TODAY'S TOPICS: MLK, Mukasey and 9/11, Torture Memos, McCain, Olbermann, Daily Show

As we watch all the phony fawning today by the corporate media over the largely censored “official” legacy of Dr. King, let’s remember that this same media – if he were alive today - would be actively marginalizing, smearing, and misrepresenting him. In fact, this same media did exactly that when he started speaking out against the war in Vietnam, the military industrial complex, and even poverty. We should also remember that King was an enemy of the state, with his own government blackmailing, threatening, and wire-tapping him.

Imagine what would be done to him in today’s 24 hour news cycle? Again, think of Rev. Wright and you’ll get your answer.

As you read the following quotes try and imagine what the reaction to them would be today by the corporate and political elites as well as the media that does their bidding:

Dr. King Quotes

• "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."
• "God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war...We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world."
• "...Let me say, finally, that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America, and there can be no great disappointment when there is no great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, extreme materialism and militarism..."
• "It is not enough to say 'We must not wage war.' It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but on the positive affirmation of peace....In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race."
• “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
• “Any man’s death diminishes me because I’m involved in mankind…Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

AND THIS ONE...

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just.”

It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: ”This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

-- Martin Luther King

VERSUS

“We look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will make – it would hope – put a free press’s mind at ease that you’re not being denied information you shouldn’t see.”

-- President George W. Bush

12%: The percent of people opposed to Obama being President that cited “Muslim” as the reason (Republicans are a smart people… there are no doubt some Dems in that 12% too)

MCCAIN VERSUS DR. KING

McCain was 50 years old when he STILL opposed a holiday for MLK. But he “learned” more about Dr. King, so by 60 years old, he had changed his mind. Doesn’t that make you feel better about the man?

Let’s look at the REAL McCain:

• He voted an amazing FOUR times against the Civil Rights Act of 1990--a bill designed to make it easier for employees to prove job discrimination and imposing harsher penalties on bosses who discriminated.
• In 2004 he opposed affirmative action in college admissions--a key component of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that is among King's key legislative victories.
• He has voted at least 8 times against raising the minimum wage.
• And as recently as last month, he argued against federal intervention to help Americans, disproportionately Black Americans, who have faced foreclosure during the housing crisis.
• He supported (for a short time) South Carolina’s right to fly the confederate flag over the statehouse during the 2000 primary. He later reversed his position on the flag and called for its removal, referring his initial position an “act of cowardice.”

END

"Illegal migrants really degrade the environment."

-- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, 10/1/07

VERSUS

"In an aggressive move to finish 670 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border by the end of the year, the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday announced plans to waive federal and state environmental laws."

-- LA Times, 4/2/08

"The Bush administration will use its authority to bypass more than 30 laws and regulations to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest U.S. border by the end of 2008."

-- AP, 4/2/08

VERSUS

"[P]eople who are here illegally...have got to comply with the law."

-- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, 4/2/08

THE TORTURE MEMOS...

In 2003, the Justice Department issued a legal memo "asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes." Former Justice Department lawyer Marty Lederman says the memo "effectively gave the Pentagon the green light to disregard statutory limits on torture" and "maltreatment."

"For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism," according to "a secret Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001." The memo's existence was disclosed "Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo" about interrogation policy.

VIDEO SECTION

Olbermann and Turley discuss the growing scandal over the recently released torture memos that demonstrate that A. the US has had a massive torture program, that came from the top (as in Bush), and that was retroactively argued by these memos for future legal cover B. that a lot of the torture methods were inspired by the show 24 (no joke), and C. the President, and other key officials are all guilty of war crimes.

Watch:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/03/countdown-yoo-torture-memo-is-more-evidence-of-impeachable-crimes/

Watch footage of the great Martin Luther King…talking about…GASP…America’s failings…something he wouldn’t be able to get away with today…as demonstrated by Rev. Wright. This includes the end of the last speech of his life…where he alludes to his own approaching death. Gives me chills every time I listen to it, esp. when you see him collapse in exhaustion when he finished:

http://alternet.org/blogs/video/81328/

I would hate to have to go into the mind of someone as sick and twisted as McCain. I mean, here’s a guy that brags about being tortured and serving in the military, yet simultaneously supports the torturing of people we capture, and is yet to support increased benefits for the troops serving in Iraq (i.e. the New GI bill). Is it self hate? Pandering? Or is he just one big fraud of a human being? I say all of the above…Watch Robert Greenwald’s latest short on “The Disgrace’s” latest mind bender:

http://alternet.org/blogs/video/81240/

Daily Show lambastes Fox News’s latest outlandish Obama attacks…or in this case, the 24hr like countdown clock

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/04/jon-stewart-slams-fox-news-for-obama-watch-clock/

Chris Mathews's racism (and sexism) continues unabated…god this guys an idiot. Quote of the day about Barack: “Does Obama connect with regular people or just African American and college grads?” Uhhh…as far as I know, blacks are both regular people, AND college grads:

http://alternet.org/blogs/mediaculture/81182/

Worst Persons…always a must watch:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/03/countdowns-worst-persons-doocy-rushbo-the-snowman/

ARTICLE SECTION: DR. KING, MUKASEY

Read these two excellent tributes to King, from Jeff Cohen, and Katrina Vanden Heuvel…and let’s remember what he REALLY said about war, poverty, and America’s crimes (and potential).

A few clips from Jeff's column:

Last night, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams enthused over new color footage of King that adorned its coverage of the 40th anniversary of the assassination. The report focused on the last phase of King's life. But the same old blinders were in place. NBC showed young working class whites in Chicago taunting King. But there was no mention of how elite media had taunted King in his last year. In 1967 and 1968, mainstream media saw Reverend King a bit like they now see Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Back then, they denounced King's critical comments; today they simply silence them.

SNIP

If King had survived to hear the war drums beating for the invasion and occupation of Iraq - amplified by TV networks, The New York Times's front page and The Washington Post's editorial page - there's little doubt where he'd stand. Or how loudly he'd be speaking out. And there's little doubt how big media would have reacted. On Fox News and talk radio, King would have been Dixie-Chicked ... or Reverend-Wrighted. In corporate centrist outlets, he'd have been marginalized faster than you can say Noam Chomsky.

AND FROM MS. VANDEN HEUVAL:

Today we are again mired in an intractable and monstrous war overseas. It is a moment to listen to Dr. King's words about the broader casualties of another war-casualties that go beyond the carnage of battle to the devastating costs of war at home-the damage to social justice and racial equality, and the unbearable cost to free speech and dissent.

SNIP

Today, 41 years later, we are once again, as Dr. King told us, "in an unthinkable position morally and politically..." Who of sane mind can look out over the current landscape in America and breathe easily. At The Nation, we recognize that when it comes to the future of our democracy, of our country and the world, we are in the fight of our lives-confronted by failed policies, wanton destruction, false promises, rampant corruption, metastasizing financial pain, and the downward spiraling of America's standing in the world.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040408C.shtml

MUKASEY'S 9/11 BOMBSHELL

As I said, if you still believe the almost comical official “9/11 story”, then I’ve got some million dollar tupper ware to sell you! Now we have a new hint that everything is not what it seems, this of course is the very strange example Mukasey used to justify the need for domestic wiretapping: a call from Afghanistan to the US prior to 9/11 that contained information about the attack which, he claimed, if it had been intercepted, would have possibly enabled the government to prevent 9/11.

Of course, the problem with using this call as a justification for domestic wiretapping is that it was an international call, and the US was able to tap such calls without a warrant prior to 9/11. So, if the call wasn't tapped, how is it that Mukasey knows about it? And if it WAS tapped--which it must have been or he wouldn't have any knowledge of it--then why WASN'T the information used to prevent 9/11?

The call is not mentioned anywhere in the 9/11 Commission report? Why not? It would appear that a major lapse has been accidentally revealed--or was it a lapse?

Glenn Greenwald, as always, is on it:

This isn’t just a matter of academic and historical interest about the 9/11 attacks, although it is that. One of two things almost certainly happened here, each of which is of great importance. Either Mukasey is lying about the 9/11 attacks in order to manipulate Americans into believing that FISA’s warrant requirements are what prevented discovery of the 9/11 attacks and caused 3,000 American deaths — a completely disgusting act by the Attorney General which obviously cannot be ignored. Or, Mukasey has just revealed the most damning fact yet about the Bush’s administration’s ability and failure to have prevented the attacks — facts that, until now, were apparently concealed from the 9/11 Commission and the public.

SNIP

The great significance of this story — that Mukasey either completely fabricated a key 9/11 event or just revealed a heretofore unknown 9/11 bombshell — is self-evident and made clear by these growing accounts. Having Hamilton, Kean and/or Zelikow comment on the veracity of Mukasey’s claims about the 9/11 attacks — as they ought to do — is vital for advancing the story.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/03/8071/

TODAY'S TOPICS: Zinn, US Imperialism, Pentagon Waste, US Military Rapists, Olbermann, Maddow, Mukasey Caught, McCain

I'll get to the torture memo bombshell tomorrow (and the new book "The Torture Team"...and article "The Green Light" busting this story open)...now to some great stuff:

Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense — that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization — begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?

-- Howard Zinn, article this week (see it below)

Electoral illegitimacy begets illegitimate rule: Secret detentions and torture redefined into meaninglessness. Secret prisons. Ending habeas corpus, the right to have one’s case heard before a judge–a right English-speaking people had enjoyed for 800 years. Secret “signing statements” purporting to negate laws signed in public. Spying on Americans, lying about it to Congress, and then, after getting caught, trying to legalize it retroactively. Destroying evidence. An executive order granting the president the power to declare anyone–without evidence–an “enemy combatant,” then order that person imprisoned for life, or even assassinated.

Even if the next president has promised to end extraordinary renditions (which began under Bill Clinton), close Gitmo, outlaw torture and overturn the Military Commissions Act, which eliminated habeas corpus, he or she will surely be tempted to retain some of Bush’s beefed up new executive powers upon moving into the Oval Office. Who wouldn’t want to read their political opponents’ email and listen to their phone calls?

But let’s posit, for the sake of argument, that Bush’s evildoing comes to an end next January. There will still be a mess to clean up.

One million Iraqis and Afghans are dead. Tens of thousands more have been tortured and maimed. Thousands of dead soldiers; tens of thousands more grievously wounded. Millions of Americans have had their privacy violated. They deserve justice. We deserve justice. The war criminals, torturers and phone companies deserve due process. If there are consequences for driving fast and cheating on your taxes, after all, there surely ought to be a price to pay for urinating on an innocent man in a dog cage at Guantánamo.

-- Ted Rall

NEW STUDY: PENTAGON WASTE ASTRONOMICAL

Now this is a story that should be the HEADLINE of every newscast and newspaper...instead, we're still talking about Rev. Wright.

Also when looking at these numbers (and Scheer writes an article about it below) notice what a diversion all the hysteria is over the kinds of "pork barrel" projects always in the news, and ragged on by legislators. These are tiny, tiny fractions of the budget, and sometimes even go to worthwhile things. The real waste, the real gorilla in the room, is the military industrial complex.

The Washington Post reports yesterday:

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The Government Accountability Office [GAO] found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion. To put in perspective, Bush vetoed more health insurance for kids supposedly because $35 billion - $7 billion a year over 5 years - was too much to spend.

More from the GAO report:

Since 2000, the Department of Defense (DOD) has roughly doubled its planned investment in new systems from $790 billion to $1.6 trillion in 2007, but acquisition outcomes in terms of cost and schedule have not improved.”

GAO has noted that the DOD [Dept. of Defense] workforce faces serious challenges and has expressed concerns about DOD's reliance on contractors to perform roles that have in the past been performed by government employees. Without the right-sized workforce, with the right skills, we believe this could place greater risk on the government for fraud, waste, and abuse.

Of the 72 programs GAO assessed this year, none of them had proceeded through system development meeting the best-practice standards for mature technologies, stable design, or mature production processes by critical junctures of the program, each of which are essential for achieving planned cost, schedule, and performance outcomes.”

-- By Bill Scher, The Campaign for America's Future

VIDEO SECTION

This is what I alluded to the other day...was it a Mukasey slip up? Lie? Or worse? He is basically saying here that they knew about plans to attack before 9/11 but didn't wiretap the person like they should have...watch Olbermann and Maddow discuss the need for an investigation:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/01/countdown-mukaseys-fisa-fables-lies-or-admissions/

Dan Abrams, who follows Olbermann on MSNBC every night, seems to have learned a trick or two from Keith. And he clearly reads the blogs. Watch his new segment “Teflon John”, where he points out all McCain’s regular gaffe’s, lies, misstatements and flip flops…all that DON’T GET COVERED by the media:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/02/the-verdict-teflon-john/

And hopefully we’re seeing a trend…as the Daily Show also makes fun of McCain’s “legacy tour”…classic!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/03/the-daily-show-welcome-to-mccain%e2%80%99s-monsters-of-nostalgia-tour/

Watch Rachelle Maddow (she's awesome!) school idiot Joe Scarborough on the phony "Maverick" mantle given to John "the disgrace" McBush:

http://alternet.org/blogs/mediaculture/81195/

And this is too good…in Olbermann’s Worst Persons he lays into Limbaugh…but the kicker is, the obese radio host bigot – by urging republicans to vote in the Democratic primary for Hillary - has disenfranchised them! And now they can’t vote for the Republican in that primary! Watch:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/02/countdowns-worst-persons-hayden-fixed-noise-el-rashbo/

For my comic interlude…enjoy Colbert’s Bears and Balls...on the credit crisis and subsequent bailouts:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/02/the-colbert-report-bears-balls/

Walmart backs down and will let the Shanks keep the money for her injuries…but what about the 8 year legal battle costs?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/01/wal-mart-backs-down-drops-draconian-reimbursement-case/

If you tuned in to the tv news at all the past two days, you likely saw some pretty major coverage of…wait for it…how bad a bowler Obama is!!! That’s right, the kind of issue that is critical to the lives of us all…I mean, we can’t have someone that sucks at bowling leading the free world can we?? Notice Forest Gump reporter Campbell Brown’s usual over accentuating words and questions…

http://alternet.org/blogs/video/81067/

ARTICLE SECTION: Zinn, Scheer

Howard Zinn writes another one of his brilliant dissections of America's real imperial past (and present). You know, the kind of truth that the Matrix will not tolerate (just look at what happened to Wright). We aren't supposed to question the myth of America...

Here's Zinn:

What at first had seemed like a purely passive foreign policy in the decade leading up to the First World War now appeared as a succession of violent interventions: the seizure of the Panama Canal zone from Colombia, a naval bombardment of the Mexican coast, the dispatch of the Marines to almost every country in Central America, occupying armies sent to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. As the much-decorated General Smedley Butler, who participated in many of those interventions, wrote later: “I was an errand boy for Wall Street.”

At the very time I was learning this history — the years after World War II — the United States was becoming not just another imperial power, but the world’s leading superpower. Determined to maintain and expand its monopoly on nuclear weapons, it was taking over remote islands in the Pacific, forcing the inhabitants to leave, and turning the islands into deadly playgrounds for more atomic tests.

SNIP

Various interventions following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam seemed to reflect the desperate need of the still-reigning superpower — even after the fall of its powerful rival, the Soviet Union — to establish its dominance everywhere. Hence the invasion of Grenada in 1982, the bombing assault on Panama in 1989, the first Gulf war of 1991. Was George Bush Sr. heartsick over Saddam Hussein’s seizure of Kuwait, or was he using that event as an opportunity to move U.S. power firmly into the coveted oil region of the Middle East? Given the history of the United States, given its obsession with Middle Eastern oil dating from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1945 deal with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and the CIA’s overthrow of the democratic Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953, it is not hard to decide that question.

SNIP

The American Empire has always been a bipartisan project — Democrats and Republicans have taken turns extending it, extolling it, justifying it. President Woodrow Wilson told graduates of the Naval Academy in 1914 (the year he bombarded Mexico) that the U.S. used “her navy and her army… as the instruments of civilization, not as the instruments of aggression.” And Bill Clinton, in 1992, told West Point graduates: “The values you learned here… will be able to spread throughout the country and throughout the world.”

For the people of the United States, and indeed for people all over the world, those claims sooner or later are revealed to be false. The rhetoric, often persuasive on first hearing, soon becomes overwhelmed by horrors that can no longer be concealed: the bloody corpses of Iraq, the torn limbs of American GIs, the millions of families driven from their homes — in the Middle East and in the Mississippi Delta.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/02/8031/

Robert Scheer writes on the GAO study I quoted at the top of the post...mind boggling waste and corruption...yet we still can't question the military budget, or its central role as the pre-eminent taxpayer expenditure (nearly 1 out of evrey 2 dollar of our money).

A few clips:

A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you’re talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II. Even the devastating defense spending audit released Monday by the Government Accountability Office documenting the enormous waste in every single U.S. advanced weapons system failed to provoke the outrage it, and five equally scathing previous annual audits, deserved… Example: the $81-billion submarine pushed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, presumably to fight al-Qaida’s navy.

SNIP

That’s a grade of zero for every major weapons system. Let’s take just one, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program estimated to be worth $300 billion in sales to its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, the nation’s biggest defense contractor and most generous donor to lobbyists and politicians’ campaigns. The program to build what Lockheed boasts is “the most complex fighter ever built” is also the most expensive, with estimated acquisition costs having increased a whopping $55 billion in just the last three years.

Lockheed need not worry about future profits, because the procurement schedule on this troubled plane has been stretched out to the year 2034. As the GAO says, “currently unproven processes and a lack of flight testing could mean future changes to design and manufacturing processes.” Hey, no problem, Lockheed will just add that to the taxpayer tab. Maybe by 2034, the plane will be ready to go take out Osama bin Laden. Or not.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/02/8040/

MCCAIN OPPOSED MLK HOLIDAY IN ARIZONA

In 1983, McCain voted against passing a bill to designate the third Monday of every January as a federal holiday in honor of King. Four years later, then-Arizona Governor Evan Mecham rescinded Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday, saying it had been established through an illegal executive order by his Democratic predecessor.

McCain said he thought Mecham was correct in his decision. Two years after that, McCain’s viewpoint began to change, but only gradually. In 1989, he urged lawmakers to make Martin Luther King Jr. day a state holiday, but said he was “still opposed to another federal holiday.”

END

MCCAIN DOESN'T KNOW SHIT ABOUT IRAQ...

In an interview with CNN earlier today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed that he has long understood the influence of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr:

I said he was still major player and his influence is going to have to be reduced and gradually eliminated.

But in a report on The Situation Room today, the network noted that just two weeks ago McCain -- trying to paint a rosy picture of Iraq -- described Sadr very differently while speaking to CNN's John King in Baghdad:

His [Sadr's] influence has been on the wane for a long time.

END

AMERICAN MILITARY RAPISTS

(American women soldiers are now more likely to get raped by their fellow male soldiers than they are to be killed in Iraq)

The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.

Numbers reported by the Department of Defense show a sickening pattern. In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported - 73% more than in 2004. The DOD's newest report, released this month, indicates that 2,688 reports were made in 2007, but a recent shift from calendar-year reporting to fiscal-year reporting makes comparisons with data from previous years much more difficult.

At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through "nonjudicial punishment," which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of "insufficient evidence."

-- Congresswoman Jane Harman

TODAY'S TOPICS: Gore, Daily Show, Hagel, The Fed, MLK Remembered, "Bushed", Iraq, McCain

In a minimally rational world, a Republican presidential candidate like John McCain who has enabled all of that would have no chance. But — in the absence of anything changing the way this works — the establishment press will remove those considerations from its election coverage and the GOP’s exploitation of bottom-feeding personality-based psychological, cultural and gender themes will predominate. In 2008, the GOP will dedicate itself single-mindedly to these same personality-based, manipulative electoral tactics because that is their only hope for winning.

There simply cannot be any greater priority than preventing a John McCain Presidency, one which would empower the same faction and continue the same policies that have been slowly though inexorably destroying this country, its institutions and political values. Understanding and neutralizing these tactics and the enabling media behavior is a prerequisite for preventing that…

-- Glenn Greenwald in his new book Great American Hypocrites

"We must win this fight. The militias that we are fighting are backed by Iran."

-- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 3/30/08, on recent fighting in southern Iraq

VERSUS

"The notion that this is a fight by American allies against Iranian-inspired elements is not accurate."

-- Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), 3/30/08

"We all share the exact same interest in doing the right thing on this. Who are we as human beings? Are we destined to destroy this place that we call home, planet earth? I can't believe that that's our destiny. It is not our destiny. But we have to awaken to the moral duty that we have to do the right thing and get out of this silly political game-playing about it. This is about survival,"

--Al Gore on 60 Minutes, watch the entire interview here

VIDEO SECTION

Good to have the Daily Show back…I need comic interludes in these rather bleak days. Watch Stewart dissect “the surge”, as in “when casualties go up, we’re winning. When casualties go down, we’re winning.”

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/01/jon-stewart-exposes-bushs-surge-doublespeak/


More on the rapidly disintegrating situation in Iraq…with Olbermann and Maddow:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/31/countdown-iraq-spinning-out-of-control/

Its official…McCain is another Reagan and W. Bush…as in clueless of the facts, dangerous to the world, and a lover of trickle down economics. Olbermann covers the latest frightening gaffe by “The Disgrace”…on the war again no less. And I should point out, just about all corporate media, aside from Olbermann, has botched the story over Basra and the war between shia factions. This being, Sadr was the “winner”, not Malicki, and also, we’re fighting on the side of the Iran backed shia’s…which kind of brings into question, well, EVERYTHING!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/01/mccain-in-the-dark-over-malikis-actions-yet-another-foreign-policy-gaffe/

An excellent “Bushed” series...as Olbermann takes on Mukasey, who, as I thought, is nearly as bad, maybe worse because he’s more “competent”, than Gonzales. And strangest of all, is what he recently said about wiretapping and 9/11. Listen carefully…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/01/countdowns-bushed-torturous-information-edition/

John Cusack visits Bill Maher to discuss his new documentary called War, Inc. The military industrial complex, if we are to survive as a nation, at some point, must be dismantled…or at least greatly reduced. Perhaps this movie is a start. Excellent!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/31/real-time-john-cusack-on-war-inc/

As I’ve said so many times here, Republican Chuck Hagel, as much as he’s wrong on most all other issues, he’s still about as good as they come in articulating what’s gone wrong in Iraq and why the war needs to end.

Here he’s interviewed by John Stewart:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/01/chuck-hagel-on-tds-we-need-an-iraq-policy-worthy-of-the-sacrifices/

Watch this demonstrationg by computer techies in how to change the ROMs of a Nedap e-voting computer in 60 seconds (making the election results hackable). Remember, we know for a fact these machines are often stored in easy places to be broken into, or worse, are taken home by election workers for days and even weeks before the election to "safeguard" them. Insane! Then, we aren't given access to their source codes, often can't check them against a paper record, and have no way of seeing where the numbers were manipulated. Seems kind of "anti-democratic"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EowKalRT3lc

ELIZABETH EDWARDS NAILS THE HEALTH CARE ARGUMENT AGAINST MCCAIN

FROM C&L: Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to think this observation might resonate with voters: John McCain could be denied coverage under John McCain’s healthcare plan. It’s a point Elizabeth Edwards drove home very well.

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, said she and John McCain have one thing in common: “Neither one of us would be covered by his health policy.”

Edwards lodged her criticism of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s proposal Saturday at the annual meeting of the Assn. of Health Care Journalists. Under McCain’s plan, insurance companies “wouldn’t have to cover preexisting conditions like melanoma and breast cancer,” she said.

McCain has been treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skin malignancy. Edwards in 2004 was diagnosed with breast cancer, and announced a year ago that it had returned and spread into her bones, meaning it no longer could be cured.

McCain’s plan focuses on offering new tax breaks for individuals who buy their own health insurance. But critics say the Arizona senator’s proposal avoids giving insurers requirements on whom they must cover and how much they may charge.

END

ARTICLE SECTION

Nomi Prins, a journalist and Senior Fellow at Demos, as well as a former investment banker on Wall Street, continues her string of insightful op-ed’s on the credit crisis, the Fed, and the subprime meltdown. As promised yesterday, here’s that analysis of the Paulson plan I was looking for. As is typical with these guys, when there’s a problem, or a massive failure, their solution is to reward the key players responsible for that problem.

In this case, the plan would be to give the Fed MORE POWER over our markets…and continue the bailouts with taxpayer money.

A few clips:

Here’s how to think about the proposed reform of financial oversight unveiled by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday: The Federal Reserve Bank, whose job already includes regulating a large component of the financial system, has failed pretty badly at its tasks. The proposed solution-to give it more responsibility-seems ridiculous and hazardous.

Yet that’s the plan. Having ignored or been unduly confused by the complexity of the banks already under its jurisdiction, the new, improved Fed would get more books to examine for undue risk, adding in brokers and insurance companies.

SNIP

The Paulson plan does nothing to give the oversight agencies any more legal standing to intervene or enforce than they already possess. That’s hardly surprising, given the vociferous opposition that greater regulation faces from Wall Street firms (to say nothing of barely regulated hedge-fund and private-equity firms)… All of the plan’s suggestions are cosmetic.

Instead, let’s please have a serious discussion about the nature of the banking system structure itself: its complexity, its responsibility, and the proper role of the federal government in regulating it. The United States has had such a debate before, leading up to the landmark 1933 Glass Steagall Act. We can and should have such a sweeping debate again.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/01/8021/

Jesse Jackson remembers Dr. King on the eve of the anniversary of his assassination. As he correctly and importantly reminds us here: some of King’s most important work and words dealt with the issue of poverty and war…not just race. Our media conveniently erases that part of his legacy…as its just too inconvenient to deal with our military industrial complex and poverty “problem”…particularly if you’re the very corporations that profit off war and misery:

A few clips:

Rev. King was struck down as he raised the bar. He was working on a poor people’s campaign. He was challenging the Vietnam War, and a nation spending far too much on violence and far too little on the poor. In Memphis, he was marching with striking sanitation workers, seeking decent wages.

Rev. King believed this nation should change its priorities, that it should not squander precious lives and resources in distant wars. He believed that every person in this country should be guaranteed what Franklin Roosevelt called his economic bill of rights — the right to a job with a decent wage, health care, affordable education, a secure retirement, plus the right to organize at the workplace and to be free from discrimination or repression of basic human rights. We put these rights into the United Declaration on Human Rights, but we have not put them into practice in the United States.

Forty years later, Rev. King’s mission is still unfulfilled. Today, poverty and unemployment are on the rise. Much of the safety net has been shredded. Welfare has been repealed; unemployment insurance covers fewer workers for less time; low-cost housing is scarce; the minimum wage has lost value; unions are on the defensive, representing less than 10 percent of the private work force. Not surprisingly, we have not witnessed such extremes of inequality since 1929, just prior to the Great Depression.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/01/8010/

GORE LAUNCHES $300 MILLION CLIMATE CHANGE CAMPAIGN: Today, former Vice President Al Gore and his organization, the Alliance for Climate Protection, launch a bipartisan, $300 million, three-year campaign to push for climate change legislation. A press release heralded the campaign as "unprecedented in scale for a public policy issue," and the Washington Post reports that the group "aims to enlist 10 million volunteers through a combination of network and cable commercials, display ads...and online social networks." Gore said he and his wife Tipper had donated all the profits from his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, to this new campaign -- called the "We" campaign -- along with his Nobel Peace Prize money. The campaign will launch TV ads later this week that "will team up offbeat celebrity couples who may not have much in common but share a belief that it is important to address climate change." The first such ad features Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich, and others will pair up Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson, and the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith. Sign up for the campaign here, and watch its debut ad here.

"The number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s." The economic slowdown caused the "recent rises in many states," say officials and experts. At the same time, after rising by 100,000 for the second month in a row, the number of Americans working part time jobs out of economic necessity reached the highest level since 1993.

Director Oliver Stone currently casting his next film, Bush: The Movie. "Word from Hollywood is that he's negotiating with Elizabeth Banks (the nutty sexaholic in The 40 Year-Old Virgin) for the role of Laura Bush. Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) will play the prez." And Robert Duvall is being rumored to play Dick Cheney.

TODAY'S TOPICS: Krugman, Baker, Olbermann, Hillary Fact Check, Stewart, HUD, Recession, "The AMERICAN" Disgrace

Olbermann continues his mockery of the Clinton “commander and chief test” (the one they say Obama hasn’t passed, and she has):

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/31/can-you-pass-the-commander-in-chief-test/

From CYL: "I can’t think of a clip that more perfectly illustrates the difference between conservative and liberal philosophy than this one from today’s “This Week.” After George Will pretty much gives the finger to the scores of American homeowners now choking under the weight of their massive mortgages, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich smack him down and set him straight. Krugman offers an incredibly appropriate comparison to Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary and a spot-on analogy to Hurricane Katrina."

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/30/krugman-on-the-housing-crisis-it%e2%80%99s-like-katrina-to-say-let-people-suffer/

Crooks and liars John Amato exposes the media’s torrid and nauseating love affair with McCain…on MSNBC. Thank you!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/28/cls-john-amato-talks-about-mccains-free-ride-from-the-media/

And to continue my expose of the “Real” McCain…watch his new ad…and no, it’s not a parody, it’s his actual ad. Don't you just love how the ad says "The AMERICAN President that AMERICANS have been waiting for." Gee, I wonder if that's directed at Obama being kind of foreign looking with a foreign sounding name, maybe a "Muslim", definitely "different", and certainly "not patriotic" enough?

And here I thought that all of our President's have been "American"? I had no idea that being totured for six years makes you so prepared to be President. I guess we're preparing a lot of the inmates at Guantanamo to be future political leaders...

http://alternet.org/blogs/video/80639/

And this is good…a mock movie trailer called “Recession”…with all McCain’s rather, let’s say, totally ludicrous and uninformed claims, not just about our economy, but the war too:

http://alternet.org/blogs/video/80638/

Innocent man spends 5 years in Guantanamo…CBS:

"At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America’s shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one."

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/03/31/an-innocent-man-loses-5-years-of-his-life-at-guantanamo-bay/

Another Bushie bites the dust under an avalanche of ethics problems…not a surprise being that he’s the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, being that part of the economy is in the greatest crisis of all (as in housing). Here’s a tidbit on the guy before you watch the news piece:

“While Jackson was busy erecting giant photo homages to himself, the nation was spiraling into the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression.” Jackson faces ongoing probes “by a federal grand jury, the Justice Department, the FBI and the HUD inspector general.”

http://alternet.org/blogs/video/80821/

ARTICLE SECTION: KRUGMAN, BAKER

Since the economy is the “issue of the day” (and when I have more time I’ll go into the threat posed by Paulson’s plan to give the Fed more power) here are two short pieces by two of my “go to” authorities on the issue: Paul Krugman and Dean Baker.

First, a few clips from Baker’s piece on what all the bank bailouts by us taxpayers tells us about our corporate welfare state:

If the welfare queen is dead, then it's time to say, "Long live the welfare king." This person really exists, his name is James E. Cayne, and taxpayers just handed him almost $50 million. Mr. Cayne got this gift when J.P. Morgan renegotiated the terms of its takeover of Bear Stearns. The buying price went up fivefold, fetching Bear Stearn's stockholders $1.2 billion instead of the $236 million in the agreement brokered by the Fed last week.

While Bear Stearns shareholders may still have been unhappy about their losses even at the higher price (the stock had been worth more than ten times as much a year earlier), in reality this was a very generous gift from US taxpayers. As an inducement to carry through the takeover, the Fed gave J.P. Morgan up to $30 billion in guarantees, in case the bank has to make good on Bear Stearns' liabilities. In other words, J.P. Morgan is being given the opportunity to do some gambling, with the taxpayers committed to making good any losses. The money that J.P. Morgan paid for this privilege went to Bear Stearns shareholders, not the taxpayers.

SNIP

This is a very nice deal for the investment banks, because they got the fees for selling the credit default swaps, not the Fed. And they were very big fees, making the banks and the bank's executives extremely wealthy. In effect, the investment banks sold insurance that they actually were not in a position to provide. Instead the Fed is providing the insurance, but the investment banks get to keep the money they got from selling the insurance: nice work, if you can get it.

This is yet another episode of the Conservative Nanny State, the story of the how the government intervenes in the market to redistribute income from those at the middle and bottom to those at the top. In this case, the media would have us applaud Mr. Bernanke and the Fed for keeping the financial system from freezing up and preventing the economic chaos that would follow.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/033108A.shtml

And Paul Krugman delves into the “financial reform” proposals coming out of the White House…as one would expect, they’re all precisely the opposite of what’s needed.

A few clips:

You now understand the principle behind the Bush administration's new proposal for financial reform, which will be formally announced today: it's all about creating the appearance of responding to the current crisis, without actually doing anything substantive. The financial events of the last seven months, and especially the past few weeks, have convinced all but a few diehards that the U.S. financial system needs major reform. Otherwise, we'll lurch from crisis to crisis - and the crises will get bigger and bigger. The rescue of Bear Stearns, in particular, was a paradigm-changing event.

SNIP

The Bush administration, however, has spent the last seven years trying to do away with government oversight of the financial industry. In fact, the new plan was originally conceived of as "promoting a competitive financial services sector leading the world and supporting continued economic innovation." That's banker-speak for getting rid of regulations that annoy big financial operators…And sure enough, according to the executive summary of the new administration plan, regulation will be limited to institutions that receive explicit federal guarantees - that is, institutions that are already regulated, and have not been the source of today's problems. As for the rest, it blithely declares that "market discipline is the most effective tool to limit systemic risk."

SNIP

As I said, America's financial crises have been getting bigger. A decade ago, the market disruption that followed the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management was considered a major, scary event; but compared with the current earthquake, the L.T.C.M. crisis was a minor tremor. If we don't reform the system this time, the next crisis could well be even bigger. And I, for one, really don't want to live through a replay of the 1930s.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/033108N.shtml

Hillary “Instrumental” (her words) in Bringing Peace to Northern Ireland? Ha ha ha!

From AP: “Hillary Rodham Clinton cites her role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland as one of the top foreign policy credentials of her presidential bid. Her critics point to an empty, wind-swept Belfast park — which Clinton a decade ago proclaimed would become Northern Ireland's first Catholic-Protestant playground — as evidence that her contribution as peacemaker was more symbolic than substantive.

"She was in charge of christening this wee corner (of the park) as some kind of peace playground. It never made any sense then, and there's nothing there today," said Brian Feeney, a Belfast political analyst, author and teacher. "Everything she did was for the optics."

Critics say the playground-that-never-was illustrates the wider lack of accomplishment from Clinton's half-dozen visits to Northern Ireland — that they emphasized speechmaking, chiefly to women's groups, leaving no lasting mark. "It's crazy for Hillary to say she played a role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland...She seems to be confusing her record with her husband's," said Robin Wilson, founder of a Northern Ireland think tank, Democratic Dialogue.”

FACT CHECK.ORG LOOKS INTO SOME OF HILLARY’S “FIRST LADY” CLAIMS

• Clinton claims to have "negotiated open borders" in Macedonia to fleeing Kosovar refugees. But the Macedonian border opened a full day before she arrived, and her meetings with Macedonian officials were too brief to allow for much serious negotiating.
• Clinton's activities "helped bring peace to Northern Ireland." Irish officials are divided as to how helpful Clinton's actions were, and key players agree that she was not directly involved in any actual negotiations.
• Clinton has repeatedly referenced her "dangerous" trip to Bosnia. She fails to mention, however, that the Bosnian war had officially ended three months before her visit – or that she made the trip with her 16-year-old daughter and two entertainers.
• Both Bill and Hillary Clinton claim that Hillary privately championed the use of U.S. troops to stop the genocide in Rwanda. That conversation left no public record, however, as U.S. policy was explicitly to stay out of Rwanda, and officials say that the use of U.S. troops was never considered.
• Clinton's tough speech on human rights delivered to a Beijing audience is as advertised, though Clinton herself has been dismissive of speeches that aren't backed by solutions.

NEWS CLIPS

…the USO of Metropolitan Washington awarded comedian Jon Stewart its Merit Award for his strong support of U.S. troops. A USO spokeswoman said that Stewart regularly comes from New York and visits with wounded soldiers at Walter Reed, but "up until now he's done it for no public recognition; he just did it out of the goodness of his heart." Stewart cracked few jokes on Tuesday, "speaking instead about how he’s been touched by his time with the wounded."

Scientists said yesterday that a chunk of ice seven times the size of Manhattan collapsed off the Wilkins Ice Shelf in western Antarctica. "The event is a result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan."