TODAY'S TOPICS: Obama Speech, Special Comment, McCain/CBS, Nas v. Fox, Surge Facts, Minimum Wage/Banana Repub

“People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.”

-- Barack Obama in front of 200,000 in Germany

OBAMA’S SPEECH IN GERMANY – MY SPECIAL COMMENTS

As you watch this clip of Obama’s speech before 200,000 plus Germans, and you wonder what that strange feeling is rising deep inside your body…don't fear, it's just called pride! Or, by the least, it’s watching our next President and not feeling a deep sense of shame, embarrassment and disgust…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/24/obama-in-europe-people-of-berlin-people-of-the-world-this-is-our-moment-this-is-our-time/

And watch the whole speech here...wow! It gets especially good the last quarter or so...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q-9ry38AhbU

Brief Analysis of Obama Trip

Clearly this trip has been one of the all time political home runs in Presidential campaign history. Anyone that watches any part of this trip, from the reaction he got from the troops, to the endorsement of his withdrawal plan by Iraqi leaders to this unbelievable turnout and reaction to his speech in Germany, realizes that not only is he going to be our next President, but our nation’s reputation around the world is going to improve, and our relationships with other nations will be strengthened by having him represent us. Hell, he’s probably impacted the way in which we are viewed from this one trip alone (not completely of course)!

So yes, it does feel good to see an articulate American leader that is loved and respected by other nations and their people. And yes, it also feels good to have a leader represent us that is providing a vision for the world that addresses climate change, poverty and peace.

But, I feel compelled, as I always do on this blog, to be balanced in my analysis of even the candidates that I want to win. And the fact is, quelling my excitement and pride in seeing Obama redefine America abroad, is three substantive issues I strongly disagree with him on that have clearly come forth on this trip.

1. He has, as Kucinich and Edwards pointed out he would during the campaign, now admitted that under his Iraq “withdrawal plan” as many as 50,000 Americans will remain as so called advisors, trainers, and some sort of strike force against terrorists. This is deeply disappointing, for many reasons I won’t go into now. Suffice it to say, occupiers are occupiers, and they will be viewed as such by the people of Iraq, and it will cost us money and lives. Period.

2. His rhetoric on “surging” troop levels in Afghanistan sounds awfully similar to McCain’s. And, I suspect that if the Soviets couldn’t bomb that country into submission in 9 years with twice the number of troops, we won’t either. If you look at the news, all I see is more and more Americans dying there, and more and more civilians being killed by our, and NATO forces. I would much prefer more talk about a political solution to Afghanistan, and the need for peace there, just as is being said about Iraq.

3. Israel is great, we love Israel, what’s that you want Israel? My god, listening to him talk you would think that it’s the Israeli’s suffering under near genocidal conditions at the hands of the Palestinians, and not vice versa! I know all the talk about needing to kiss Israel’s ass to win elections as the next person, but there is a limit to this morally bankrupt calculation. And for an agent of change, I don’t think its too much to ask for just A LITTLE more balance when discussing the Israel-Palestine issue.

With that, I am going to continue to try and keep an even keel and a balanced approach this election cycle, and not get too outraged or upset over Obama’s latest policy disappointment, yet not ignoring them either. And similarly, being quick to point out the many things he does right, and how they could, or could not, improve the lives of those in our country and the world, during the Obama Administration.

THE MOVING TO THE CENTER FALLACY (please listen Obama)

Let us remember, that so called “moving to the center” is actually moving AWAY FROM THE CENTER!!! Only the punditocracy and their distortions of reality can claim that moving away from the 80% of Americans that oppose telecom immunity is towards the center! Only these TV talking heads would dare claim that moving away from the 70% of Americans who oppose NAFTA is moving towards “the center”! And only these same elites would have you believe that moving away from the 65% of Americans that want all troops out of Iraq is in fact, moving to the center!!

Don’t believe the hype! There is only one reason the American Matrix wants us to believe that our opinions are outside the mainstream: to prevent us from ever changing the status quo! Period.

MOVE VIDEOS…

CBS’s cover up of the latest BIG McCain lie regarding the surge’s role in the Anbar (or Sunni) Awakening really puts into focus how truly amazing it is that the right wing could still be successful in convincing most in the media, and the generally public, that the press is ANTI-MCCAIN AND PRO OBAMA!!!! Only a sick and twisted alternative universe, or Matrix, could such a reality distorting claim be possible…

Here’s what CBS says is their Standard operating procedure…something they broke by covering up for McCain:

“If a question to an interview subject is used, the answer must be to that specific question. The question and the answer may be edited, but not in a way that would distort the meaning of either. Answers to different questions may not be combined to give the impression of one continuous response. In short, we cannot create an answer merely because we wish the subject had said it better.”

Sign the MoveOn petition and watch Olbermann bust the scandal wide open (though the rest of the media wants nothing to do with this story):

https://pol.moveon.org/donate/cbs_coverup.html?id=13322-1187820-1Ffi3Ax&t=2

The Daily Show on the Bush all star team…world class deceivers…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/23/daily-show-bushs-all-star-team-of-liars-and-deceivers/

No matter how much I sometimes disagree with him on various issues, and the solutions needed to solve them, he’s got undeniable charisma and leadership abilities. McCain must be crapping his pants, and I don’t say that just because he’s 102 years old…watch Obama interact with the TROOPS…this seems to blow a hole in the “elitist” charge against him, no?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/23/thousands-of-gis-state-dept-workers-flock-to-obama-in-baghdad/

Rapper Nas joined progressive groups to deliver a 600,000-signature petition to FOX headquarters for being the racist network they are…Here’s just one clip from his sick new rap track (he was one of my favorite rappers as it is…)…notice his reference to the Matrix:

Watch what you’re watching, Fox keeps feeding us toxins, Stop sleeping, Start thinking outside of the box, And unplugged from the Matrix doctrine, But watch what you say, Fox Five is watching...

Watch him perform live on Colbert:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/24/colbert-report-nas-protests-fox-performs-new-anti-fox-song/

And O’Reilly wins two of the three Worst Person’s Awards…calling liberal bloggers no different than the Klan. So everybody, I am NO DIFFERENT than the Klan…that hurts Bill, that really hurts…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/23/worlds-worst-oreilly-likens-netroots-nation-to-klan-meeting/

Don Siegelman – the Governor who was framed and jailed by the GOP – guests on MSNBC to discuss Rove’s involvement:

http://alternet.org/blogs/video/92618/republicans_admit_off-camera_siegelman_case_was_fixed/

ARTICLE SECTION: Minimum Wage/Banana Republic

And Holly Sklar - co-author of “A Just Minimum Wage: Good for Workers, Business and Our Future” - drops by to give us another one of her breakdowns of the new data on the widening disparity between the rich and poor in this country. In particular, the state of our miserly minimum wage in light of the rapidly escalating cost of food, gas, and health care.

Again, it is realities like these that will always keep me grounded when I hear politicians with soaring rhetoric…no matter how good they are, the devil is in the details. And, until I see Obama really pushing for policies like a 9 or 10 buck minimum wage, I won’t be truly celebrating anything…

A few clips…welcome to the US Banana Republic:

Between 1947 and 1973, worker productivity rose 104 percent and the minimum wage rose 101 percent, adjusting for inflation. The middle class grew. Between 1973 and 2007, productivity rose 83 percent and the minimum wage fell 22 percent, adjusting for inflation. Average worker wages fell 10 percent while domestic corporate profits rose 219 percent, and profits in the disproportionately low-wage retail industry jumped 346 percent. More jobs paid poverty wages.

SNIP

There’s been a massive shift of income from the bottom and middle to the top. The richest 1 percent of Americans has increased their share of the nation’s income to a higher level than any year since 1928, the eve of the Great Depression. Our modern robber baron age features people like Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo. He pocketed $103 million last year as the subprime mortgage ponzi scheme morphed into the worst financial crisis since the Depression.

SNIP

Eight of the “SurePayroll Top Ten States for Small Businesses” in 2008 have had state minimum wages above the federal level. They include Washington, California and Oregon, three of the four states with the highest minimums. Minimum wage raises are stimulus for an economy tanking from a housing bubble gone bust, sharply higher oil prices, extreme inequality, unsustainable debt, and fraud and speculation crowding out productive investment. Higher wages benefit business by increasing consumer purchasing power, reducing costly employee turnover, raising productivity, and improving product quality and company reputation. They reinforce long-term success.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/24/10573/

MORE ON WHY I AM SKEPTICAL OF WAR IN AFGHANISTAN (I'll be discussing ways in which to deal with Afghanistan from the peace movement perspective in coming months and sadly, years)

Juan Cole has some very good thoughts.

When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces? Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda? Wouldn’t we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard? I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with “Taliban”. But I’m not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means ’seminary student.’)

The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These ‘neo-Taliban’ don’t seem mostly to have that background. A lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers in places like Uruzgan. There has now been a rise of suicide bombings in Afghanistan, on a scale never before seen. One killed 24 people in a bazaar at Deh Rawood on Sunday. Robert Pape has demonstrated that suicide bombings typically are carried out by people who think their country is under foreign military occupation. If the US keeps sending more troops, will that really calm things down? […]

If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don’t think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public […]

Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai’s army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. “Al-Qaeda” was always Bin Laden’s hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.

NEWS CLIPS...

Though Big Oil companies "insist they're trying to find new oil" to help bring down gas prices, more than half of the money from their record profits is being spent on stock buybacks and dividends rather than exploration. While spending on stock buybacks and dividends has increased 25 percent since 2000, the percentage spent to find new deposits of fossil fuels "has remained flat for years, in the mid-single digits."

"Bush administration officials agreed that greenhouse gases could endanger the public and should be regulated under clean-air laws, but later reversed course amid opposition from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the oil industry, a congressional report said." The "report is inaccurate to the point of being laughable," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

OVER 100 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS DECLARE OPPOSITION TO BUSH'S 'RADICAL' CONTRACEPTION STANCE: More than 100 members of Congress signed a letter to President Bush yesterday urging an end to a Health and Human Services (HHS) draft proposal that would reclassify contraception as abortion. The letter warns that the proposal would "have a disastrous effect upon access to safe and effective birth control for millions of women" and create a "radical reversal of decades of public health work." The HHS proposal would require hospitals receiving federal funds to pledge that they would not discriminate against people who refuse to provide forms of contraception due to religious beliefs in hiring positions. In the letter, 104 representatives wrote that the move "would allow any provider, who wants to deny a woman emergency contraception or even birth control pills, to claim protection based on a personal belief that such pills fit the regulatory definition." At a press conference, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) said, "We will not put up with this radical, ideological agenda to turn the clock back on women's rights." The Bush administration has a history of hostility to birth control, from viewing contraceptives as part of the "culture of death" to HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt's assertion that health care providers with moral objections to abortion have no obligation to refer patients to other providers.

A Surge of Confusion: The Facts versus McCain and the ENTIRE MEDIA!!!!

In an interview on Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) asserted that the 2007 troop surge in Iraq "began the Anbar awakening," the process by which Sunni tribal leaders allied with U.S. force and turned against al Qaeda in Iraq. McCain also suggested that to disagree with his version of history "does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed" in Iraq. In fact, it is McCain himself who has done a disservice to history. The Anbar awakening began in the late summer and early fall of 2006, months before the surge was announced in January 2007. While the Anbar awakening is an important contributor to the drop in violence in Iraq, it is only one of several factors. Meanwhile, the stated goal of the surge -- Iraqi political reconciliation -- remains unmet.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: The awakening began in the town of Ramadi in Anbar province in September 2006, under the command of Army Col. Sean MacFarland. MacFarland sought to build ties to local leaders to draw their support away from the insurgency. In his account of the events in Ramadi, MacFarland wrote: "A growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias made those younger leaders open to our overtures." Eventually U.S. forces were able to establish credibility with local leaders, who turned against the insurgents. The new approach eventually spread outward to other Iraqi provinces. A second important factor in the decreased violence was the decision by Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to declare a "freeze" of his Jaysh al-Mahdi militia in the wake of violent clashes in the shrine city of Karbala in late August 2007. The Jaysh al-Mahdi had been regarded by the U.S. military as a threat equal to, if not greater than, al Qaeda in Iraq by virtue of their being an indigenous, nationalist movement with strong political support among poor Iraqis. Gen. David Petraeus himself recognized Sadr's cooperation as an essential component in the drop in violence in and around Baghdad. A third factor was the separation of Sunni and Shi'a Iraqis into protected enclaves as a result of a massive and terrifying campaign of sectarian cleansing by Sunni and Shi'a militias in Baghdad, and the construction of concrete barriers around these enclaves. The addition of 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq encouraged, supported, and consolidated each of these phenomena, but very likely could not have worked without them.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG: While Gen. Petraeus is credited with reviving the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine, the Anbar strategy that is the center-piece of the surge violates a central tenet of that doctrine in that it does not redirect political authority toward the central government. The deals that have been made are between Sunni tribal militias and U.S. forces, not the Iraqi government. The Sunni militias have not been incorporated into the Iraq Security forces in any substantial numbers, and questions remain as to their loyalties and intentions. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made clear that he views these militias as a threat to the authority of the central government. In a February 2008 report from the Center for American Progress on the Awakenings movement, Brian Katulis and others wrote that "what has been extolled as a central 'success' of the surge has also exacerbated existing political divisions and fomented new political cleavages in an already fractured and fragile Iraqi body politic. [The Sunni militias] are challenging each other, traditional Sunni Arab political parties, and the Iraqi government." Echoing this, Steven Simon wrote in Foreign Affairs that "the recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq." Simon also wrote that the lack of accommodation between the Iraqi government and the Sunni militias "will impede Iraq's political development for years to come unless specific steps are taken in the near term to bring the Sunni army the surge created under the rubric of the state." Simon concludes, "These steps are not being taken."

GOAL OF THE SURGE REMAINS UNMET: When President Bush announced the surge in January 2007, he declared that the goal of greater security was to "help make reconciliation possible." More than a year and a half after that speech, this reconciliation has not occurred in any meaningful way. Though some benchmark legislation has been passed, most of these laws have been worded so vaguely as to make their implementation extremely problematic. On Wednesday, after months of intense negotiating, Iraqi President Jalal Talibani "rejected the recently passed provincial elections law...a move that appears to doom what has been touted as all-important legislation for the country." This is one of many indicators that, as Matthew Duss wrote in the Guardian, "no real consensus yet exists among Iraqis as to what the new Iraq will be." As evidenced by numerous statements from Iraqi government officials over the last months, "consensus does exist...around the belief that no genuine, sustainable Iraqi unity can develop while the Iraqi government continues to be underwritten by a foreign military presence."

TODAY'S TOPICS: McCain's Lies/Gaffe's, Election Theft Bombshell, End of Free Press, Economic Meltdown, Torture, McCain on Economics/Women's Health

...photographs of spare keys for electronic-voting machines displayed on a Web page were used to make replicas with similar-looking keys. A video demo showed how someone filed down a key from a hotel mini-bar and was able to open up the memory card slot of a Diebold voting system.

-- security expert at a hacker conference

“We have to drill off-shore. The oil executives say that within a couple of years we could be seeing results of it.”

-- John “grumpy gramps the disgrace” McBush (I’m still working on the perfect nick name for him) touts the support from oil company CEO’s for his drilling plan at a town hall meeting…at the same time he’s running tv ads that ludicrously claim Obama is at fault for high gas prices!!! Then he credits the surge for the Sunni Awakening (which happened BEFORE hand), and now is calling Obama a traitor who wants the US to lose “the war”.

“My Friends”, this guy is the gift (or ignorant scumbag) that keeps on giving …

VIDEO SECTION

Amazingly CBS deleted McCain's lies from their interview segment and replaced that answer with one McCain gave to another question!! I’m referring to his bald faced lie – or grossly ignorant – assertion that the surge was responsible for the Sunni Awakening (again, THE SURGE CAME AFTER Sunnis decided to take it to Al Qaeda). The most important reasons there is a lot less violence isn't just the surge, its that we've bribed all the factions, the country's ethnic groups are now all segregated from each other, and we've killed nearly a million and a half people...as many of these factions have too...hence there's a lot less people to fight/kill...

Luckily we have the transcripts of what he said, and Olbermann's coverage (which isn’t up yet on C&L) blows it all out of the water…will have that tomorrow. Here's some of that CBS interview:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/23/mccain-falsely-credits-the-surge-for-catalyzing-anbar-awakening/

Colbert on Obama’s snubbing of the Fox Fascist Network…sweet:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/22/the-colbert-report-barack-obama-snubs-fox-news/

The Daily Show on the old and senile grumpy gramps McSame, as he fumbles and a bumbles over the most basic of facts yet again…this time it’s that non-existent “border” between Iraq and Pakistan…last week it was his consistent reference to Czechoslovakia – a country that hasn’t existed for over 15 years…more laughs to come…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/22/daily-show-mccain-makes-the-first-gaffe-of-obamas-iraq-trip/

Obama interviewed by my dream woman and CBS reporter Lara Logan…somehow I don’t think any of this qualifies as the “gaffe” republicans are looking for from the guy…in fact, he’s FAR more Presidential than Bush, and certainly more so than grumpy gramps…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/21/senator-obama-on-afghanistan-situation-is-precarious-and-urgent/

The republicans are in a tizzy over the success of Obama’s trip (though I am disturbed by his seeming admittance that as many as 50,000 Americans will remain in Iraq, and that the answer to Afghanistan is necessarily more troops and killing). Let’s see, we have Iraqi leaders and the Iraqi people agreeing with Obama’s withdrawal plan. We’ve got American troops crowding around him like he’s a rock star. He’s hitting three pointers. He speaks in full sentences and he knows basic geography and syntax. Basically, he’s got everything the Republicans, and their sociopathic (Bush) and senile (McCain) leaders don’t have…ouch:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/21/republicans-are-panicked-about-obamas-trip/

ARTICLE SECTION

Chris Hedges connects the dots, from our rapidly deteriorating newspaper staffs (and sales) to our infotainment tv "news" to our dying democracy. Similarly, is the way in which each of these trends are related to the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility among the wealthy elite, the widening gap between the haves and have nots, and well, just the growing number of dumber and dumber people…

A few clips:

The rise of our corporate state has done the most, however, to decimate traditional news-gathering. Time Warner, Disney, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., General Electric and Viacom control nearly everything we read, watch, hear and ultimately think. And news that does not make a profit, as well as divert viewers from civic participation and challenging the status quo, is not worth pursuing. This is why the networks have shut down their foreign bureaus. This is why cable newscasts, with their chatty anchors, all look and sound like the "Today" show. This is why the FCC, in an example of how far our standards have fallen, defines shows like Fox's celebrity gossip program "TMZ" and the Christian Broadcast Network's "700 Club" as "bona fide newscasts."

This is why television news personalities, people like Katie Couric, have become celebrities earning, in her case, $15 million a year. This is why newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are being ruthlessly cannibalized by corporate trolls like Sam Zell, turned into empty husks that focus increasingly on boutique journalism. Corporations are not in the business of news. They hate news, real news. Real news is not convenient to their rape of the nation. Real news makes people ask questions. They prefer to close the prying eyes of reporters. They prefer to transform news into another form of mindless amusement and entertainment.

A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/92284/?ses=517b656ba24a56ff826950ba1237c253

ELECTION THEFT BOMBSHELL: DO WE KNOW THE PRIMARY CULPRIT??? Watch the Video!!!

(these are those lawyers in Ohio I worked with oh so long ago...they're still uncovering evidence!!!)

GOP Tech Guru Mike Connell 'High IQ Forrest Gump...At Scene of Every Single Crime' Say Ohio Attorneys

'Whether He's Pulling the Gun or Not...He's the Guy Who Made the Gun,' Allege

Buckeye Lawyers About Man Said to Have Been Behind Florida 2000, Ohio 2004, RNC Emails, Congressional Computer Networks & More...

Following last week's dramatic press conference in Ohio announcing the reopening of a long-standing 2004 Ohio Presidential Election lawsuit based on new information, the attorneys for the plaintiff sat down to discuss their concerns about Republican operative Mike Connell in an exclusive interview. The attorneys who hope to depose both him and Karl Rove, describe him in the interview as a "high IQ Forrest Gump," said to be "at the scene" of every GOP "crime" from Florida 2000 to Ohio 2004 to the Karl Rove/RNC email flap to creation of the current Congressional computer network and firewall…

In the wake of the failure by the Buckeye State's Attorney General to properly investigate the allegations, and new evidence and testimony unearthed by Arnebeck and other private investigators, he is now asking that the stay on the lawsuit be lifted by the court in order to refocus the case and depose Karl Rove, and a number of other top GOP operatives believed to be involved in manipulating the results of the '04 election.

One of those operatives is Republican tech-guru Mike Connell.

Steve Heller covered last week's press conference for us, which featured comments from data security expert Stephen Spoonamore alleging fraud in the '04 election and Arnebeck's assertion that he believes "Rove will be identified as having engaged in a corrupt, ongoing pattern of corrupt activities specifically affecting the situation here in Ohio."

In the video-taped interview, posted at right (appx. 10 mins), the two attorneys focus specifically on their concerns about GOP operative/IT specialist Connell, who, they allege, has been found to have been "at the scene of the crime" for numerous questionable elections since 2000. Connell's firm was also responsible for creating the RNC email systems used by Karl Rove and others. He is also said to have installed the existing Congressional computer networks for high-security House and Senate committees such as Judiciary and Intelligence.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6206

MCCAIN’S ECONOMIC PLAN = CATASTROPHE AND INSANITY

The term flip-flopping doesn't do justice to Mr. McCain's self-contradictory economic pronouncements because that implies there's some rational, if hypocritical, logic at work. What he serves up instead is plain old incoherence, as if he were compulsively consulting one of those old Magic 8 Balls. In a single 24-hour period in April, Mr. McCain went from saying there's been "great economic progress" during the Bush presidency to saying "Americans are not better off than they were eight years ago." He reversed his initial condemnation of mortgage bailouts in just two weeks.

In February Mr. McCain said he would balance the federal budget by the end of his first term even while extending the gargantuan Bush tax cuts. In April he said he'd accomplish this by the end of his second term. In July he's again saying he'll do it in his first term. Why not just say he'll do it on Inauguration Day? It really doesn't matter since he's never supplied real numbers that would give this promise even a patina of credibility.

Mr. McCain's plan for Social Security reform is "along the lines that President Bush proposed." Or so he said in March. He came out against such "privatization" in June (though his policy descriptions still support it). Last week he indicated he isn't completely clear on what Social Security does. He called the program's premise - young taxpayers foot the bill for their elders (including him) - an "absolute disgrace."

Given that Mr. McCain's sole private-sector job was a fleeting stint in public relations at his father-in-law's beer distributorship, he comes by his economic ignorance honestly. But there's no A team aboard the Straight Talk Express to fill him in. His campaign economist, the former Bush adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, could be found in the June 5 issue of American Banker suggesting even at that late date that we still don't know "the depth of the housing crisis" and proposing that "monitoring is the right thing to do in these circumstances."

-- Frank Rich, New York Times

MCCAIN VERSUS CONTRACEPTION, WOMEN, AND SCIENCE

John McCain is so opposed to contraception that he voted against requiring insurance plans to cover it like other drugs, and either so indifferent to women's health and rights or just so out of it that he doesn't even remember how he voted. That's the way to show American women you really care.

This is not a trivial issue. There's the basic unfairness of not covering these essential, even life-saving drugs and devices so fundamental to women's health and well-being, and the added insult of denying coverage while men are lavished with cut-rate erections. And there's the craven submission to religious extremists that moves the politics of that denial. It's a pocketbook issue, too: A year's worth of contraception can cost a woman $600. That's a lot of money. Is it too much to expect the next president of the United States to understand that? Now that every politician in America prides himself on knowing the price of a gallon of milk and talks like he's just finished doing the week's shopping for a family of 10?

The story heated up the blogosphere, but a Nexis search at the beginning of this week found only 61 mentions in print and on TV, and most of those were passing references in stories about McCain's bad week (Phil Gramm calling Americans "a nation of whiners" obsessed with a "mental recession" got most of the attention) or focused on the effect that Fiorina's off-message remark will have on her vice presidential chances.

Where is the discussion of the real issue, which is that for more than 20 years John McCain has voted against contraception every time it came up and -- now he tells us! -- doesn't even care or know enough to explain why. Women -- and men -- need to know where he stands on this issue so basic to health and human flourishing if they are going to make informed decisions in the polling booth. But so far the media has refused to present McCain's anti-contraception record as a big, coherent story that tells us a great deal about who he is and what policies he would pursue in the White House.

-- Katha Pollitt, TheNation.com.

MARKET DEREGULATION, CAPITALIST FUNDAMENTALISM, AND AMERICA’S COMING ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

We are witnessing a momentous event -- the great deflation of Wall Street -- and it is far from over. The crash of IndyMac is just the beginning. More banks will fail, so will many more debtors. The crisis has the potential to transform American politics because, first it destroys a generation of ideological bromides about free markets, and, second, because it makes visible the ugly power realities of our deformed democracy. Democrats and Republicans are bipartisan in this crisis because they have colluded all along over thirty years in creating the unregulated financial system and mammoth mega-banks that produced the phony valuations and deceitful assurances. The federal government protects the most powerful interests from the consequences of their plundering. It prescribes "market justice" for everyone else.

SNIP

If Washington wants real results, it has to abandon the wishful posture that is simply helping the private firms get over their fright. The government must instead act decisively to take charge in more convincing ways. That means acknowledging to the general public the depth of the national crisis and the need for more dramatic interventions.

Instead of propping up Fannie Mae or others, the threatened firm should be formally nationalized as a nonprofit federal agency performing valuable services for the housing market. That is the real consequence anyway if the taxpayers have to buy up $300 billion in stock.

The real national concern should be focused on the major creditors who lend to Fannie Mae and other US agencies as well as private financial firms. They include China, Japan and other foreign central banks. Foreign investors hold about 21 percent of the long-term debt paper issued by US government agencies -- $376 billion in China, $229 billion in Japan.

It is not in our national interest to burn these nations with heavy losses. On the contrary, we need to sustain their good regard because they can help us recover by bailing out the US economy with more lending. If these foreign creditors turn away and stop their lending now, the US economy is toast and won't soon recover.

-- William Greider, The Nation

TORTURE = BAD INTEL = THEN THROWN OUT IN COURT ANYWAY

FROM C&l: This is just one of many reasons why we shouldn’t torture. As more details about the Bush administration’s torture program come to light, (see Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side) we find that torture brings about more bogus intelligence and coerced confessions have led our intelligence agencies on a host of wild goose chases and wasted valuable time and U.S. tax dollars.

The judge ruled that some of Hamdan’s statements made at Gitmo may be allowed, but his defense is arguing that all his statements were coerced by using abusive tactics. How much evidence will be thrown out is yet to be determined, but if this article from the AP is accurate, the first of King George’s war tribunals is shaping up to be yet another three ring circus.

The judge in the first American war crimes trial since World War II barred evidence on Monday that interrogators obtained from Osama bin Laden’s driver, ruling he was subjected to “highly coercive” conditions in Afghanistan. At Bagram, the judge found Hamdan was kept in isolation 24 hours a day with his hands and feet restrained, and armed soldiers prompted him to talk by kneeing him in the back. His captors at Panshir repeatedly tied him up, put a bag over his head and knocked him the ground.

In addition to the other interrogations, the judge said he would throw out statements whenever a government witness is unavailable to vouch for the questioners’ tactics. He also withheld a ruling on a key interrogation at Guantanamo in May 2003 until defense lawyers can review roughly 600 pages of confinement records provided by the government on Sunday night. Read on…

AND THIS…

BRITISH REPORT SAYS NOT TO TRUST U.S. ASSURANCES REGARDING TORTURE: A report released Sunday by the British parliament's foreign affairs committee says that the British government should not rely on assurances from the U.S. government that it does not torture terrorism suspects, after "Britain had previously taken those assurances at face value." The main difference between the two countries that the report cites is the definition of waterboarding as torture. UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said that the controversial technique is torture, but President Bush vetoed a bill that would ban CIA use of the method. The committee concluded that "Given the clear differences in definition, the UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture." The committee also suggested that the British government conduct "exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques." The report also challenges the British government to investigate further whether British land has been used for "rendition" flights by the United States, after allegations that two American planes carrying terrorism suspects had landed and refueled on the British-held Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

TODAY'S TOPICS: Taibbi and Moyers Manifestos!, Jail Rove, Mukasey in Contempt, Waxman, Malicki, Gore, Klein

"It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now."

--Al Gore

I have tried to investigate what really happened and the White House has resisted oversight every step of the way. The committee’s inquired has tried to penetrate the cloud surrounding VP Cheney’s conduct. But today the President has asserted executive privilege and is withholding from the committee and the American people key evidence about the VP Cheney’s actions. During our investigation we have learned that Mr. Libby told the FBI that it was possible that the Vice President instructed him to leak Miss Wilson’s identity.

That would be an extraordinary breach of trust. There is a key document that could explain what the VP knew and what he did. The report of the VP’s interview with officials working from the FBI working for Mr. Fitzgerald. If there is one document that could pierce the cloud hanging over the VP, that is it.

Mr Mukasey decided that a different rule should apply to Republican Presidents than to Democratic Presidents. The claim of executive privilege is ludicrous.

The President’s actions have darkened the cloud over the VP and left important questions unanswered. As the committee considers its next steps, I hope the President and Vice President will also consider theirs. Congress and the American public are entitled to know what role the President and Vice President in the despicable outing of Miss. Wilson.

-- Rep. Henry Waxman

This is what I’m talking about!!! Now watch Waxman threaten to hold Mukasey in contempt of Congress too! Just do it, and start arresting these motherf*****

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/18/chairman-waxman-threatens-to-hold-mukasey-in-contempt-over-withholding-cheneys-fbi-interview-about-valerie-plame/

MORE VIDEOS

Gore appears on Meet the Press, and Tom Brokaw proves that he’s just as big an idiot, and can ask just as many partisan and inane questions that have no merit or place in an intellectual discussion as Fox can…watch and be outraged that even someone that is supposedly a “good” reporter (ha!) plays the same gotcha game, and reads the same GOP talking points that are sent their way so as to appear like they ask “tough questions”.

I mean seriously Tom!? You’re interviewing one of the great American thinkers of our time about the biggest crisis our species has ever faced and you start attacking him for criticizing politics? Why point out what the Limbaugh's of the world will criticize him for (an old journalistic trick, simply repeat attacks by others so you come off as just someone reporting what others say…and you therefore bare no responsibility for the claims themselves…) instead of what matters?

This is classic…Brokaw goes after Gore for claiming politics has become trivial…while asking Gore the very trivial questions that makes his point!!!

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/20/meet-the-press-tom-brokaw-wants-al-gore-to-think-of-the-children/

Greenwald does another brilliant short film, this on the need to arrest and jail Rove for his crimes…

From Alternet: This sounds like a dream, doesn't it? Well, it's not. We have a unique opportunity right now to send Karl Rove to jail, but only if we take immediate action. All we have to do is pressure the 40 members of the House Judiciary Committee, make them hold Rove in contempt and send him to jail. We've never had such a direct opportunity to hold Rove accountable. No, this is not enough punishment for his years and years of crimes, but it's a huge start, and will send a very clear message to the entire Bush administration.
We put together this video to explain the issues surrounding Rove's failure to testify before Congress, and why Rove should be held in contempt and sent to jail. Check out Send Karl Rove to Jail, and sign our petition to ensure that the HJC holds Rove in contempt.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/91974/

Attorney David Iglesias, one of the eight US Attorneys forced out of their jobs by the Bush administration for failing to pursue bogus politically-motivated prosecutions, appeared on “Morning Joe” Friday and offered his thoughts on why Karl Rove ignored a Congressional subpoena and skipped town in order to avoid testifying.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/21/fired-us-attorney-david-iglesias-rove-skipped-testimony-to-avoid-indictment/

Talk about two different realities clashing…and a disparity of intellect that spans the cosmos, watch Naomi Klein get interviewed by Fox News. It must be surreal for someone like Klein to talk with cro magnons like this at Fox:

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/92025/

ARTICLE SECTION: TAIBBI AND MOYERS CLASSICS!!

MATT TAIBBI ON THE MEDIA VERSUS AMERICA’S ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

This article is so good, and so important, that I’m going to post nearly two pages of the 7 page article here on the blog, so even the laziest of people will hopefully at least read the parts I put down here! This article perfectly illustrates why I got into the work that I do…in particular, the way issues of economic and social justice clash with the false reality created by America’s corporate Matrix…most notably the media. As I have said often on this blog, we are rapidly approaching Banana Republic like disparities in wealth and income, and all our media can talk about is flag lapels, Rev. Wright, Michelle Obama's "militancy", and anything else that is meaningless, superficial, or just plain distracting.

Read the whole article, but if not, here’s some great highlights:

The Republican and Democratic conventions are just around the corner, which means that we're at a critical time in our nation's history. For this is the moment when the country's political and media consensus finally settles on the line of bullshit it will be selling to the public as the "national debate" come fall.

SNIP

The press, meanwhile, is clearly flailing around for a sensational hook to use in selling the election, as the once-brightly-burning star of blue-red hatred seems unfortunately to have dimmed a little -- just in time, perhaps, to torpedo the general election season cable ratings. They are working hard to come up with the WWF-style shorthand labels they always use to sell electoral contests: if 2000 was the "wooden" and ?condescending? Al Gore versus the "dummy" Bush, and 2004 featured that same ?regular guy? Bush against the "patrician" and "bookish" John Kerry (who also "looked French"), in 2008 we’re going to be sold the "maverick" McCain against the "smooth" Obama, or some dumb thing along those lines. Time has even experimented with a "poker versus craps" storyline, feeding off the incidental fact that Obama is a regular poker player while McCain reportedly favors craps, which apparently has some electorally relevant meaning -- and if you know what that something is, please let me know.

SNIP

A few weeks back, I got a call from someone in the office of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders wanted to tell me about an effort his office had recently made to solicit information about his constituents economic problems. He sent out a notice on his e-mail list asking Vermont residents to "tell me what was going on in their lives economically." He expected a few dozen letters at best -- but got, instead, more than 700 in the first week alone. Some, like the excerpt posted above, sounded like typical tales of life for struggling single-parent families below the poverty line. More unnerving, however, were the stories Sanders received from people who held one or two or even three jobs, from families in which both spouses held at least one regular job -- in other words, from people one would normally describe as middle-class.

For example, this letter came from a single mother from Vermont City:

I am a single mother with a 9-year-old boy. To stay warm at night my son and I would pull off all the pillows from the couch and pile them on the kitchen floor. I'd hang a blanket from the kitchen doorway and we'd sleep right there on the floor. By February we ran out of wood and I burned my mother's dining room furniture. I have no oil for hot water. We boil our water on the stove and pour it in the tub. I'd like to order one of your flags and hang it upside down at the capital building... we are certainly a country in distress.

Sanders got letters from working people who have been reduced to eating "cereal and toast" for dinner, from a 71-year-old man who has been forced to go back to work to pay for heating oil and property taxes, from a worker in an oncology department of a hospital who reports that clinically ill patients are foregoing cancer treatments because the cost of gas makes it too expensive to reach the hospital. The recurring theme is that employment, even dual employment, is no longer any kind of barrier against poverty. Not economic discomfort, mind you, but actual poverty. Meaning, having less than you need to eat and live in heated shelter -- forgetting entirely about health care and dentistry, which has long ceased to be considered an automatic component of American middle-class life. The key factors in almost all of the Sanders letters are exploding gas and heating oil costs, reduced salaries and benefits, and sharply increased property taxes (a phenomenon I hear about all across the country at campaign trail stops, something that seems to me to be directly tied to the Bush tax cuts and the consequent reduced federal aid to states). And it all adds up to one thing.

"The middle class is disappearing," says Sanders. "In real ways we're becoming more like a third-world country."

SNIP

None of this is a secret. Here, however, is something that is a secret: that this is a class issue that is being intentionally downplayed by a political/media consensus bent on selling the public a version of reality where class resentments, or class distinctions even, do not exist. Our "national debate" is always a thing where we do not talk about things like haves and have-nots, rich and poor, employers versus employees. But we increasingly live in a society where all the political action is happening on one side of the line separating all those groups, to the detriment of the people on the other side.

We have a government that is spending two and a half billion dollars a day in Iraq, essentially subsidizing new swimming pools for the contracting class in northern Virginia, at a time when heating oil and personal transportation are about to join health insurance on the list of middle-class luxuries. Home heating and car ownership are slipping away from the middle class thanks to exploding energy prices -- the hidden cost of the national borrowing policy we call dependency on foreign oil, "foreign" representing those nations, Arab and Chinese, that lend us the money to pay for our wars.

And while we've all heard stories about how much waste and inefficiency there is in our military spending, this is always portrayed as either "corruption" or simple inefficiency, and not what it really is -- a profound expression of our national priorities, a means of taking money from ordinary, struggling people and redistributing it not downward but upward, to connected insiders, who turn your tax money into pure profit.

SNIP

This is why you need to pay careful attention when you hear about John McCain claiming that he's going to "look at entitlement program" waste as a means of solving the budget crisis, or when you tune into the debate about the "death tax." We are in the midst of a political movement to concentrate private wealth into fewer and fewer hands while at the same time placing more and more of the burden for public expenditures on working people. If that sounds like half-baked Marxian analysis... well, shit, what can I say? That's what's happening. Repealing the estate tax (the proposal to phase it out by the year 2010 would save the Walton family alone $30 billion) and targeting "entitlement" programs for cuts while continually funneling an ever-expanding treasure trove of military appropriations down the befouled anus of pointless war profiteering, government waste and North Virginia McMansions -- this is all part of a conversation we should be having about who gets what share of the national pie. But we're not going to have that conversation, because we're going to spend this fall mesmerized by the typical media-generated distractions, yammering about whether or not Michelle Obama's voice is too annoying, about flag lapel pins, about Jeremiah Wright and other such idiotic bullshit.

SNIP

These fantasy elections we've been having -- overblown sports contests with great production values, decided by haircuts and sound bytes and high-tech mudslinging campaigns -- those were sort of fun while they lasted, and were certainly useful in providing jerk-off pundit-dickheads like me with high-paying jobs. But we just can't afford them anymore. We have officially spent and mismanaged our way out of la-la land and back to the ugly place where politics really lives -- a depressingly serious and desperate argument about how to keep large numbers of us from starving and freezing to death. Or losing our homes, or having our cars repossessed. For a long time America has been too embarrassed to talk about class; we all liked to imagine ourselves in the wealthy column, or at least potentially so, flush enough to afford this pissing away of our political power on meaningless game-show debates once every four years. The reality is much different, and this might be the year we're all forced to admit it.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/91927/

MOYERS ON BIG MONEY’S DESTRUCTIVE INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC POLICY

This article by Bill Moyers is the PERFECT partner to the above Taibbi piece…as big money’s role in distorting our nation’s values by corrupting our political leaders and polluting our public policy and dialogue is central to explaining our current predicament.

A few clips:

Once again we're closing the barn door after the horse is out and gone. In Washington, the Federal Reserve has finally acted to stop some of the predatory lending that exploited people's need for money. And like Rip Van Winkle, Congress is finally waking up from a long doze under the warm sun of laissez-faire economics. That's French for turning off the alarm until the burglars have made their getaway.

Philosophy is one reason we do this to ourselves; when you worship market forces as if they were the gods of Olympus, then the gods can do no wrong - until, of course, they prove to be human. Then we realize we should have listened to our inner agnostic and not been so reverent in the first place.

SNIP

What a beautiful term: "artful lobbying." It means honest graft. Look at any of the important issues bogged down in the swampland along the Potomac and you don't have to scrape away the muck too deeply to find that campaign cash is at the core of virtually every impasse. We're spending more than six percent of our salaries on gasoline, and global warming keeps temperatures rising, but the climate bill was killed last month and President Bush just got rid of his daddy's longtime ban on offshore drilling. Only in a fairy tale would anyone believe it's just coincidence that the oil and gas industries have donated more than $18 million to federal candidates this year, three-quarters of it going to Republicans. They've spent more than $26 million lobbying this year - that's seven times more than environmental groups have spent.

Follow the money - it goes from your gas tank to the wine bars and steak houses of DC, where the payoffs happen. Or ponder that FISA surveillance legislation that just passed the Senate. It let the big telecommunications companies off the hook for helping the government wiretap our phones and laptops without warrants. Over the years those telecom companies have given Republicans in the House and Senate $63 million and Democrats $49 million. No wonder that when their lobbyists reach out and place a call to Congress, they never get a busy signal. Do the same without making a big contribution, and you'll be put on "hold" until the embalmer shows up to claim your cold corpse.

http://www.truthout.org/article/mothers-milk-politics-turns-sour

MALICKI ENDORSES OBAMA-LIKE WITHDRAWAL

Here is Maliki's statement, delivered as Obama's visit to the region was beginning…this is a HUGE BLOW to McCain:

Whoever is thinking about the shorter term [for withdrawal] is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems ... As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned… Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic...Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

Tom Hayden’s analysis of this turn of events:

In a stunning diplomatic breakthrough for Barack Obama, Iraq's prime minister yesterday endorsed the Democratic candidate's 16-month timeline for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki endorsed the Obama approach in a July 18 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, just as President Bush and Sen. John McCain were touting a vague new commitment to a "horizon" for withdrawal. The New York Times did not report the Maliki statement in its July 19 edition.

This could be the "Philippine option" predicted in Ending the War in Iraq, in which the US arranged behind the scenes for the Manila government to request the departure of the American fleet. While the sequencing may be accidental, it appears that the Obama forces could reap a windfall. Obama will seem more successful than Bush in managing the last stages of the war, depriving McCain of the claim to superior foreign policy experience. Obama's imminent arrival in Baghdad could seem like a victory lap in the foreign policy "primary."