the world burn…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/13/jack-cafferty-how-much-influence-should-corporations-have-over-energy-legislation/
ARTICLE SECTION
HUMAN RIGHTS...
Norm Solomon discusses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as defined by the UN, and which was agreed upon in 1948 by the General Assembly. Unfortunately, we come woefully short of meeting those standards that were set, which in a truly moral world would be what all countries practice.
A few clips:
The chances are slim that you saw much news coverage of Human Rights Day when it blew past the media radar — as usual — on Dec. 10. Human rights may be touted as a treasured principle in the United States, but the assessed value in medialand is apt to fluctuate widely on the basis of double standards and narrow definitions.
SNIP
Perhaps the farthest afield from the customary U.S. media parameters is Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which insists: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Measured with such yardsticks for human rights, the United States falls far short of many countries. If American news media did a better job of reporting on human rights in all their dimensions, we’d be less self-satisfied as a nation — and more outraged about the widespread violations of human rights that persist in our midst every day.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/13/5796/
MISSING CIA TAPES...
What’s on the missing CIA tapes? Naomie Wolf takes a few guesses.
A few clips:
What we are likely to see if the tapes documenting the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri are ever recovered is that the “confessions” of the prisoners upon which the White House has built its entire case for subverting the Constitution and suspending civil liberties in this country was obtained through methods such as electrocution, beating to the point of organ failure, hanging prisoners from the wrists from a ceiling, suffocation, and threats against family members (”I am going to find your mother and I am going to fuck her” is one direct quote from a US interrogator). On the missing tapes, we would likely see responses from the prisoners that would be obvious to us as confessions to anything at all in order to end the violence. In other words, if we could witness the drama of manufacturing by torture the many violently coerced “confessions” upon which the whole house of cards of this White House and its hyped “war on terror” rests, it would likely cause us to reopen every investigation, including the most serious ones (remember, even the 9/11 committee did not receive copies of the tapes); shut down the corrupt, Stalinesque Military Commissions System; turn over prisoners, the guilty and the innocent, into a working, accountable justice system operating in accordance with American values; and direct our legal scrutiny to the torturers themselves — right up to the office of the Vice President and the President if that is where the investigations would lead.
SNIP
We should also bear in mind that the Bush White House has deliberately crafted its memos and laws — such as the Bybee/Gonzales “torture memo” and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — with a keen eye to seeking indemnification of its own guilt regarding having committed evident crimes, because those involved know quite well that acts committed could be criminal acts. (An historical note worth mentioning, when we consider how hyperalert the Bush White House has been to the issue of seeking retroactively to protect itself and its subordinates from prosecution for war and other crimes, is that the Nuremberg Trials eventually swept up influential Nazi industrialists such as Fritz Thyssen of IG Farben — who relied on Auschwitz slave labor — and with whom Prescott Bush had collaborated in amassing the Bush family millions; some of the sentences given to those industrialists found guilty in the postwar trials were severe.) For a moment postwar, the legal spotlight was also about to search out and hold accountable the several prominent US investors who had partnered with Nazi industrialists (see the exhaustively documented study of US/Nazi corporate collaboration, IBM and the Holocaust.)
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/14/5824/
SENATE CONSERVATIVES BLOCK ENERGY BILL: This morning, the Senate failed to invoke cloture by one vote on a groundbreaking energy bill that has already passed the House. The bill would have raised corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards and create significant incentives towards renewable energy for the first time in 30 years. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the Senate would take up the bill again today after taking out the provision shutting off tax loopholes to oil companies, which faced objections by Senate Republicans and President Bush. After the vote, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), said, "The future just failed by one vote. ... The oil companies now are celebrating in their boardrooms. ... They continue to have a death grip on this Senate." "The bill represents a historic opportunity to ease America's dependence on foreign oil and to take steps in the battle against global warming, and its passage would send a message to the worlds' negotiators in Bali that Washington is at last getting serious about climate change," The New York Times noted. The Senate's vote today will likely add to others' frustration with the U.S delegation in Bali, as European nations at the conference on climate change have "threatened to boycott U.S.-led climate talks next month unless Washington" agrees to specific targets for reducing greenhouse gases. Former vice president Al Gore said today that the United States "is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali."
GOOD NEWS SECTION...
Kucinich to File Impeachment Articles Against George W. Bush as Wexler Schools Dems on Constitutional 'Obligation' to Hold Such Hearings
Democratic Presidential Candidate from Ohio Receives Standing Ovation on Announcement of Intentions
Florida Democrat Says Impeachment Will Further Democratic Legislative Agenda, 'Make America More Popular' in Eyes of World...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5438
Two Senior Republicans Join Dems in Vote to Hold Rove, Bolten in Contempt
Grassley and Specter vote Yay; Now It's Up to Reid and Pelosi to Schedule Full Floor Votes as White House Continues to Scoff at Both Congress and the Rule of Law...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5437
"Democracy Won; Blackwater Zero"
From the courage campaign: "That was the headline on my Huffington Post piece late Tuesday night, breaking the news from the San Diego County Registrar of Voters that the people of the tiny border town of Potrero -- who had just spent a year of their lives fighting Blackwater -- had won an overwhelming landslide victory. From the bottom-up, they beat Blackwater at the ballot box. By a stunning 2-to-1 margin.
In the first up-or-down vote related to Blackwater ever held in the United States, Potrero voters decisively recalled five elected leaders from office who had previously approved Blackwater's plans to build a base in their small town -- a mercenary training facility consisting of 15 firing ranges, a helipad, and a heavy vehicle operator's course covering the equivalent of 10 football fields.
The best part? This traditionally conservative rural community -- Potrero voters embraced the re-election of George W. Bush, 62%-37% over John Kerry, in 2004 -- shocked even the most optimistic observers by electing the entire slate of "Save Potrero" community leaders running as a coalition to block Blackwater's base. The "Save Potrero" candidates individually received anywhere from 62-71% of the post-recall vote to replace the staunch pro-Blackwater Planning Group members.
Not only will Blackwater's proposed paramilitary base disrupt the lives of its residents -- it will also threaten the pristine natural habitat of the Round Potrero Valley, which includes part of Cleveland National Forest and is adjacent to the proposed Hauser Wilderness preserve. The regular detonation of firearms would be a risk both to the fire-prone landscape as well as to the wildlife that currently calls that area home, including the golden eagle and the California condor. It would also increase traffic substantially, a primary concern to residents of this small town.
The battle to block Blackwater's base is not over, however. While all of the pro-Blackwater members of the Potrero Planning Group were booted from office, the base may still be approved by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.
To block Blackwater's base in California, it's going to take a people-powered movement of patriots across America. Let's face it. The larger our numbers, the louder our voice. 12,257 people have already signed on. Will you join the movement today at our new web site?
http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/m/676e11d7c926fa31/xxm9Dg/
BACK TO BAD NEWS...
109: The record number of soldiers who "have killed themselves this year, according to Army statistics showing confirmed or suspected suicides."
HALLIBURTON RAPE…NOT ISOLATED INCIDENT?
Earlier this week, former Halliburton/KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones revealed that in 2005 she had been "raped by multiple men at a KBR camp" in Baghdad. For the past two years, her congressman, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), has been pushing the federal government to investigate the matter, but he "says neither the department of State nor Justice will give him answers" on the status of the investigation.
On CNN's Lou Dobbs' Tonight last night, Poe said that he does "not think this is an isolated case" and encouraged "other victims to notify" his office:
DOBBS: Now I know you've written a letter to the U.S. attorney general, Michael Mukasey, seeking his intervention in this case. Is there anything the audience of this broadcast can do so assist you?
POE: Yes, exactly. There's something you can do. We do not think this is an isolated case of sexual assault against American citizens in Baghdad by coworkers. We want the other victims to notify my office immediately.
Frustrated by the government's inaction, Jones is now taking her case to the civil court system, but KBR is pushing for it to be heard in "private arbitration," without a "public record or transcript." Halliburton has "won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it."
END
Friday, December 14, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
TODAY'S TOPICS: CIA Torture Tapes and 9/11 Official Story, Olbermann, "Bushed", Halliburton's Gang Rape, Gore Speech
"There are different ways of doing it. It's like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that's beside the point. It's not being used."
-- Republican sociopath Senator Kit Bond, comparing waterboarding to swimming on the Lehrer News Hour
More from Gore's Speech:
The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.
That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”
We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures - each a palpable possibility - and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.
The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.” The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”
Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”
We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”
--Al Gore Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
BREAKING NEWS: Rachelle Maddow is reported to be getting her own TV show on MSNBC...in place of...drum rolls please...idiot right winger Tucker Carslon!!! How much do you want to make a bet that Olbermann's sky high ratings helped lead MSNBC to make this decision? This is the best political news I've heard in sometime...
VIDEO SECTION
Election theft 08’ covered by PBS’s NOW. I included this way down in a post a few days ago, but for those interested in really understanding the way in which this next election will attempt to be stolen by the GOP again, please watch...from caging, to e-voting, to voter ID's...be ready, they've stolen the last two already...:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5402
Keith Olbermann has a new segment on Countdown called "Bushed!" that keeps track of past Bush scandals you may have forgotten about (I think I heard him say 46 in all...but he's doing 3 a night, in short 1 minute segments...brilliant).
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/new-countdown-segment-bushed/
More “Bushed” from Olbermann, as he reminds us of 3 other past scandals, from habeus corpus to 9/11 to the NIE report:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/12/countdown-bushed-on-habeas-corpus-911-air-and-the-nie-on-iran/
What can you say?? Dan Abrams does another great piece for his series called "Bush League Justice". This on Bush’s use of “signing statements”, which is itself, and impeachable offense:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/12/bush-league-justice-signing-statements/
Huckabee and Thompson question Global Warming…saying essentially the problem is overblown. Any surprise here? Worst of all of course, is idiotic “reporter” Katie Couric doing a show on…wait for it…whether global warming is real!!! Way to go!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/huckabee-and-thompson-say-global-warming-is-overblown/
If you really want to get delirious, just juxtapose, the Republicans running for President with, let's say Al Gore's words on the issue of climate change, then watch this group of neanderthals (my apology to neanderthals) "answer" the question of whether global warming is real in their debate last night. It truly boggles the mind...
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/12/gop-debate-candidates-launch-insurrection-over-global-warming-question/
Olbermann and Sam Seder discuss the Halliburton gang rape…just writing that makes my head spin...particularly because it happened a few years ago...was covered up...and the woman was caged and intimidated to not speak out. Freedom on the march!
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70421/
An excellent Tom Tomorrow cartoon:
http://images.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/12/10/tomo/story.jpg?sid13
A cartoon detailing Mormon beliefs…kind of a cross between scientology, Christianity, and those Hale Bopp nutjobs that castrated themselves before committing suicide:
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70372/
ARTICLE SECTION: CIA Tapes connection to 9/11
Robert Sheer makes the connection between the destroyed CIA tapes and the truth about what happened on 9/11…as it was those interrogations that nearly the entire, official 9/11 story was based upon…using torture no less. Even if you don’t believe this government, in any way could have been a part of, or aware of, the 9/11 attack, you’d have to be insanely naïve to believe the official story sold to us. I highly suggest you read this piece.
A few clips:
When the CIA destroyed those prisoner interrogation videotapes, was it also destroying the truth about 9/11? After all, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the basic narrative of what happened on that day-and the definition of the enemy in this war on terror that George W. Bush launched in response to the tragedy-comes from the CIA's account of what those prisoners told their torturers. The commission was never allowed to interview the prisoners, or speak with those who did, and was instead forced to rely on what the CIA was willing to relay.
On the matter of the existence of the tapes, we know the CIA lied, not only to the 9/11 Commission but to Congress as well. Given that the Bush administration has for six years refused those prisoners any sort of public legal exposure, why should we believe what we've been told about what may turn out to be the most important transformative event in our nation's history? On the basis of what the CIA claimed the tortured prisoners said, President Bush launched a "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT), an endless war that threatens to bankrupt our society both financially and morally.
SNIP
Videos were made of those "sensitive" interrogations, which were accurately described as "torture" by one of the agents involved, John Kiriakou, in an interview with ABC News. Yet when the 9/11 Commission and federal judges specifically asked for such tapes, they were destroyed by the CIA, which then denied their existence.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121207H.shtml
Destroying Accountability...more on the CIA Tapes
CIA Director Michael Hayden is set to appear before the House Intelligence Committee today in a closed-door hearing to answer questions about the CIA's destruction of videotapes documenting the torture of detainees. After testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, Hayden told reporters he had laid out "the narrative, the history of why the tapes were destroyed." But since the interrogations were first videotaped under George Tenet in 2002, and later destroyed under Porter Goss in 2005, Hayden was either unable or unwilling to provide full answers. "Other people in the agency know about this far better than I," said Hayden. Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV) called the 90-minute session "a useful and not yet complete hearing." Still remaining unanswered is "who authorized destruction of the tapes, and why Congress wasn't told about it."
DESTRUCTION DENIAL: As with the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, top Bush administration officials are denying any knowledge of the acts and pinning the blame on lower-ranking officials. President Bush has repeatedly asserted that he had "no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction," and Vice President Cheney reportedly "learned about the tapes and their destruction at the same time" as Bush. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "I myself don't recollect any knowledge of the tapes." Then-White House counsel Harriet Miers knew about the CIA's plans, but supposedly urged the agency not to destroy the tapes. Even Goss, who was CIA director in 2005, said that he "was not informed in advance." The full blame for the destruction of the tapes has now fallen on Jose Rodriguez, then the CIA's head of the clandestine division. By denying any involvement, all these Bush administration officials are claiming that Rodriguez undertook the destruction of the tapes in a unilateral manner. But several former CIA colleagues describe Jose Rodriguez as "a cautious operator who probably would have ensured that top CIA managers knew of the plan" to destroy the torture tapes. One former official said Rodriguez was concerned that mid-level officers would get in trouble despite the fact "they were carrying out the direction from higher-ups."
TORTURE IS NOT DONE 'WILLY NILLY': Beyond the destruction of the tapes, administration officials are even trying to distance themselves from knowledge about the 2002 interrogations and the fact that they were videotaped. But earlier this week, John Kiriakou -- the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah -- confirmed that Zubaydah was waterboarded. When asked by NBC News whether the White House was "involved" in the decision to waterboard Zubaydah, whose interrogation was captured on one of the videotapes, Kiriakou concurred: "Absolutely." "This isn't something done willy nilly," he said. "It's not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House." While Hayden has claimed that "videotaping stopped in 2002," a lawyer representing former CIA detainee Muhammad Bashmilah, said that his client "saw cameras in interrogation rooms after 2002."
CIRCLING THE WAGONS: Broader questions about the administration's torture policies have reemerged during this recent debate. During his nomination hearing, Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to say whether or not waterboarding is torture. On Monday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) requested that Mukasey finally answer this question. "[N]ow that you have been sworn in as our nation's Attorney General and presumably have been briefed on the program," wrote Feingold, "I urge you to provide your views on its legality to Congress at the earliest possible date." But in his first public statements regarding the CIA's destruction of the torture tapes, Mukasey said yesterday he "refused to be rushed into deciding whether he considers waterboarding a form of torture." In a Los Angeles Times op-ed on Monday, Morris Davis, formerly the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, revealed that he had stepped down on Oct. 4 because the Bush administration had placed him under the chain of command of Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes, a torture advocate and close Cheney ally. "[T]he decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor's office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions," wrote Davis. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on torture yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed that the Pentagon had blocked Davis from testifying before the committee. "The Defense Department has ordered him not to appear," said Feinstein.
"Forty people were killed and more than 125 wounded when three car bombs exploded in quick succession in the Shi'ite city of Amara in southern Iraq on Wednesday." The attacks "were among the deadliest this year in southern Iraq and came as tensions ran high across the region."
BIDEN ASKS WHETHER WHITE HOUSE'S PRESERVATION ORDER COVER CHENEY? After the media revealed last Thursday evening that the CIA had destroyed torture tapes, the White House and the Department of Justice delayed sending out a preservation order ensuring that federal government employees did not further destroy evidence. On Monday, the White House finally announced the preservation order but did not specify how far reaching the order is. Yesterday, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding asking the White House to specify. "Please confirm that the directive to preserve documents applied to the Executive Office of the President, including the National Security Council, in addition to immediate White House staff. In light of the Office of the Vice President's record of fatuous arguments that it is not subject to the authority of the President, please also confirm that the directive included the Office of the Vice President and that the Office of the Vice President intends to comply," Biden said. "Absent a preservation order, there is substantial risk that the torture evidence will disappear," noted lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights.
"There are different ways of doing it. It's like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that's beside the point. It's not being used."
-- Republican sociopath Senator Kit Bond, comparing waterboarding to swimming on the Lehrer News Hour
More from Gore's Speech:
The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow.
That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”
We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures - each a palpable possibility - and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now.
The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, “One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.” The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”
Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”
We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”
--Al Gore Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
BREAKING NEWS: Rachelle Maddow is reported to be getting her own TV show on MSNBC...in place of...drum rolls please...idiot right winger Tucker Carslon!!! How much do you want to make a bet that Olbermann's sky high ratings helped lead MSNBC to make this decision? This is the best political news I've heard in sometime...
VIDEO SECTION
Election theft 08’ covered by PBS’s NOW. I included this way down in a post a few days ago, but for those interested in really understanding the way in which this next election will attempt to be stolen by the GOP again, please watch...from caging, to e-voting, to voter ID's...be ready, they've stolen the last two already...:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5402
Keith Olbermann has a new segment on Countdown called "Bushed!" that keeps track of past Bush scandals you may have forgotten about (I think I heard him say 46 in all...but he's doing 3 a night, in short 1 minute segments...brilliant).
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/new-countdown-segment-bushed/
More “Bushed” from Olbermann, as he reminds us of 3 other past scandals, from habeus corpus to 9/11 to the NIE report:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/12/countdown-bushed-on-habeas-corpus-911-air-and-the-nie-on-iran/
What can you say?? Dan Abrams does another great piece for his series called "Bush League Justice". This on Bush’s use of “signing statements”, which is itself, and impeachable offense:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/12/bush-league-justice-signing-statements/
Huckabee and Thompson question Global Warming…saying essentially the problem is overblown. Any surprise here? Worst of all of course, is idiotic “reporter” Katie Couric doing a show on…wait for it…whether global warming is real!!! Way to go!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/huckabee-and-thompson-say-global-warming-is-overblown/
If you really want to get delirious, just juxtapose, the Republicans running for President with, let's say Al Gore's words on the issue of climate change, then watch this group of neanderthals (my apology to neanderthals) "answer" the question of whether global warming is real in their debate last night. It truly boggles the mind...
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/12/gop-debate-candidates-launch-insurrection-over-global-warming-question/
Olbermann and Sam Seder discuss the Halliburton gang rape…just writing that makes my head spin...particularly because it happened a few years ago...was covered up...and the woman was caged and intimidated to not speak out. Freedom on the march!
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70421/
An excellent Tom Tomorrow cartoon:
http://images.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/12/10/tomo/story.jpg?sid13
A cartoon detailing Mormon beliefs…kind of a cross between scientology, Christianity, and those Hale Bopp nutjobs that castrated themselves before committing suicide:
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70372/
ARTICLE SECTION: CIA Tapes connection to 9/11
Robert Sheer makes the connection between the destroyed CIA tapes and the truth about what happened on 9/11…as it was those interrogations that nearly the entire, official 9/11 story was based upon…using torture no less. Even if you don’t believe this government, in any way could have been a part of, or aware of, the 9/11 attack, you’d have to be insanely naïve to believe the official story sold to us. I highly suggest you read this piece.
A few clips:
When the CIA destroyed those prisoner interrogation videotapes, was it also destroying the truth about 9/11? After all, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the basic narrative of what happened on that day-and the definition of the enemy in this war on terror that George W. Bush launched in response to the tragedy-comes from the CIA's account of what those prisoners told their torturers. The commission was never allowed to interview the prisoners, or speak with those who did, and was instead forced to rely on what the CIA was willing to relay.
On the matter of the existence of the tapes, we know the CIA lied, not only to the 9/11 Commission but to Congress as well. Given that the Bush administration has for six years refused those prisoners any sort of public legal exposure, why should we believe what we've been told about what may turn out to be the most important transformative event in our nation's history? On the basis of what the CIA claimed the tortured prisoners said, President Bush launched a "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT), an endless war that threatens to bankrupt our society both financially and morally.
SNIP
Videos were made of those "sensitive" interrogations, which were accurately described as "torture" by one of the agents involved, John Kiriakou, in an interview with ABC News. Yet when the 9/11 Commission and federal judges specifically asked for such tapes, they were destroyed by the CIA, which then denied their existence.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121207H.shtml
Destroying Accountability...more on the CIA Tapes
CIA Director Michael Hayden is set to appear before the House Intelligence Committee today in a closed-door hearing to answer questions about the CIA's destruction of videotapes documenting the torture of detainees. After testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, Hayden told reporters he had laid out "the narrative, the history of why the tapes were destroyed." But since the interrogations were first videotaped under George Tenet in 2002, and later destroyed under Porter Goss in 2005, Hayden was either unable or unwilling to provide full answers. "Other people in the agency know about this far better than I," said Hayden. Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV) called the 90-minute session "a useful and not yet complete hearing." Still remaining unanswered is "who authorized destruction of the tapes, and why Congress wasn't told about it."
DESTRUCTION DENIAL: As with the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, top Bush administration officials are denying any knowledge of the acts and pinning the blame on lower-ranking officials. President Bush has repeatedly asserted that he had "no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction," and Vice President Cheney reportedly "learned about the tapes and their destruction at the same time" as Bush. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "I myself don't recollect any knowledge of the tapes." Then-White House counsel Harriet Miers knew about the CIA's plans, but supposedly urged the agency not to destroy the tapes. Even Goss, who was CIA director in 2005, said that he "was not informed in advance." The full blame for the destruction of the tapes has now fallen on Jose Rodriguez, then the CIA's head of the clandestine division. By denying any involvement, all these Bush administration officials are claiming that Rodriguez undertook the destruction of the tapes in a unilateral manner. But several former CIA colleagues describe Jose Rodriguez as "a cautious operator who probably would have ensured that top CIA managers knew of the plan" to destroy the torture tapes. One former official said Rodriguez was concerned that mid-level officers would get in trouble despite the fact "they were carrying out the direction from higher-ups."
TORTURE IS NOT DONE 'WILLY NILLY': Beyond the destruction of the tapes, administration officials are even trying to distance themselves from knowledge about the 2002 interrogations and the fact that they were videotaped. But earlier this week, John Kiriakou -- the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah -- confirmed that Zubaydah was waterboarded. When asked by NBC News whether the White House was "involved" in the decision to waterboard Zubaydah, whose interrogation was captured on one of the videotapes, Kiriakou concurred: "Absolutely." "This isn't something done willy nilly," he said. "It's not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House." While Hayden has claimed that "videotaping stopped in 2002," a lawyer representing former CIA detainee Muhammad Bashmilah, said that his client "saw cameras in interrogation rooms after 2002."
CIRCLING THE WAGONS: Broader questions about the administration's torture policies have reemerged during this recent debate. During his nomination hearing, Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to say whether or not waterboarding is torture. On Monday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) requested that Mukasey finally answer this question. "[N]ow that you have been sworn in as our nation's Attorney General and presumably have been briefed on the program," wrote Feingold, "I urge you to provide your views on its legality to Congress at the earliest possible date." But in his first public statements regarding the CIA's destruction of the torture tapes, Mukasey said yesterday he "refused to be rushed into deciding whether he considers waterboarding a form of torture." In a Los Angeles Times op-ed on Monday, Morris Davis, formerly the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, revealed that he had stepped down on Oct. 4 because the Bush administration had placed him under the chain of command of Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes, a torture advocate and close Cheney ally. "[T]he decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor's office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions," wrote Davis. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on torture yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed that the Pentagon had blocked Davis from testifying before the committee. "The Defense Department has ordered him not to appear," said Feinstein.
"Forty people were killed and more than 125 wounded when three car bombs exploded in quick succession in the Shi'ite city of Amara in southern Iraq on Wednesday." The attacks "were among the deadliest this year in southern Iraq and came as tensions ran high across the region."
BIDEN ASKS WHETHER WHITE HOUSE'S PRESERVATION ORDER COVER CHENEY? After the media revealed last Thursday evening that the CIA had destroyed torture tapes, the White House and the Department of Justice delayed sending out a preservation order ensuring that federal government employees did not further destroy evidence. On Monday, the White House finally announced the preservation order but did not specify how far reaching the order is. Yesterday, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding asking the White House to specify. "Please confirm that the directive to preserve documents applied to the Executive Office of the President, including the National Security Council, in addition to immediate White House staff. In light of the Office of the Vice President's record of fatuous arguments that it is not subject to the authority of the President, please also confirm that the directive included the Office of the Vice President and that the Office of the Vice President intends to comply," Biden said. "Absent a preservation order, there is substantial risk that the torture evidence will disappear," noted lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
TODAY'S TOPICS: Gore Speech, Global Warming, Evangelical Top 10, Olbermann, "Justice" Department, CIA Tapes
“Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”
-- George Orwell
Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” - or “truth force.” In every land, the truth - once known - has the power to set us free.
Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.
There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.
We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”
That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.
This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.
When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us.
-- Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
Listen to Gore's speech in its entirety here!:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/11/it_is_time_to_make_peace
"To address these problems, the goal of Federal policy should be to emphasize abstinence as the only certain way to avoid both unintended pregnancies and STDs."
-- White House, 2/02
VERSUS
"The birth rate rose by 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 among 15-to-19-year-old girls, after plummeting 34 percent between 1991 and 2005."
-- Washington Post, 12/6/07
"Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job. ... Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury."
-- ABC News, 12/10/07
VERSUS
"[C]ivilian contractors cannot be tried in military courts, and it is unclear what American criminal laws might cover criminal acts committed in a war zone."
-- New York Times, 10/30/07
VIDEO SECTION
Lawrence O’Donnel goes to town on Romney’s “religion speech” and Mormonism in general on the McClaughlin group. It seems pundits are truly afraid to criticize a religion at all...even if its based on...well...insanity, criminality, and racism. O'Donnell seems to have had enough...
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70205/
It’s always a pleasant surprise when a reporter suddenly starts to ask tough questions of this administration, and actually start doing serious investigative pieces that unearth facts and information that will help people understand the truth. Today’s pleasant surprise is Dan Abrams of MSNBC, and his new series called “Bush League”…an investigation into the politicization of the Justice Department. Some truly shocking statistics...even to me...
Again I wonder: Is Olbermann's courage rubbing off on other reporters???
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/bush-league-justice/
Olbermann and Turley discuss the latest revelations from the missing CIA tapes…as in, the CIA agents in them say waterboarding is torture:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/countdown-cia-agent-involved-in-torture-tapes-now-says-waterboarding-is-torture/
Watch Clooney and Pitt do a riff on the Larry Craig “wide stance” episode. Classic!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/10/open-thread-654/
Bradley Whitford, formerly of the West Wing, urges people to oppose giving Telecom companies immunity for their crimes against us:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/10/bradley-whitford-on-telecom-immunity-call-your-senators-now/
Huckabee says the only explanation for his rapid surge is God. So, he’s basically saying that God is a Huckabee booster, and is playing an active role in our electoral process. If that isn’t bat shit crazy, I don’t know what is. And if it’s true, I have a personal message for God: butt out of our elections you anti-democratic authoritarian swindler!
Watch Mike “endorsed by God” Huckabee:
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70141/
WAR ON SCIENCE...AND GLOBAL WARMING AWARENESS
FROM C&L: As noted on the Oversight committee's Web page:
In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute developed an internal "Communications Action Plan" that stated: "Victory will be achieved when ... average citizens ‘understand’ ucertainties in climate science ... [and] recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’" The Bush Administration has acted as if the oil industry’s communications plan were its mission statement. White House officials and political appointees in the agencies censored congressional testimony on the causes and impacts of global warming, controlled media access to government climate scientists, and edited federal scientific reports to inject unwarranted uncertainty into discussions of climate change and to minimize the threat to the environment and the economy.
What a shock! A pair of oil men at the top of the U.S. government favored their pals in the oil industry? Say it ain't so.
See more:
WHITE HOUSE JUNK SCIENCE: "Science is warning us" to prevent a "permanent carbon summer," Gore declared yesterday. The White House, however, will not accept this science. In its report yesterday, the House Oversight Committee came to the "inescapable conclusion" that "the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming." The administration censored 150 federal climate scientists from eight federal agencies and "exerted unusual control over the public statements of federal scientists on climate change issues." In response, the committee's conservative minority attacked the report: "The majority has relied on selective passages from two hearings, one deposition, and one transcribed interview to make grossly exaggerated claims of political interference with climate change science." White House Press Secretary Dana Perino called the report simply "untrue." But the committee's conclusions are consistent with the testimony of multiple former federal employees who were forced to fix the facts to fit White House policy. "The Bush Administration has acted as if the oil industry's communications plan were its mission statement," the report added.
VERSUS REASONS FOR HOPE
THE IPCC PIONEERS: In reality, climate change solutions are attainable and affordable. In a recent report, the IPCC -- comprised of the world's top scientists -- noted that successful global plans to combat global warming can be undertaken with a very modest reduction in global annual GDP growth of 0.12 percent. In November, officials from more than 150 companies around the world -- worth "nearly $4 trillion in market capitalization" -- signed a petition demanding "urgent measures to cut greenhouse gas pollution at least in half by 2050." Like Gore, Pachauri urged yesterday that "it is within the reach of human society to meet these threats. The impacts of climate change can be limited by suitable adaptation measures and stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emission." While the science behind climate change is "unequivocal," there is still work to be done to advance the science. "There is also notable lack of geographic data and literature on observed changes, with marked scarcity in developing countries. Future changes in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet mass are another major source of uncertainty that could increase sea level rise projections. The need for further scientific input calls for continued trust and cooperation from policymakers and society at large to support the work needed for scientific progress," Pachauri said.
The Top Ten Ways To Identify An Evangelical Republican:
Number Ten:
They’re opposed to sectarian conflict in Iraq but in favor of sectarian politics in the United States.
Number Nine:
They’re opposed to homosexuality and same-sex relationships but they’ll vote for a presidential candidate who does drag and lived with two gay men if he can beat Hillary Clinton and her “typically” unfaithful heterosexual husband.
Number Eight:
They wouldn’t dare vote for a Clinton given Bill’s disgraceful sexual antics in the White House but they’re happy to support a candidate who used New York City funds to carry on an adulterous affair.
Number Seven:
They criticize Democratic candidates for suggesting they would only nominate pro-choice judges to uphold the law of the land while they require their own candidates to pass religious litmus tests in conflict with the law of the land.
Number Six:
They’re in favor of abstinence only sex education even if it leads to more unwed teen pregnancies and more parent sponsored abortions (call it the evangelical version of NIMBY - not in my back yard; NIMBU - not in my babygirls uterus).
Number Five:
They’re in favor of the separation of church and state if it involves opposing a congressional inquiry into the fundraising and spending habits of leading televangelists but opposed to the separation when it comes to selecting a presidential nominee.
Number Four:
They support candidates who endorse more funding for AIDS in Africa while embracing a candidate who favored quarantining AIDS patients in America as well as having Hollywood fund AIDS research instead of the government.
Number Three:
They tout Ronald Reagan as their political icon despite the fact that he was unable to acknowledge the toll of HIV on gays in America or even utter the word AIDS…while they and their church’s now run around talking about saving Africa from the ravages of HIV…as long as it doesn’t involve condoms.
Number Two:
They talk about their Christian values while they favor denying health care treatment to the children of illegal immigrants. Family values apparently stop at the waters edge (that would be the Rio Grande river).
Number One:
They’ll never make enough money to truly benefit from George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich or condemn his doubling of the national debt but they’re happy to call the Democratic candidates who supported an increase in minimum wage and favor a national health care system unacceptable tax and spend liberals.
Bonus Qualifier:
They abhor the fact that Jesus was tortured, mocked, and condemned to death without due process but they’re damn sure in favor of waterboarding and disregarding the principle of habeas corpus while indefinitely imprisoning war on terror detainees.
END
DETAINEE CLAIMS TO HAVE BEEN VIDEOTAPED AFTER CIA SAID IT STOPPED VIDEOTAPING INTERROGATIONS: In his letter to CIA employees last week informing them of the destruction of videotapes featuring interrogations, CIA director Michael Hayden claimed that "videotaping stopped in 2002" after officials "determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes." But the New York Times reports today that "on Monday, a lawyer representing a former prisoner who said he was held by the CIA. said the prisoner saw cameras in interrogation rooms after 2002." The former detainee, Muhammad Bashmilah of Yemen "was seized by Jordanian intelligence agents in 2003 and turned over to the CIA." Bashmilah was "flown from Jordan to Afghanistan in October 2003 and held there until April 2004, when he was flown by plane and helicopter to a C.I.A. jail in an unidentified country," according to an Amnesty International report. Bashmilah's lawyer, Meg Satterthwaite, said yesterday that "Mr. Bashmilah described cameras both in his cells and in interrogation rooms, some on tripods and some on the wall." Asked about Bashmilah's account, CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano "said he had nothing to add to General Hayden's statement" about videotaping stopping in 2002.
Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Scott Lilly examines the little-known Office of Labor-Management Services, which under the Bush administration, has worked to "undermine the reputation of the labor union movement through a classic political misinformation campaign." A Labor Department spokesman simply responded that the OLMS "serves a vital purpose in protecting rank-and-file union members."
“Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”
-- George Orwell
Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called “Satyagraha” - or “truth force.” In every land, the truth - once known - has the power to set us free.
Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between “me” and “we,” creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility.
There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We need to go far, quickly.
We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lock-step “ism.”
That means adopting principles, values, laws, and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.
This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.
When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us.
-- Al Gore, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
Listen to Gore's speech in its entirety here!:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/11/it_is_time_to_make_peace
"To address these problems, the goal of Federal policy should be to emphasize abstinence as the only certain way to avoid both unintended pregnancies and STDs."
-- White House, 2/02
VERSUS
"The birth rate rose by 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 among 15-to-19-year-old girls, after plummeting 34 percent between 1991 and 2005."
-- Washington Post, 12/6/07
"Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job. ... Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury."
-- ABC News, 12/10/07
VERSUS
"[C]ivilian contractors cannot be tried in military courts, and it is unclear what American criminal laws might cover criminal acts committed in a war zone."
-- New York Times, 10/30/07
VIDEO SECTION
Lawrence O’Donnel goes to town on Romney’s “religion speech” and Mormonism in general on the McClaughlin group. It seems pundits are truly afraid to criticize a religion at all...even if its based on...well...insanity, criminality, and racism. O'Donnell seems to have had enough...
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70205/
It’s always a pleasant surprise when a reporter suddenly starts to ask tough questions of this administration, and actually start doing serious investigative pieces that unearth facts and information that will help people understand the truth. Today’s pleasant surprise is Dan Abrams of MSNBC, and his new series called “Bush League”…an investigation into the politicization of the Justice Department. Some truly shocking statistics...even to me...
Again I wonder: Is Olbermann's courage rubbing off on other reporters???
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/bush-league-justice/
Olbermann and Turley discuss the latest revelations from the missing CIA tapes…as in, the CIA agents in them say waterboarding is torture:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/countdown-cia-agent-involved-in-torture-tapes-now-says-waterboarding-is-torture/
Watch Clooney and Pitt do a riff on the Larry Craig “wide stance” episode. Classic!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/10/open-thread-654/
Bradley Whitford, formerly of the West Wing, urges people to oppose giving Telecom companies immunity for their crimes against us:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/10/bradley-whitford-on-telecom-immunity-call-your-senators-now/
Huckabee says the only explanation for his rapid surge is God. So, he’s basically saying that God is a Huckabee booster, and is playing an active role in our electoral process. If that isn’t bat shit crazy, I don’t know what is. And if it’s true, I have a personal message for God: butt out of our elections you anti-democratic authoritarian swindler!
Watch Mike “endorsed by God” Huckabee:
http://alternet.org/blogs/video/70141/
WAR ON SCIENCE...AND GLOBAL WARMING AWARENESS
FROM C&L: As noted on the Oversight committee's Web page:
In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute developed an internal "Communications Action Plan" that stated: "Victory will be achieved when ... average citizens ‘understand’ ucertainties in climate science ... [and] recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’" The Bush Administration has acted as if the oil industry’s communications plan were its mission statement. White House officials and political appointees in the agencies censored congressional testimony on the causes and impacts of global warming, controlled media access to government climate scientists, and edited federal scientific reports to inject unwarranted uncertainty into discussions of climate change and to minimize the threat to the environment and the economy.
What a shock! A pair of oil men at the top of the U.S. government favored their pals in the oil industry? Say it ain't so.
See more:
WHITE HOUSE JUNK SCIENCE: "Science is warning us" to prevent a "permanent carbon summer," Gore declared yesterday. The White House, however, will not accept this science. In its report yesterday, the House Oversight Committee came to the "inescapable conclusion" that "the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming." The administration censored 150 federal climate scientists from eight federal agencies and "exerted unusual control over the public statements of federal scientists on climate change issues." In response, the committee's conservative minority attacked the report: "The majority has relied on selective passages from two hearings, one deposition, and one transcribed interview to make grossly exaggerated claims of political interference with climate change science." White House Press Secretary Dana Perino called the report simply "untrue." But the committee's conclusions are consistent with the testimony of multiple former federal employees who were forced to fix the facts to fit White House policy. "The Bush Administration has acted as if the oil industry's communications plan were its mission statement," the report added.
VERSUS REASONS FOR HOPE
THE IPCC PIONEERS: In reality, climate change solutions are attainable and affordable. In a recent report, the IPCC -- comprised of the world's top scientists -- noted that successful global plans to combat global warming can be undertaken with a very modest reduction in global annual GDP growth of 0.12 percent. In November, officials from more than 150 companies around the world -- worth "nearly $4 trillion in market capitalization" -- signed a petition demanding "urgent measures to cut greenhouse gas pollution at least in half by 2050." Like Gore, Pachauri urged yesterday that "it is within the reach of human society to meet these threats. The impacts of climate change can be limited by suitable adaptation measures and stringent mitigation of greenhouse gas emission." While the science behind climate change is "unequivocal," there is still work to be done to advance the science. "There is also notable lack of geographic data and literature on observed changes, with marked scarcity in developing countries. Future changes in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet mass are another major source of uncertainty that could increase sea level rise projections. The need for further scientific input calls for continued trust and cooperation from policymakers and society at large to support the work needed for scientific progress," Pachauri said.
The Top Ten Ways To Identify An Evangelical Republican:
Number Ten:
They’re opposed to sectarian conflict in Iraq but in favor of sectarian politics in the United States.
Number Nine:
They’re opposed to homosexuality and same-sex relationships but they’ll vote for a presidential candidate who does drag and lived with two gay men if he can beat Hillary Clinton and her “typically” unfaithful heterosexual husband.
Number Eight:
They wouldn’t dare vote for a Clinton given Bill’s disgraceful sexual antics in the White House but they’re happy to support a candidate who used New York City funds to carry on an adulterous affair.
Number Seven:
They criticize Democratic candidates for suggesting they would only nominate pro-choice judges to uphold the law of the land while they require their own candidates to pass religious litmus tests in conflict with the law of the land.
Number Six:
They’re in favor of abstinence only sex education even if it leads to more unwed teen pregnancies and more parent sponsored abortions (call it the evangelical version of NIMBY - not in my back yard; NIMBU - not in my babygirls uterus).
Number Five:
They’re in favor of the separation of church and state if it involves opposing a congressional inquiry into the fundraising and spending habits of leading televangelists but opposed to the separation when it comes to selecting a presidential nominee.
Number Four:
They support candidates who endorse more funding for AIDS in Africa while embracing a candidate who favored quarantining AIDS patients in America as well as having Hollywood fund AIDS research instead of the government.
Number Three:
They tout Ronald Reagan as their political icon despite the fact that he was unable to acknowledge the toll of HIV on gays in America or even utter the word AIDS…while they and their church’s now run around talking about saving Africa from the ravages of HIV…as long as it doesn’t involve condoms.
Number Two:
They talk about their Christian values while they favor denying health care treatment to the children of illegal immigrants. Family values apparently stop at the waters edge (that would be the Rio Grande river).
Number One:
They’ll never make enough money to truly benefit from George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich or condemn his doubling of the national debt but they’re happy to call the Democratic candidates who supported an increase in minimum wage and favor a national health care system unacceptable tax and spend liberals.
Bonus Qualifier:
They abhor the fact that Jesus was tortured, mocked, and condemned to death without due process but they’re damn sure in favor of waterboarding and disregarding the principle of habeas corpus while indefinitely imprisoning war on terror detainees.
END
DETAINEE CLAIMS TO HAVE BEEN VIDEOTAPED AFTER CIA SAID IT STOPPED VIDEOTAPING INTERROGATIONS: In his letter to CIA employees last week informing them of the destruction of videotapes featuring interrogations, CIA director Michael Hayden claimed that "videotaping stopped in 2002" after officials "determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes." But the New York Times reports today that "on Monday, a lawyer representing a former prisoner who said he was held by the CIA. said the prisoner saw cameras in interrogation rooms after 2002." The former detainee, Muhammad Bashmilah of Yemen "was seized by Jordanian intelligence agents in 2003 and turned over to the CIA." Bashmilah was "flown from Jordan to Afghanistan in October 2003 and held there until April 2004, when he was flown by plane and helicopter to a C.I.A. jail in an unidentified country," according to an Amnesty International report. Bashmilah's lawyer, Meg Satterthwaite, said yesterday that "Mr. Bashmilah described cameras both in his cells and in interrogation rooms, some on tripods and some on the wall." Asked about Bashmilah's account, CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano "said he had nothing to add to General Hayden's statement" about videotaping stopping in 2002.
Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Scott Lilly examines the little-known Office of Labor-Management Services, which under the Bush administration, has worked to "undermine the reputation of the labor union movement through a classic political misinformation campaign." A Labor Department spokesman simply responded that the OLMS "serves a vital purpose in protecting rank-and-file union members."
Monday, December 10, 2007
TODAY'S TOPICS: Fighting the Power, Huckabee Scandal, CIA Tapes, Subprime Crisis, China/US vs. Global Warming
Back when Hillary Clinton described Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, a number of people pointed out that this was an unfair comparison. For example, Darth Vader once served in the military. Here’s another reason the comparison is invalid: the contractors Darth Vader hired to build the Death Star actually got the job done.
--Paul Krugman, NY Times
"I didn't say that we should quarantine."
-- Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 12/9/07, on AIDS patients
VERSUS
"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."
-- Huckabee, 1992
VIDEO SECTION
On Friday’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann spoke with Georgetown Law professor, Neal Katyal, who successfully argued the Hamdan case before the Supreme Court about the CIA obstructing justice by destroying interrogation video tapes depicting torture. Keith brings up what are basically multiple levels of crimes at play here.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/08/countdown-cia-may-have-committed-multiple-crimes-in-torture-tape-scandal/
Bob Schieffer gives another decent editorial...this one on torture being un-american…perhaps Olbermann is having a little influence on other mainstream news anchors?
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/09/bob-schieffer-commentary-cia-torture-tapes-the-message-of-edward-r-murrow/
Joe Biden wants a special prosecutor to look into the destroyed CIA torture tapes scandal:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/09/biden-on-this-week-appoint-a-special-prosecutor-in-cia-torture-tape-scandal/
DEBUNKING HUCKABEE'S DEFENSE OF RAPISTS RELEASE
Arianna:
The way that Mike Huckabee has handled the furor caused by the Huffington Post’s coverage of his role in the release of Wayne Dumond, a serial rapist who went on to rape and kill at least one other woman, has been very revealing. And troubling.
Huckabee’s response has been to fudge the truth, point the finger at everyone in sight, and — that old standby — blame the messenger. He also claimed “the Huffington Post just doesn’t want to give the whole story of what was going on.” Really? Our original story on the Dumond case was over 4,000 words long and offered what even the American Spectator deemed a “detailed, convincingly irrefutable” presentation of the evidence in which HuffPost “backs up every single word.” What’s more, we included links to a number of never before published documents from the governor’s own files…
read on
Watch the issue discussed with two members of the Arkansas parole board that agreed to release Dumond...let's just say they directly contradict Huckabee's version of events:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/07/arainna-responds-to-huckabees-non-response-to-murray-waas-wayne-dumond-story/
ARTICLE SECTION
FIGHTING TO SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY
Chris Hedges writes another “stop the fascists, save our democracy” special. Some real powerful stuff.
A few clips:
Those who recognize the injustice of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a war with Iran, who concede that these wars are not only a violation of international law but under the post-Nuremberg laws are defined as criminal wars of aggression, yet do nothing, have forfeited their rights as citizens. By allowing the status quo to go unchallenged they become agents of injustice. To do nothing is to do something. They practice a faux morality. They vent against war on the Internet or among themselves but do not resist. They take refuge in the conception of themselves as moderates. They stand on what they insist is the middle ground without realizing that the middle ground has shifted under us, that the old paradigm of left and right, liberal and conservative, is meaningless in a world where, to quote Immanuel Kant, those in power have embraced “a radical evil.”
SNIP
We face a crisis. Our democratic institutions are being dismantled. We are headed for a state of perpetual war. We are paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative. There are hundreds of thousands who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This number would be dwarfed by a war with Iran, which could ignite a regional inferno in the Middle East. Not a lot is being asked of us. Compare our potential sacrifices with what is being inflicted on and demanded of those trapped in the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon, perhaps, Iran. Courage, as Aristotle wrote, is the highest of human virtues because without it we are unlikely to practice any other virtue. Once we find courage we find freedom.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/10/5731/
EXPLAINING THE SUPBRIME CRISIS
This is an excellent breakdown of the housing crisis…from a macro perspective that goes beyond just the borrower and the lender, but to the heart of the problem: Wall Street, trading, and deregulation.
A few clips:
Regardless of whether you adopt the progressive view of the crisis (banks lured borrowers with reckless procedures) or the conservative one (borrowers should have known not to get in over their heads), lenders knew it was an easy game to lavish money and extract fees from consumers as long as they had lots of customers wanting to own the home of their dreams.
More than that, they knew they could package and sell loans to investors, indirectly through Wall Street firms, and directly, to traders, creating room on their balance sheets to originate even more mortgages. Trouble was, investor appetite for the once-lucrative sub-prime mortgage packages dried up as credit did. Investment banks that bet their client investors would be there forever got crucified and are paying the price with multi-billion dollar writedowns and ejected CEO's. But so are homeowners, for whom every piece of bad news makes their individual financial situation seem worse.
SNIP
Traders' bets were simple: since lenders were lending at high, or sub-prime, rates, they could buy prepackaged bunches of those loans and sell them to investors seeking to benefit from this high-payment steam. The downside risk, they calculated, was that some borrowers wouldn't pay their mortgages and default. But, if those defaults occurred to a low enough percentage of all the mortgages in package, there would be more than enough non-defaulting loans to keep money flowing in.
SNIP
While politicians are focused on stricter lending practices or debating the merits of Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson's $100 billion Wall Street trader bail-out fund, they miss a glaring point. If lenders couldn't offset their loans to Wall Street, their lending practices couldn't have spiraled out of control. If Wall Street hadn't leveraged these positions, their losses wouldn't have brought the economic and psychological damage to the housing market that mere inability on the part of borrowers to repay their loans would have caused.
http://alternet.org/mediaculture/70096/
China and the United States, the world's top two polluters, "say they are not ready to commit to mandatory caps on greenhouse gases." At the U.N. climate talks in Bali, the United States has instead indicated that it will "come up with its own plan."
'Too Little, Too Late' Subprime Solution
On Thursday, President Bush stood with Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson to announce an agreement with the mortgage industry to provide relief to families facing home foreclosures. "The holidays are fast approaching and, unfortunately, this will be a time of anxiety for Americans worried about their mortgages and their homes. There's no perfect solution, but the homeowners deserve our help," Bush said. His plan would freeze mortgage rates for some troubled borrowers. Yet the vast majority of Americans facing foreclosure would be left out by the Bush plan, including the record 351,000 people who fell into foreclosure in the third quarter of this year. The deal asks for only a voluntary freeze on interest rates, and does not require congressional approval or funds. The effects of the subprime mortgage crisis have spread throughout other sectors of the economy, an estimated 800,000 Americans have are already faced foreclosure since mid-2007, and 3.5 million loans are expected to default before the end of 2010. Although Bush's plan will offer substantial help to thousands of families, it is, as The New York Times editorial board described it, "too little, too late and too voluntary." Andrew Jakabovics of the Center for American Progress said, "As with other serious crises that have happened on Bush's watch, the solution is to make it the next administration's problem."
TOO MANY EXCLUDED: Bush's plan is hardly the comprehensive assistance millions of Americans need. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, called the plan "little more than financial wallpaper" that was "insufficient to say the least." The plan "would exclude those who are delinquent on their payments -- about 22 percent of all subprime borrowers, according to First American LoanPerformance, an industry research firm." Moreover, Bush's plan would apply only to those facing rising rates in 2008 and 2009, although "$57 billion in subprime loans were scheduled to be reset at higher rates in the final three months of this year." Also, "in one curious twist, the plan could eliminate many people who have good credit scores or who managed to improve their credit scores, because the good ratings would be a sign they did not need help." Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said, "We've all told people, don't go any more deeply into debt. Now we're saying that people who go more deeply into debt will have an advantage over people who don't go more deeply into debt." Finally, some economists worry that the plan may discourage purchasers of mortgages bundled by banks. Standard & Poor warned, "Declining investor participation means reduced capital and liquidity, which may affect homeownership and borrowing opportunities." Barclays Capital -- extrapolating from a similar program recently unveiled in California -- estimates that only about 12 percent of all subprime borrowers, or 240,000 homeowners, would get relief.
POSSIBILITIES FOR REAL RELIEF: Though some conservatives have derided Bush's already paltry plan as a "taxpayer-financed bailout," it is clear that the government needs to take more dramatic action to help American families stay in their homes and forestall larger shockwaves across the larger economy. Among other measures, "we need a Family Foreclosure Rescue Corporation (FFRC), which would issue new, fixed-rate mortgages to those borrowers 'under water' and facing default or foreclosure. In the process, the FFRC would buy up the old adjustable-rate mortgages from lenders and investors and replacing them with new, tax-friendly government-rated bonds equal to the current value of these homes," Jakabovics said. Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) has proposed legislation to take this necessary step. Last month, the House passed the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act, which requires lenders to ensure a borrower's ability to pay, prohibits unfair lending practices like steering, and creates the Office of Housing Counseling, among other provisions. The Senate has yet to take up the bill. The Center for American Progress has also called for an increase in federal funds to target key cities and states facing the highest risk of mass foreclosure and a strengthening of programs that aid families while their mortgage contracts are renegotiated. "Any plan from the Administration that falls short of this goal of providing long-term affordability will merely defer mass foreclosures to a later date," Dodd said.
Back when Hillary Clinton described Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, a number of people pointed out that this was an unfair comparison. For example, Darth Vader once served in the military. Here’s another reason the comparison is invalid: the contractors Darth Vader hired to build the Death Star actually got the job done.
--Paul Krugman, NY Times
"I didn't say that we should quarantine."
-- Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 12/9/07, on AIDS patients
VERSUS
"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."
-- Huckabee, 1992
VIDEO SECTION
On Friday’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann spoke with Georgetown Law professor, Neal Katyal, who successfully argued the Hamdan case before the Supreme Court about the CIA obstructing justice by destroying interrogation video tapes depicting torture. Keith brings up what are basically multiple levels of crimes at play here.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/08/countdown-cia-may-have-committed-multiple-crimes-in-torture-tape-scandal/
Bob Schieffer gives another decent editorial...this one on torture being un-american…perhaps Olbermann is having a little influence on other mainstream news anchors?
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/09/bob-schieffer-commentary-cia-torture-tapes-the-message-of-edward-r-murrow/
Joe Biden wants a special prosecutor to look into the destroyed CIA torture tapes scandal:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/09/biden-on-this-week-appoint-a-special-prosecutor-in-cia-torture-tape-scandal/
DEBUNKING HUCKABEE'S DEFENSE OF RAPISTS RELEASE
Arianna:
The way that Mike Huckabee has handled the furor caused by the Huffington Post’s coverage of his role in the release of Wayne Dumond, a serial rapist who went on to rape and kill at least one other woman, has been very revealing. And troubling.
Huckabee’s response has been to fudge the truth, point the finger at everyone in sight, and — that old standby — blame the messenger. He also claimed “the Huffington Post just doesn’t want to give the whole story of what was going on.” Really? Our original story on the Dumond case was over 4,000 words long and offered what even the American Spectator deemed a “detailed, convincingly irrefutable” presentation of the evidence in which HuffPost “backs up every single word.” What’s more, we included links to a number of never before published documents from the governor’s own files…
read on
Watch the issue discussed with two members of the Arkansas parole board that agreed to release Dumond...let's just say they directly contradict Huckabee's version of events:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/07/arainna-responds-to-huckabees-non-response-to-murray-waas-wayne-dumond-story/
ARTICLE SECTION
FIGHTING TO SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY
Chris Hedges writes another “stop the fascists, save our democracy” special. Some real powerful stuff.
A few clips:
Those who recognize the injustice of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a war with Iran, who concede that these wars are not only a violation of international law but under the post-Nuremberg laws are defined as criminal wars of aggression, yet do nothing, have forfeited their rights as citizens. By allowing the status quo to go unchallenged they become agents of injustice. To do nothing is to do something. They practice a faux morality. They vent against war on the Internet or among themselves but do not resist. They take refuge in the conception of themselves as moderates. They stand on what they insist is the middle ground without realizing that the middle ground has shifted under us, that the old paradigm of left and right, liberal and conservative, is meaningless in a world where, to quote Immanuel Kant, those in power have embraced “a radical evil.”
SNIP
We face a crisis. Our democratic institutions are being dismantled. We are headed for a state of perpetual war. We are paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative. There are hundreds of thousands who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This number would be dwarfed by a war with Iran, which could ignite a regional inferno in the Middle East. Not a lot is being asked of us. Compare our potential sacrifices with what is being inflicted on and demanded of those trapped in the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon, perhaps, Iran. Courage, as Aristotle wrote, is the highest of human virtues because without it we are unlikely to practice any other virtue. Once we find courage we find freedom.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/10/5731/
EXPLAINING THE SUPBRIME CRISIS
This is an excellent breakdown of the housing crisis…from a macro perspective that goes beyond just the borrower and the lender, but to the heart of the problem: Wall Street, trading, and deregulation.
A few clips:
Regardless of whether you adopt the progressive view of the crisis (banks lured borrowers with reckless procedures) or the conservative one (borrowers should have known not to get in over their heads), lenders knew it was an easy game to lavish money and extract fees from consumers as long as they had lots of customers wanting to own the home of their dreams.
More than that, they knew they could package and sell loans to investors, indirectly through Wall Street firms, and directly, to traders, creating room on their balance sheets to originate even more mortgages. Trouble was, investor appetite for the once-lucrative sub-prime mortgage packages dried up as credit did. Investment banks that bet their client investors would be there forever got crucified and are paying the price with multi-billion dollar writedowns and ejected CEO's. But so are homeowners, for whom every piece of bad news makes their individual financial situation seem worse.
SNIP
Traders' bets were simple: since lenders were lending at high, or sub-prime, rates, they could buy prepackaged bunches of those loans and sell them to investors seeking to benefit from this high-payment steam. The downside risk, they calculated, was that some borrowers wouldn't pay their mortgages and default. But, if those defaults occurred to a low enough percentage of all the mortgages in package, there would be more than enough non-defaulting loans to keep money flowing in.
SNIP
While politicians are focused on stricter lending practices or debating the merits of Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson's $100 billion Wall Street trader bail-out fund, they miss a glaring point. If lenders couldn't offset their loans to Wall Street, their lending practices couldn't have spiraled out of control. If Wall Street hadn't leveraged these positions, their losses wouldn't have brought the economic and psychological damage to the housing market that mere inability on the part of borrowers to repay their loans would have caused.
http://alternet.org/mediaculture/70096/
China and the United States, the world's top two polluters, "say they are not ready to commit to mandatory caps on greenhouse gases." At the U.N. climate talks in Bali, the United States has instead indicated that it will "come up with its own plan."
'Too Little, Too Late' Subprime Solution
On Thursday, President Bush stood with Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson to announce an agreement with the mortgage industry to provide relief to families facing home foreclosures. "The holidays are fast approaching and, unfortunately, this will be a time of anxiety for Americans worried about their mortgages and their homes. There's no perfect solution, but the homeowners deserve our help," Bush said. His plan would freeze mortgage rates for some troubled borrowers. Yet the vast majority of Americans facing foreclosure would be left out by the Bush plan, including the record 351,000 people who fell into foreclosure in the third quarter of this year. The deal asks for only a voluntary freeze on interest rates, and does not require congressional approval or funds. The effects of the subprime mortgage crisis have spread throughout other sectors of the economy, an estimated 800,000 Americans have are already faced foreclosure since mid-2007, and 3.5 million loans are expected to default before the end of 2010. Although Bush's plan will offer substantial help to thousands of families, it is, as The New York Times editorial board described it, "too little, too late and too voluntary." Andrew Jakabovics of the Center for American Progress said, "As with other serious crises that have happened on Bush's watch, the solution is to make it the next administration's problem."
TOO MANY EXCLUDED: Bush's plan is hardly the comprehensive assistance millions of Americans need. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, called the plan "little more than financial wallpaper" that was "insufficient to say the least." The plan "would exclude those who are delinquent on their payments -- about 22 percent of all subprime borrowers, according to First American LoanPerformance, an industry research firm." Moreover, Bush's plan would apply only to those facing rising rates in 2008 and 2009, although "$57 billion in subprime loans were scheduled to be reset at higher rates in the final three months of this year." Also, "in one curious twist, the plan could eliminate many people who have good credit scores or who managed to improve their credit scores, because the good ratings would be a sign they did not need help." Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said, "We've all told people, don't go any more deeply into debt. Now we're saying that people who go more deeply into debt will have an advantage over people who don't go more deeply into debt." Finally, some economists worry that the plan may discourage purchasers of mortgages bundled by banks. Standard & Poor warned, "Declining investor participation means reduced capital and liquidity, which may affect homeownership and borrowing opportunities." Barclays Capital -- extrapolating from a similar program recently unveiled in California -- estimates that only about 12 percent of all subprime borrowers, or 240,000 homeowners, would get relief.
POSSIBILITIES FOR REAL RELIEF: Though some conservatives have derided Bush's already paltry plan as a "taxpayer-financed bailout," it is clear that the government needs to take more dramatic action to help American families stay in their homes and forestall larger shockwaves across the larger economy. Among other measures, "we need a Family Foreclosure Rescue Corporation (FFRC), which would issue new, fixed-rate mortgages to those borrowers 'under water' and facing default or foreclosure. In the process, the FFRC would buy up the old adjustable-rate mortgages from lenders and investors and replacing them with new, tax-friendly government-rated bonds equal to the current value of these homes," Jakabovics said. Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) has proposed legislation to take this necessary step. Last month, the House passed the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act, which requires lenders to ensure a borrower's ability to pay, prohibits unfair lending practices like steering, and creates the Office of Housing Counseling, among other provisions. The Senate has yet to take up the bill. The Center for American Progress has also called for an increase in federal funds to target key cities and states facing the highest risk of mass foreclosure and a strengthening of programs that aid families while their mortgage contracts are renegotiated. "Any plan from the Administration that falls short of this goal of providing long-term affordability will merely defer mass foreclosures to a later date," Dodd said.
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