TODAY'S TOPICS: Palin Interview, Krugman, Populism, Hightower, Election Theft, Earmarks, Corporate Tax Cheats
Jesus Christ!! Palin's a bigger idiot that I even thought. She's like a female version of Dan Quayle...with a bit more charisma.
Palin Links Iraq to Sept. 11 In Talk to Troops in Alaska -- Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."
Anne E. Kornblut in the Washington Post -- 9/12/08
Sarah Palin said two things in her pretty embarrassing first big interview that especially hurts her:
1. War with Russia could happen over the Georgia conflict
2. Soldiers going to Iraq are fighting the people who killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11.
REDEFINING "POPULISM"
A big thanks to Jim Hightower for calling out the GOP on their attempts to take the word and idea of "Populism" and flip it on itself. Exhibit one is the talking point that - you might want to sit down for this - Sarah Palin is a "Populist"!!!
Calling Palin a populist is like calling me a neoconervative! It's an insidious attempt to control ideas and the meanings of words themselves...particularly when its a word like "populist", as it defines what the GOP is most afraid of: populism.
"Populist is not an empty political buzzword that can be attached to someone like Palin, whose campaigns (lieutenant governor, governor and now Veep) are financed and even run by the lobbyists and executives of Big Oil, Wall Street bankers, drug companies, telecom giants and other entrenched economic interests.
Populists don't support opening our national parks and coastlines to allow the ExxonMobils to take publicly owned oil and sell it to China. Palin does. Populists favor a windfall profits tax on oil companies that are robbing consumers at the pump while milking taxpayers for billions of dollars in subsidies. Palin doesn't. Populists don't hire corporate lobbyists to deliver a boatload of earmarked federal funds, then turn around and claim to be a heroic opponent of earmarks. Palin did. Populists favor shifting more of America's tax burden from the middle class to the superwealthy, while opposing another huge tax giveaway for corporations. Palin doesn't and doesn't.
Another thing populists don't do is sneer at community organizers, as Palin did in her nationally televised coming-out party. Indeed, populists of old were community organizers, as are today's. They work in communities all across our great land, putting in long days at low pay to help empower ordinary folks who are besieged by the avarice and arrogance of Palin's own corporate backers. Since the governor likes to put her fundamental Christianity on political display, she might give some thought to a new bumper sticker that expresses a bit of Biblical populism: "Jesus was a community organizer while Pontius Pilate was governor."
-- Jim Hightower
VIDEO SECTION
Matt Damon dismantles Sarah Palin...but nicely AND without offending...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6urw_PWHYk&feature=bz303
Obama answers the insane “lipstick” attacks on him…it’s hard to even post something about it…
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/98327/obama_strikes_back_on_contrived_lipstick_controversy/
Greenwald: As we've seen with The Real McCain 2 (nearly 4.5 million views and counting!), once the truth gets out, it's hard to stop. In the last few days we have seen a disgusting descent into the worst of sleazy smear politics. We need to spread the facts and the truth. Send this to your friends and relations, especially if they are unsure or undecided -- they're more willing to believe you than a talking head! Vote this video up on Digg and Reddit, and rate, comment, and favorite it on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH0xzsogzAk
GREENWALD: What's Wal-Mart so afraid of? They're up to their old tricks, using scare tactics to intimidate employees against supporting pro-worker candidates. So what's got them backed into a corner? Four words: Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).
EFCA would effectively enable workers to unionize and secure contracts without fear of being fired or reprisals from union-busting companies like Wal-Mart. It's a crucial bill for workers' rights. It could single-handedly restore the middle class. And it's the reason we've partnered with American Rights at Work to bring you our latest video.
http://www.freechoiceact.org/page/s/yournewjob?source=bnf0908
Chris Mathews has his moments…he may have taken WAY too long to come around to this conclusion, but at least he did. Watch him tear into Bush and the GOP regarding 9/11 and the opportunity it presented our nation…one squandered by Bush:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/12/chris-matthews-its-impossible-to-fail-as-much-as-bush-has/
Classic Colbert…the one career industry that’s going great right now…Repo men:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/12/colbert-repo-man-a-bush-economic-success-story/
Watch the Dumb and Dumber ticket in action…
First Palin get’s confused in her interview:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/11/ready-to-lead-palin-doesnt-know-what-the-bush-doctrine-is/
And second, McCain gets confused about Palin:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/11/john-mccain-stumbles-badly-after-being-asked-if-palin-has-national-security-experience-energy/
Robert Kuttner – a phenomenal economist – really gets into it with Sean Hannity on Fox. Hannity is one of those guys that yes, if I passed him on the street I might have to kick his ass…for the good of humanity…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/11/sean-hannity-says-he-writes-the-talking-points-as-he-berates-robert-kuttner/
ARTICLE SECTION
A great expose of McCain's “earmark scam”. I was waiting for someone to take apart the myths that A. Earmarks are all bad. B. that they represent a big chunk of our budget funding (they don’t…in fact they are only about 1-2 % of the budget). Republicans like to scapegoat earmarks (even though Republicans ask for WAY more than Democrats do) as a way of distracting us from the real scandalous waste, like corporate tax loopholes and military defense spending. Instead, McCain loves to pick out an earmark that is especially absurd and then use it as the poster child for government waste…when in fact, they are chump change compares to just the tax breaks we give oil companies alone!
A few clips:
McCain is doing his best to equate earmarks with wasteful spending. Certainly, earmarks are used to steer money toward legislators' home districts, and there have been some well-publicized cases in which those dollars were not spent wisely. However, part of a legislator's job is to be an advocate for his or her district. If politicians bring home the bacon, constituents are more likely to send them back to Washington. That's democracy.
Earmarks are frequently derided as "pork" and "pet projects." But earmarked spending is only as wise or as wasteful as the project itself. If you don't like the project or the politician, you can say he's cadging federal dollars to get re-elected. If you like the project and support the politician, you say that the earmarker is doing his job by looking out for constituents.
Representatives may have a better idea what their constituents need than bureaucrats in D.C. Lawmakers work closely with state and local leaders to find out what their districts need. As mayor of Wasilla and later as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin worked closely with Rep. Don Young and Sen. Ted Stevens to secure tens of millions of dollars in earmarks for her tiny town.
Earmarks support libraries, police departments, schools and laboratories across the country. They also fund giveaways to well-connected corporations, favors to campaign contributors and boondoggles like the notorious Bridge to Nowhere. Legislators are now more accountable for the earmarks they sponsor, thanks to tougher transparency requirements instituted in 2007. Ultimately, it's up to the electorate to decide whether a representative is making good decisions.
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/98371/mccain%27s_phony_earmark_ploy/
Paul Krugman takes apart what is shaping up to be the most deceptive and dirty campaign every run. Clearly McCain and Palin have made the decision they are going to take their chances and just flat out lie about everything and just hope enough people don’t pay attention or even care for that matter.
A few clips:
But I can't think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign's lies in 2000 were artful - you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.
SNIP
Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they're probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being "balanced" at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn't say that he's wrong, it reports that "some Democrats say" that he's wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty. They're probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being "McCain campaign lies," it becomes "Obama on defensive in face of attacks."
http://www.truthout.org/article/blizzard-lies?print
MORE BAD NEWS FOR PALIN (get a feeling this whole Palin thing is starting to unravel? She didn't know SHIT in the interview, and she's been caught lying multiple times and there's an investigation heating up...)
Palin asks Schwarzenegger to veto fees aimed at cutting pollution at California ports -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president, has urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto a fee on cargo containers going through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, setting off a wave of criticism from California environmentalists. Palin's letter to Schwarzenegger is dated Aug. 28 -- one day before presidential candidate and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced that he had picked her as his running mate.
Patrick McGreevy in the Los Angeles Times -- 9/12/08
STATS OF THE DAY
"The rate of suicides among-active duty soldiers is on pace to surpass both last year's numbers and the rate of suicide in the general U.S. population for the first time since the Vietnam war, according to U.S. Army officials." Officials attribute the rise to "the increased pace of combat operations, the number of deployments and financial and family troubles connected with deployments."
WHO’S UNPATRIOTIC AGAIN???? CORPORATE TRAITORS
-- AP
U.S. financial institutions are using stock swaps and intricate loan transactions to help foreign investors avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes on dividends paid by U.S. companies, according to a Senate report to be released on Thursday.
The report by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on permanent investigations said investment bankers use phrases like "dividend enhancement," "yield enhancement" and "dividend uplift" to market an array of transactions "whose major purpose is to enable non-U.S. persons to dodge payment of U.S. taxes on stock dividends."
… The committee estimates that using offshore entities to avoid paying U.S. taxes costs the federal treasury about $100 billion annually. The report did not put a specific amount on tax losses due to stock swaps and loans transactions with offshore entities, but said the amount is "substantial."
The report recommended Congress enact legislation to make it clear that foreign investors cannot avoid U.S. dividend taxes by using a swap or stock loan to disguise dividend payments. It also encouraged the IRS to take tough enforcement action against transactions that have no economic purpose other than to avoid taxes.
The report also recommended IRS tighten its rules to make sure that dividend equivalent payments made in an equity swap transaction are taxable just like direct dividend payments to investors.
end
The House will vote on a bill to allow expanded offshore drilling as early as next week, as part of an energy package that would also repeal tax breaks for oil companies and invest in renewable energy sources. "So we're saying: OK, you want to drill, this is how it will be. No more subsidies," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said.
Foreclosure filings last month "increased 27 percent compared to the same month a year ago." Senate Democrats are urging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to immediately implement 90-day foreclosure freeze on mortgages they hold. ]
"The U.S. trade deficit soared in July, the Commerce Department said, as oil imports hit an all-time high. ...The Labor Department also reported that new applications for unemployment benefits fell less than expected last week as the struggling economy continues to take a toll on workers."
Republicans Ramp up Voter Disenfranchisement Efforts Ahead of November Election
GOP Attempts to Challenge Foreclosed Families at Michigan Polls, Toss Thousands of Voters Over Typos in Florida and Game the Senatorial Ballot in Mississippi...
Three recent stories have come to light about the Republican Party's latest and sometimes illegal efforts at voter disenfranchisement. Unfortunately, these three stories are only the very tip of an enormous iceberg. Steve Heller details the fresh outrages in MI, MS and FL that will likely have enormous consequences this November...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6372
REPORT: U.S. STILL 'DANGEROUSLY VULNERABLE' TO ATTACK: Seven years after 9/11, the United States is still '"dangerously vulnerable' to chemical, biological and nuclear attacks," according to a report card set to be released tomorrow by the bipartisan Partnership for a Secure America. The group, composed of 22 former U.S. officials and leaders of the disbanded 9/11 Commission, "gave the United States an overall grade of C." According to the report, "[a] nuclear, chemical or biological weapon in the hands of terrorists remains the single greatest threat to our nation," and "while progress has been made in securing these weapons and materials, we are still dangerously vulnerable." "Efforts to reduce access to nuclear technology and bomb-making materials have slowed, thousands of U.S. chemical plants remain unprotected, and the U.S. government continues to oppose strengthening an international treaty to prevent bioterrorism," the report says. The partnership recommends that the government "appoint a White House adviser with power to make funding decisions for counterproliferation programs, coordinate all such government programs under a strategic plan and strengthen international cooperation."
Friday, September 12, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: Dismantle Conservatism, Olbermann Comment, Palin v. Wolves, Scheer, Morford, Solomon, Daily Show
DISMANTLE "CONSERVATISM"
Believe me, I realize that the more the news media focuses on Palin - generally speaking - that's bad for Obama. But, because McCain did NO VETTING, I am not yet convinced that a number of smoking guns aren't out there that may in the end torpedo this psycho’s new found stardom…at least in the minds of moderates, independents and other swing voters…which have so far been largely bamboozled.
So, yes, I do have quite a bit more on Palin today…but I won’t keep this up for long…
What I would really like to see the Dems do more of, and Bill Clinton began this in his convention speech, is start DISMANTLING CONSERVATISM as a philosophy!!! Just as they have Liberalism…with the only difference being we have the truth on our side, and liberalism can be repaired while conservatism must be tied to the disastrous last 30 years.
This campaign should be a referendum on the results of conservative economic policy and the class war began by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago. We have seen the government stop enforcing labor laws, big business bust up unions, union membership plummet and workers lose ground in terms of safety, security and wealth. Meanwhile, industry profits rise, wages decrease and white-collar theft gets more audacious. Just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that companies are raiding employees' pension funds "to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay."
This is the REAL STORY of this election.
Digby has a great post up called: Self Correcting Conservatives. The Republicans do a great job of defining liberals and The Democratic Party lets them get away with this crap every time.
And I always felt that Democrats should have run hard against conservatism itself so that a majority of voters would reject the GOP brand no matter who was wearing it. Instead we saw airy campaigns rife with symbols of liberal progress and the promise of some new post partisan agreement that only one side had signed on to. Indeed, they have all spent way too much time for the last year extolling the other side, genuflecting to their icons and pretending that there was some national consensus that everyone wanted Democrats to stop their vicious partisanship — when they hadn’t lifted a finger. It’s been maddening to watch.
So here we are. It doesn’t mean Obama will lose, of course. He probably won’t. Their side is even fundamentally weaker now than when the campaign began. But since both sides decided to run on personality and symbols we now have an empty campaign. McCain had no choice because his party is as decrepit as he is and their ideas are even more dessicated. But Democrats didn’t have to help them hide it. If they had worked a little bit harder at discrediting conservatism itself, people wouldn’t have felt so comfortable coming back to it, which is what Nate Silver thinks may have happened. There’s much about the Obama campaign that I admire. But I have always believed it was a mistake to box themselves into a post-partisan trap…read on.
VIDEO Section
Here here!!! Olbermann’s special comment on the GOP’s trade-marking of 911!
I have to point this out, here’s a passage from my Take the Red Pill article from 2003:
The attack was turned into a marketing tool by the Bush administration to sell its radical agenda to the American public. By essentially trademarking patriotism, the administration was able to portray opponents of its policies as soft on terrorism…even un-American. The 9/11 tragedy served as a timely rallying cry for the Republican party, and was effectively used by the Bush administration to justify key aspects of its agenda: ensuring re-election and Republican control of our government; increasing the power of America’s corporate aristocracy; stifling public dissent; and expanding U.S. economic and military global dominance."
-- Zack Kaldveer
NOW WATCH OLBERMANN:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/10/special-comment-on-the-gops-trademarking-of-september-11/
Wow…can the media and the McCain camp sink any lower than their latest “sexism” attack on Obama??? Seriously everyone: am I in a nightmarish dream right now? This can’t be the “real world”! We can’t actually be debating this!!!?? Thankfully David Schuster is just not accepting the absolutely insane McCain camp talking points:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/11/shuster-refuses-to-be-spun-by-nancy-pfotenhauer/
So the Military generals opposed surge…all the while Bush was saying he only listens to what the Generals say…you just can’t make this shit up. Woodward reports:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/10/woodward-on-60-minutes-military-generals-opposed-surge/
How to hack voting machines…just watch how easy it is:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/98290/step_by_step_guide_to_hacking_electronic_voting_machines/
ARTICLE SECTION: Scheer, Morford, Solomon
Robert Scheer takes apart the outrageously misinformed and idiotic op-ed “written” by McCain and Palin on the bailout of Fannie and Freddie. With Phil Gramm as McCain’s closest economic advisor its truly a site to behold listening to these people blame OTHERS for our subprime meltdown and skyrocketing gas prices. Bizarro world is back (has never left us actually)…the culprit of the crises blames others for it while walking away with riches beyond belief…nice...
A few clips:
Referring to the government's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Palin opined that the two had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers," displaying abysmal ignorance of the fact that only now will those privately owned banks become a huge taxpayer obligation, as the federal government takes them over. Nor can the meltdown of home values be traced to those two beleaguered institutions, because they did not make the original subprime mortgage commitments.
The housing bubble was the result of the Ponzi-scheme antics of those other financial entities: commercial banks, stockbrokers and hedge funds, which were allowed in a GOP-deregulated market to get into the "swap" business. Through the rampant reselling of loans, the obligation to collect on a loan was divorced from the act of selling it in the first place, so who cared if the recipient of the loan was not at all qualified or the appraisal of the property value was inflated, as long as the paper was traded away, or insured, before the moment of foreclosure?
SNIP
The mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector were made legal only as a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, pushed through Congress just hours before the 2000 Christmas recess. Gramm, until recently co-chair of the McCain campaign, also had co-authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law in 1999 with President Bill Clinton's signature. That gem, which Gramm had pushed for years with massive financial industry lobbying, destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies. Those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community, and no wonder we have witnessed an even more rapid and severe meltdown in housing values than during the Great Depression.
Not surprisingly, Gramm was rewarded for his service upon retirement as a senator and as head of the Senate Banking Committee with a top position at the Swiss-based UBS bank, which is close to drowning in the subprime mortgage nightmare he helped create. These folks have no shame, as was evidenced when the senator's wife, Wendy, was named a director of Enron, whose roiling of the energy market had been made possible only through yet another provision of Gramm's Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/10-1
A fantastic article by Norm Solomon on what we can learn from the corporate news media’s strange fawning over the Daily Show.
A few clips:
Consider the subtexts of this passage in the story: "Mr. Stewart ... and his writers have energetically tackled the big issues of the day -- 'the stuff we find most interesting,' as he said in an interview at the show's Midtown Manhattan offices, the stuff that gives them the most 'agita,' the sometimes somber stories he refers to as his 'morning cup of sadness.' And they've done so in ways that straight news programs cannot: speaking truth to power in blunt, sometimes profane language, while using satire and playful looniness to ensure that their political analysis never becomes solemn or pretentious."
Well, OK. That says a lot about "The Daily Show." But what does it say about the "real" news media -- and especially about the most important and self-important huge media outlets that dispense news with enormous ripple effects across the media terrain?
If -- as the New York Times soberly reported in the article -- "straight news programs cannot" tackle the "big issues of the day" while "speaking truth to power," we should ask a key question: Why not? But this is not a question that media outlets like the Times seem interested in pursuing to any depth.
SNIP
That's the way it goes in medialand. What isn't conspicuous is apt to be insidious. The tick-tock of U.S. media hypnosis may be passably good at looking back -- reexamining some aspects of propaganda for the Iraq invasion, for instance, years after it occurs -- while now helping to mesmerize the country into escalation of the war in Afghanistan. But let's not quibble. Everybody has a job to do.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/10-0
A brilliant piece by Mark Morford on corporate greenwashing and other techniques to control and manipulate us by turning their products and crimes into the opposite of what they are…
A few clips:
Here is "clean coal." Isn't it beautiful? Truly, the hell-bound ad agency that coughed up that one even had the nerve to film a commercial featuring Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate" playing over perky scenes of manic Americans sucking down electricity like John McCain sucks down extra oxygen, claiming that coal is America's namesake resource and we should therefore kneel before it and worship it like apple pie and horrible sex-ed and Lindsay Lohan's nipples. Did I mention the coal industry's PR people are going to hell for this? Count on it.
There is, of course, no such thing as "clean coal." It's as impossible as a humanitarian Republican, as insulting as Homeland Security. Even Obama gets it wrong in his support of this lethal oxymoron. There are only two options: Brutally pollutive coal extraction and burning techniques, rapacious strip mining and millions of acres of destroyed forest and contaminated water tables and toxified air and one of the most environmentally destructive energy sources on the planet; or new and slightly less horribly pollutive coal extraction/burn techniques that attempt to rein in a few of the more toxic pollutants, but not including carbon dioxide or, you know, cancer and death. That's about it.
SNIP
And recall, won't you, a couple of years back, when Wal-Mart launched its own ad campaign to counter all the negative press it was getting about its nasty labor policies, the lawsuits and infractions and claims of forced overtime, even lovely hints of sexism and racism and blurry photos of secret underground lairs where 10,000 paunchy middle managers met to skin live kittens and drink the blood of sweatshop workers and sacrifice their dreams as they chant Shania Twain lyrics in their underwear (again, paraphrasing).
Of course, Wal-Mart, rather than actually improve its policies, instead spent millions to make itself merely look friendlier, touting all the (low-paying, often part-time, generally miserable) jobs they bring in to a community, and gosh, just look how happy those cashiers seem to be, and never you mind the vague threats that if anyone tries to unionize, a pale army of sexless managers will follow you home and kill you in your sleep with this 20-pound tub of cheese-coated popcorn. Mmm, wholesome.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/10-2
PALIN (wolf killer) VERSUS THE ENVIRONMENT
She wants to start drilling. She wants to block US moves to list the polar bear as an endangered species. And she has allowed big game hunters to shoot Alaska's bears and wolves from low-flying planes. The 44-year-old governor says a federal government decision to protect the polar bear will cripple energy development offshore. As a result, she is suing the Bush administration, which ruled the polar bear is endangered and needs protection.
The US Geological Survey says climate change has shrunk Arctic summer sea ice to about 1.65 million sq miles, nearly 40 per cent less than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. In such a situation it was unconscionable for Governor Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global warming's threat to sea ice, says Kassie Siegel of the Centre for Biological Diversity.
Big game hunters are happy to pay lots of money to shoot wolves and bears from the air. They also chase them across the snow to the point of exhaustion and then land the planes on skis, shooting them from point-blank range. The animals are considered endangered across the "lower 48" states of America, but not Alaska. The hunters keep and sell the animals' pelts.
Last year, Mrs Palin proposed offering a bounty of $150 per wolf, as long as the hunter provided the wolf's foreleg as proof of the kill. The measure did not pass. She even spent $400,000 on a state-funded campaign to block attempts to end the hunt.
Its not just wildlife conservationists who object. Many ordinary Alaskans also condemn the practice as barbaric.
-- Leonard Doyle, Independent UK
Palin's Wasilla charged rape victims for their sexual assault exams.
When Sarah Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the town's police department charged rape victims for their forensic testing.
In a May, 2000 article, the Frontiersman reported:
While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.
Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon stated:
"In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer," Fannon said.
Let's be clear: charging a person who has the strength to come forward after being sexually assaulted for their own examination isn't just insensitive, it is monstrous. And for victims to hear the Chief of Police say that he thinks it's right to charge the victim is horrifying.
Now let's talk about Palin's executive responsibility on this issue. As a blogger on BitchPhD points out:
One can only assume that she supported Wasilla's policy of billing rape victims for their own rape kits...not only because Fannon was her appointee, but also because this was four years into her tenure as mayor and because, let's be honest: in a town of that size, the mayor doesn't get to plead ignorance of policies or public statements of her own chief of police.
[...]
Palin was willing to raise taxes to build a sports complex. Her police chief was unwilling to use public funds to investigate rapes. This shit needs to be in the national news. And Palin and McCain need to answer some hard questions about it.
MORE PALIN FACTS
OTHER PROJECTS TO NOWHERE: Though the Bridge to Nowhere has been abandoned, Alaska is still using excessive federal funds to build infrastructure projects that only benefit a limited number of citizens. In fact, after Congress removed funding for the Bridge to Nowhere, then-Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski approved the construction of a $24 million gravel "access" road, known as the Gravina Island Access Highway, that would lead to the nonexistent bridge. In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, Palin was asked whether she supported the earmarked project, or whether she would pledge to cancel it as governor. Rather than responding with "thanks but no thanks" to federal funding for the "access" road, Palin replied that she "wouldn't" cancel the project because she was "not going to stand in the way of progress." To this day, the state of Alaska "is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone -- because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government." As CQ recently noted, there is also "a second bridge, more than twice as expensive and just as controversial" as the canceled Bridge to Nowhere, but Palin hasn't tried to kill it. Palin also supports a $375 million "mega-project" known as the "road to nowhere," that connects a town of 2,400 to a town of 870.
Good News
"The Department of Veterans Affairs said Monday that it would no longer ban voter registration drives among veterans living at federally run nursing homes, shelters for the homeless and rehabilitation centers across the country."
One of the nation's largest Hummer stores will shut its doors. The Dan Towbin dealership in Las Vegas "is at least the eighth Hummer dealer closing this year, nearly a 5% decline in the brand’s U.S. dealer base." The WSJ notes that, "with the national average for a price of gas resting at $3.66 a gallon, it costs $84 to fill up Hummer’s smallest model -- the H3."
GREEN RECOVERY: A NEW PROGRAM TO CREATE GOOD JOBS AND START BUILDING A LOW-CARBON ECONOMY: Yesterday, the Center for American Progress released Green Recovery, a new report by Dr. Robert Pollin and University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute economists, which "outlines a green economic recovery program to strengthen the U.S. economy over the next two years and leave it in a better position for sustainable prosperity." The report "demonstrates how a new Green Recovery program that spends $100 billion over two years would create 2 million new jobs, with a significant proportion in the struggling construction and manufacturing sectors." If Congress were to spend roughly the same amount "on new oil and gas subsidies and subsidizing gasoline and oil prices, only a quarter as many jobs would be created," according to the report's findings. "A comprehensive clean energy agenda is essential to the future of our country. The green recovery and infrastructure investment described here is doable in the early days of a new administration," says Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta. Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers, agrees, telling reporters that "from the point of view of the steelworkers union, the view is quite simple, that a energy efficient green economy creates jobs and it can create jobs in America."
DISMANTLE "CONSERVATISM"
Believe me, I realize that the more the news media focuses on Palin - generally speaking - that's bad for Obama. But, because McCain did NO VETTING, I am not yet convinced that a number of smoking guns aren't out there that may in the end torpedo this psycho’s new found stardom…at least in the minds of moderates, independents and other swing voters…which have so far been largely bamboozled.
So, yes, I do have quite a bit more on Palin today…but I won’t keep this up for long…
What I would really like to see the Dems do more of, and Bill Clinton began this in his convention speech, is start DISMANTLING CONSERVATISM as a philosophy!!! Just as they have Liberalism…with the only difference being we have the truth on our side, and liberalism can be repaired while conservatism must be tied to the disastrous last 30 years.
This campaign should be a referendum on the results of conservative economic policy and the class war began by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago. We have seen the government stop enforcing labor laws, big business bust up unions, union membership plummet and workers lose ground in terms of safety, security and wealth. Meanwhile, industry profits rise, wages decrease and white-collar theft gets more audacious. Just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that companies are raiding employees' pension funds "to finance their executives' retirement benefits and pay."
This is the REAL STORY of this election.
Digby has a great post up called: Self Correcting Conservatives. The Republicans do a great job of defining liberals and The Democratic Party lets them get away with this crap every time.
And I always felt that Democrats should have run hard against conservatism itself so that a majority of voters would reject the GOP brand no matter who was wearing it. Instead we saw airy campaigns rife with symbols of liberal progress and the promise of some new post partisan agreement that only one side had signed on to. Indeed, they have all spent way too much time for the last year extolling the other side, genuflecting to their icons and pretending that there was some national consensus that everyone wanted Democrats to stop their vicious partisanship — when they hadn’t lifted a finger. It’s been maddening to watch.
So here we are. It doesn’t mean Obama will lose, of course. He probably won’t. Their side is even fundamentally weaker now than when the campaign began. But since both sides decided to run on personality and symbols we now have an empty campaign. McCain had no choice because his party is as decrepit as he is and their ideas are even more dessicated. But Democrats didn’t have to help them hide it. If they had worked a little bit harder at discrediting conservatism itself, people wouldn’t have felt so comfortable coming back to it, which is what Nate Silver thinks may have happened. There’s much about the Obama campaign that I admire. But I have always believed it was a mistake to box themselves into a post-partisan trap…read on.
VIDEO Section
Here here!!! Olbermann’s special comment on the GOP’s trade-marking of 911!
I have to point this out, here’s a passage from my Take the Red Pill article from 2003:
The attack was turned into a marketing tool by the Bush administration to sell its radical agenda to the American public. By essentially trademarking patriotism, the administration was able to portray opponents of its policies as soft on terrorism…even un-American. The 9/11 tragedy served as a timely rallying cry for the Republican party, and was effectively used by the Bush administration to justify key aspects of its agenda: ensuring re-election and Republican control of our government; increasing the power of America’s corporate aristocracy; stifling public dissent; and expanding U.S. economic and military global dominance."
-- Zack Kaldveer
NOW WATCH OLBERMANN:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/10/special-comment-on-the-gops-trademarking-of-september-11/
Wow…can the media and the McCain camp sink any lower than their latest “sexism” attack on Obama??? Seriously everyone: am I in a nightmarish dream right now? This can’t be the “real world”! We can’t actually be debating this!!!?? Thankfully David Schuster is just not accepting the absolutely insane McCain camp talking points:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/11/shuster-refuses-to-be-spun-by-nancy-pfotenhauer/
So the Military generals opposed surge…all the while Bush was saying he only listens to what the Generals say…you just can’t make this shit up. Woodward reports:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/10/woodward-on-60-minutes-military-generals-opposed-surge/
How to hack voting machines…just watch how easy it is:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/98290/step_by_step_guide_to_hacking_electronic_voting_machines/
ARTICLE SECTION: Scheer, Morford, Solomon
Robert Scheer takes apart the outrageously misinformed and idiotic op-ed “written” by McCain and Palin on the bailout of Fannie and Freddie. With Phil Gramm as McCain’s closest economic advisor its truly a site to behold listening to these people blame OTHERS for our subprime meltdown and skyrocketing gas prices. Bizarro world is back (has never left us actually)…the culprit of the crises blames others for it while walking away with riches beyond belief…nice...
A few clips:
Referring to the government's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Palin opined that the two had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers," displaying abysmal ignorance of the fact that only now will those privately owned banks become a huge taxpayer obligation, as the federal government takes them over. Nor can the meltdown of home values be traced to those two beleaguered institutions, because they did not make the original subprime mortgage commitments.
The housing bubble was the result of the Ponzi-scheme antics of those other financial entities: commercial banks, stockbrokers and hedge funds, which were allowed in a GOP-deregulated market to get into the "swap" business. Through the rampant reselling of loans, the obligation to collect on a loan was divorced from the act of selling it in the first place, so who cared if the recipient of the loan was not at all qualified or the appraisal of the property value was inflated, as long as the paper was traded away, or insured, before the moment of foreclosure?
SNIP
The mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector were made legal only as a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, pushed through Congress just hours before the 2000 Christmas recess. Gramm, until recently co-chair of the McCain campaign, also had co-authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law in 1999 with President Bill Clinton's signature. That gem, which Gramm had pushed for years with massive financial industry lobbying, destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies. Those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community, and no wonder we have witnessed an even more rapid and severe meltdown in housing values than during the Great Depression.
Not surprisingly, Gramm was rewarded for his service upon retirement as a senator and as head of the Senate Banking Committee with a top position at the Swiss-based UBS bank, which is close to drowning in the subprime mortgage nightmare he helped create. These folks have no shame, as was evidenced when the senator's wife, Wendy, was named a director of Enron, whose roiling of the energy market had been made possible only through yet another provision of Gramm's Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/10-1
A fantastic article by Norm Solomon on what we can learn from the corporate news media’s strange fawning over the Daily Show.
A few clips:
Consider the subtexts of this passage in the story: "Mr. Stewart ... and his writers have energetically tackled the big issues of the day -- 'the stuff we find most interesting,' as he said in an interview at the show's Midtown Manhattan offices, the stuff that gives them the most 'agita,' the sometimes somber stories he refers to as his 'morning cup of sadness.' And they've done so in ways that straight news programs cannot: speaking truth to power in blunt, sometimes profane language, while using satire and playful looniness to ensure that their political analysis never becomes solemn or pretentious."
Well, OK. That says a lot about "The Daily Show." But what does it say about the "real" news media -- and especially about the most important and self-important huge media outlets that dispense news with enormous ripple effects across the media terrain?
If -- as the New York Times soberly reported in the article -- "straight news programs cannot" tackle the "big issues of the day" while "speaking truth to power," we should ask a key question: Why not? But this is not a question that media outlets like the Times seem interested in pursuing to any depth.
SNIP
That's the way it goes in medialand. What isn't conspicuous is apt to be insidious. The tick-tock of U.S. media hypnosis may be passably good at looking back -- reexamining some aspects of propaganda for the Iraq invasion, for instance, years after it occurs -- while now helping to mesmerize the country into escalation of the war in Afghanistan. But let's not quibble. Everybody has a job to do.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/10-0
A brilliant piece by Mark Morford on corporate greenwashing and other techniques to control and manipulate us by turning their products and crimes into the opposite of what they are…
A few clips:
Here is "clean coal." Isn't it beautiful? Truly, the hell-bound ad agency that coughed up that one even had the nerve to film a commercial featuring Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate" playing over perky scenes of manic Americans sucking down electricity like John McCain sucks down extra oxygen, claiming that coal is America's namesake resource and we should therefore kneel before it and worship it like apple pie and horrible sex-ed and Lindsay Lohan's nipples. Did I mention the coal industry's PR people are going to hell for this? Count on it.
There is, of course, no such thing as "clean coal." It's as impossible as a humanitarian Republican, as insulting as Homeland Security. Even Obama gets it wrong in his support of this lethal oxymoron. There are only two options: Brutally pollutive coal extraction and burning techniques, rapacious strip mining and millions of acres of destroyed forest and contaminated water tables and toxified air and one of the most environmentally destructive energy sources on the planet; or new and slightly less horribly pollutive coal extraction/burn techniques that attempt to rein in a few of the more toxic pollutants, but not including carbon dioxide or, you know, cancer and death. That's about it.
SNIP
And recall, won't you, a couple of years back, when Wal-Mart launched its own ad campaign to counter all the negative press it was getting about its nasty labor policies, the lawsuits and infractions and claims of forced overtime, even lovely hints of sexism and racism and blurry photos of secret underground lairs where 10,000 paunchy middle managers met to skin live kittens and drink the blood of sweatshop workers and sacrifice their dreams as they chant Shania Twain lyrics in their underwear (again, paraphrasing).
Of course, Wal-Mart, rather than actually improve its policies, instead spent millions to make itself merely look friendlier, touting all the (low-paying, often part-time, generally miserable) jobs they bring in to a community, and gosh, just look how happy those cashiers seem to be, and never you mind the vague threats that if anyone tries to unionize, a pale army of sexless managers will follow you home and kill you in your sleep with this 20-pound tub of cheese-coated popcorn. Mmm, wholesome.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/10-2
PALIN (wolf killer) VERSUS THE ENVIRONMENT
She wants to start drilling. She wants to block US moves to list the polar bear as an endangered species. And she has allowed big game hunters to shoot Alaska's bears and wolves from low-flying planes. The 44-year-old governor says a federal government decision to protect the polar bear will cripple energy development offshore. As a result, she is suing the Bush administration, which ruled the polar bear is endangered and needs protection.
The US Geological Survey says climate change has shrunk Arctic summer sea ice to about 1.65 million sq miles, nearly 40 per cent less than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. In such a situation it was unconscionable for Governor Palin to ignore overwhelming evidence of global warming's threat to sea ice, says Kassie Siegel of the Centre for Biological Diversity.
Big game hunters are happy to pay lots of money to shoot wolves and bears from the air. They also chase them across the snow to the point of exhaustion and then land the planes on skis, shooting them from point-blank range. The animals are considered endangered across the "lower 48" states of America, but not Alaska. The hunters keep and sell the animals' pelts.
Last year, Mrs Palin proposed offering a bounty of $150 per wolf, as long as the hunter provided the wolf's foreleg as proof of the kill. The measure did not pass. She even spent $400,000 on a state-funded campaign to block attempts to end the hunt.
Its not just wildlife conservationists who object. Many ordinary Alaskans also condemn the practice as barbaric.
-- Leonard Doyle, Independent UK
Palin's Wasilla charged rape victims for their sexual assault exams.
When Sarah Palin was Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the town's police department charged rape victims for their forensic testing.
In a May, 2000 article, the Frontiersman reported:
While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.
Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon stated:
"In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer," Fannon said.
Let's be clear: charging a person who has the strength to come forward after being sexually assaulted for their own examination isn't just insensitive, it is monstrous. And for victims to hear the Chief of Police say that he thinks it's right to charge the victim is horrifying.
Now let's talk about Palin's executive responsibility on this issue. As a blogger on BitchPhD points out:
One can only assume that she supported Wasilla's policy of billing rape victims for their own rape kits...not only because Fannon was her appointee, but also because this was four years into her tenure as mayor and because, let's be honest: in a town of that size, the mayor doesn't get to plead ignorance of policies or public statements of her own chief of police.
[...]
Palin was willing to raise taxes to build a sports complex. Her police chief was unwilling to use public funds to investigate rapes. This shit needs to be in the national news. And Palin and McCain need to answer some hard questions about it.
MORE PALIN FACTS
OTHER PROJECTS TO NOWHERE: Though the Bridge to Nowhere has been abandoned, Alaska is still using excessive federal funds to build infrastructure projects that only benefit a limited number of citizens. In fact, after Congress removed funding for the Bridge to Nowhere, then-Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski approved the construction of a $24 million gravel "access" road, known as the Gravina Island Access Highway, that would lead to the nonexistent bridge. In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, Palin was asked whether she supported the earmarked project, or whether she would pledge to cancel it as governor. Rather than responding with "thanks but no thanks" to federal funding for the "access" road, Palin replied that she "wouldn't" cancel the project because she was "not going to stand in the way of progress." To this day, the state of Alaska "is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone -- because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government." As CQ recently noted, there is also "a second bridge, more than twice as expensive and just as controversial" as the canceled Bridge to Nowhere, but Palin hasn't tried to kill it. Palin also supports a $375 million "mega-project" known as the "road to nowhere," that connects a town of 2,400 to a town of 870.
Good News
"The Department of Veterans Affairs said Monday that it would no longer ban voter registration drives among veterans living at federally run nursing homes, shelters for the homeless and rehabilitation centers across the country."
One of the nation's largest Hummer stores will shut its doors. The Dan Towbin dealership in Las Vegas "is at least the eighth Hummer dealer closing this year, nearly a 5% decline in the brand’s U.S. dealer base." The WSJ notes that, "with the national average for a price of gas resting at $3.66 a gallon, it costs $84 to fill up Hummer’s smallest model -- the H3."
GREEN RECOVERY: A NEW PROGRAM TO CREATE GOOD JOBS AND START BUILDING A LOW-CARBON ECONOMY: Yesterday, the Center for American Progress released Green Recovery, a new report by Dr. Robert Pollin and University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute economists, which "outlines a green economic recovery program to strengthen the U.S. economy over the next two years and leave it in a better position for sustainable prosperity." The report "demonstrates how a new Green Recovery program that spends $100 billion over two years would create 2 million new jobs, with a significant proportion in the struggling construction and manufacturing sectors." If Congress were to spend roughly the same amount "on new oil and gas subsidies and subsidizing gasoline and oil prices, only a quarter as many jobs would be created," according to the report's findings. "A comprehensive clean energy agenda is essential to the future of our country. The green recovery and infrastructure investment described here is doable in the early days of a new administration," says Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta. Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers, agrees, telling reporters that "from the point of view of the steelworkers union, the view is quite simple, that a energy efficient green economy creates jobs and it can create jobs in America."
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: Palin?!@, The Dumb and Dumber Ticket, The "L-Word", Taibbi, Fannie/Freddie, Ohio Theft 08'
"When I look every day, the big oil company's building is right out there next to me, and it's quite a reminder that we should have mutually beneficial relationships with the oil industry… I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem.
And she also signed a bill just two weeks ago "suspending Alaska's gasoline, marine fuel and aviation fuel taxes until Aug. 31, 2009," which will only add to Big Oil's coffers. "
-- Palin told Roll Call last week…same time as ads are running saying she “took on big oil”
SPECIAL COMMENT ON ALL THIS BULLSHIT!
Only in America could a man who has called the mainstream media his "base" run against that very same media. And only in America can TWO CANDIDATES simply reinvent themselves, completely, and tell one bald face lie after another to the public and the press yet GO UP in the polls! But here’s the tiny bit of good news, Obama started using the “L-Word”! That’s right, something I’ve been begging and pleading for since the advent of this blog years ago: start calling these people out for the LIARS they are.
Perhaps in Obama’s desperation to stop the McCain/Palin momentum (and lies) – otherwise known as the DUMB AND DUMBER ticket – he will grow the BALLS needed to start taking a machete to these crooks and simply tell the truth: they’re filthy, sick, liars (ok, just calling them liars will do). More on this later in the post but first I've got to get more off my chest on the Palin phenomenon...otherwise known as the seventh sign of the Apocalypse:
Our politics in this country have really come down to simply the need of people (many, not all) to identify with the candidate, and somehow feel he or she is like them…no matter how idiotic, unintelligent, and completely lacking that may be. It’s a sick and twisted way to view politics…incredibly selfish and totally devoid of compassion and awareness of what’s going on in the country and world. This is the only way I can understand the GIANT impact Sarah Palin is having on the race.
I mean a 20 point jump for McCain among white women since her pick???!!!! Please ladies, get a f****** life! For example, she supports teaching creationism in school, favors privatization of health insurance, boasts of being a "lifetime member of the NRA," opposes stem-cell research, and declared that "she would support a ballot question that would deny benefits to homosexual couples." Oh, and she favors abstinence-only programs and opposes contraception, yet if you’re raped she doesn’t think a woman has the right to an abortion! What kind of “human being” can hold such conflicting positions…Doublethink alert!
Is all that matters whether you feel like a candidate is “like you” (she’s not!!!)…rather than say, her stance on issues that could affect the life of your daughters and grandchildren? I mean, how sick are we? It’s the “I’d rather have a beer with Bush” delusion all over again. Forget the fact that the emperor has no clothes, and that you’re being completely lied too, even if it was true (as if the son of a former President and the head of the CIA is “like you”), since when is it more important to “feel” like you could be friends with a leader than whether that leader can help the country and the lives of it’s people?
I’m serious getting nauseous…I don’t want to lose faith in America, and Americans, but we are REALLY pushing it right now with this Palin thing…just when I thought our country couldn’t sink any lower. I just keep coming back to the Matrix analogy. It seems reality itself is of increasingly little interest to most Americans today. It’s the illusion that has become important. A manufactured world, nearly indistinguishable from what we see on television is now the driving force in peoples lives. Feels warm and safe, just like the blue pill...
It’s all media created soap opera and sports narratives in which voters seem to seek to identify with the “leading characters” travails, rather than taking a hard look at issues, facts, and policies. Most simply don't live in reality anymore, they are totally controlled, and make decisions solely by how things "impact" them emotionally. One big sick and twisted reality tv show...
NEW PALIN FACTS, NOT UNFAIR ATTACKS
Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.
-- James V. Grimaldi and Karl Vick in the Washington Post -- 9/9/08
STATS OF THE DAY
It’s called “Imperialism” - The US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet . America garrisons the globe in ways that are unprecedented, and yet, if you live in the United States, you basically wouldn't know it because we (and the media) never talk about it
According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, corporate executives at Goliath, Inc. spent $17 billion lobbying Congress in the last decade. Labor leaders at David's union hall mustered $333 million. In the 2008 election, business interests have outspent unions 18-to-1 on campaign contributions.
VIDEO SECTION
Perhaps the first sign of the Democratic uprising against the flat out, stone cold lies of the Dumb and Dumber ticket, watch Paul Begala “go to town on GOP media consultant Alex Castellanos for peddling blatant falsehoods about Sarah Palin’s “reformer” record, specifically her phantom opposition to the “Bridge to Nowhere,” which she not only supported, but for which hired a Abramoff crony to secure the earmark.”
“That’s just not true. You know, John, the facts matter. There’s lots of things that are debatable who is more qualified or less experienced or more this or more passionate, whatever. It is a fact that she campaigned and supported that bridge to nowhere. It is a fact that she hired lobbyists to get earmarks. It is a fact that as governor she lobbies for earmarks. Her state is essentially a welfare state taking money from the federal government… This is the problem. We have this false debate when we ought to have at least agreed upon facts.”
AMEN!!!! Watch:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/09/paul-begala-rips-msm-republican-operative-for-flat-out-lying-about-palins-record/
Obama interviewed by Olbermann…and Obama’s new ad finally does it…calls McCain and Palin LIARS!!! That’s right, the “L-word”. Clearly the gloves are off for now, but will they STAY OFF?
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/08/obama-on-countdown-mccainpalin-stretching-the-bounds-of-spin/
A great ad on the Internet regarding Sarah Palin’s belief that if a woman is raped, she should be forced by law to have the child:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/09/midday-open-thread-7/
Bob Woodward reveals that our idiotic, sociopath President just can’t figure out why Iraqi’s aren’t grateful to us for murdering a million of their countryman! C'mon Iraq, where's the love??? Watch:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/98147/woodward%3A_bush_doesn%E2%80%99t_get_why_iraqis_aren%27t_appreciative_of_liberation/
A great discussion among bloggers, led by Henry Rollins, on the media’s love affair with McCain and how just a little bit of reporting on the press’s part always sends him into a tizzy…
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/97844/henry_rollins_and_paul_waldman_spurn_the_media%27s_love_for_mccain/
ARTICLE SECTION: Obama, Ohio Theft 08', Fannie/Freddie
The phenomenal Rolling Stone’s reporter – Matt Taibbi – NAILS what it is about Obama that makes him special…or at least, seems to make us feel like he’s special. Whether he is, is yet to be seen…and that's part of the attraction.
A few clips from this Red Pill special:
All of this saccharine talk of "change" is so transparently a mechanical come-on that if it were anybody but Barack Obama uttering the word, you'd want to throw up at the very sound of it. And yet, as I watch Obama deliver the same hackneyed act I've seen hundreds of times before, I feel against my will that I am actually watching something different at work. After Kerry and Dean speeches, I often heard people say things like, "At least he's not as dumb as Bush." But after Obama speeches, I see audience members stumbling around in all directions with orgiastic smiles on their faces, as though they've been splashed with gallons of magic pixie paint…Watching him at work, you realize that Obama's remarkable success has almost nothing to do with the same-old product being marketed by the same-old political machine, and almost everything to do with the specific qualities of the individual who is selling it. The same stuff that sounded like hollow, invidious horseshit coming from Kerry and Gore sounds, as dispensed by Obama, like nothing less than a clarion call to collective action. And every time you feel his pitch working, you wonder: Is this some chat-room robot I'm falling in love with? Or is this an actual human being on the line, offering me an opportunity at last to fulfill my deepest desires?
SNIP
But I'm not sure there is a mask when it comes to Barack Obama. It sounds crazy, but he might actually be this guy, this couldn't-possibly-exist guy, inside and out. I heard Joe Lieberman talk about his middle-class dad, I heard Hillary plaster every corner of Pennsylvania with talk about her grandfather's sojourn in the lace factory, I heard John Edwards tell everyone who would listen, and even some who wouldn't, about what being the son of a millworker meant to him, and in every case I could feel the cold hand of political calculation crawling up my shirt as they spoke.
Then I hear Obama tell audiences about his grandmother and her time working on a bomber assembly line during World War II. Intellectually I know it's the same thing -- but when you actually watch him in person, you get this crazy sense that these schlock ready-for-paperback patriotic tales really are a big part of his emotional makeup. You listen to him talking about his grandfather waving a little American flag on the Hawaiian beach as he watched the astronauts come in to shore, and you can almost see that these moments actually have some kind of poetic meaning for him, and that he views his own already-historic run as a continuation of that pat-but-inspirational childhood story -- putting a man on the moon then, putting a black man in the White House now.
http://www.alternet.org/election08/97792/why_obama%27s_message_resonates_with_millions/
Just in case anyone was wondering, YES, the GOP vote thieves are coming to town this November again, and here are 10 ways they’re already stealing Ohio…a CRITICAL state for Obama to win.
Here are the top 10 according to election fraud investigative heroes Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis (to read details on each you have to go to the article):
1) Illegal Destruction of Evidence Surrounding the Vote Count
2) Massive Residual Elimination of Registered Voters
3) Renewed Attempts to Eliminate Additional Registered Voters
4-5) Resisting Universal Access to Absentee Ballots While Re-introducing Chaos
6) Resisting Same-Day Registration and Voting:
7) The Persistent Spread of Electronic Voting Machines
8) Residual Chaos From Precinct Elimination and Manipulation
9) Data Mining
10) Expanded Voter Identification Requirements
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/09-0
I was heartened to read this crack analysis by economist Robert Kuttner regarding the recent decision to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. I was waiting for someone to provide the larger context missing from the press reports: when FDR created Fannie Mae it was a non-profit, government run, FOR THE PUBLIC INTEREST, entity that was incredibly successful in increasing homeownership in this country. AS with so many things, it wasn’t until the greedy CEO’s and influence peddlers got their hands on it, privatized it (while socializing it’s losses) and corrupted it that things started to really go awry.
Of course, we have become such a country of such “free market fundamentalism” – our real national religion – that we (I especially mean the corporate media) can’t actually talk about the ways in which government and not for profit (take health care) approaches work exponentially better than when they are privatized and corporatized.
Let’s hope that when all the dust settles, Fannie Mae will return to what it once was, a government sponsored entity designed to help PEOPLE, not enrich shareholders.
A few clips:
FNMA was part of the New Deal's trinity of housing agencies -- the other two being the Home Owners Loan Corporation and the FHA agencies that Roosevelt formed in order to literally create the modern mortgage system. Before the New Deal, there were no long-term, self-amortizing mortgages. The loan was due and payable at the end of the term -- usually five years -- and if you couldn't persuade a bank or savings-and-loan to roll it over, you lost the house. After foreclosures exploded during the Depression, Roosevelt invented a whole new system. FNMA's job was to buy approved mortgages from banks, to replenish their working capital, so that they could make more mortgages. As the biggest buyer, FNMA also maintained standards.
The system worked like a fine watch. Home-ownership rates soared. Loan standards were generous but not stupid. Nobody in the home mortgage business got filthy rich, and mortgage lenders hardly ever went broke. The government's bank insurance funds regularly turned a profit. And here's a quaint, archaic concept: It operated in the public interest.
SNIP
Here is the cycle: The government invents something virtuous; the private market takes it over and loses hundreds of billions; the government then bails it out. This is best understood as socialized risk, privatized gain. Yes, the shareholders of Fannie Mae will deservedly lose a bundle -- it's always the shareholders who take a hit -- but the insiders who thought up subprime and the executives of Fannie Mae during the roaring '90s already made their pile.
http://www.alternet.org/story/98076/nationalize_fannie_mae_it_worked_until_it_was_privatized/
Virginia County Threatens Student Voters in Chilling Edict (another way to steal the election...stop the youth from voting)
FROM BRAD BLOG: 'If You Have Scholarship, You Could Lose This Funding,' Note Warns (Erroniously)
The Republican War on Voting continues...
As the youth and minority vote alone this year could make the difference in this year's Presidential election, the following chilling edict issued recently by the Registrar of Montgomery County, Virginia (home to Virginia Tech University), unfortunately comes as little surprise...and likely an omen as to what we'll be seeing much more of between her and November 4th...
It reads, in part: “The Code of Virginia states that a student must declare a legal residence in order to register. A legal residence can be either a student’s permanent address from home or their current college residence. By making Montgomery County your permanent residence, you have declared your independence from your parents and can no longer be claimed as a dependent on their income tax filings — check with your tax professional. If you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding. And, if you change your registration to Montgomery County, Virginia Code requires you to change your driver’s license and car registration to your present address within 30 days.”
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6361
"When I look every day, the big oil company's building is right out there next to me, and it's quite a reminder that we should have mutually beneficial relationships with the oil industry… I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem.
And she also signed a bill just two weeks ago "suspending Alaska's gasoline, marine fuel and aviation fuel taxes until Aug. 31, 2009," which will only add to Big Oil's coffers. "
-- Palin told Roll Call last week…same time as ads are running saying she “took on big oil”
SPECIAL COMMENT ON ALL THIS BULLSHIT!
Only in America could a man who has called the mainstream media his "base" run against that very same media. And only in America can TWO CANDIDATES simply reinvent themselves, completely, and tell one bald face lie after another to the public and the press yet GO UP in the polls! But here’s the tiny bit of good news, Obama started using the “L-Word”! That’s right, something I’ve been begging and pleading for since the advent of this blog years ago: start calling these people out for the LIARS they are.
Perhaps in Obama’s desperation to stop the McCain/Palin momentum (and lies) – otherwise known as the DUMB AND DUMBER ticket – he will grow the BALLS needed to start taking a machete to these crooks and simply tell the truth: they’re filthy, sick, liars (ok, just calling them liars will do). More on this later in the post but first I've got to get more off my chest on the Palin phenomenon...otherwise known as the seventh sign of the Apocalypse:
Our politics in this country have really come down to simply the need of people (many, not all) to identify with the candidate, and somehow feel he or she is like them…no matter how idiotic, unintelligent, and completely lacking that may be. It’s a sick and twisted way to view politics…incredibly selfish and totally devoid of compassion and awareness of what’s going on in the country and world. This is the only way I can understand the GIANT impact Sarah Palin is having on the race.
I mean a 20 point jump for McCain among white women since her pick???!!!! Please ladies, get a f****** life! For example, she supports teaching creationism in school, favors privatization of health insurance, boasts of being a "lifetime member of the NRA," opposes stem-cell research, and declared that "she would support a ballot question that would deny benefits to homosexual couples." Oh, and she favors abstinence-only programs and opposes contraception, yet if you’re raped she doesn’t think a woman has the right to an abortion! What kind of “human being” can hold such conflicting positions…Doublethink alert!
Is all that matters whether you feel like a candidate is “like you” (she’s not!!!)…rather than say, her stance on issues that could affect the life of your daughters and grandchildren? I mean, how sick are we? It’s the “I’d rather have a beer with Bush” delusion all over again. Forget the fact that the emperor has no clothes, and that you’re being completely lied too, even if it was true (as if the son of a former President and the head of the CIA is “like you”), since when is it more important to “feel” like you could be friends with a leader than whether that leader can help the country and the lives of it’s people?
I’m serious getting nauseous…I don’t want to lose faith in America, and Americans, but we are REALLY pushing it right now with this Palin thing…just when I thought our country couldn’t sink any lower. I just keep coming back to the Matrix analogy. It seems reality itself is of increasingly little interest to most Americans today. It’s the illusion that has become important. A manufactured world, nearly indistinguishable from what we see on television is now the driving force in peoples lives. Feels warm and safe, just like the blue pill...
It’s all media created soap opera and sports narratives in which voters seem to seek to identify with the “leading characters” travails, rather than taking a hard look at issues, facts, and policies. Most simply don't live in reality anymore, they are totally controlled, and make decisions solely by how things "impact" them emotionally. One big sick and twisted reality tv show...
NEW PALIN FACTS, NOT UNFAIR ATTACKS
Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.
-- James V. Grimaldi and Karl Vick in the Washington Post -- 9/9/08
STATS OF THE DAY
It’s called “Imperialism” - The US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet . America garrisons the globe in ways that are unprecedented, and yet, if you live in the United States, you basically wouldn't know it because we (and the media) never talk about it
According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, corporate executives at Goliath, Inc. spent $17 billion lobbying Congress in the last decade. Labor leaders at David's union hall mustered $333 million. In the 2008 election, business interests have outspent unions 18-to-1 on campaign contributions.
VIDEO SECTION
Perhaps the first sign of the Democratic uprising against the flat out, stone cold lies of the Dumb and Dumber ticket, watch Paul Begala “go to town on GOP media consultant Alex Castellanos for peddling blatant falsehoods about Sarah Palin’s “reformer” record, specifically her phantom opposition to the “Bridge to Nowhere,” which she not only supported, but for which hired a Abramoff crony to secure the earmark.”
“That’s just not true. You know, John, the facts matter. There’s lots of things that are debatable who is more qualified or less experienced or more this or more passionate, whatever. It is a fact that she campaigned and supported that bridge to nowhere. It is a fact that she hired lobbyists to get earmarks. It is a fact that as governor she lobbies for earmarks. Her state is essentially a welfare state taking money from the federal government… This is the problem. We have this false debate when we ought to have at least agreed upon facts.”
AMEN!!!! Watch:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/09/paul-begala-rips-msm-republican-operative-for-flat-out-lying-about-palins-record/
Obama interviewed by Olbermann…and Obama’s new ad finally does it…calls McCain and Palin LIARS!!! That’s right, the “L-word”. Clearly the gloves are off for now, but will they STAY OFF?
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/08/obama-on-countdown-mccainpalin-stretching-the-bounds-of-spin/
A great ad on the Internet regarding Sarah Palin’s belief that if a woman is raped, she should be forced by law to have the child:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/09/midday-open-thread-7/
Bob Woodward reveals that our idiotic, sociopath President just can’t figure out why Iraqi’s aren’t grateful to us for murdering a million of their countryman! C'mon Iraq, where's the love??? Watch:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/98147/woodward%3A_bush_doesn%E2%80%99t_get_why_iraqis_aren%27t_appreciative_of_liberation/
A great discussion among bloggers, led by Henry Rollins, on the media’s love affair with McCain and how just a little bit of reporting on the press’s part always sends him into a tizzy…
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/97844/henry_rollins_and_paul_waldman_spurn_the_media%27s_love_for_mccain/
ARTICLE SECTION: Obama, Ohio Theft 08', Fannie/Freddie
The phenomenal Rolling Stone’s reporter – Matt Taibbi – NAILS what it is about Obama that makes him special…or at least, seems to make us feel like he’s special. Whether he is, is yet to be seen…and that's part of the attraction.
A few clips from this Red Pill special:
All of this saccharine talk of "change" is so transparently a mechanical come-on that if it were anybody but Barack Obama uttering the word, you'd want to throw up at the very sound of it. And yet, as I watch Obama deliver the same hackneyed act I've seen hundreds of times before, I feel against my will that I am actually watching something different at work. After Kerry and Dean speeches, I often heard people say things like, "At least he's not as dumb as Bush." But after Obama speeches, I see audience members stumbling around in all directions with orgiastic smiles on their faces, as though they've been splashed with gallons of magic pixie paint…Watching him at work, you realize that Obama's remarkable success has almost nothing to do with the same-old product being marketed by the same-old political machine, and almost everything to do with the specific qualities of the individual who is selling it. The same stuff that sounded like hollow, invidious horseshit coming from Kerry and Gore sounds, as dispensed by Obama, like nothing less than a clarion call to collective action. And every time you feel his pitch working, you wonder: Is this some chat-room robot I'm falling in love with? Or is this an actual human being on the line, offering me an opportunity at last to fulfill my deepest desires?
SNIP
But I'm not sure there is a mask when it comes to Barack Obama. It sounds crazy, but he might actually be this guy, this couldn't-possibly-exist guy, inside and out. I heard Joe Lieberman talk about his middle-class dad, I heard Hillary plaster every corner of Pennsylvania with talk about her grandfather's sojourn in the lace factory, I heard John Edwards tell everyone who would listen, and even some who wouldn't, about what being the son of a millworker meant to him, and in every case I could feel the cold hand of political calculation crawling up my shirt as they spoke.
Then I hear Obama tell audiences about his grandmother and her time working on a bomber assembly line during World War II. Intellectually I know it's the same thing -- but when you actually watch him in person, you get this crazy sense that these schlock ready-for-paperback patriotic tales really are a big part of his emotional makeup. You listen to him talking about his grandfather waving a little American flag on the Hawaiian beach as he watched the astronauts come in to shore, and you can almost see that these moments actually have some kind of poetic meaning for him, and that he views his own already-historic run as a continuation of that pat-but-inspirational childhood story -- putting a man on the moon then, putting a black man in the White House now.
http://www.alternet.org/election08/97792/why_obama%27s_message_resonates_with_millions/
Just in case anyone was wondering, YES, the GOP vote thieves are coming to town this November again, and here are 10 ways they’re already stealing Ohio…a CRITICAL state for Obama to win.
Here are the top 10 according to election fraud investigative heroes Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis (to read details on each you have to go to the article):
1) Illegal Destruction of Evidence Surrounding the Vote Count
2) Massive Residual Elimination of Registered Voters
3) Renewed Attempts to Eliminate Additional Registered Voters
4-5) Resisting Universal Access to Absentee Ballots While Re-introducing Chaos
6) Resisting Same-Day Registration and Voting:
7) The Persistent Spread of Electronic Voting Machines
8) Residual Chaos From Precinct Elimination and Manipulation
9) Data Mining
10) Expanded Voter Identification Requirements
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/09-0
I was heartened to read this crack analysis by economist Robert Kuttner regarding the recent decision to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. I was waiting for someone to provide the larger context missing from the press reports: when FDR created Fannie Mae it was a non-profit, government run, FOR THE PUBLIC INTEREST, entity that was incredibly successful in increasing homeownership in this country. AS with so many things, it wasn’t until the greedy CEO’s and influence peddlers got their hands on it, privatized it (while socializing it’s losses) and corrupted it that things started to really go awry.
Of course, we have become such a country of such “free market fundamentalism” – our real national religion – that we (I especially mean the corporate media) can’t actually talk about the ways in which government and not for profit (take health care) approaches work exponentially better than when they are privatized and corporatized.
Let’s hope that when all the dust settles, Fannie Mae will return to what it once was, a government sponsored entity designed to help PEOPLE, not enrich shareholders.
A few clips:
FNMA was part of the New Deal's trinity of housing agencies -- the other two being the Home Owners Loan Corporation and the FHA agencies that Roosevelt formed in order to literally create the modern mortgage system. Before the New Deal, there were no long-term, self-amortizing mortgages. The loan was due and payable at the end of the term -- usually five years -- and if you couldn't persuade a bank or savings-and-loan to roll it over, you lost the house. After foreclosures exploded during the Depression, Roosevelt invented a whole new system. FNMA's job was to buy approved mortgages from banks, to replenish their working capital, so that they could make more mortgages. As the biggest buyer, FNMA also maintained standards.
The system worked like a fine watch. Home-ownership rates soared. Loan standards were generous but not stupid. Nobody in the home mortgage business got filthy rich, and mortgage lenders hardly ever went broke. The government's bank insurance funds regularly turned a profit. And here's a quaint, archaic concept: It operated in the public interest.
SNIP
Here is the cycle: The government invents something virtuous; the private market takes it over and loses hundreds of billions; the government then bails it out. This is best understood as socialized risk, privatized gain. Yes, the shareholders of Fannie Mae will deservedly lose a bundle -- it's always the shareholders who take a hit -- but the insiders who thought up subprime and the executives of Fannie Mae during the roaring '90s already made their pile.
http://www.alternet.org/story/98076/nationalize_fannie_mae_it_worked_until_it_was_privatized/
Virginia County Threatens Student Voters in Chilling Edict (another way to steal the election...stop the youth from voting)
FROM BRAD BLOG: 'If You Have Scholarship, You Could Lose This Funding,' Note Warns (Erroniously)
The Republican War on Voting continues...
As the youth and minority vote alone this year could make the difference in this year's Presidential election, the following chilling edict issued recently by the Registrar of Montgomery County, Virginia (home to Virginia Tech University), unfortunately comes as little surprise...and likely an omen as to what we'll be seeing much more of between her and November 4th...
It reads, in part: “The Code of Virginia states that a student must declare a legal residence in order to register. A legal residence can be either a student’s permanent address from home or their current college residence. By making Montgomery County your permanent residence, you have declared your independence from your parents and can no longer be claimed as a dependent on their income tax filings — check with your tax professional. If you have a scholarship attached to your former residence, you could lose this funding. And, if you change your registration to Montgomery County, Virginia Code requires you to change your driver’s license and car registration to your present address within 30 days.”
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6361
Monday, September 08, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: Olbermann Demoted, Patriot Act, Authoritarianism, Palin Facts, Insult Dog, Daily Show, Obama Answers, Woodward Revelations
"We are a nation at war and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources."
-- Sarah Palin…whoops…
THE PALIN CHOICE...A STRATEGIC WINNER (for now anyway)
This quote from Frank Rich of the NY Times pretty much sums up my thoughts on the Palin choice. Deep down inside when I heard it, then saw her, then watched her give her speech, I knew that in a totally bizarre, soul stomping way, this was the best choice McCain ever made.
Not because in reality she’s anything but a horrific and cynical choice that endangers our nation, disrespects women, and mocks our entire democratic process. She’s not capable, honest, trustworthy, or has any business running a shoe store, let alone the free world.
No, it was a great choice because Americans are a deeply “conditioned and controlled” people, and our corporate media is deeply corrupted and inane. You put those two things together, and I just knew that the media would cover her through a kind of “superstar” prism…yet with the paradoxical “she’s a regular old housewife” angle too…not that different from the way reality tv is turning the idiotic and mundane into the rich and famous.
I also knew the media would repeat GOP talking points (how many times have you heard “a breath of fresh air” in reference to Palin?) but would immediately back down from asking the tough questions as soon as the GOP started crying “liberal” (a lot more on this in today’s post). Voters meanwhile would be swept up in the drama surrounding her choice and the narrative being supplied by the GOP and the press…particularly if she could deliver a snide and mocking speech well…as she did. More than anything, she shifts the focus from the decrepit invalid McCain, and puts it on the charismatic (to many, not me), good ole' boy/girl, common folk type Sarah Palin.
It’s hard to articulate how sick I feel by the new poll numbers showing a giant Palin bounce along with the REAL STORY of the convention: the rise of the new police state (articles on that below). Both “stories” point to a very dark election and times...
Rich Writes:
That's why the Palin choice was brilliant politics - not because it rallied the G.O.P.'s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what's frightening about the top of the ticket.
By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year - and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 - they just might pull it off.
STAT OF THE DAY: 88% of FOX viewers voted Republican in 2004 (who are the other 12%...talk about idiots)
VIDEO SECTION
Yes!!! Triumph the Insult Comic Dog gets loose at the GOP Convention…if you’ve seen the videos of him in the line at the new Star Wars films opening and the Presidential debates of 04’ you’ll know how good this will be (not quite as funny as those…but watch at the end…funny stuff):
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/98031/the_rnc_was_fun..._for_triumph_to_poop_on%21/
A great Obama clip from the campaign trail answering the insanity of the GOP Convention:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/08/barack-obama-they-must-think-youre-stupid/
Daily Show on the reformed Maverick…classic!!
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/97999/jon_stewart_presents_%27mccain%3A_reformed_maverick%27/
Obama responds to the sick and twisted mocking of community organizers by the GOP at the convention…on a night in which their theme was “Service”…oh the irony…and the darkness…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/07/this-week-obama-responds-to-gop-community-organizer-insults/
Jeffrey Toobin joins Bill Maher to talk about the Palin choice and the McCain camp’s incessant, and successful whining and complaining about media bias against them...the greatest lie the Matrix ever sold: "the media is liberal"!!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/07/jeffrey-toobin-on-real-time/
Watch a surprisingly tough interview segment by Chris Wallace of Fox news of McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis and his ludicrous claim that Palin is a reformer…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/07/fns-davis-defends-palins-massive-earmarks/
ARTICLE SECTION: Olbermann Out, Police State
Expert media critic and law expert Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com (he’s on Maddow’s opening show tonight too) writes about yet another death blow delivered by the corporate media owners to the concept of an independent press. I speak of MSNBC removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, "bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral."
That’s right, one of the greatest lies ever told by the Matrix – the media is liberal – has once again been used as a battering ram against our democracy…further hastening the end of a truly free press. It’s ironic, that at the same time we were seeing the unprecedented rise and consolidation of the Police State at the GOP convention, without so much as a murmur from the media, we DO SEE the demotion of the one tv anchor that had the courage to ask the tough questions (Olbermann).
I am more fearful now that all the signs are there, clear as day, that our once strong democracy is but a farce. But to understand why this demotion is so important, and so telling, one must first go to the root of the “liberal media” myth, and the power of the right wing to manipulate and intimidate the corporate media.
A few clips:
The irrefutable fact is that nothing attracts ratings for MSNBC -- and nothing has attracted ratings in the entire history of that channel -- the way that Olbermann does. Yet here is MSNBC removing him from the anchor position, reducing his role in its political coverage, and clearly diminishing his stature (and implicitly criticizing his coverage). That is extraordinary for a media company to publicly embarrass, diminish and tarnish its own principal asset. It is plainly doing so for ideological, not ratings-based, reasons: namely, it fears doing anything to anger the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right in this country.
… the greatest and most transparent myth in American politics is that the U.S. has a "liberal media." That is a myth that is maintained, first and foremost, by defining anyone who isn't Rush Limbaugh as a "liberal." Hence, people such as the wife of Bush official Dan Senor (Campbell Brown) is a "liberal," as is Alan Greenspan's wife (Andrea Mitchell), along with establishment-worshipers such as Rush-Limbaugh-admirer Brian Williams, right-wing-talking-points-spouting Charlie Gibson, and anyone who writes for the war-enabling New York Times and Washington Post.
SNIP
The single dumbest claim in our political culture is that the huge corporations which own our establishment media outlets promote a "liberal" ideology. Why would General Electric ever use NBC and its other media assets to promote political liberalism? They lavishly benefit from the whole panoply of right-wing policies -- from endlessly expanding defense spending to deregulation. Their multiple businesses depend upon maintaining good relations with the right-wing ideologues who run our Government. Even ignoring all of the above-documented empirical facts, the very idea that a corporation like GE -- or Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC) and Time Warner (CNN) -- would actively promote a left-wing agenda in its news divisions and undermine the very Government power centers on which they rely has been the most self-evidently moronic premise one can imagine.
SNIP
This decision by MSNBC is as alarming as it is illustrative. They just implicitly chided and overtly demoted their most popular and valuable news personality because the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right demanded that they do so. It's fine for Brit Hume to host a "news program" and for hard-core right-wing ideologues to dominate cable news. The fact that Dick Cheney (understandably) viewed Tim Russert's Meet the Press as the ideal forum to allow the White House to "control the message" bothered nobody outside of a few online critics, and didn't remotely impede the perception of Russert as the Beacon of Tough and Objective Journalism. But MSNBC's ratings-based decision to feature Keith Olbermann is a grave threat to modern journalism and must be stopped. So decrees the White House and the McCain campaign, and so the GE-owned MSNBC complies.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-4
Now to my second article – a fitting follow up to the above one – regarding THE ACTUAL STORY of the GOP convention: the rise of the police state and American authoritarianism, GOP tyranny, and the Patriot Act finally and fully put into action. Those that opposed the Patriot Act certainly did so in part because it was clear that it was much more about silencing domestic opposition than it was about capturing "real terrorists".
Last week in St. Paul confirmed this fear, as the Act, and all it's Constitution stomping provisions, were on display, be it the monitoring of citizen's phone conversations, e-mails, meetings and political opinions to the shutting down of anti-war groups and locking up innocents as terrorists without the right to Habeus Corpus. There should no longer be any doubt as to the destructive power of the Patriot Act and the threat it poses to each and every Americans civil liberties.
Again, the more I find out what really happened in St. Paul, and the more I see how much that sick and twisted Sarah Palin has sent McCain’s poll numbers skyrocketing, I have this deep and sinking feeling that our country teeters on the brink. What was that famous quote? "Democracy in America will end not in a cry but with a wimper”…indeed…
A few clips:
St. Paul is a window into our future. It is a future where, as one protester told me by phone, "people have been pepper-gassed, thrown on the ground by police who had drawn their weapons, had their documents seized and their tattoos photographed before being taken away to jail." It is a future where illegal house raids are carried out. It is a future where vans containing heavily armed paramilitary units circle and film protesters. It is a future where, as the protester said, "people have been pulled from cars because their license plates were on a database and handcuffed, thrown in the back of a squad car and then watched as their vehicles were ransacked and their personal possessions from computers to literature seized." It is a future where constitutional rights mean nothing and where lawful dissent is branded a form of terrorism.
SNIP
St. Paul was not ultimately about selecting a presidential candidate. It was about the power of the corporate state to carry out pre-emptive searches, seizures and arrests. It was about squads of police in high-tech riot gear, many with drawn semiautomatic weapons, bursting into houses. It was about seized computers, journals and political literature. It was about shutting down independent journalism, even at gunpoint. It was about charging protesters with "conspiracy to commit riot," a rarely used statute that criminalizes legal dissent. It was about 500 people held in open-air detention centers. It was about the rising Orwellian state that has hollowed out the insides of America, cast away all that was good and vital, and donned its skin to shackle us all.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-0
PALIN FACTS…THE FACE OF EXTREMISM
(I know I’ve posted a lot of these already…but I want everyone who comes across this blog to get these…she clearly has been chosen to re-ignite the culture wars and create a wedge through the electorate…again)
From Moveon (with some minor additions from me):
Palin recently said that the war in Iraq is "God's task." She's even admitted she hasn't thought about the war much—just last year she was quoted saying, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."
As The Hill reports, "Governor Palin has ... opposed a crucial clean water initiative." She also approved legislation that let oil and gas companies nearly triple the amount of toxic waste they can dump into Cook Inlet, an important fishery.
Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group—who advocate for a vote on secession from the union—to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention.'"
Palin wants to teach creationism in public schools. She hasn't made clear whether she thinks evolution is a fact.
Palin doesn't believe that humans contribute to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade." 5
Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was even sponsored by BP and supports offshore drilling everywhere. Palin is also in favor of drilling in the ecologically sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn't even support abortion in the case of rape or incest.
Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches.
As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them—shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, "news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."
She DID support the Bridge to Nowhere (before she opposed it). Palin claimed that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. But in 2006, Palin supported the project repeatedly, saying that Alaska should take advantage of earmarks "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."
IRAQ - The War Within (new Woodward book)
In his "fourth insider account from the Bush White House," The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008, veteran journalist Bob Woodward "tracks the growing alarm in the White House in 2006, as U.S. casualties mounted during Iraq's plunge toward civil war." Based on "more than 150 interviews," including conversations with the President and classified documents, Woodward's book "reveals that the administration's efforts to develop a new Iraq strategy were crippled by dissension among the president's advisers, delayed by political calculations and undermined by a widening and sometimes bitter rift in civilian-military relations." Woodward portrays Bush as an out-of-touch commander in chief who was slow to recognize the threat posed by the growing Iraqi insurgency during the summer of 2006. Woodward reveals that, despite the Bush's public assertions that "he relies on his generals to tell him what to do," the surge strategy "came from the White House" and was strongly opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General George W. Casey, the Commanding General in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. The surge itself, Woodward notes, was not solely responsible for the lessening of violence in Iraq. "At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge," Woodward writes.
DETACHED PRESIDENT: As violence escalated in Iraq throughout 2006, Bush seemed detached from the reality on the ground. In a recent interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, Woodward reported that Bush could not understand why the Iraqis were seemingly unappreciative of "what we've done to them." "His beacon is liberation. He thinks we've done this magnificent thing for them. I think he still holds to that position," Woodward said. In 2006, Casey "concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself" who viewed the war in conventional terms, repeatedly asking how many of the various enemies had been captured or killed." Casey "confided to a colleague that he had the impression that Bush reflected the 'radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, 'Kill the Bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeeded.'" Similarly, deputy national security adviser Megan O'Sullivan and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley tried "in the summer of 2006 to get an Iraq strategy review underway" but "they encountered resistance," and "it was almost a month before the president would be fully engaged" in the process. With the 2006 midterm elections looming, the administration, Woodward writes, did not want to acknowledge that "Iraq had gotten so bad that they were considering a new approach. That would play into the hands of critics and antiwar Democrats." Finally, "in mid-October, after months of inaction, Hadley told the president, 'I want to start an informal internal review'...'Do it,' Bush said."
MILITARY OPPOSED THE SURGE: "While the violence in Iraq skyrocketed to unnerving levels, a second front in the war raged at home, fought at the highest levels of the White House, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department," Woodward writes. Indeed, "the idea of five brigades came from the White House, not from anybody except the White House." The Joint Chiefs of Staff "all but dismissed the surge option, worried that the armed forces were already stretched to the breaking point." Like Casey, the JCS "favored a renewal effort to train and build up the Iraqi security forces so that U.S. troops could begin to leave." By November 2006, the chiefs' frustrations burst into the open" after "news coverage that retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff had briefed the president...about a new strategy being proposed by the American Enterprise Institute." "When does the AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff," Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief, asked during one meeting. Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, warned that "the all-volunteer force might break under the strain of extended and repeated deployments" and "several of the chiefs noted that the five brigades were effectively the strategic reserve of the U.S. military, the forces on hand in case of flare-ups elsewhere in the world." But Bush decided that the surge would "keep a lid on" violence and "also help here at home, since for many the measure of success is reduction in violence." For all his certainty, however, the president "did not know what his principal military adviser, Gen. Pace had recommended." During an interview with Woodward, Bush said, "Okay, I don't know this. I'm not in these meetings, you'll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do."
SURGE NOT FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR DECREASE IN VIOLENCE: Despite conventional wisdom that "the surge had worked...the full story was more complicated." According to Woodward, the U.S. military's reliance on "a series of top-secret operations...had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it." These covert activities enabled the military "to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or the so-called special groups." Defense officials say that the military relied on "fusion cells" or "small, hybrid teams of special forces and intelligence officers" to capture "hundreds of suspected terrorists and their supporters in recent months" The book also reveals that U.S. intelligence closely tracked Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. "There is significant surveillance of Maliki. And as one source told me, 'We know everything he says.' And others I've talked to about that say, 'You can't literally know everything.' But we know a great deal," Woodward said in the 60 Minutes interview. Woodward also confirms that "the so-called Anbar Awakenings, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces," and Moqtada al-Sadr's decision "to suspend operations" of his powerful Mahdi Army also contributed to the lessening of violence.
NEWS CLIPS
"Cellphone pictures taken in the aftermath of a U.S. military operation in Afghanistan are providing new evidence that a large number of civilians may have been mistakenly killed by American troops last month," according to NATO officials. The images show at least 11 dead children; the U.S. military has insisted that only five to seven civilian were killed.
"We are a nation at war and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources."
-- Sarah Palin…whoops…
THE PALIN CHOICE...A STRATEGIC WINNER (for now anyway)
This quote from Frank Rich of the NY Times pretty much sums up my thoughts on the Palin choice. Deep down inside when I heard it, then saw her, then watched her give her speech, I knew that in a totally bizarre, soul stomping way, this was the best choice McCain ever made.
Not because in reality she’s anything but a horrific and cynical choice that endangers our nation, disrespects women, and mocks our entire democratic process. She’s not capable, honest, trustworthy, or has any business running a shoe store, let alone the free world.
No, it was a great choice because Americans are a deeply “conditioned and controlled” people, and our corporate media is deeply corrupted and inane. You put those two things together, and I just knew that the media would cover her through a kind of “superstar” prism…yet with the paradoxical “she’s a regular old housewife” angle too…not that different from the way reality tv is turning the idiotic and mundane into the rich and famous.
I also knew the media would repeat GOP talking points (how many times have you heard “a breath of fresh air” in reference to Palin?) but would immediately back down from asking the tough questions as soon as the GOP started crying “liberal” (a lot more on this in today’s post). Voters meanwhile would be swept up in the drama surrounding her choice and the narrative being supplied by the GOP and the press…particularly if she could deliver a snide and mocking speech well…as she did. More than anything, she shifts the focus from the decrepit invalid McCain, and puts it on the charismatic (to many, not me), good ole' boy/girl, common folk type Sarah Palin.
It’s hard to articulate how sick I feel by the new poll numbers showing a giant Palin bounce along with the REAL STORY of the convention: the rise of the new police state (articles on that below). Both “stories” point to a very dark election and times...
Rich Writes:
That's why the Palin choice was brilliant politics - not because it rallied the G.O.P.'s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what's frightening about the top of the ticket.
By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year - and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 - they just might pull it off.
STAT OF THE DAY: 88% of FOX viewers voted Republican in 2004 (who are the other 12%...talk about idiots)
VIDEO SECTION
Yes!!! Triumph the Insult Comic Dog gets loose at the GOP Convention…if you’ve seen the videos of him in the line at the new Star Wars films opening and the Presidential debates of 04’ you’ll know how good this will be (not quite as funny as those…but watch at the end…funny stuff):
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/98031/the_rnc_was_fun..._for_triumph_to_poop_on%21/
A great Obama clip from the campaign trail answering the insanity of the GOP Convention:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/08/barack-obama-they-must-think-youre-stupid/
Daily Show on the reformed Maverick…classic!!
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/97999/jon_stewart_presents_%27mccain%3A_reformed_maverick%27/
Obama responds to the sick and twisted mocking of community organizers by the GOP at the convention…on a night in which their theme was “Service”…oh the irony…and the darkness…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/07/this-week-obama-responds-to-gop-community-organizer-insults/
Jeffrey Toobin joins Bill Maher to talk about the Palin choice and the McCain camp’s incessant, and successful whining and complaining about media bias against them...the greatest lie the Matrix ever sold: "the media is liberal"!!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/07/jeffrey-toobin-on-real-time/
Watch a surprisingly tough interview segment by Chris Wallace of Fox news of McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis and his ludicrous claim that Palin is a reformer…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/07/fns-davis-defends-palins-massive-earmarks/
ARTICLE SECTION: Olbermann Out, Police State
Expert media critic and law expert Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com (he’s on Maddow’s opening show tonight too) writes about yet another death blow delivered by the corporate media owners to the concept of an independent press. I speak of MSNBC removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, "bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral."
That’s right, one of the greatest lies ever told by the Matrix – the media is liberal – has once again been used as a battering ram against our democracy…further hastening the end of a truly free press. It’s ironic, that at the same time we were seeing the unprecedented rise and consolidation of the Police State at the GOP convention, without so much as a murmur from the media, we DO SEE the demotion of the one tv anchor that had the courage to ask the tough questions (Olbermann).
I am more fearful now that all the signs are there, clear as day, that our once strong democracy is but a farce. But to understand why this demotion is so important, and so telling, one must first go to the root of the “liberal media” myth, and the power of the right wing to manipulate and intimidate the corporate media.
A few clips:
The irrefutable fact is that nothing attracts ratings for MSNBC -- and nothing has attracted ratings in the entire history of that channel -- the way that Olbermann does. Yet here is MSNBC removing him from the anchor position, reducing his role in its political coverage, and clearly diminishing his stature (and implicitly criticizing his coverage). That is extraordinary for a media company to publicly embarrass, diminish and tarnish its own principal asset. It is plainly doing so for ideological, not ratings-based, reasons: namely, it fears doing anything to anger the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right in this country.
… the greatest and most transparent myth in American politics is that the U.S. has a "liberal media." That is a myth that is maintained, first and foremost, by defining anyone who isn't Rush Limbaugh as a "liberal." Hence, people such as the wife of Bush official Dan Senor (Campbell Brown) is a "liberal," as is Alan Greenspan's wife (Andrea Mitchell), along with establishment-worshipers such as Rush-Limbaugh-admirer Brian Williams, right-wing-talking-points-spouting Charlie Gibson, and anyone who writes for the war-enabling New York Times and Washington Post.
SNIP
The single dumbest claim in our political culture is that the huge corporations which own our establishment media outlets promote a "liberal" ideology. Why would General Electric ever use NBC and its other media assets to promote political liberalism? They lavishly benefit from the whole panoply of right-wing policies -- from endlessly expanding defense spending to deregulation. Their multiple businesses depend upon maintaining good relations with the right-wing ideologues who run our Government. Even ignoring all of the above-documented empirical facts, the very idea that a corporation like GE -- or Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC) and Time Warner (CNN) -- would actively promote a left-wing agenda in its news divisions and undermine the very Government power centers on which they rely has been the most self-evidently moronic premise one can imagine.
SNIP
This decision by MSNBC is as alarming as it is illustrative. They just implicitly chided and overtly demoted their most popular and valuable news personality because the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right demanded that they do so. It's fine for Brit Hume to host a "news program" and for hard-core right-wing ideologues to dominate cable news. The fact that Dick Cheney (understandably) viewed Tim Russert's Meet the Press as the ideal forum to allow the White House to "control the message" bothered nobody outside of a few online critics, and didn't remotely impede the perception of Russert as the Beacon of Tough and Objective Journalism. But MSNBC's ratings-based decision to feature Keith Olbermann is a grave threat to modern journalism and must be stopped. So decrees the White House and the McCain campaign, and so the GE-owned MSNBC complies.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-4
Now to my second article – a fitting follow up to the above one – regarding THE ACTUAL STORY of the GOP convention: the rise of the police state and American authoritarianism, GOP tyranny, and the Patriot Act finally and fully put into action. Those that opposed the Patriot Act certainly did so in part because it was clear that it was much more about silencing domestic opposition than it was about capturing "real terrorists".
Last week in St. Paul confirmed this fear, as the Act, and all it's Constitution stomping provisions, were on display, be it the monitoring of citizen's phone conversations, e-mails, meetings and political opinions to the shutting down of anti-war groups and locking up innocents as terrorists without the right to Habeus Corpus. There should no longer be any doubt as to the destructive power of the Patriot Act and the threat it poses to each and every Americans civil liberties.
Again, the more I find out what really happened in St. Paul, and the more I see how much that sick and twisted Sarah Palin has sent McCain’s poll numbers skyrocketing, I have this deep and sinking feeling that our country teeters on the brink. What was that famous quote? "Democracy in America will end not in a cry but with a wimper”…indeed…
A few clips:
St. Paul is a window into our future. It is a future where, as one protester told me by phone, "people have been pepper-gassed, thrown on the ground by police who had drawn their weapons, had their documents seized and their tattoos photographed before being taken away to jail." It is a future where illegal house raids are carried out. It is a future where vans containing heavily armed paramilitary units circle and film protesters. It is a future where, as the protester said, "people have been pulled from cars because their license plates were on a database and handcuffed, thrown in the back of a squad car and then watched as their vehicles were ransacked and their personal possessions from computers to literature seized." It is a future where constitutional rights mean nothing and where lawful dissent is branded a form of terrorism.
SNIP
St. Paul was not ultimately about selecting a presidential candidate. It was about the power of the corporate state to carry out pre-emptive searches, seizures and arrests. It was about squads of police in high-tech riot gear, many with drawn semiautomatic weapons, bursting into houses. It was about seized computers, journals and political literature. It was about shutting down independent journalism, even at gunpoint. It was about charging protesters with "conspiracy to commit riot," a rarely used statute that criminalizes legal dissent. It was about 500 people held in open-air detention centers. It was about the rising Orwellian state that has hollowed out the insides of America, cast away all that was good and vital, and donned its skin to shackle us all.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-0
PALIN FACTS…THE FACE OF EXTREMISM
(I know I’ve posted a lot of these already…but I want everyone who comes across this blog to get these…she clearly has been chosen to re-ignite the culture wars and create a wedge through the electorate…again)
From Moveon (with some minor additions from me):
Palin recently said that the war in Iraq is "God's task." She's even admitted she hasn't thought about the war much—just last year she was quoted saying, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."
As The Hill reports, "Governor Palin has ... opposed a crucial clean water initiative." She also approved legislation that let oil and gas companies nearly triple the amount of toxic waste they can dump into Cook Inlet, an important fishery.
Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group—who advocate for a vote on secession from the union—to "keep up the good work" and "wished the party luck on what she called its 'inspiring convention.'"
Palin wants to teach creationism in public schools. She hasn't made clear whether she thinks evolution is a fact.
Palin doesn't believe that humans contribute to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being manmade." 5
Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was even sponsored by BP and supports offshore drilling everywhere. Palin is also in favor of drilling in the ecologically sensitive Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn't even support abortion in the case of rape or incest.
Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She's said she will only support abstinence-only approaches.
As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them—shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, "news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."
She DID support the Bridge to Nowhere (before she opposed it). Palin claimed that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. But in 2006, Palin supported the project repeatedly, saying that Alaska should take advantage of earmarks "while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."
IRAQ - The War Within (new Woodward book)
In his "fourth insider account from the Bush White House," The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008, veteran journalist Bob Woodward "tracks the growing alarm in the White House in 2006, as U.S. casualties mounted during Iraq's plunge toward civil war." Based on "more than 150 interviews," including conversations with the President and classified documents, Woodward's book "reveals that the administration's efforts to develop a new Iraq strategy were crippled by dissension among the president's advisers, delayed by political calculations and undermined by a widening and sometimes bitter rift in civilian-military relations." Woodward portrays Bush as an out-of-touch commander in chief who was slow to recognize the threat posed by the growing Iraqi insurgency during the summer of 2006. Woodward reveals that, despite the Bush's public assertions that "he relies on his generals to tell him what to do," the surge strategy "came from the White House" and was strongly opposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General George W. Casey, the Commanding General in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. The surge itself, Woodward notes, was not solely responsible for the lessening of violence in Iraq. "At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge," Woodward writes.
DETACHED PRESIDENT: As violence escalated in Iraq throughout 2006, Bush seemed detached from the reality on the ground. In a recent interview with CBS's 60 Minutes, Woodward reported that Bush could not understand why the Iraqis were seemingly unappreciative of "what we've done to them." "His beacon is liberation. He thinks we've done this magnificent thing for them. I think he still holds to that position," Woodward said. In 2006, Casey "concluded that one big problem with the war was the president himself" who viewed the war in conventional terms, repeatedly asking how many of the various enemies had been captured or killed." Casey "confided to a colleague that he had the impression that Bush reflected the 'radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, 'Kill the Bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeeded.'" Similarly, deputy national security adviser Megan O'Sullivan and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley tried "in the summer of 2006 to get an Iraq strategy review underway" but "they encountered resistance," and "it was almost a month before the president would be fully engaged" in the process. With the 2006 midterm elections looming, the administration, Woodward writes, did not want to acknowledge that "Iraq had gotten so bad that they were considering a new approach. That would play into the hands of critics and antiwar Democrats." Finally, "in mid-October, after months of inaction, Hadley told the president, 'I want to start an informal internal review'...'Do it,' Bush said."
MILITARY OPPOSED THE SURGE: "While the violence in Iraq skyrocketed to unnerving levels, a second front in the war raged at home, fought at the highest levels of the White House, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the State Department," Woodward writes. Indeed, "the idea of five brigades came from the White House, not from anybody except the White House." The Joint Chiefs of Staff "all but dismissed the surge option, worried that the armed forces were already stretched to the breaking point." Like Casey, the JCS "favored a renewal effort to train and build up the Iraqi security forces so that U.S. troops could begin to leave." By November 2006, the chiefs' frustrations burst into the open" after "news coverage that retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff had briefed the president...about a new strategy being proposed by the American Enterprise Institute." "When does the AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff," Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief, asked during one meeting. Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, warned that "the all-volunteer force might break under the strain of extended and repeated deployments" and "several of the chiefs noted that the five brigades were effectively the strategic reserve of the U.S. military, the forces on hand in case of flare-ups elsewhere in the world." But Bush decided that the surge would "keep a lid on" violence and "also help here at home, since for many the measure of success is reduction in violence." For all his certainty, however, the president "did not know what his principal military adviser, Gen. Pace had recommended." During an interview with Woodward, Bush said, "Okay, I don't know this. I'm not in these meetings, you'll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do."
SURGE NOT FULLY RESPONSIBLE FOR DECREASE IN VIOLENCE: Despite conventional wisdom that "the surge had worked...the full story was more complicated." According to Woodward, the U.S. military's reliance on "a series of top-secret operations...had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it." These covert activities enabled the military "to locate, target and kill key individuals in groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency and renegade Shia militias, or the so-called special groups." Defense officials say that the military relied on "fusion cells" or "small, hybrid teams of special forces and intelligence officers" to capture "hundreds of suspected terrorists and their supporters in recent months" The book also reveals that U.S. intelligence closely tracked Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. "There is significant surveillance of Maliki. And as one source told me, 'We know everything he says.' And others I've talked to about that say, 'You can't literally know everything.' But we know a great deal," Woodward said in the 60 Minutes interview. Woodward also confirms that "the so-called Anbar Awakenings, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces," and Moqtada al-Sadr's decision "to suspend operations" of his powerful Mahdi Army also contributed to the lessening of violence.
NEWS CLIPS
"Cellphone pictures taken in the aftermath of a U.S. military operation in Afghanistan are providing new evidence that a large number of civilians may have been mistakenly killed by American troops last month," according to NATO officials. The images show at least 11 dead children; the U.S. military has insisted that only five to seven civilian were killed.
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