TODAY'S TOPICS: Obama Sells Out, FISA Capitulation, Solomon, HealthCare v. Warfare, Environment, Torture

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

DAMN IT OBAMA!!! Friggin Sell Out!

Jesus Christ this guy is selling out faster than a car salesman!! Before I could even say “the presumptive nominee” Obama was kissing the ass of Fortune magazine and going down on Wall Street…

This sure validates EVERY REASON I supported John Edwards in the primaries.

Where to even start? In the past 7 days Obama’s ability to pander and sprint to the right has rivaled Hillary’s record setting performance in the primary. He soon could be the new leader in the “who can make Zack feel nauseous quicker” game (one of my least favorite games ever).

I'm really upset about this right now, so don't mistake this post as totally giving up on the guy, but I've got to get this out...

Let’s begin…

1. NAFTA – though it’s one of the least popular pieces of legislation in recent memory, and offers him an almost guaranteed victory in numerous swing states, Obama couldn’t backtrack quicker since becoming the nominee from his original principled position. Now he’s assuring Fortune magazine that all politicians get a little overheated in campaigns, and say things they don’t mean…ala’ his NAFTA comments. Thanks for lying to us Barack, good to know you’re in the back pocket of corporate America too.
2. Naming JASON FURMAN as top Economic Advisor – It’s also really good to know that his topic economic advisor is longtime Walmart defender and corporate “free” trade stalwart Jason Furman. Just what we need, another Wall Street cocks***** shaping economic policy. Thanks Barack!
3. FLAG LAPELS/NEW AD – While this isn’t nearly as important an issue, and I realize he needs to calm peoples’ fears, but damn, how often does he need to wear an American flag lapel these days? In his new ad, not only is he wearing one again, but he can’t stop talking about “faith”, “tax cuts”, and “welfare reform”. Jesus, sounds like a Republican to me…glad to see he’s running the same triangulating campaigns as the Clinton’s did. The perfect way to A. appear weak. B. blur the differences between the parties, C. hurt progressive arguments in the long term while boosting Republican ones.
4. AIPAC Speech – Do I need to even go into this one? Listening to him talk to AIPAC, one of the most influential, belligerent, right wing, warmongering and racist groups in the country made my skin crawl. From what I can tell, Obama believes Palestinians have no rights, are the source of nearly all the problems Israel has, Iran is some kind of evil empire super power that threatens the world, and Israel is some heaven sent angel land who’s government apparently isn’t responsible for it's horrific treatment of the Palestinian people. Apartheid is far too kind of a description for the kinds of policies Israel is pursuing and AIPAC wants to take those to an even more criminal level. Gee, and here I thought this little piece of news was worrisome: "Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military's capacity to carry out long-range strikes."
5. SELLS OUT ON FISA – This one really gets me! He’s a constitutional law expert for Christ’s sake!! But rather than show an atom’s worth of integrity, and immediately opposing the new FISA bill, Obama instead - in hopes of appearing “tough on terrorism” (actually it’s being tough on Americans and the Constitution) - came out in support of the telecom immunity giving, privacy eviscerating, Constitution burning, and Bush protecting FISA "compromise" today. For the full story on FISA go to my privacy blog.

Here’s today’s "profile in cowardice", straight from Obama's mouth, as he explains why he supports the FISA "compromise"

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives -– and the liberty –- of the American people.

Ding, Ding, Ding…he’s done it, Zack is puking!!!! So here’s the game I’m going to play, it’s called the “what issue is Obama going to sell out on next?” Let’s see, I’m thinking it’s “we need to keep a small presence in Iraq after all to ensure it doesn’t fall into chaos”.

VIDEO SECTION

Here’s what the new FISA bill really does and what a politician with courage and principle says about it. Senator Russ Feingold said:

“The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President’s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home.

Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity. And under this bill, the government can still sweep up and keep the international communications of innocent Americans in the U.S. with no connection to suspected terrorists, with very few safeguards to protect against abuse of this power. Instead of cutting bad deals on both FISA and funding for the war in Iraq, Democrats should be standing up to the flawed and dangerous policies of this administration.”

Now watch Jonathan Turley’s “what any criminal would love to do” analysis of the new FISA compromise on Olbermann:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/20/turley-on-new-fisa-bill-its-what-any-criminal-would-love-to-do/

Or better, watch and listen to what Dennis Kucinich has to say about this FISA abomination:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/20/house-passes-new-steny-hoyerfisa-bill/

Scott McClellan’s opening statement in today’s testimony before Congress:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/20/breaking-scott-mcclellan-testifies-before-congress-opening-statement/

Daily show on the Supreme Court decision that re-establishes Habeus Corpus…such as Fox News coverage and other insane reactions by the right wing fascists…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/20/daily-show-guantanamo-baywatch-and-the-scotus-decision/

A hilarious cartoon by Tom Tomorrow about “how conservatives can convince themselves to believeanything”:

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/06/17/tomo/index.html

ARTICLE SECTION- Health Care versus Warfare

Norm Solomon nails it. A few clips:

Statistics about the war dead tell us very little about human realities. And familiar downbeat numbers about health care — 47 million Americans with no health insurance, perhaps an equal number woefully under-insured — tell us very little about the actual consequences or other options.

SNIP

There’s a lot of profit in death. Under the guise of national security. And under the guise of health care.Today, across the United States, people are dying because they don’t have access to health care. But policy solutions are available. In Congress, about 90 co-sponsors are backing H.R. 676, a bill to provide “comprehensive health insurance coverage for all United States residents.” Call it whatever you like — “single payer” or “improved Medicare for all” or “universal health care with choice of providers and no financial barriers.” What it adds up to is the policy option of treating health care as the human right that it is.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/9/9739/

NEWS CLIPS…

ENVIRONMENT…

The "dirty truth about clean coal" is that it is "more a catchphrase than a reality," writes BusinessWeek. "Despite the eagerness of the coal and power industries to sanitize their image and the desire of U.S. politicians to push a healthy-sounding alternative to expensive foreign oil and natural gas, clean coal is still a misnomer."

The New York Times reports that there is currently a "shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling," meaning that any attempts to lift the offshore drilling ban would have little near-term effect. The "world's existing drill-ships are booked solid for the next five years," and shipbuilders have raised prices since last year "by as much as $100 million a vessel to about half a billion dollars."

ADMINISTRATION REPORT LINKS EXTREME WEATHER TO POLLUTION, CLIMATE CHANGE: Yesterday, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program released a 162-page report revealing that "changes in weather and climate change" have been and will continue to be "the biggest impact of global warming." The report, which synthesizes the findings of more than 100 academic papers, also warns that increases in extreme weather are "among the most serious challenges to society." The assessment finds that manmade global warming has caused an increased frequency of heat waves, droughts, severe rainfall, and fierce hurricanes, and that there is a 90 percent likelihood that the frequency and intensity of such harsh weather conditions will rise. Thomas Karl, co-chairman of the report, said the recurrence of the type of flooding witnessed in Iowa will continue as "time goes on and global temperatures increase." In definitive terms, carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning coal, oil, and natural gas, contributed most to global warming in the last century, the report concludes. NASA climatologist James Hansen cites the report in stating that "the next President and Congress" must exert leadership in order to take "responsibility for the present dangerous situation."

TORTURE

DOCUMENTS SHOW MILITARY HID DETAINEES FROM THE RED CROSS: Documents released yesterday by the Senate Armed Services Committee show that the U.S. military "hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)," which is mandated under international law to record the abuse of prisoners. "When the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees," the documents say, "the [Department of Defense] has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC." It is "unclear whether the Pentagon moved the detainees from one place to another or merely told the ICRC they were no longer present at a facility." Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, a now retired military lawyer, reportedly said at a 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison that "we may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques." ICRC’s Washington spokesman Bernard Barrett said, "we knew that we did not always have full access to all detainees. It was a fairly serious issue." Last year, the New York Times reported that a confidential 2003 manual for operating Guantanamo revealed that "military officials had a policy of denying detainees access to independent monitors" from the ICRC.

FEITH CHICKENS OUT OF CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON TORTURE, REFUSES TO APPEAR WITH WILKERSON: Former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith withdrew from a scheduled appearance before a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on torture yesterday because he did not want to to appear with Colin Powell's former chief of staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was also testifying. Feith was to speak about his role in helping the Bush administration evade the Geneva conventions, but informed the committee through his counsel that he "would not appear today because he is not willing to appear alongside one of our other witnesses," said Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). "Mr. Feith's unwillingness to attend voluntarily and provide the truth about this government's actions shows a fundamental disrespect for Congress and the American people," Nadler said. Wilkerson, who left the Bush administration in protest over Bush policies, has criticized Feith's competence, saying "seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Seated next to Feith's empty chair, Wilkerson testified that Vice President Cheney probably knew that the U.S. was using torture at Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq. "At what level did American leadership fail?" Wilkerson asked. "I believe it failed at the highest levels of the Pentagon, in the Vice President's Office and perhaps even in the Oval Office."

MEDICAL EXAMS BACK UP CLAIMS OF DETAINEE ABUSE UNDER U.S. CUSTODY: In an interview with the New York Times, Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, military lawyer for a Guantanamo detainee and Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, said "the Bush administration's war crimes system 'is designed to get criminal convictions' with 'no real evidence.'" Military prosecutors "launder evidence derived from torture," Kuebler said, adding, "You put the whole package together and it stinks." At the same time, a report released yesterday by the Physicians for Human Rights gives credibility to Kuebler's claim of detainee abuse. "The first extensive medical examinations of former detainees in U.S. military jails offer corroboration for prisoners' claims of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their American captors," the report found. "The assessments of 11 men formerly held in U.S. detention camps overseas revealed scars and other injuries consistent with their accounts of beatings, electric shocks, shackling and, in at least one case, sodomy." Physicians for Human Rights used "teams of medical specialists" to conduct the "physical and psychological tests, including exams intended to assess if the subjects were lying." In a statement, ret. Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, "who led the Army's first official investigation on Abu Ghraib, said the new evidence suggested a 'systematic regime of torture' inside U.S.-run detention camps."

WAR PROFITEERING

PENTAGON REPORT REVEALS MASSIVE OVERCHARGING BY CONTRACTOR KBR: Yesterday, the Pentagon Inspector General (IG) released an audit finding that KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, "overcharged the U.S. Navy for providing meals to workers and service personnel in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina." The audit found that the Navy "paid approximately $4.1 million for meals and services we calculate should have cost $1.7 million, more than a $2.3 million difference." The audit also found that KBR's repairs of "hurricane-damaged Navy facilities" were "shoddy and substandard." "[O]ne technical advisor alleged that the federal govenrment 'certainly paid twice' for many KBR projects because of 'design and workmanship deficiencies.'" The IG "recommended that the Navy try to recoup about $8.4 million in 'excessive' equipment lease payments and material profits, and another $1.4 million for more than 110,000 meals that were paid for and thrown away over a 34-day period." Yesterday, an Army official who managed KBR's Pentagon contract for work in Iraq said he was fired "when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR." KBR "had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn't justify," the official, Charles Smith, said.In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) sought assurance that the Pentagon "is taking action to prevent accidental electrocutions among U.S. troops in Iraq." In January, one of Casey's constituents, Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, died of cardiac arrest "after being electrocuted while showering at his barracks in Baghdad." At least 11 other troops have also been electrocuted.

TODAY'S TOPICS: Moyer's Manifesto, The Torture State, Daily Show, Colbert, Olbermann, McBush, Media Reform

THE TORTURE STATE

“There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes.’

-- Gen. Taguba on the recent torture revelations

Having "spent several months experimenting with the limits of physical and psychological pressure," military officers at Guantanamo Bay turned to the CIA in late 2002 "to find ways to get terrorism suspects to talk." "...the definition of illegal torture was ‘written vaguely’" and "subject to perception." "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

-- CIA lawyer Jonathan M. Fredman

"The result of the overwhelming power of relatively narrow corporate ideologies has been the creation of widely established political and economic illusions with little visible contradictions in the media to which a majority of the population is exclusively exposed.”

-- Ben Bagdikian, author of Media Monopoly

“It is impossible not to wonder what will become of not just news but democracy itself, in a world in which we can no longer depend on newspapers to invest their unmatched resources and professional pride in helping the rest of us to learn, however imperfectly, what we need to know.”

-- Eric Alterman

Because I’m – outside of a few video clips – only posting Bill Moyers epic speech today, I suggest you check out my privacy blog for an update on the Dems apparent caving in on FISA. Go here for that…

VIDEO SECTION

My dream woman, and reporter extraordinaire, Lora Logan (who has done some outstanding reporting from Iraq) visits the Daily Show to talk and bash America’s Corporate Media. See what I mean…my dream girl!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/18/the-daily-show-lara-logan-on-the-us-media-id-just-blow-my-brains-out-because-it-would-drive-me-nuts/

The Daily Show on the media’s affinity for smearing Obama (“Baraknaphobia”)…because they sure do like doing it. Of course, its all under the guise of “reporting” these internet smears so we are better informed. Riiigghhtt…this is classic!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/17/jon-stewart-examines-the-medias-affinity-for-smearing-obama/

Colbert does a brilliant play on the term “Lexicon artist”. Watch:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/19/the-word-the-lexicon-artist/

As I’ve been saying for years here, the flip flopping of McCain would end up destroying his own artificial and untrue “maverick” persona. The media is FINALLY catching on, as I said they would once the general election started. I could easily see Obama winning this race by double digits…but you have to factor in AT LEAST 5 points of theft….which would still be a victory. Watch Jack Cafferty…funny:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/18/cafferty-file-mccain-is-liable-to-break-a-hip-with-all-his-flip-flops/

Watch the breaking news on our torture state…still no impeachment…anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/18/gen-taguba-on-torture-there-is-no-longer-any-doubt-that-the-current-administration-committed-war-crimes/

Olbermann covers the connection between McCain, the Enron loophole, and Phil Gramm…really, really damning stuff. This guy’s campaign is going in the shitter even faster than I predicted. Perhaps the GOP should start shopping for a new candidate…they have a couple months!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/19/countdown-mccain-oil-and-the-enron-loophole/

And Colbert, who gets the most interesting, intellectual and eclectic guests of any show on television does it again…this time it’s Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University and lead counsel for Salim Hamdan in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.

Torture could be what – if not impeachment – could result in the jailing of these motherf*****’s for war crimes once they leave office. This is why, we should expect them to try ANYTHING in the coming months, and in the Election itself. Perhaps an orchestrated attack on ourselves, perhaps a full scale war with Iran, a massive attempt to steal another election (or its postponement), and many other scenarios not yet thought of…

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/88674/

ARTICLE SECTION – MOYERS MANIFESTO!!

This is all I’m posting today…it’s just that fantastic. The following is clips (and a link) from Bill Moyers recent speech at the Media Reform Conference (I went to the one in St. Louise 2 years ago)…perhaps the best I’ve ever read. If you really want to understand issues related to media consolidation and its relationship to the future of our democracy, this is the one for you.

It’s about 8 pages long, so I’m going to post a few pages of my favorite parts in case you can’t get to the whole thing. This is straight out of my undergrad and grad school days…but taken to a point of such mastery and brilliance I’m almost left speechless.

As I write this the FCC is attempting to allow even greater consolidation of the media, and therefore our access to independent information. Similarly, the cable companies are seeking to get their hands on the internet, the one, last, and most powerful threat to the Matrix itself. The good news is that these are winnable battles, but the bad news is we’re running out of time. But Moyers says it all here, so I’ll hand it over to him.

Take it Bill:

…what we need to know to make democracy work for all Americans is compromised by media institutions deeply embedded in the power structures of society. Whether employing professional journalists trained at prestigious universities, or polemicists who serve partisan agendas, our dominant media are ultimately accountable only to corporate boards whose mission is not “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for the whole body of our republic, but the aggrandizement of corporate executives and shareholders; organizations whose self-styled mandate is not holding public and private power accountable so there is an equilibrium in society, but aggregating their interlocking interests; organizations whose reward comes from the manufacturing of news and information as profitable consumer commodities rather than the means to empower morally responsible citizens.

SNIP

Be vigilant; the fate of the cyber commons is at stake here, the future of “the mobile web” and the benefits of the Internet as open architecture. We’ll lose without you: the only antidote to the power of organized money in Washington is the power of organized people at the netroots. When Verizon tried to censor NARAL’s use of text-messaging last year, it was quick action by your coalition that led the company to reverse its position. Your efforts also led to an FCC proceeding on this critical issue. Yes, be vigilant; wherever the Internet flows - on our PCs, cell phones, mobile devices, and even to our new digital televisions — we must assure it remains an open and non-discriminatory medium of expression — what our colleague Jeff Chester calls truly a digital democracy.

SNIP

Advertisers have aggressively seized the new online world to go back into the programming business themselves, creating “branded content.” Imagine — the Camel News Caravan revived, but this time online as a sponsored YouTube channel. Already, newspapers and magazines (and soon TV programming) are encouraged to sell key words to advertisers — so-called “in-text advertising” — in the online versions of stories. Can you imagine advertisers going for stories with key words such as “health care reform,” “environmental degradation,” “Iraqi casualties,” “contracting fraud,” or “K Street lobbyists.”

I don’t think so. So what will happen to news in the future as the already tattered boundaries between journalism and advertising is dispensed with entirely, as content, programming, commerce and online communities are rolled into one profitably attractive package? Last year the investment firm of Piper Jaffrey predicted that much of the business model for new media would be just that kind of hybrid. They called it “communitainment.”
Where are you, George Orwell, now that we need you?

SNIP

Across the media landscape the health of our democracy is imperiled, buffeted by gale force winds of technological, political, and demographic forces. Without a truly free and independent press, this 250-year-old experiment in self-government will not make it. I am no romantic about journalism — we are fallen creatures, too, like everyone else — but I believe more fervently than ever that as journalism goes, so goes democracy. Yet as mergers and buy-outs change both old and new media, bringing a frenzied focus on cost-cutting while fattening the pockets of the new owners and their investors, we are seeing journalism degraded through the layoffs and buyouts of legions of reporters and editors.

Advertising Age reports that U.S. media employment has fallen to a 15-year low. The Los Angeles Times alone has experienced a withering series of resignations by editors who refused to turn a red pencil into an editorial scalpel. The new owner of the Tribune Company — the real estate mogul Sam Zell — recently toured the Los Angeles Times newsroom, telling employees that “the challenge is, how do we get somebody 126 years old to get it up? Well,” Zell said “I’m your Viagra.” He told his journalists that he didn’t have an editorial agenda or a perspective “about newspapers’ role as civic institutions. I’m a businessman. All that matters in the end is the bottom line.”

Just this week, he told Wall Street analysts that to save money he intends to eliminate 500 pages of news a week across all of the company’s 12 papers. That could mean some 82 pages a week lost from the Los Angeles Times alone. Reporting will be replaced by what Zell claims his readers want — maps, graphics, lists, rankings and stats. [Sounds to me as if Sam has confused Viagra with Lunesta.]

SNIP

You couldn’t find a more revealing measure of the state of the dominant media today than the continuing ubiquitous presence on the air and in print of the very pundits and experts — self-selected message multipliers of a disastrous foreign policy — who got it all wrong in the first place. It just goes to show: When the bar is low enough, you can never be too wrong.
So the press as a whole remains in denial about its complicity in passing on the government’s unverified claims as facts, while “blocking out any other narrative,” as Danny Schechter wrote this week. That’s the great danger. It’s not simply that the dominant media see the world as the powerful see it; they don’t allow alternative and competing narratives to emerge that would enable us to measure the claims of the official view of reality.

The stars of the dominant media now tell us they did indeed ask tough questions of government during the run-up to the war. But you will go through the transcripts of that period before the war and you will find very few tough questions, and if you come across them, you will discover they are asked of the wrong people. That’s exactly what you could have heard last night on Bill Moyers Journal from John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for McClatchy (previously Knight Ridder), who took his own colleagues in the dominant media to task for relying on the very sources who cooked the intelligence books in the first place, or who had memorized the White House talking points, and who were prepared to answer every ‘tough’ question with wry evasions and smooth lies that were swallowed quickly by gullible questioners.

Sadly, the Fourth Estate became the Fifth Column of democracy, colluding with the powers-that-be in a “culture of deception,” to quote Scott McClellan, that subverts the thing most necessary to freedom — the truth. Danny Schechter reminds us on Huffington Post that after the media’s “all the war, all the time” coverage of this contrived and manufactured war, Vice President Cheney dropped into a post-invasion media dinner to thank journalists for their service. And just the other day, this same Dick Cheney was tossed softball after softball at an event at the National Press Club where he drew laughter when he said “No, he wouldn’t be reading Scott McClellan’s book.”

The blind leading the blind. What you don’t know can kill you, as well as other people’s children.

SNIP

The new from the front is not good. As a journalist I report the assault on nature evidenced in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers, sacrificing the health and lives of those in the valleys to short-term profit, and I see a link between that process and the stock-market frenzy which scorns long-term investments — genuine savings — in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small stockholders, pensioners, employees and homeowners out of luck, out of work, and out of hope.

And then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of regulations designed to prevent exactly that kind of human and economic damage. Who pushed for the removal of that firewall? The political marionettes in Washington who dance to the speculators’ tune, and who are well rewarded with campaign contributions and lucrative lobbying jobs when they have delivered the goods. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the Web of a system that can effectively limits politics to those who can afford to spend millions of dollars in their race for office, and who know that their careers depend on pleasing their donors while deserting their voters.

Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among other industrialized democracies, the greatest income inequality since the Roaring 20s, the relentless cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining workers whose jobs have been exported and to programs of health care, all of which snatch away the ladder by which Americans of scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save their way up to middle-class security.

And I connect those numbers to campaigns by reactionaries against labor unions and higher minimum wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of the social contract on a shrinking middle class awash in credit card debt as workers struggle to keep up with rising costs for health care, for college tuitions, and for affordable housing — while huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, the rich get richer and with each increase in their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and execute the laws.

SNIP

Perhaps too much his being asked of too few — but you’re not alone, Remember? Look around. You’re not alone. And you know what we need to know. Go, now, and tell it on the mountains and in the cities. From your Web sites and laptops, tell it. From the street corners and the coffee house, from delis and diners, tell it. From the workplace and the bookstore, tell it. On campus and at the mall, tell it. Tell it at the synagogue, sanctuary, and mosque. Tell it. Tell it where you can, when you can, and while you can. Tell America what we need to know — and we just might rekindle the patriot’s dream.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/16/9670/

TODAY'S TOPICS: Gore/Obama, Taibbi Masterpiece, Torture, Recount/Lieberman, Gay Marriage, Foreclosure Crisis

Sadly, I agree with Dean Baker (one of my favorite economists). Furman is a very disappointing choice by Barack. Obama's AIPAC speech was also disheartening...there's been a lot of good coming from him too, but I want to keep things in perspective here:

Like many progressives I was disappointed to hear the line-up for Obama's economic team going into the general election. The lead figure will be Jason Furman, who was the director of the Hamilton Project at Brookings. This project is the brainchild of Robert Rubin the leading light of the Wall Street Democrats. While my friends and fellow progressive economists, Jared Bernstein and Jamie Galbraith are on the team (I have also been contacted), it is clear who has the leading role.

-- Dean Baker, Center for Economic Policy and Research

"[O]il is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. But we're not doing it, the Chinese are, in cooperation with the Cuban government."

-- Vice President Cheney, 6/11/08

VERSUS

"It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida...no Chinese firm is drilling there."

-- Cheney, 6/12/08

GAY MARRIAGE IN NORWAY (and Canada, and Spain, and California)!!

Gay couples in Norway will be granted the same rights as heterosexuals to marry, adopt and undergo artificial insemination under a new equality law passed Tuesday. Norway's upper house of parliament voted 23-17 in favor of the gender-neutral marriage law on the same day that gay couples were marrying in California….A parliamentary majority had announced agreement on the legislation last month, and the lower house voted 84-41 in favor last week.

The law gives individual congregations and clergy the right but not the legal obligation to perform wedding ceremonies for gay couples.

End

VIDEO SECTION

HBO’s recount details that yes, good ole’ Joe Lieberman was sticking the knife in the back of Gore and the Democrats back in 2000 as well. I cannot wait until November when the Dems will add to their majority in the Senate and then immediately kick him off every committee he serves on! Sadly, he’s the swing vote right now, so he’s still got his chairmanship…but not for long.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/16/recount-lieberman-helps-sink-gore-in-2000-election/

Who is John McCain? I suspect we may hear this question more as the campaign progresses because as we know, he has literally changed positions on every important issue he’s ever supposedly cared about. Gen. Wesley Clark, no doubt a contender for the VP slot begins an attack I’d like to see more of.

First, from CYL: There aren’t too many reporters that have actually asked him about his flip flop on torture lately, have you noticed that?

Here’s the Supreme Court smack down on habeas corpus privileges at Gitmo:

The Supreme Court has ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.

This is another huge defeat for McCain personally because he was involved in that horrible Military Commissions Act. Getting rebuked by the wingnut Supreme Court has dealt him a huge

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/17/wesley-clarke-on-mccain-hes-changed-his-position-on-torture-who-is-he/

From Robert Greenwald...yet another brilliant short film on McBush, McSame, or just "the disgrace"...take your choice:

Gas prices are hitting all-time highs. Our country is in the midst of a recession thanks in part to our crippling dependence on oil, so what's John McCain's plan? Will he hold the corporate leaders of the energy industry accountable when he addresses them today in Houston? Probably not, considering they are some of his biggest fund-raisers.

The Center for Responsive Politics finds that McCain has accepted over $1 million from the oil and gas industry. Many of McCain's top advisers have lobbied for big oil, which is why he now acts in their best interests, opposing environmental legislation and alternative energy plans. And that's exactly why we want everyone to know The REAL McCain.

http://bravenewfilms.org/watch/27378970/42047?utm_source=rgemail

Gov. Granholm of Michigan deconstructs the McCain talking points on CNN…nice:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/17/governor-jennifer-on-john-mccain-they-want-a-change-in-the-white-house-they-dont-want-a-third-bush-term/

Gore gives a fantastic speech endorsing Obama. Granted, he doesn’t have the kind of perfect cadence and oratorical brilliance that Obama does, but this is an especially well written, reasoned, logical and insightful argument for Barack from Gore. He takes you on a journey that leads inexorably to “Yes We Can”. Very well thought out…not a surprise coming from Gore these days:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/17/governor-jennifer-on-john-mccain-they-want-a-change-in-the-white-house-they-dont-want-a-third-bush-term/

ARTICLE SECTION: TAIBBI MASTERPIECE, JACKSON

Matt Taibbi writes one of the most blistering and hilarious critiques of John McCain you will ever read. He's already one of favorite political writers...this is a must read.

A few clips:

But the idea that John McCain is kicking off his trek to the White House by fleeing at top-end speed from the faltering Republican brand is the kind of absurdly facile misperception that only the American campaign press could swallow whole. The reality is that the once independent-thinking McCain has by now completely remade himself into a prototypical, dumbed-down Republican Party stooge -- one who plans to rely on the same GOP strategy that has been winning elections ever since Pat Buchanan and Dick Nixon cooked up a plan for cleaving the South back in 1968. Rather than serving up the "straight talk" he promises, McCain is enthusiastically jumping aboard with every low-rent, fearmongering, cock-sucking presidential aspirant who's ever traveled the Lee Atwater/William Safire highway.

SNIP

With his chameleonlike, whatever-gets-you-through-the-night ideology, McCain intends to use the same below-the-belt, commie-baiting, watermelon-waving smear tactics that Clinton used against Obama in the Democratic primaries, except at tenfold intensity. Once the victim of a classic racist smear job in backwoods South Carolina (where he was whipped in the 2000 primary after a Karl Rove whispering campaign suggested he had an illegitimate black daughter), McCain has now positioned himself on the business end of that same deal.

Like Hillary Clinton, an erstwhile vilified liberal who remade herself as a flag-waving, Sixties-bashing champion of "hardworking Americans, white Americans" once the remarkable candidacy of Barack Obama forced her off her old turf, the one-time "insurgent" McCain has finally decided to sail with the wind at his back by going dumb and courting the same talk-radio demographic that used to despise him. What enables him to do so is a key insight: that while George W. Bush may be unpopular as an individual, fear and hatred in this country have never gone out of style.

SNIP

McCain enters the general election in the form of a man who has jettisoned the last traces of his dangerous unorthodoxy just in time to be plausible in the role of the torchbearing leader of the anti-Obama mob, waving the flag and chanting, "One of us! One of us!" all the way through to November. He now favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent, he's unblinkingly pro-life every time he remembers to mention abortion, and he's given up bitching about torture. With his newfound opposition to his own attempts to reform immigration policy and campaign finance, McCain is perhaps the first candidate in history to stump against two bills bearing his own name.

SNIP

Then as now, the crime of the Obama class in the eyes of a wronged veteran like McCain wasn't that they caused these wartime sufferings; it was that they didn't cheer them as righteous and necessary, and unhesitatingly support the sending of more soldiers to the same fate. In the present day, it is George Bush who got us into this new Vietnam-like mess and revived the specter of tortured prisoners, but McCain's anger isn't focused in that direction. He's not mad that it's happening again, not looking to blame the people who actually started the fire. Instead he seems re-energized by the fact that we are all back in that same hell, back to living the PTSD-inducing nightmare that McCain himself never got to leave -- and if it takes dumbing down his act and playing to the Rush and Hannity crowd to give his story a happy ending this time around, he won't hesitate. So if you thought Hillary was bad, buckle your seat belts: The really dumb stuff is just beginning.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/88211/

Jesse jackson writes another dead on piece about the Foreclosure Crisis and the absolute, immoral, and disgraceful inaction by our government in addressing it.

A few clips:

We are witnessing a staggering failure of leadership. Housing foreclosures in May were up 48 percent over last year, and rising. One in six homes is worth less than its mortgage. Homeowners have lost, according to the Federal Reserve, nearly $1 trillion in the value of their homes, for most their greatest asset by far. Housing prices are down about 14 percent since last year, with many projecting the fall will go down 25 percent. Those who came into the housing market in the last few years — disproportionately black and Latino families — are getting hurt the most. Yet neither Congress nor the president has acted to stem the fall.

Many families were victimized by predatory lenders. Many loans were written without lenders making any effort whatsoever to check to see if the borrower could afford the loan. After the bubble burst, the Federal Reserve acted to bail out the shadow banking system, fearful that the entire financial system might collapse. But neither the Federal Reserve nor Congress nor the president has acted to help homeowners facing the loss of their homes.

SNIP

Yet, neither Congress nor the president has acted. President Bush has relied largely on volunteer efforts to encourage banks to renegotiate loans. These have helped only a handful of those in trouble. The House has passed a bill that would empower the Federal Housing Authority to guarantee renegotiated loans, with lenders agreeing to take their losses and responsible borrowers provided with affordable, fixed-rate mortgages. It’s a first step, but Bush has vowed to veto anything like this.

The most sensible way to help folks as a last resort is to allow bankruptcy judges to force lenders to take some of the losses, restructure the loans at a lower level and let responsible borrowers stay in their homes. The judges — again conservative on the whole — could sort out, case by case, who was victimized by predator lenders and reject those who tried to game the system.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/17/9682/

GOOD NEWS

After last month's landmark decision striking down a ban on gay marriage in California, county clerks around the state "began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Monday at 5:01 p.m."

A new Pew poll finds that "Americans dissatisfied with political sound bites are turning to the Internet for a more complete picture." Nearly 30 percent of adults have "used the Internet to read or watch unfiltered campaign material" and 6 percent have "contributed to a campaign using the Internet, compared with 2% in 2004."

WAXMAN REQUESTS CONTRACTING FRAUD INVESTIGATION: House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) requested in a letter yesterday that the Defense Department Inspector General (IG) begin investigating what could be thousands of criminal cases involving fraudulent contracts in Iraq. A May 22 IG report on contracting fraud examined a sampling of contracts, with 4 percent resulting in criminal referrals. In his letter, Waxman wrote that when extrapolated "to the entire pool of 180,000 transactions, it appears that there may be more than 7,000 potential criminal cases involving more than $190 million in federal spending that have not been identified...an astounding amount of potential criminal fraud." Last week the AP reported that the military doesn't have enough staff to fully investigate fraud. Although the Army contracting budget has nearly doubled since 2002, from $46 billion to $112 billion -- "the number of people who hunt down crooked companies and corrupt officials has stayed about the same," with fewer than 100 agents assigned to the Army Criminal Investigation Command fraud unit.

A Senate investigation has found that "top Pentagon officials began assembling lists of harsh interrogation techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that those officials later cited memos from field commanders to suggest that the proposals originated far down the chain of command." It provides evidence that the policies were "not the work of out-of-control, lower-ranking troops."

GOOD AND BAD NEWS

Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani man who was living in the United States before being imprisoned after Sept. 11, 2001. The man was held for in solitary confinement for several months, "where he was subjected to daily body-cavity searches...as well as to beatings and to extremes of hot and cold," after which he pleaded guilty to document fraud.

INVESTIGATION FINDS WIDESPREAD ABUSE IN AFGHANISTAN DETENTION CENTERS: An eight-month McClatchy investigation has found systematic torture and mistreatment of detainees in detention centers throughout Afghanistan, starting in 2001 and lasting at least 20 months. Sixty-eight percent of former detainees interviewed reported being assaulted in Afghanistan, a rate higher than the 42 percent of cases in Guantanamo Bay. Detainees said abuse ranged from being baptized by prison guards dressed as Roman Catholic priests to being "chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor" and "left there for 18, 24 hours or more." While most press attention has focused on the detention center at the Soviet-built Bagram Airbase, where two detainees were beaten to death by guards in December 2002, former detainees of internment centers in Kandahar also reported being hit by guards on a regular basis during the same period. Though the Department of Defense maintains that such detainee abuse is isolated, prison guards say they were deployed to Afghanistan with inadequate training, were placed in an environment where the rules were unclear, and in the absence of supervision, "everybody hit their boiling point."

VETERANS RECRUITED FOR TESTING ON DRUGS LINKED TO SUICIDE AND VIOLENCE: A Washington Times/ABC News investigation released today finds that "mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects." During one experiment, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took three months to alert patients of the "severe mental side effects" associated with Chantrix, an anti-smoking drug being tested. According to the report, U.S. Army sniper James Elliott, who has been diagnosed with PTSD and was given $30 per month to take Chantrix, suffered a "severe mental breakdown" and was arrested after walking the streets with a loaded gun. Elliott described himself as a "lab rat, guinea pig, disposable hero," adding that "they never told me that I was going to be suicidal, that I would cease sleeping." Arthur Caplan, one of the nation's top medical ethicists, told the Washington Times that Elliot's treatment was "a pretty serious breach of ethics." Miles McFall, the VA's director of programs for PTSD sufferers, blamed the three month delay in notifying the patients of potential problems with Chantrix on government bureaucracy, saying it was an" incredibly quick response for a governmental institution."

"The global number of refugees and displaced people reached 67 million last year," according to the UN refugee agency. Once again, Afghanistan and Iraq topped the list of the countries of origins for refugees with 3.1 million and 2.3 million respectively. In Iraq, "the number of internally displaced rose from 1.8 million at the start of the year to close to 2.4 million by the end of 2007" due to sectarian and political divisions.

TODAY'S POST: Obama v. McCain, Sirota on VP, Iraq Facts, Olbermann Special Comment, Vidal, Kucinich, Colbert/Stewart

Obama fine tuning his economic attack:

McCain is now calling for a new round of tax giveaways that are twice as expensive as the original Bush plan and nearly twice as regressive. His policy will spend nearly $2 trillion on tax breaks for corporations, including $1.2 billion for Exxon alone, a company that just recorded the highest profits in history.... At a time when we're fighting two wars, when millions of Americans can't afford their medical bills or their tuition bills, when we're paying more than $4 a gallon for gas, the man who rails against government spending wants to spend $1.2 billion on a tax break for Exxon Mobil. That isn't just irresponsible. It's outrageous.

I have a different vision for the future. Instead of spending twelve billion dollars a month to rebuild Iraq, I think it's time we invested in our roads and schools and bridges and started to rebuild America. Instead of handing out giveaways to corporations that don't need them and didn't ask for them, it's time we started giving a hand-up to families who are trying pay their medical bills and send their children to college. We can't afford four more years of skewed priorities that give us nothing but record debt -- we need change that works for the American people.

-- Obama

VIDEO SECTION

Olbermann does it again…this time his Special Comment is directed at McCain’s “not that important” comment, his pattern of “not caring” about the troops, changing his positions, and generally making an ass of himself.

The men and women in Iraq, today, Senator — they are your comrades, too. And you are condemning them to die. To die, for your misdirections, for Mr. Bush’s lies — for whoever makes the money off building 58 permanent American bases and all the weapons and all the bullets and all the wiring so costly and so slip-shod that it electrocutes our comrades as they step, not to fight freedom’s enemies, but into the shower at the base. That, Senator, that is context.

Ouch...watch:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/12/countdown-special-comment-the-unimportance-of-being-john-mccain/

Colbert offers a McCain “green screen challenge”:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/13/colbert-issues-john-mccain-green-screen-challenge/

The Daily show on character assassination politics…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/12/the-daily-show-let-the-character-assassinations-begin/

"Why I’m voting republican"…a great montage of what it really means to be one...

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/12/why-im-voting-republican/

ARTICLE SECTION

As usual, I agree 100% with David Sirota's analysis of what Obama should look for in a VP...and why that won't, and can't, be hillary.

A few clips:

After realizing that the Democratic primary would be a battle and not a coronation, Clinton desperately tried to obscure this record. The saber-rattling lawmaker who helped lead the country into war presented herself as a steadfast critic of it; the first lady who gave speeches backing NAFTA claimed she never supported it; the senator gracing Fortune magazine’s cover suddenly tried to be a Huey Long populist. With such a clear line from Reaganism to Clintonism to our current national security and economic crises, it was too little too late.

SNIP

Now, John McCain is trumpeting his support for NAFTA, deregulation and intensifying the war in Iraq. It is the Arizona senator’s very own kind of Clintonism. That means for Obama to really draw the most effective general-election contrast, the smart vice presidential pick is not Clinton, but an anti-Clinton — and there are many of them.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/13/9611/

Gore Vidal writes about the kucinich impeachment articles and the disgraceful, yet expected, near total silence by the corporate media. Of course, European news DID cover it...

A few clips:

Although this is the most important motion made in Congress in the 21st century, it was also the most significant plea for a restoration of the republic, which had been swept to one side by the mad antics of a president bent on great crime. And as I listened with awe to Kucinich, I realized that no newspaper in the U.S., no broadcast or cable network, would pay much notice to the fact that a highly respected member of Congress was asking for the president and vice president to be tried for crimes which were carefully listed by Kucinich in his articles requesting impeachment.

SNIP

But there it was on the first page of Le Monde. The House of Representatives, which was intended to be the democratic chamber, at last was alert to its function, and the bravest of its members set in motion the articles of impeachment of the most dangerous president in our history. Rep Kucinich listed some 30-odd articles describing impeachable offenses committed by the president and vice president, neither of whom had ever been the clear choice of our sleeping polity for any office.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/12/9579/

More reasons oil prices are so high…speculators, hedge funds, and deregulation...

A few clips:

Grand concentrations of private wealth, history tells us, have a nasty little habit of nurturing wasteful and witless speculation. Wasteful and witless speculation, news reports last week revealed, just happens to be the economic joker in the deck that's turbocharging our current surge in crude oil prices.

SNIP

Hedge funds can essentially do whatever they choose. They typically make their money playing games with money. In the oil market, for instance, they have no interest in ever using the oil they sign “futures” contracts to buy. Instead, they buy and sell the futures contracts — with borrowed money. That can be risky. But the rewards can be staggeringly huge. A sweet deal for sweet crude can stuff hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, into hedge fund manager pockets.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/87474/?ses=e5b854c9d5337e41ad9812c4210a83b2

$23 BILLION MISSING IN IRAQ…WHOOPS….

BBC reporters think they know where $23 billion missing and misspent Iraq war dollars went, but they can't tell us:

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

The BBC's Panorama programme has used US and Iraqi government sources to research how much some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies. [BBC]

IRAQ FACTS…THE FACE OF TRAGEDY

David Morris, a former Marine who has been embedded in Iraq as a reporter, compiled the following Iraq Index for the June 9th issue of The Nation.

The numbers speak for themselves:

Percentage of Iraqis displaced by war: 20

American cost of the Iraq occupation per second (as of March 2008): $4,563.18

Total number of Coalition personnel in Iraq at the height of the "surge" (including all contractors and civilian support personnel): 343,100

Total number of actual U.S. combat troops in Iraq at the height of the "surge" (excluding support personnel): 38,000

Number of police officers in New York City: 37,000

Number of embedded journalists during March 2003 invasion: 775

Number of embedded journalists during March 2008: 23

Number of U.S. killed and wounded, Hue City, Vietnam, 1968: 147; 857

Number of U.S. killed and wounded, Fallujah, Iraq, 2004: 104; 1,110

Number of Iraq veterans diagnosed with PTSD: 300,000

Number of troops stop-lossed: 58,300

Number of troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001: 1,668,000

Number of troops deployed after being declared medically unfit: 43,000