Hello!
The comments on this profile are unclaimed and thus are unverified.
Do they belong to you? Claim these comments.
djchefron
Is this you? Claim Profile »
1 年 ago
in Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out on Jack and Jill Politics
I will do that I am so sorry that I offended you and I wont post anything else that might get you to stop and read something other than a link or snippet but whats really annoying is people who comment under anonymous soagain thank you for your suggegtion and carry on
1 年 ago
in Thursday Open Thread- Let it all hang out on Jack and Jill Politics
The Price of Political Favoritism and Cronyism: Lost Lives
By murrayw Wednesday June 18, 2008 2:27pm
Filed Under: Uncategorized
In the broader scheme of things, the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is a fairly obscure agency. By law its core missions are to decrease the disproportional numbers of minority children incarcerated, prevent teenage delinquency, and act to remove children from adult jails, where they are at high risk for both sexual assault and suicide. But the agency also doles out more than a quarter of a billion dollars in federal grant money every year-with little congressional oversight or attention from the public. But instead of the money being spent for what Congress intended it, the agency’s funding more recently flowed to programs with political, social or religious connections to the White House. The agency’s new priorities include encouraging teenage abstinence and promoting golf to inner city kids.
The favoritism and politicization in the awarding of grants by OJJDP would ordinarily be unremarkable compared to such higher profile examples of cronyism by the Bush administration– except for the staggering human consequences. To fund his new priorities, J. Robert Flores, the administrator of OJJDP has cut funding for the training of corrections officers to prevent the physical and sexual abuse of incarcerated children. He has cut funds for a program to counsel rape victims that had been praised by President Bush. He has cut funds to prevent the incarceration of mentally ill or mentally retarded children. And he has cut funding for programs to prevent the suicide of gay and lesbian children.
Flores’ tenure as head of Justice’s OJJDP and the favorism and cronyism which at least a half dozen subordinates and superiors have alleged was the subject of a recent Nightline broadcast which I helped report with ABC chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross and reporters Ana Schecter and Maddy Sauer. Tomorrow morning, Flores will be questioned under oath about all of this before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
And my colleague Ana has a story out this afternoon disclosing that Flores is also the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General:
The DOJ Inspector General has launched an investigation into fancy trips around the world taken by J. Robert Flores, the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which always included golf and/or tennis…
“Flores would golf during the day while on official travel around the country on tax payer funds,” said Scott Peterson, a former staff member at OJJDP who traveled with Flores on various occasions.
An OIG investigator questioned one staff member about Flores’ travel and about an ex-Colonel in the Honduran army hired by Flores who at one time ran for president of Honduras.
The staffer said the Human Resources Department [of DOJ] was concerned that giving access to the DOJ computer system to a non-US citizen and a former Honduran Colonel could be dangerous for security reasons.
Fonseca, whose Honduran military career spanned three decades, was contracted to work on faith-based and gang issues…
Fonseca attended Church with Flores, according to DOJ staffers, and is married to Deborah Lynne De Moss, a major GOP contributor. Fonseca himself donated $2,000 to Bush in 2004, the same year he was hired, and reportedly raised about $50,000 more on behalf of the president…
In a farewell to his colleagues in July of 2007, Fonesca wrote in an email: “It is my hope and prayer that the joy and peace of Jesus Christ will be real to each on of you.”
Historians are already arguing whether the Bush administration has engaged in cronyism and favoritism at the expense of professionalism and competence. Presidents of both political parties are routinely accused by those in the opposition of stacking the government with their ideological or political loyalists. But the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina and the reconstruction of Iraq, the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, and the nomination of Harriett Miers to the Supreme Court raise questions as to whether during the Bush presidency, as Paul Krugman has written in the New York Times, “politicization and cronyism have become standard operating procedure throughout the federal government.”
Setting aside its traditional mission, Flores’ office awarded a $500,000 federal grant last year to the World Golf Association. In explaining why he overrode his career staff in awarding the grant, Flores explained: “We need something… to engage the gangs and the street kids. Golf is the hook.” Flores awarded the grant despite the fact that the group’s grant proposal rated 47th best out of 104 applicants. The honorary chairman the Golf Association’s First Tee program is former George Herbert Walker Bush.
In a draft of his testimony to be given to Congress tomorrow, Flores has decided to come out swinging against those who criticize the grant to the World Golf Association, claiming that they are “biased against the wealthy.” Flores wrote in the draft testimony that he believes that the grant has been “pilloried because it was tied to golf, and I assume for those who are biased against the wealthy, because it has historically been a sport of the well-to-do.”
Flores also overruled his professional staff and awarded a million dollar grant to the Best Friends Foundation, an organization that promotes sexual abstinence. Best Friends ranked 53rd out of 104 grant applicants. Additionally, the organization refused to participate in a congressionally mandated study into the effectiveness of abstinence programs for teens.
Why then did Best Friends obtain its grant? The founder and president of Best Friends is Elayne Bennett. Her husband, Bill Bennett, had been, respectively, the Secretary of Education during the Reagan administration and the drug czar for the first Bush administration. Now at days, of course, Bill Bennett spends most of his time as a cable television personality supporting the policies of the current Bush administration Moreover, funding sexual abstinence for teenagers has been a priority for the White House.
While Best Friends and the World Golf Association received their grants, more than forty other organizations that had received higher ratings from Justice Department reviewers received no federal money at all. Those denied grants included organizations that train youth corrections officers, counsel rape victims, and work to prevent suicide among gay and lesbian youth.
A program to help troubled teens in San Diego, Vista, was ranked number two by the staff out of 202 applicants in its category of prevention and intervention but was turned down for a grant to help deal with inner city teen violence in San Diego. Why was its grant turned down? Justice Department employees said Flores did not like the fact that group distributed condoms.
Often times, effective programs had their funds curtailed for ideological reasons. Even the Girl Scouts was not immune. When one of Flores’ superiors wanted to fund a Girl Scouts program to serve girls whose mothers were incarcerated, Flores objected because the group had ties to Planned Parenthood.
Another program, designed to train adult guards to deal with teens in custody, also was denied federal money even though it was ranked by the staff number 2 out of 104 in its category.
“What Flores did in this situation is he just stomped on the heads of kids who are very much at risk and in trouble in this country,” said Earl Dunlap, who runs the guard training program for the National Partnership for Juvenile Services.
Another group that was turned down for an OJJDP grant– despite the strong recommendations of career Department employees that it be awarded one was the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), a Washington D.C. based advocacy group for victims of rape and sexual assault.
Among other things, RAINN runs a telephone hotline for victims of rape and sexual assault, which has put hundreds of thousands of victims together with local rape crisis centers. RAINN ranked 14th best among 104 prospective grantees in the category in which it applied. The group directly competed against the World Golf Association, which was ranked 47th in the competition, and Best Friends, which ranked 51st.
Flores has refused to answer questions about why he turned overruled his staff in funding RAINN. One OJJDP employee said Flores expressed concerns to him that some rape victims might possibly be counseled as to how to obtain abortions by rape counseling centers which RAINN refers those who contact the organization’s telephone hot line. President Bush, however, has publicly praised the organization, as have conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill.
But most importantly, Flores’ office is by law supposed to take a leading role in removing kids from adult jails, where they are sexually assaulted and at high risk for suicide. Indeed, that policy objective was central to the OJJDP’s creation during the Carter administration.
In 1986, the Reagan administration’s Administrator of OJJDP, Al Regnery resigned after being confronted with allegations that he, like Flores, had disregarded the recommendations of his career staff and federal regulations to award grants for political or ideological reasons. Regnery awarded grant money to the dean of the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty College to devise a high-school course on the Constitution. He awarded $789,000 to a former songwriter for “Captain Kangaroo” to study pornographic cartoons.
Regnery had also been asked by then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III to informally spearhead the Regan administration’s anti-pornography campaign. Regnery provided the initial funding to the President’s Commission on Pornography with OJJDPF funds diverted from juvenile crime prevention programs.
But most of all, Regnery ignored the federal law to act to remove children from adult jails. Regnery and his boss, then-Attorney General Edwin Meese believed that jailing children with adults was a deterrent to crime. The Reagan administration purposely did little to urge state governments to comply with the law.
The consequences to children were devastating. When incarcerated with adults, children are subjected to physical and sexual assaults, raped, and even murdered. According to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, for the year 2005, 21% of sexual assault victims in jails were juveniles even though kids only constitute less than 1% of the nation’s incarcerated population.
But even more tragic, locking up children with adults in jails and prisons often leads a significant number to commit suicide. According to one federal study, children incarcerated in adult jails and prisons commit suicide at 36 times the rate that they do when they are locked up with other juveniles.
With Regnery’s resignation, OJJDP returned to its mission of removing children from adult jails. But during Flores’ current tenure under President Bush, the removal of children from adult jails has once again become less of a priority and children are again at risk. Grant money and staff resources have instead been devoted to programs to encourage abstinence, golf and further other political priorities of the White House.
In the meantime, we have the testimony of at least one victim to the consequences. A teenager held in a county jail wrote a local district attorney saying he did not want to be exposed to adult criminals because of their bad influences:
“A wise person once told me it is not our mistakes in life that define who we are, bur rather how we recover from those mistakes. With that I would just like you to know that I’m going to use this situation to make me a stronger person and a better person.”
Two and one half months later, the boy committed suicide.
By murrayw Wednesday June 18, 2008 2:27pm
Filed Under: Uncategorized
In the broader scheme of things, the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is a fairly obscure agency. By law its core missions are to decrease the disproportional numbers of minority children incarcerated, prevent teenage delinquency, and act to remove children from adult jails, where they are at high risk for both sexual assault and suicide. But the agency also doles out more than a quarter of a billion dollars in federal grant money every year-with little congressional oversight or attention from the public. But instead of the money being spent for what Congress intended it, the agency’s funding more recently flowed to programs with political, social or religious connections to the White House. The agency’s new priorities include encouraging teenage abstinence and promoting golf to inner city kids.
The favoritism and politicization in the awarding of grants by OJJDP would ordinarily be unremarkable compared to such higher profile examples of cronyism by the Bush administration– except for the staggering human consequences. To fund his new priorities, J. Robert Flores, the administrator of OJJDP has cut funding for the training of corrections officers to prevent the physical and sexual abuse of incarcerated children. He has cut funds for a program to counsel rape victims that had been praised by President Bush. He has cut funds to prevent the incarceration of mentally ill or mentally retarded children. And he has cut funding for programs to prevent the suicide of gay and lesbian children.
Flores’ tenure as head of Justice’s OJJDP and the favorism and cronyism which at least a half dozen subordinates and superiors have alleged was the subject of a recent Nightline broadcast which I helped report with ABC chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross and reporters Ana Schecter and Maddy Sauer. Tomorrow morning, Flores will be questioned under oath about all of this before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
And my colleague Ana has a story out this afternoon disclosing that Flores is also the subject of an investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General:
The DOJ Inspector General has launched an investigation into fancy trips around the world taken by J. Robert Flores, the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which always included golf and/or tennis…
“Flores would golf during the day while on official travel around the country on tax payer funds,” said Scott Peterson, a former staff member at OJJDP who traveled with Flores on various occasions.
An OIG investigator questioned one staff member about Flores’ travel and about an ex-Colonel in the Honduran army hired by Flores who at one time ran for president of Honduras.
The staffer said the Human Resources Department [of DOJ] was concerned that giving access to the DOJ computer system to a non-US citizen and a former Honduran Colonel could be dangerous for security reasons.
Fonseca, whose Honduran military career spanned three decades, was contracted to work on faith-based and gang issues…
Fonseca attended Church with Flores, according to DOJ staffers, and is married to Deborah Lynne De Moss, a major GOP contributor. Fonseca himself donated $2,000 to Bush in 2004, the same year he was hired, and reportedly raised about $50,000 more on behalf of the president…
In a farewell to his colleagues in July of 2007, Fonesca wrote in an email: “It is my hope and prayer that the joy and peace of Jesus Christ will be real to each on of you.”
Historians are already arguing whether the Bush administration has engaged in cronyism and favoritism at the expense of professionalism and competence. Presidents of both political parties are routinely accused by those in the opposition of stacking the government with their ideological or political loyalists. But the Bush administration’s handling of Katrina and the reconstruction of Iraq, the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, and the nomination of Harriett Miers to the Supreme Court raise questions as to whether during the Bush presidency, as Paul Krugman has written in the New York Times, “politicization and cronyism have become standard operating procedure throughout the federal government.”
Setting aside its traditional mission, Flores’ office awarded a $500,000 federal grant last year to the World Golf Association. In explaining why he overrode his career staff in awarding the grant, Flores explained: “We need something… to engage the gangs and the street kids. Golf is the hook.” Flores awarded the grant despite the fact that the group’s grant proposal rated 47th best out of 104 applicants. The honorary chairman the Golf Association’s First Tee program is former George Herbert Walker Bush.
In a draft of his testimony to be given to Congress tomorrow, Flores has decided to come out swinging against those who criticize the grant to the World Golf Association, claiming that they are “biased against the wealthy.” Flores wrote in the draft testimony that he believes that the grant has been “pilloried because it was tied to golf, and I assume for those who are biased against the wealthy, because it has historically been a sport of the well-to-do.”
Flores also overruled his professional staff and awarded a million dollar grant to the Best Friends Foundation, an organization that promotes sexual abstinence. Best Friends ranked 53rd out of 104 grant applicants. Additionally, the organization refused to participate in a congressionally mandated study into the effectiveness of abstinence programs for teens.
Why then did Best Friends obtain its grant? The founder and president of Best Friends is Elayne Bennett. Her husband, Bill Bennett, had been, respectively, the Secretary of Education during the Reagan administration and the drug czar for the first Bush administration. Now at days, of course, Bill Bennett spends most of his time as a cable television personality supporting the policies of the current Bush administration Moreover, funding sexual abstinence for teenagers has been a priority for the White House.
While Best Friends and the World Golf Association received their grants, more than forty other organizations that had received higher ratings from Justice Department reviewers received no federal money at all. Those denied grants included organizations that train youth corrections officers, counsel rape victims, and work to prevent suicide among gay and lesbian youth.
A program to help troubled teens in San Diego, Vista, was ranked number two by the staff out of 202 applicants in its category of prevention and intervention but was turned down for a grant to help deal with inner city teen violence in San Diego. Why was its grant turned down? Justice Department employees said Flores did not like the fact that group distributed condoms.
Often times, effective programs had their funds curtailed for ideological reasons. Even the Girl Scouts was not immune. When one of Flores’ superiors wanted to fund a Girl Scouts program to serve girls whose mothers were incarcerated, Flores objected because the group had ties to Planned Parenthood.
Another program, designed to train adult guards to deal with teens in custody, also was denied federal money even though it was ranked by the staff number 2 out of 104 in its category.
“What Flores did in this situation is he just stomped on the heads of kids who are very much at risk and in trouble in this country,” said Earl Dunlap, who runs the guard training program for the National Partnership for Juvenile Services.
Another group that was turned down for an OJJDP grant– despite the strong recommendations of career Department employees that it be awarded one was the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), a Washington D.C. based advocacy group for victims of rape and sexual assault.
Among other things, RAINN runs a telephone hotline for victims of rape and sexual assault, which has put hundreds of thousands of victims together with local rape crisis centers. RAINN ranked 14th best among 104 prospective grantees in the category in which it applied. The group directly competed against the World Golf Association, which was ranked 47th in the competition, and Best Friends, which ranked 51st.
Flores has refused to answer questions about why he turned overruled his staff in funding RAINN. One OJJDP employee said Flores expressed concerns to him that some rape victims might possibly be counseled as to how to obtain abortions by rape counseling centers which RAINN refers those who contact the organization’s telephone hot line. President Bush, however, has publicly praised the organization, as have conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill.
But most importantly, Flores’ office is by law supposed to take a leading role in removing kids from adult jails, where they are sexually assaulted and at high risk for suicide. Indeed, that policy objective was central to the OJJDP’s creation during the Carter administration.
In 1986, the Reagan administration’s Administrator of OJJDP, Al Regnery resigned after being confronted with allegations that he, like Flores, had disregarded the recommendations of his career staff and federal regulations to award grants for political or ideological reasons. Regnery awarded grant money to the dean of the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty College to devise a high-school course on the Constitution. He awarded $789,000 to a former songwriter for “Captain Kangaroo” to study pornographic cartoons.
Regnery had also been asked by then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III to informally spearhead the Regan administration’s anti-pornography campaign. Regnery provided the initial funding to the President’s Commission on Pornography with OJJDPF funds diverted from juvenile crime prevention programs.
But most of all, Regnery ignored the federal law to act to remove children from adult jails. Regnery and his boss, then-Attorney General Edwin Meese believed that jailing children with adults was a deterrent to crime. The Reagan administration purposely did little to urge state governments to comply with the law.
The consequences to children were devastating. When incarcerated with adults, children are subjected to physical and sexual assaults, raped, and even murdered. According to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, for the year 2005, 21% of sexual assault victims in jails were juveniles even though kids only constitute less than 1% of the nation’s incarcerated population.
But even more tragic, locking up children with adults in jails and prisons often leads a significant number to commit suicide. According to one federal study, children incarcerated in adult jails and prisons commit suicide at 36 times the rate that they do when they are locked up with other juveniles.
With Regnery’s resignation, OJJDP returned to its mission of removing children from adult jails. But during Flores’ current tenure under President Bush, the removal of children from adult jails has once again become less of a priority and children are again at risk. Grant money and staff resources have instead been devoted to programs to encourage abstinence, golf and further other political priorities of the White House.
In the meantime, we have the testimony of at least one victim to the consequences. A teenager held in a county jail wrote a local district attorney saying he did not want to be exposed to adult criminals because of their bad influences:
“A wise person once told me it is not our mistakes in life that define who we are, bur rather how we recover from those mistakes. With that I would just like you to know that I’m going to use this situation to make me a stronger person and a better person.”
Two and one half months later, the boy committed suicide.
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind on Jack and Jill Politics
SKA -POWWW!!!!
....................................Earlier I mentioned that Rudy Giuliani (R) has come out of hiding after his embarrassing presidential and began attacking Barack Obama (D) on terrorism:
“There are very clear, dramatic, important differences between McCain and Obama,” Giuliani said, describing those differences as “one wanting to be on offense, the other wanting to be on defense.”
Giuliani said he believed Obama’s inexperience was evident because he likened how the U.S. should handle terrorists to how those accused in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were prosecuted.
“These are not isolated criminal acts,” Giuliani said. “They are a loosely defined conspiracy and an act of war. For Sen. Obama to suggest ’93 is the best example of how to deal with this is a good example of him wanting to go on defense.”
Apparently, Giuliani's presidential bid ended so quickly that none of his opponents got to dive into his own record and past remarks, so Obama's campaign did that today:
In an e-mail, entitled, “Giuliani v Giuliani: 1993 World Trade Center Bombing Case,” the Obama campaign points out that in 1993, Giuliani said at the time, per the New York Times, March 5, 1994: “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani declared that the verdict ‘demonstrates that New Yorkers won't meet violence with violence, but with a far greater weapon -- the law.’”
Also from that day’s Times: “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he hoped that the verdicts would lessen tensions rather than increase them. ‘It should show that our legal system is the most mature legal system in the history of the world,’ he said, ‘that it works well, that that is the place to seek vindication if you feel your rights have been violated.’”
Kaboom!
Seems Giuliani still isn't ready for prime time. But it could have worse for poor ol' Rudy. He might have had to deal with this hypocrisy if he had become the nominee. Instead, he's just another second-tier surrogate for John McCain (R), who is shaping-up to be one of the worst presidential candidates in modern history.
....................................Earlier I mentioned that Rudy Giuliani (R) has come out of hiding after his embarrassing presidential and began attacking Barack Obama (D) on terrorism:
“There are very clear, dramatic, important differences between McCain and Obama,” Giuliani said, describing those differences as “one wanting to be on offense, the other wanting to be on defense.”
Giuliani said he believed Obama’s inexperience was evident because he likened how the U.S. should handle terrorists to how those accused in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were prosecuted.
“These are not isolated criminal acts,” Giuliani said. “They are a loosely defined conspiracy and an act of war. For Sen. Obama to suggest ’93 is the best example of how to deal with this is a good example of him wanting to go on defense.”
Apparently, Giuliani's presidential bid ended so quickly that none of his opponents got to dive into his own record and past remarks, so Obama's campaign did that today:
In an e-mail, entitled, “Giuliani v Giuliani: 1993 World Trade Center Bombing Case,” the Obama campaign points out that in 1993, Giuliani said at the time, per the New York Times, March 5, 1994: “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani declared that the verdict ‘demonstrates that New Yorkers won't meet violence with violence, but with a far greater weapon -- the law.’”
Also from that day’s Times: “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he hoped that the verdicts would lessen tensions rather than increase them. ‘It should show that our legal system is the most mature legal system in the history of the world,’ he said, ‘that it works well, that that is the place to seek vindication if you feel your rights have been violated.’”
Kaboom!
Seems Giuliani still isn't ready for prime time. But it could have worse for poor ol' Rudy. He might have had to deal with this hypocrisy if he had become the nominee. Instead, he's just another second-tier surrogate for John McCain (R), who is shaping-up to be one of the worst presidential candidates in modern history.
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind on Jack and Jill Politics
The latino vote and the (wrong) CW
by kos
Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 07:59:55 AM PDT
I don't mind the CW being wrong on occasion, I just hate it when it's wrong despite all evidence to the contrary.
There was a growing consensus during the Democratic primary season that Obama was going to struggle with Latino voters -- due to the exit polls, his race, and McCain’s immigration stance. In fact, in that now-famous conference call in which Hillary Clinton indicated that she would be open to serving as Obama’s running mate, that response was spurred by concern by New York Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D) that Obama was going to have trouble with Latinos. But it looks like that CW -- at least right now -- was wrong. In addition to our recent NBC/WSJ poll, which showed Hispanics breaking for Obama 62%-28%, a new survey of 800 Latino voters from 21 states finds that 60% of them plan to vote for Obama versus 23% for McCain. That is down considerably from the 40%-plus Bush received in 2004. It’s no longer fair to say that Obama has a problem with Latino voters; McCain does. This was a case of conventional wisdom that was never based on fact, just semi-informed speculation based on primary exit polling and bad stereotypes of Latinos.
You think? Really? Stereotypes like Latinos won't vote for black candidates? Claims (fed by the Clinton campaign) that people who voted for Clinton in the primary wouldn't vote for Obama in the general? All of it ratified by a clueless media who just repeated the latest bullshit talking points from Lanny Davis and Karl Rove?
That "new survey" cited above is this one, but there are plenty of state-level surveys that similarly show Obama poised to absolutely crush McCain with this demographic.
Obama's lead among Latinos is consistent among those born in the U.S. and those born abroad. Among U.S.-born Latinos, Obama leads McCain 57 percent to 26 percent, and among foreign-born Latinos, 64 percent to 21 percent.
Likewise, Obama does well among Latinos across many states. In California, he leads 66 percent to 20 percent; in New York, 65 percent to 20 percent; in Texas, 61 percent to 22 percent. Combining data in the four southwestern states expected to be key battlegrounds -- New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada -- Obama leads McCain 57 percent to 31 percent among Latino voters. In Florida, where about half of Latino voters are Cuban-American, Obama has 43 percent to McCain's 42 percent. The poll's margin of error is 3.5 percent.
Again, that CW was always hogwash, no matter how much Republicans, Clinton partisans, and the press wanted to believe otherwise. Whether the actual hard data makes a dent in the CW remains to be seen. Remember, people still claim Bush speaks fluent Spanish (when he absolutely does not).
by kos
Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 07:59:55 AM PDT
I don't mind the CW being wrong on occasion, I just hate it when it's wrong despite all evidence to the contrary.
There was a growing consensus during the Democratic primary season that Obama was going to struggle with Latino voters -- due to the exit polls, his race, and McCain’s immigration stance. In fact, in that now-famous conference call in which Hillary Clinton indicated that she would be open to serving as Obama’s running mate, that response was spurred by concern by New York Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D) that Obama was going to have trouble with Latinos. But it looks like that CW -- at least right now -- was wrong. In addition to our recent NBC/WSJ poll, which showed Hispanics breaking for Obama 62%-28%, a new survey of 800 Latino voters from 21 states finds that 60% of them plan to vote for Obama versus 23% for McCain. That is down considerably from the 40%-plus Bush received in 2004. It’s no longer fair to say that Obama has a problem with Latino voters; McCain does. This was a case of conventional wisdom that was never based on fact, just semi-informed speculation based on primary exit polling and bad stereotypes of Latinos.
You think? Really? Stereotypes like Latinos won't vote for black candidates? Claims (fed by the Clinton campaign) that people who voted for Clinton in the primary wouldn't vote for Obama in the general? All of it ratified by a clueless media who just repeated the latest bullshit talking points from Lanny Davis and Karl Rove?
That "new survey" cited above is this one, but there are plenty of state-level surveys that similarly show Obama poised to absolutely crush McCain with this demographic.
Obama's lead among Latinos is consistent among those born in the U.S. and those born abroad. Among U.S.-born Latinos, Obama leads McCain 57 percent to 26 percent, and among foreign-born Latinos, 64 percent to 21 percent.
Likewise, Obama does well among Latinos across many states. In California, he leads 66 percent to 20 percent; in New York, 65 percent to 20 percent; in Texas, 61 percent to 22 percent. Combining data in the four southwestern states expected to be key battlegrounds -- New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada -- Obama leads McCain 57 percent to 31 percent among Latino voters. In Florida, where about half of Latino voters are Cuban-American, Obama has 43 percent to McCain's 42 percent. The poll's margin of error is 3.5 percent.
Again, that CW was always hogwash, no matter how much Republicans, Clinton partisans, and the press wanted to believe otherwise. Whether the actual hard data makes a dent in the CW remains to be seen. Remember, people still claim Bush speaks fluent Spanish (when he absolutely does not).
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind on Jack and Jill Politics
D To answer your question YES. You republicans have no problem with enriching Halliburtin or throwing billions away in that hellhole that is Iraq but trying to help out the least among us you cry that the sky is falling we have no money.
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind on Jack and Jill Politics
Another reason why we cant afford 4 more years of republican mis-rule.
....................................By JESSE J. HOLLAND, AP Labor Writer
Tue Jun 17, 2:29 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans blocked legislation Tuesday that would have given an extra three months of jobless benefits for all unemployed Americans, but congressional Democrats plan to bring the bill back by attaching it to an Iraq war funding measure.
ADVERTISEMENT
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., tried to bring the House-passed unemployment extension bill up for quick consideration in the Senate, but was stymied by an objection from Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate's No. 2 Republican. It takes unanimous agreement to fast track a bill in the Senate.
The House on Thursday passed legislation that would extend unemployment benefits for an additional 13 weeks in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for workers who exhaust their regular 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. States with an unemployment rate of 6 percent or more would get an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits.
Kyl noted that the House bill would eliminate a requirement that people work 20 weeks before receiving unemployment benefits, "something I don't think we want to change."
"So as a result, we would like to have the Senate weigh in and make sure that if this is done, it is done in the right way," he said.
The White House also has threatened to veto the House's legislation if it makes it through the Senate, preferring legislation that would only extend unemployment benefits in states with high unemployment.
House Democrats said 10 percent of the unemployed would not get unemployment benefits if the 20-week provision was not deleted.
Reid said House Democrats will resurrect the legislation by adding it to the must-pass Iraq war funding bill Congress will consider later this year. "This, I believe, will be in the package we get from the House," Reid said.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that if the House bill became law, about 3.2 million Americans would collect $11.7 billion in extended unemployment benefits over the life of the extension.
Congress has extended unemployment benefits during periods that turned out to be recessions: twice in the 1970s, again in the early 1980s and 1990s, and most recently from March 2002 through December 2003.
"It's unfortunate that the Senate was stopped from even considering a bill to give a little more help to hurting folks all across this country," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. "Unemployment numbers are at unacceptable levels, and this unemployment insurance bill is a commonsense response to the real problems that working families are facing in these tough economic times."
....................................By JESSE J. HOLLAND, AP Labor Writer
Tue Jun 17, 2:29 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans blocked legislation Tuesday that would have given an extra three months of jobless benefits for all unemployed Americans, but congressional Democrats plan to bring the bill back by attaching it to an Iraq war funding measure.
ADVERTISEMENT
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., tried to bring the House-passed unemployment extension bill up for quick consideration in the Senate, but was stymied by an objection from Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Senate's No. 2 Republican. It takes unanimous agreement to fast track a bill in the Senate.
The House on Thursday passed legislation that would extend unemployment benefits for an additional 13 weeks in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for workers who exhaust their regular 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. States with an unemployment rate of 6 percent or more would get an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits.
Kyl noted that the House bill would eliminate a requirement that people work 20 weeks before receiving unemployment benefits, "something I don't think we want to change."
"So as a result, we would like to have the Senate weigh in and make sure that if this is done, it is done in the right way," he said.
The White House also has threatened to veto the House's legislation if it makes it through the Senate, preferring legislation that would only extend unemployment benefits in states with high unemployment.
House Democrats said 10 percent of the unemployed would not get unemployment benefits if the 20-week provision was not deleted.
Reid said House Democrats will resurrect the legislation by adding it to the must-pass Iraq war funding bill Congress will consider later this year. "This, I believe, will be in the package we get from the House," Reid said.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that if the House bill became law, about 3.2 million Americans would collect $11.7 billion in extended unemployment benefits over the life of the extension.
Congress has extended unemployment benefits during periods that turned out to be recessions: twice in the 1970s, again in the early 1980s and 1990s, and most recently from March 2002 through December 2003.
"It's unfortunate that the Senate was stopped from even considering a bill to give a little more help to hurting folks all across this country," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. "Unemployment numbers are at unacceptable levels, and this unemployment insurance bill is a commonsense response to the real problems that working families are facing in these tough economic times."
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind on Jack and Jill Politics
For everyone who hates the constitution.
...................................Read this incredible article by Warren Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers
'The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.
"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility -- Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan -- were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.
A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world."
This jives with what I reported about the temporary black sites in my Poland piece:
"Former European and US intelligence officials indicate that the secret prisons across the European Union, first identified by the Washington Post, are likely not permanent locations, making them difficult to identify.
What some believe was a network of secret prisons was most probably a series of facilities used temporarily by the United States when needed, officials say. Interim "black sites" - secret facilities used for covert activities - can be as small as a room in a government building, which only becomes a black site when a prisoner is brought in for short-term detainment and interrogation.
For example, detainees could be shuffled from a temporary black site in one country to a temporary black site in another country, never staying long enough at either to attract notice. Such an arrangement, sources say, would allow plausible deniability by the host country as well as the US. Investigators looking for a permanent facility would never find one. Such a site, sources say, would have to be near an airport.
Washington-based security expert and president of Global Security John Pike says short-term detention in already existing facilities would be "sensible tradecraft" and a more likely scenario than a network of specific, long term prisons.
"A short-term operation does not develop a big signature and you don't have a continual parade of people," said Pike. "When it becomes noticeable, they move it all."
"It's a shell game," he added."
What the McClatchy article shows is that not only did the Bush administration violate Geneva Conventions, domestic and international laws, but they knew what they were doing was illegal-so much so, that they hid their crimes from human rights investigators, all the while claiming "we don't torture." They lied to us and to the world all the while moving prisoners around like pieces of garbage, so that no one would know the crimes the Bush administration and their proxies were committing
We learned from the Nuremberg trials that people are accountable for what their government does in their name.
Yes, we will be judged by history and in the harshest possible light.
Moreover, we now know that Bush administration proxies essentially held mostly innocent people, whom they tortured and who subsequently after their release became radicalized.
In other words, they built Manchurian candidates- terrorists- either knowingly or as a symptom of their illegal torture program. However you choose to view this staggering revelation it does not change the reality we are now faced with. Namely, the Bush administration has created the very monsters they claimed to be fighting against. They created an enemy, a global enemy, that did not exist in such numbers and across so many geographical boundaries. They have put us in danger and they have made this country less safe than it has ever been.
Consider this too, that if the cabal that has taken over our government did indeed knowingly create a program in which they manufactured terrorists to go along with their faux war on terror, then this would be a whole new level of evil that I have no words left through which to vent my anger. There are not enough words, not in any language, to explain or justify or likely even deal with this possibility. But it is a possibility that should nevertheless be considered, given what we now know about the people of the Bush regime.
For me, the only question left is this: now what?
...................................Read this incredible article by Warren Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers
'The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.
"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility -- Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan -- were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.
A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world."
This jives with what I reported about the temporary black sites in my Poland piece:
"Former European and US intelligence officials indicate that the secret prisons across the European Union, first identified by the Washington Post, are likely not permanent locations, making them difficult to identify.
What some believe was a network of secret prisons was most probably a series of facilities used temporarily by the United States when needed, officials say. Interim "black sites" - secret facilities used for covert activities - can be as small as a room in a government building, which only becomes a black site when a prisoner is brought in for short-term detainment and interrogation.
For example, detainees could be shuffled from a temporary black site in one country to a temporary black site in another country, never staying long enough at either to attract notice. Such an arrangement, sources say, would allow plausible deniability by the host country as well as the US. Investigators looking for a permanent facility would never find one. Such a site, sources say, would have to be near an airport.
Washington-based security expert and president of Global Security John Pike says short-term detention in already existing facilities would be "sensible tradecraft" and a more likely scenario than a network of specific, long term prisons.
"A short-term operation does not develop a big signature and you don't have a continual parade of people," said Pike. "When it becomes noticeable, they move it all."
"It's a shell game," he added."
What the McClatchy article shows is that not only did the Bush administration violate Geneva Conventions, domestic and international laws, but they knew what they were doing was illegal-so much so, that they hid their crimes from human rights investigators, all the while claiming "we don't torture." They lied to us and to the world all the while moving prisoners around like pieces of garbage, so that no one would know the crimes the Bush administration and their proxies were committing
We learned from the Nuremberg trials that people are accountable for what their government does in their name.
Yes, we will be judged by history and in the harshest possible light.
Moreover, we now know that Bush administration proxies essentially held mostly innocent people, whom they tortured and who subsequently after their release became radicalized.
In other words, they built Manchurian candidates- terrorists- either knowingly or as a symptom of their illegal torture program. However you choose to view this staggering revelation it does not change the reality we are now faced with. Namely, the Bush administration has created the very monsters they claimed to be fighting against. They created an enemy, a global enemy, that did not exist in such numbers and across so many geographical boundaries. They have put us in danger and they have made this country less safe than it has ever been.
Consider this too, that if the cabal that has taken over our government did indeed knowingly create a program in which they manufactured terrorists to go along with their faux war on terror, then this would be a whole new level of evil that I have no words left through which to vent my anger. There are not enough words, not in any language, to explain or justify or likely even deal with this possibility. But it is a possibility that should nevertheless be considered, given what we now know about the people of the Bush regime.
For me, the only question left is this: now what?
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind on Jack and Jill Politics
Dont worry I think if Ms. Hassebeck wants to verbally joust with Mrs Obama she will come off as a bigger idiot than even I give her credit for.
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Speak your mind on Jack and Jill Politics
Yesterday on race for the white house John Harwood said that McCain was leading in Mich. so I went to Pollster.com and it clearly showed that Obama was up 47 to 42 I was like WTF.
1 年 ago
in Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody on Jack and Jill Politics
I have to share this with you Thanks To Dj Timmy Richardson AKA TOT
....................................Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian
10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."
3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.
2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
....................................Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian
10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."
3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.
2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
1 年 ago
in Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody on Jack and Jill Politics
Since the msm follows the polls maybe they will hype this one as much as the so call white surbaran soccer moms with a plus/minus rate of 9%
...................................PPP Poll: Obama Up Big in Ohio
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds Sen. Barack Obama begins the general election in Ohio with a double digit lead over John McCain, 50% to 39%.
It's a major improvement from most recent previous Ohio poll, taken at the height of the Jeremiah Wright controversy in March, which showed Obama trailing McCain 49% to 41%.
Bottom line: "The key difference for Obama is that he's got his party behind him to a much greater extent than he did then."
...................................PPP Poll: Obama Up Big in Ohio
A new Public Policy Polling survey finds Sen. Barack Obama begins the general election in Ohio with a double digit lead over John McCain, 50% to 39%.
It's a major improvement from most recent previous Ohio poll, taken at the height of the Jeremiah Wright controversy in March, which showed Obama trailing McCain 49% to 41%.
Bottom line: "The key difference for Obama is that he's got his party behind him to a much greater extent than he did then."
1 年 ago
in Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody on Jack and Jill Politics
John John John why are breaking your own laws that you helped pass?
...................................John McCain has scammed the public campaign finance system that he purports to champion. Last February, the Washington Post, first reported on McCain's scam based on a "stern warning" to McCain from the Republican Chair of the FEC -- and noted the potential for criminal, yes criminal, behavior by McCain:
Knowingly violating the spending limit is a criminal offense that could put McCain at risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison.
The DNC filed an FEC complaint against McCain over this issue, but there's basically been no FEC because of Mitch McConnell's political games. So, having waited the requisite time, the DNC is going to court:
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Tuesday announced it would file suit in federal court next week to force the Federal Election Commission to investigate Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
The complaint alleges that McCain violated campaign finance laws by opting out of the federal matching fund program after already benefitting from it by using anticipated matching funds to secure a private loan. That assistance helped his campaign in the GOP primary.
The DNC had already filed a complaint with the FEC earlier this year when McCain withdrew from the program.
“John McCain poses as a reformer but when it comes to his own campaign, he thinks the rules apply to everyone but him,” said DNC Chairman Howard Dean. “Taxpayer dollars helped him secure a private loan to keep his campaign afloat, he got free ballot access which saved his campaign money and yet it’s clear he doesn’t think he needs to stick by the legally binding contract he signed. John McCain is breaking the law and doesn’t seem to care.”
...................................John McCain has scammed the public campaign finance system that he purports to champion. Last February, the Washington Post, first reported on McCain's scam based on a "stern warning" to McCain from the Republican Chair of the FEC -- and noted the potential for criminal, yes criminal, behavior by McCain:
Knowingly violating the spending limit is a criminal offense that could put McCain at risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison.
The DNC filed an FEC complaint against McCain over this issue, but there's basically been no FEC because of Mitch McConnell's political games. So, having waited the requisite time, the DNC is going to court:
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Tuesday announced it would file suit in federal court next week to force the Federal Election Commission to investigate Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).
The complaint alleges that McCain violated campaign finance laws by opting out of the federal matching fund program after already benefitting from it by using anticipated matching funds to secure a private loan. That assistance helped his campaign in the GOP primary.
The DNC had already filed a complaint with the FEC earlier this year when McCain withdrew from the program.
“John McCain poses as a reformer but when it comes to his own campaign, he thinks the rules apply to everyone but him,” said DNC Chairman Howard Dean. “Taxpayer dollars helped him secure a private loan to keep his campaign afloat, he got free ballot access which saved his campaign money and yet it’s clear he doesn’t think he needs to stick by the legally binding contract he signed. John McCain is breaking the law and doesn’t seem to care.”
1 年 ago
in Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody on Jack and Jill Politics
Monday, June 16, 2008
Keystone Kondi's Kwazy Kwestions
As the End of Bush Days draws near, the desperation and insanity of the administration and its neoconservative policies become more and more apparent. One of the most recent examples is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's address to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on June 3, where she once and for all crossed over to the dark side and swore fealty to Lord Cheney's quest to start a shooting war with Iran.
With Horse's Caboose Condi hitched onto the Cheney train, can Armageddon be far behind?
Smart Girl
Condi was never part of the administration's policy team. She was the smart professor gal from Stanford who Cheney and Don Rumsfeld brought aboard to tutor the Bush kid in things like geography and history that he should have learned before he graduated from Yale and Harvard but didn't. Making her National Security Adviser gave her an excuse to be in meetings where she could whisper answers in Bush's ear (which is how he graduated from Yale and Harvard). Sticking Condi in the job also guaranteed Dick and Don wouldn't have to put up with a pesky NSA who actually wanted to influence foreign policy. When the time came to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State, Condi was the perfect choice. They wouldn't have to cut her out of the decision loop they way they cut Powell out. Condi was never in the loop to begin with.
The Goebbels Brigade tried to make her seem like a real player on the world stage for a time. There was talk at one point of putting Condi up for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Rice 2008 urges John McCain to pick Condi as his running mate. At the "Run Condi Run" web site (moonfruit.com, really) you can donate to the organization and buy McCain/Rice 2008 bumper stickers and even order a Condi bobble head doll.
Rumors surfaced in summer of 2007 that suggested Condi and Cheney were locking horns over Iran policy. By October of that year though, when she told Congress that Iran was America's "single greatest challenge," it was clear that she was still Uncle Dick's good little girl.
Good Girl
In her June 3, 2008 speech to AIPAC, Condi began her verbal assault on Iran with the standard neoconservative misquote of a remark made by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then she launched into a fabulist speculation on Iran's nuclear intentions.
Now, we hear Iran’s rulers say that they do not seek a nuclear weapon, only peaceful nuclear energy. Well, then why have they rejected the past offers from the international community for incentives, even cooperation on light water reactors? Why has Iran rejected, thus far, Russia’s offer of uranium enrichment in Russia? Why, as the IAEA’s most recent report shows, is Iran continuing to enrich uranium, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions? Why, as the IAEA also suggests, are parts of Iran’s nuclear program under the control of the Iranian military? And why is Iran continuing to deny international experts full access to its nuclear facilities? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s just hard to imagine that there are innocent answers to these questions. (Applause.)
It's even harder to imagine that we could have a Secretary of State who possesses the intellectual sophistication of a slow child, and yet we do. Ms. Rice seems wholly oblivious to the nature of the competition among today's political entities; the struggle for control of the kind of power it takes to run industries and to transport goods and to transform entire regions of the world.
The international maneuvering revolves around who will control how fast the last of the planet's oil gets used, and how much the rest of us have to pay for it, and who gets to direct the world's transition to alternate energy sources. Hence, the real political leverage Iran has to gain from its nuclear program will come from a viable energy industry, not nuclear weapons. Possessing nuclear weapons would amount to little more than painting a bull's eye on its back. Using one would be tantamount to self-genocide; the retaliation would be the virtual end of the Persian race.
The "past offers from the international community for incentives" regarding cooperation on light water reactors or uranium enrichment performed in another country all involve making Iran dependent on other nations—nations the U.S. can control—in order for its energy industry to function. That's like telling the Iranians they can have a farm as long as they grows their crops in Iowa and use John Deere tractors and American labor and let us keep the seeds for next year, and if they're good little sand tics we'll let them buy some of their own food from us.
We don’t need the IAEA report to "suggest" that Iran is continuing to enrich uranium. Iran isn't keeping it a secret; it has flat out told the whole world it's continuing to enrich uranium. As a party to the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has an "inalienable right" to pursue production of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. For the UN Security Council to have passed a resolution denying Iran of an inalienable right makes the Security Council in violation of the NPT and the resolution itself illegal, so someone please explain to me how Iran is "in violation" of an illegal resolution.
The IAEA report does not suggest that "parts of Iran’s nuclear program [are] under the control of the Iranian military." It says that Iran needs to "clarify procurement and R&D; activities of military related institutes and companies that could be nuclear related." (Italics mine.) The distance between those two statements you could drive an armored division through. Military related industries are ideal for providing certain precision components for nuclear fuel refinery. Remember how those aluminum tubes Iraq was supposedly using for a uranium centrifuge turned out to be parts for artillery rockets?
The IAEA report states that in early April the Agency recently "requested Iran to provide, as a transparency measure, access to additional locations related, inter alia, to the manufacturing of centrifuges, R&D; on uranium enrichment, and uranium mining and milling." That's all pretty innocent stuff related to the kind of uranium enrichment we already know Iran is doing. Less than two months later, when the report was released, Iran hadn't gotten back to the Agency about taking it to those additional locations. That's not surprising; this was hardly a pressing matter.
A first semester political science student at the most obscure community college in America has sufficient imagination to arrive at these "innocent" conclusions. Why doesn’t our Secretary of State?
Doctor Ditz
Condoleezza Rice, Ph.D. is part of a diplomacy machine that's designed not to work. Demanding Iran give up its uranium enrichment program as a precondition to direct diplomatic talks was a head fake. Cheney's neocons made Iran an offer it couldn't accept; that way they could say they tried diplomacy even though they really didn't.
The goal of the Bush regime's foreign policy is to promote conflict, not avoid it. The neoconservatives desire nothing more ardently than to create a second Cold War with our old adversaries Russia and China, whose client state Iran is assuming the role of Eastern Europe. Rounding out the lineup for round two, Venezuela is stepping in for Cuba and Iraq is substituting for West Germany.
The neo-communists won't engage us in an arms race this time around. They'll let us be the ones who pour national treasure down a sand dune on fantastic weapons that can't win the kinds of wars we fight until we're bankrupt. One commonly hears these days that we're playing checkers and the Russians and Chinese are playing chess. A more ironically apt analogy is that they have graduated to duplicate bridge while we continue to play war.
Even more ironic is that we won the first Cold War because our economic model was superior, but in the second Cold War we're likely to find that the neocoms have become better capitalists than we are.
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword .
Keystone Kondi's Kwazy Kwestions
As the End of Bush Days draws near, the desperation and insanity of the administration and its neoconservative policies become more and more apparent. One of the most recent examples is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's address to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on June 3, where she once and for all crossed over to the dark side and swore fealty to Lord Cheney's quest to start a shooting war with Iran.
With Horse's Caboose Condi hitched onto the Cheney train, can Armageddon be far behind?
Smart Girl
Condi was never part of the administration's policy team. She was the smart professor gal from Stanford who Cheney and Don Rumsfeld brought aboard to tutor the Bush kid in things like geography and history that he should have learned before he graduated from Yale and Harvard but didn't. Making her National Security Adviser gave her an excuse to be in meetings where she could whisper answers in Bush's ear (which is how he graduated from Yale and Harvard). Sticking Condi in the job also guaranteed Dick and Don wouldn't have to put up with a pesky NSA who actually wanted to influence foreign policy. When the time came to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State, Condi was the perfect choice. They wouldn't have to cut her out of the decision loop they way they cut Powell out. Condi was never in the loop to begin with.
The Goebbels Brigade tried to make her seem like a real player on the world stage for a time. There was talk at one point of putting Condi up for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. Rice 2008 urges John McCain to pick Condi as his running mate. At the "Run Condi Run" web site (moonfruit.com, really) you can donate to the organization and buy McCain/Rice 2008 bumper stickers and even order a Condi bobble head doll.
Rumors surfaced in summer of 2007 that suggested Condi and Cheney were locking horns over Iran policy. By October of that year though, when she told Congress that Iran was America's "single greatest challenge," it was clear that she was still Uncle Dick's good little girl.
Good Girl
In her June 3, 2008 speech to AIPAC, Condi began her verbal assault on Iran with the standard neoconservative misquote of a remark made by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Then she launched into a fabulist speculation on Iran's nuclear intentions.
Now, we hear Iran’s rulers say that they do not seek a nuclear weapon, only peaceful nuclear energy. Well, then why have they rejected the past offers from the international community for incentives, even cooperation on light water reactors? Why has Iran rejected, thus far, Russia’s offer of uranium enrichment in Russia? Why, as the IAEA’s most recent report shows, is Iran continuing to enrich uranium, in violation of UN Security Council resolutions? Why, as the IAEA also suggests, are parts of Iran’s nuclear program under the control of the Iranian military? And why is Iran continuing to deny international experts full access to its nuclear facilities? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s just hard to imagine that there are innocent answers to these questions. (Applause.)
It's even harder to imagine that we could have a Secretary of State who possesses the intellectual sophistication of a slow child, and yet we do. Ms. Rice seems wholly oblivious to the nature of the competition among today's political entities; the struggle for control of the kind of power it takes to run industries and to transport goods and to transform entire regions of the world.
The international maneuvering revolves around who will control how fast the last of the planet's oil gets used, and how much the rest of us have to pay for it, and who gets to direct the world's transition to alternate energy sources. Hence, the real political leverage Iran has to gain from its nuclear program will come from a viable energy industry, not nuclear weapons. Possessing nuclear weapons would amount to little more than painting a bull's eye on its back. Using one would be tantamount to self-genocide; the retaliation would be the virtual end of the Persian race.
The "past offers from the international community for incentives" regarding cooperation on light water reactors or uranium enrichment performed in another country all involve making Iran dependent on other nations—nations the U.S. can control—in order for its energy industry to function. That's like telling the Iranians they can have a farm as long as they grows their crops in Iowa and use John Deere tractors and American labor and let us keep the seeds for next year, and if they're good little sand tics we'll let them buy some of their own food from us.
We don’t need the IAEA report to "suggest" that Iran is continuing to enrich uranium. Iran isn't keeping it a secret; it has flat out told the whole world it's continuing to enrich uranium. As a party to the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has an "inalienable right" to pursue production of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. For the UN Security Council to have passed a resolution denying Iran of an inalienable right makes the Security Council in violation of the NPT and the resolution itself illegal, so someone please explain to me how Iran is "in violation" of an illegal resolution.
The IAEA report does not suggest that "parts of Iran’s nuclear program [are] under the control of the Iranian military." It says that Iran needs to "clarify procurement and R&D; activities of military related institutes and companies that could be nuclear related." (Italics mine.) The distance between those two statements you could drive an armored division through. Military related industries are ideal for providing certain precision components for nuclear fuel refinery. Remember how those aluminum tubes Iraq was supposedly using for a uranium centrifuge turned out to be parts for artillery rockets?
The IAEA report states that in early April the Agency recently "requested Iran to provide, as a transparency measure, access to additional locations related, inter alia, to the manufacturing of centrifuges, R&D; on uranium enrichment, and uranium mining and milling." That's all pretty innocent stuff related to the kind of uranium enrichment we already know Iran is doing. Less than two months later, when the report was released, Iran hadn't gotten back to the Agency about taking it to those additional locations. That's not surprising; this was hardly a pressing matter.
A first semester political science student at the most obscure community college in America has sufficient imagination to arrive at these "innocent" conclusions. Why doesn’t our Secretary of State?
Doctor Ditz
Condoleezza Rice, Ph.D. is part of a diplomacy machine that's designed not to work. Demanding Iran give up its uranium enrichment program as a precondition to direct diplomatic talks was a head fake. Cheney's neocons made Iran an offer it couldn't accept; that way they could say they tried diplomacy even though they really didn't.
The goal of the Bush regime's foreign policy is to promote conflict, not avoid it. The neoconservatives desire nothing more ardently than to create a second Cold War with our old adversaries Russia and China, whose client state Iran is assuming the role of Eastern Europe. Rounding out the lineup for round two, Venezuela is stepping in for Cuba and Iraq is substituting for West Germany.
The neo-communists won't engage us in an arms race this time around. They'll let us be the ones who pour national treasure down a sand dune on fantastic weapons that can't win the kinds of wars we fight until we're bankrupt. One commonly hears these days that we're playing checkers and the Russians and Chinese are playing chess. A more ironically apt analogy is that they have graduated to duplicate bridge while we continue to play war.
Even more ironic is that we won the first Cold War because our economic model was superior, but in the second Cold War we're likely to find that the neocoms have become better capitalists than we are.
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes at Pen and Sword .
1 年 ago
in Tuesday Open Thread: Hi Everybody on Jack and Jill Politics
Is our mis adventure in Iraq about protecting our "freedoms" or is about getting paid?.
...................................
KBR Machinery Company had the Army over a barrel: if the Army refused to pay KBR's inflated bills (more than $1B in unjustified costs), KBR threatened to shut off payments to its subcontractors, which in turn would stop feeding the army in Iraq.
Of course, the fact that KBR was then a subsidiary of Halliburton didn't hurt its bargaining position either; the Halliburton board knew what it was doing when it gave Dick Cheney $80 million he wasn't contractually entitled to as he moved from its executive suite to the White House. But even a less-well-connected company would have had an intolerably powerful bargaining position vis-à-vis the army: the company could basically hold the troops hostage.
And KBR was able to squeeze more than money out of the Army; it also demanded and got high performance ratings, which helped it win a share of a contract for $150 billion just awarded for support functions in Iraq.
Hilzoy is right: time to de-privatize, or at least insist on always having a second source ready to take over, as any sane private company does when contracting out an essential function.
What a great issue for the Obama campaign!
...................................
KBR Machinery Company had the Army over a barrel: if the Army refused to pay KBR's inflated bills (more than $1B in unjustified costs), KBR threatened to shut off payments to its subcontractors, which in turn would stop feeding the army in Iraq.
Of course, the fact that KBR was then a subsidiary of Halliburton didn't hurt its bargaining position either; the Halliburton board knew what it was doing when it gave Dick Cheney $80 million he wasn't contractually entitled to as he moved from its executive suite to the White House. But even a less-well-connected company would have had an intolerably powerful bargaining position vis-à-vis the army: the company could basically hold the troops hostage.
And KBR was able to squeeze more than money out of the Army; it also demanded and got high performance ratings, which helped it win a share of a contract for $150 billion just awarded for support functions in Iraq.
Hilzoy is right: time to de-privatize, or at least insist on always having a second source ready to take over, as any sane private company does when contracting out an essential function.
What a great issue for the Obama campaign!
1 年 ago
in Monday Open Thread - How was the weekend? on Jack and Jill Politics
Why the Christian right fears Obama
The language of faith isn’t a foreign tongue to the senator of Illinois. He talks the talk and easily engages believers. In fact, Obama has a better footing with the religious-minded than competitor John McCain.
By Daniel Gilgoff
On paper, the Democrats' nomination of Barack Obama is a gift to the Christian right.
Obama's liberal record on gay rights and abortion — he opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal "partial-birth abortion" ban and, as a state senator in Illinois, opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which attempted to protect unsuccessfully aborted fetuses — should make him easy enough for "values voters" to oppose.
(Illustration by Web Bryant, USA TODAY)
And Obama has struggled among religious voters in this year's Democratic primaries. In Ohio, his 2-to-1 loss among white Catholics and a 20-point loss among white evangelicals gave Hillary Clinton's campaign a second wind that kept her in the race these last three months.
That same faith-based divide undergirded Obama's losses in Pennsylvania — where Clinton took nearly 60% of weekly churchgoers — and Indiana. Heavily religious West Virginia and Kentucky, meanwhile, handed Obama his biggest defeats of this campaign, even though he appeared to have the nomination sealed up by the time voters in those states cast their ballots.
Yet for months, the Christian right had been more worried about the prospect of Obama's nomination than Clinton's. The evangelical Family Research Council's frequent e-mail alerts to supporters laid into Obama while largely laying off of Clinton. One of Focus on the Family Action's recent "Action Update" explained why the Illinois senator is as "extreme as they come on family issues" — using 26 footnotes to make its case — but barely mentions his Democratic opponent.
The conservative Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights, for its part, had gone so far as to call Obama's position on abortion "Hitlerian," even though it was virtually indistinguishable from Clinton's.
Of course, part of the reason for the Christian right's focus on Obama is his emergence months ago as the Democratic front-runner. But the movement's leaders also fear him because, despite his weak showing among religious Democrats, he has shown unusual potential for appealing to the rank-and-file evangelicals and other religious voters who usually back the Christian right's Republican allies.
Openly faithful
That's largely because Obama isn't afraid to discuss faith's role in his life, including his come-to-Jesus experience. Speaking of the influence that the now well-known Rev. Jeremiah Wright had on him, Obama told a church audience last year: "He introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him."
Such talk is more reminiscent of George W. Bush than of recent Democratic presidential nominees. "To a lot of people, Sen. Obama is an unknown suit that talks the 'evangelical talk' without actually saying anything on his opinions or his track record," says Tom McClusky, the Family Research Council's chief lobbyist. "In the general election, Sen. Obama speaking 'religion' is going to sound more familiar and natural than Sen. (John) McCain."
And — to evangelicals, at least — more familiar than Hillary Clinton, whose mainline Methodist background helps explain her preference for discussing the importance of doing good works over her personal relationship with Jesus. "Clinton does not compete with the religious right because her message is one not of hope and of healing, but of meeting the pragmatic concerns of economic advantage," says Douglas Kmiec, a conservative Catholic legal scholar and former adviser to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. (Kmiec has since endorsed Obama.)
"Obama has the capacity to win the soul of the working person," Kmiec says, "whereas Mrs. Clinton speaks to the pocketbook and the here and now."
Another asset for Obama among religious conservatives is his past expressions of admiration for the Christian right and its positions, unusual for a liberal Democrat. In The Audacity of Hope — whose title, taken from one of Wright's sermons, is itself a testament to the influence of religion in his life — Obama writes of tinkering with his website's indelicate language on his pro-choice position after receiving a letter from an anti-abortion doctor.
Obama's gestures to the faithful come at a moment when evangelicals, nearly 80% of whom supported President Bush in 2004, are showing less allegiance to the GOP than perhaps at any time since Jerry Falwell launched the modern Christian right three decades ago. A report last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 40% of white evangelicals ages 18 to 29 identified themselves as Republicans. That's down from 55% two years earlier. With more evangelicals taking up traditionally progressive causes such as the environment and international human rights, challenging the hot-button agenda of the old line Christian right, Obama's pledge to work across the partisan divide might have special resonance with them.
To be sure, Obama still has his work cut out. After all, evangelicals and other religious conservatives have heavily supported Republicans for decades. Even so, Democrats need to make only small inroads among values voters to change the outcome of a close election. For instance, had John Kerry won half of Ohio's weekly churchgoers in 2004 — as current Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland managed to do in his 2006 race — he would be in the White House today. Building such inroads has been made easier by McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
McCain's challenge
Though McCain has vowed to improve his famously strained relations with the Christian right — remember his 2006 commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University? — he still lacks a full-time religious outreach director. Obama's campaign hired such an operative well over a year ago and has expanded its faith outreach staff since then.
In the past month alone, McCain has outraged many in the Christian right by publicly rejecting Texas evangelist John Hagee and Ohio pastor Rod Parsley, two of his few major Christian right backers. He also had a relatively measured response to the California Supreme Court's legalization of gay marriage, an issue that galvanizes social conservatives.
And though his solidly anti-abortion voting record could be a big selling point to religious conservatives, McCain has done little to advertise it on the campaign trail. "A number of us have met with his people to let him know that our base is going to be dramatically lacking energy unless he really makes their hearts beat on an issue like life," says Texas-based Christian activist Kelly Shackelford, who runs an advocacy group associated with Focus on the Family. "The candidate has to speak on those issues in a way that people believe him."
So far, McCain has demurred. Obama, though not telling values voters what they want to hear on issues such as abortion, is nonetheless speaking to them. And the Christian right's heart is beating faster.
Dan Gilgoff is politics editor at Beliefnet.com and author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War. His God-o-Meter blog on religion in the presidential race is at www.beliefnet.com/godometer.</br>
The language of faith isn’t a foreign tongue to the senator of Illinois. He talks the talk and easily engages believers. In fact, Obama has a better footing with the religious-minded than competitor John McCain.
By Daniel Gilgoff
On paper, the Democrats' nomination of Barack Obama is a gift to the Christian right.
Obama's liberal record on gay rights and abortion — he opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal "partial-birth abortion" ban and, as a state senator in Illinois, opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which attempted to protect unsuccessfully aborted fetuses — should make him easy enough for "values voters" to oppose.
(Illustration by Web Bryant, USA TODAY)
And Obama has struggled among religious voters in this year's Democratic primaries. In Ohio, his 2-to-1 loss among white Catholics and a 20-point loss among white evangelicals gave Hillary Clinton's campaign a second wind that kept her in the race these last three months.
That same faith-based divide undergirded Obama's losses in Pennsylvania — where Clinton took nearly 60% of weekly churchgoers — and Indiana. Heavily religious West Virginia and Kentucky, meanwhile, handed Obama his biggest defeats of this campaign, even though he appeared to have the nomination sealed up by the time voters in those states cast their ballots.
Yet for months, the Christian right had been more worried about the prospect of Obama's nomination than Clinton's. The evangelical Family Research Council's frequent e-mail alerts to supporters laid into Obama while largely laying off of Clinton. One of Focus on the Family Action's recent "Action Update" explained why the Illinois senator is as "extreme as they come on family issues" — using 26 footnotes to make its case — but barely mentions his Democratic opponent.
The conservative Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights, for its part, had gone so far as to call Obama's position on abortion "Hitlerian," even though it was virtually indistinguishable from Clinton's.
Of course, part of the reason for the Christian right's focus on Obama is his emergence months ago as the Democratic front-runner. But the movement's leaders also fear him because, despite his weak showing among religious Democrats, he has shown unusual potential for appealing to the rank-and-file evangelicals and other religious voters who usually back the Christian right's Republican allies.
Openly faithful
That's largely because Obama isn't afraid to discuss faith's role in his life, including his come-to-Jesus experience. Speaking of the influence that the now well-known Rev. Jeremiah Wright had on him, Obama told a church audience last year: "He introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ. I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him."
Such talk is more reminiscent of George W. Bush than of recent Democratic presidential nominees. "To a lot of people, Sen. Obama is an unknown suit that talks the 'evangelical talk' without actually saying anything on his opinions or his track record," says Tom McClusky, the Family Research Council's chief lobbyist. "In the general election, Sen. Obama speaking 'religion' is going to sound more familiar and natural than Sen. (John) McCain."
And — to evangelicals, at least — more familiar than Hillary Clinton, whose mainline Methodist background helps explain her preference for discussing the importance of doing good works over her personal relationship with Jesus. "Clinton does not compete with the religious right because her message is one not of hope and of healing, but of meeting the pragmatic concerns of economic advantage," says Douglas Kmiec, a conservative Catholic legal scholar and former adviser to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. (Kmiec has since endorsed Obama.)
"Obama has the capacity to win the soul of the working person," Kmiec says, "whereas Mrs. Clinton speaks to the pocketbook and the here and now."
Another asset for Obama among religious conservatives is his past expressions of admiration for the Christian right and its positions, unusual for a liberal Democrat. In The Audacity of Hope — whose title, taken from one of Wright's sermons, is itself a testament to the influence of religion in his life — Obama writes of tinkering with his website's indelicate language on his pro-choice position after receiving a letter from an anti-abortion doctor.
Obama's gestures to the faithful come at a moment when evangelicals, nearly 80% of whom supported President Bush in 2004, are showing less allegiance to the GOP than perhaps at any time since Jerry Falwell launched the modern Christian right three decades ago. A report last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 40% of white evangelicals ages 18 to 29 identified themselves as Republicans. That's down from 55% two years earlier. With more evangelicals taking up traditionally progressive causes such as the environment and international human rights, challenging the hot-button agenda of the old line Christian right, Obama's pledge to work across the partisan divide might have special resonance with them.
To be sure, Obama still has his work cut out. After all, evangelicals and other religious conservatives have heavily supported Republicans for decades. Even so, Democrats need to make only small inroads among values voters to change the outcome of a close election. For instance, had John Kerry won half of Ohio's weekly churchgoers in 2004 — as current Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland managed to do in his 2006 race — he would be in the White House today. Building such inroads has been made easier by McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
McCain's challenge
Though McCain has vowed to improve his famously strained relations with the Christian right — remember his 2006 commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University? — he still lacks a full-time religious outreach director. Obama's campaign hired such an operative well over a year ago and has expanded its faith outreach staff since then.
In the past month alone, McCain has outraged many in the Christian right by publicly rejecting Texas evangelist John Hagee and Ohio pastor Rod Parsley, two of his few major Christian right backers. He also had a relatively measured response to the California Supreme Court's legalization of gay marriage, an issue that galvanizes social conservatives.
And though his solidly anti-abortion voting record could be a big selling point to religious conservatives, McCain has done little to advertise it on the campaign trail. "A number of us have met with his people to let him know that our base is going to be dramatically lacking energy unless he really makes their hearts beat on an issue like life," says Texas-based Christian activist Kelly Shackelford, who runs an advocacy group associated with Focus on the Family. "The candidate has to speak on those issues in a way that people believe him."
So far, McCain has demurred. Obama, though not telling values voters what they want to hear on issues such as abortion, is nonetheless speaking to them. And the Christian right's heart is beating faster.
Dan Gilgoff is politics editor at Beliefnet.com and author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War. His God-o-Meter blog on religion in the presidential race is at www.beliefnet.com/godometer.</br>
1 年 ago
in Monday Open Thread - How was the weekend? on Jack and Jill Politics
Monday, June 16, 2008
Organizer of McCain meeting to woo Clinton supporters is infamous for trying to keep blacks out of Thomas Jefferson family reunions
John Aravosis (DC) · 6/16/2008
From Ben Smith:
A key organizer of John McCain's meeting Saturday with former supporters of Hillary Clinton is best known for her role in another bitter American fight: The effort by some white descendants of Thomas Jefferson to keep his possible African-American descendants out of family gatherings....
Abeles first made the news in 2003, when she and her husband, then-Monticello Association President Nat Abeles, led the fight to keep members of the Hemings family -- descendants of Jefferson slave and, some historians believe, mistress Sally Hemmings -- out of a gathering of the Monticello Association, which is made up of lineal descendants of the third president.
Ben then quotes AP:
The wife of a Thomas Jefferson family association official said Friday that she masqueraded as a 67-year-old black woman on an Internet chat room in a bid to keep descendants of a reputed Jefferson mistress out of this weekend's family reunion.
"It might have been somewhat unethical," said Paulie Abeles of Washington, D.C., who participated for eight months in the Yahoo! message board created for relatives of Jefferson slave Sally Hemings.
"It might have been childish, but I really think I was working in the best interest of the majority of the family members to make the reunion a calm and civilized gathering," she said.
Organizer of McCain meeting to woo Clinton supporters is infamous for trying to keep blacks out of Thomas Jefferson family reunions
John Aravosis (DC) · 6/16/2008
From Ben Smith:
A key organizer of John McCain's meeting Saturday with former supporters of Hillary Clinton is best known for her role in another bitter American fight: The effort by some white descendants of Thomas Jefferson to keep his possible African-American descendants out of family gatherings....
Abeles first made the news in 2003, when she and her husband, then-Monticello Association President Nat Abeles, led the fight to keep members of the Hemings family -- descendants of Jefferson slave and, some historians believe, mistress Sally Hemmings -- out of a gathering of the Monticello Association, which is made up of lineal descendants of the third president.
Ben then quotes AP:
The wife of a Thomas Jefferson family association official said Friday that she masqueraded as a 67-year-old black woman on an Internet chat room in a bid to keep descendants of a reputed Jefferson mistress out of this weekend's family reunion.
"It might have been somewhat unethical," said Paulie Abeles of Washington, D.C., who participated for eight months in the Yahoo! message board created for relatives of Jefferson slave Sally Hemings.
"It might have been childish, but I really think I was working in the best interest of the majority of the family members to make the reunion a calm and civilized gathering," she said.
1 年 ago
in Monday Open Thread - How was the weekend? on Jack and Jill Politics
This is what happens when you dont question and let the president do whatever he wants.Thank you Supreme Court for restoring some of our rights.
...................................By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
They shouted "Allahu Akbar" — God is great — as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar's head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face.
Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst."
But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.
"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.
An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.
McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.
This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.
The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.
Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.
While he was held at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, Akhtiar said, "When I had a dispute with the interrogator, when I asked, 'What is my crime?' the soldiers who took me back to my cell would throw me down the stairs."
The McClatchy reporting also documented how U.S. detention policies fueled support for extremist Islamist groups. For some detainees who went home far more militant than when they arrived, Guantanamo became a school for jihad, or Islamic holy war.
Of course, Guantanamo also houses Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who along with four other high-profile detainees faces military commission charges. Cases also have been opened against 15 other detainees for assorted offenses, such as attending al Qaida training camps.
But because the Bush administration set up Guantanamo under special rules that allowed indefinite detention without charges or federal court challenge, it's impossible to know how many of the 770 men who've been held there were terrorists.
A series of White House directives placed "suspected enemy combatants" beyond the reach of U.S. law or the 1949 Geneva Conventions' protections for prisoners of war. President Bush and Congress then passed legislation that protected those detention rules.
However, the administration's attempts to keep the detainees beyond the law came crashing down last week.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that detainees have the right to contest their cases in federal courts, and that a 2006 act of Congress forbidding them from doing so was unconstitutional. "Some of these petitioners have been in custody for six years with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention," the court said in its 5-4 decision, overturning Bush administration policy and two acts of Congress that codified it.
One former administration official said the White House's initial policy and legal decisions "probably made instances of abuse more likely. ... My sense is that decisions taken at the top probably sent a signal that the old rules don't apply ... certainly some people read what was coming out of Washington: The gloves are off, this isn't a Geneva world anymore."
Like many others who previously worked in the White House or Defense Department, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the legal and political sensitivities of the issue.
McClatchy's interviews are the most ever conducted with former Guantanamo detainees by a U.S. news organization. The issue of detainee backgrounds has previously been reported on by other media outlets, but not as comprehensively.
McClatchy also in many cases did more research than either the U.S. military at Guantanamo, which often relied on secondhand accounts, or the detainees' lawyers, who relied mainly on the detainees' accounts.
The Pentagon declined to discuss the findings. It issued a statement Friday saying that military policy always has been to treat detainees humanely, to investigate credible complaints of abuse and to hold people accountable. The statement says that an al Qaida manual urges detainees to lie about prison conditions once they're released. "We typically do not respond to each and every allegation of abuse made by past and present detainees," the statement said.
LITTLE INTELLIGENCE VALUE
The McClatchy investigation found that top Bush administration officials knew within months of opening the Guantanamo detention center that many of the prisoners there weren't "the worst of the worst." From the moment that Guantanamo opened in early 2002, former Secretary of the Army Thomas White said, it was obvious that at least a third of the population didn't belong there.
Of the 66 detainees whom McClatchy interviewed, the evidence indicates that 34 of them, about 52 percent, had connections with militant groups or activities. At least 23 of those 34, however, were Taliban foot soldiers, conscripts, low-level volunteers or adventure-seekers who knew nothing about global terrorism.
Only seven of the 66 were in positions to have had any ties to al Qaida's leadership, and it isn't clear that any of them knew any terrorists of consequence.
If the former detainees whom McClatchy interviewed are any indication — and several former high-ranking U.S. administration and defense officials said in interviews that they are — most of the prisoners at Guantanamo weren't terrorist masterminds but men who were of no intelligence value in the war on terrorism.
Far from being an ally of the Taliban, Mohammed Akhtiar had fled to Pakistan shortly after the puritanical Islamist group took power in 1996, the senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. The Taliban burned down Akhtiar's house after he refused to ally his tribe with their government.
The Americans detained Akhtiar, the intelligence officer said, because they were given bad information by another Afghan who'd harbored a personal vendetta against Akhtiar going back to his time as a commander against the Soviet military during the 1980s.
"In some of these cases, tribal feuds and political feuds have played a big role" in people getting sent to Guantanamo, the intelligence officer said.
He didn't want his name used, partly because he didn't want to offend the Western officials he works with and partly because Afghan intelligence officers are assassinated regularly.
"There were Afghans being sent to Guantanamo because of bad intelligence," said Helaluddin Helal, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for security from 2002 to early 2004. "In the beginning, everyone was trying to give intelligence to the Americans ... the Americans were taking action without checking this information."
Nusrat Khan was in his 70s when American troops shoved him into an isolation cell at Bagram in the spring of 2003. They blindfolded him, put earphones on his head and tied his hands behind his back for almost four weeks straight, Khan said.
By the time he was taken out of the cell, Khan — who'd had at least two strokes years before he was arrested and was barely able to walk — was half-mad and couldn't stand without help. Khan said that he was taken to Guantanamo on a stretcher.
Several Afghan officials, including the country's attorney general, later said that Khan, who spent more than three years at Guantanamo, wasn't a threat to anyone; he'd been turned in as an insurgent leader because of decades-old rivalries with competing Afghan militias.
Ghalib Hassan was an Interior Ministry-appointed district commander in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, a man who'd risked his life to help the U.S.-backed government. Din Mohammed, the former governor of that province and now the governor of Kabul, said there was no question that local tribal leaders, offended by Hassan's brusque style, fed false information about him to local informants used by American troops.
The Pentagon declined requests to make top officials, including the secretary of defense, available to respond to McClatchy's findings. The defense official in charge of detainee affairs, Sandra Hodgkinson, refused to speak with McClatchy.
The Pentagon's only response to a series of written questions from McClatchy, and to a list of 63 of the 66 former detainees interviewed for this story, was a three-paragraph statement.
"These unlawful combatants have provided valuable information in the struggle to protect the U.S. public from an enemy bent on murder of innocent civilians," Col. Gary Keck said in the statement. He provided no examples.
Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, until recently the commanding officer at Guantanamo, said that detainees had supplied crucial information about al Qaida, the Taliban and other terrorist groups.
"Included with the folks that were brought here in 2002 were, by and large, the main leadership of al Qaida and the Taliban," he said in a phone interview.
Buzby agreed, however, that some detainees were from the bottom rung.
"It's all about developing the mosaic ... there's value to both ends of the spectrum," he said.
Former senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials, however, said McClatchy's conclusions squared with their own observations.
"As far as intelligence value from those in Gitmo, I got tired of telling the people writing reports based on their interrogations that their material was essentially worthless," a U.S. intelligence officer said in an e-mail, using the military's slang for Guantanamo.
Guantanamo authorities periodically sent analysts at the U.S. Central Command "rap sheets on various prisoners and asked our assessment whether they merited continued confinement," said the analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "Over about three years, I assessed around 40 of these individuals, mostly Afghans. ... I only can remember recommending that ONE should be kept at GITMO."
'WAR COUNCIL' REWRITES DETAINEE LAW
At a Pentagon briefing in the spring of 2002, a senior Army intelligence officer expressed doubt about the entire intelligence-gathering process.
"He said that we're not getting anything, and his thought was that we're not getting anything because there might not be anything to get," said Donald J. Guter, a retired rear admiral who was the head of the Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps at the time.
Many detainees were "swept up in the pot" by large operations conducted by Afghan troops allied with the Americans, said former Army Secretary White, who's now a partner at DKRW Energy, an energy company in Houston.
One of the Afghan detainees at Guantanamo, White recalled, was more than 80 years old.
Army Spc. Eric Barclais, who was a military intelligence interrogator at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan from September 2002 through January 2003, told military investigators in sworn testimony that "We recommended lots of folks be released from (Bagram), but they were not. I believe some people ended up at (Guantanamo) that had no business being sent there."
"You have to understand some folks were detained because they got turned in by neighbors or family members who were feuding with them," Barclais said. "Yes, they had weapons. Everyone had weapons. Some were Soviet-era and could not even be fired."
A former Pentagon official told McClatchy that he was shocked at times by the backgrounds of men held at Guantanamo.
" 'Captured with weapon near the Pakistan border?' " the official said. "Are you kidding me?"
"The screening, the understanding of who we had was horrible," he said. "That's why we had so many useless people at Gitmo."
In 2002, a CIA analyst interviewed several dozen detainees at Guantanamo and reported to senior National Security Council officials that many of them didn't belong there, a former White House official said.
Despite the analyst's findings, the administration made no further review of the Guantanamo detainees. The White House had determined that all of them were enemy combatants, the former official said.
Rather than taking a closer look at whom they were holding, a group of five White House, Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers who called themselves the "War Council" devised a legal framework that enabled the administration to detain suspected "enemy combatants" indefinitely with few legal rights.
The threat of new terrorist attacks, the War Council argued, allowed President Bush to disregard or rewrite American law, international treaties and the Uniform Code of Military Justice to permit unlimited detentions and harsh interrogations.
The group further argued that detainees had no legal right to defend themselves, and that American soldiers — along with the War Council members, their bosses and Bush — should be shielded from prosecution for actions that many experts argue are war crimes.
With the support of Bush, Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the group shunted aside the military justice system, and in February 2002, Bush suspended the legal protection for detainees spelled out in Common Article Three of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which outlaws degrading treatment and torture.
The Bush administration didn't launch a formal review of the detentions until a 2004 Supreme Court decision forced it to begin holding military tribunals at Guantanamo. The Supreme Court ruling last week said that the tribunals were deeply flawed, but it didn't close them down.
In late 2004, Pentagon officials decided to restrict further interrogations at Guantanamo to detainees who were considered "high value" for their suspected knowledge of terrorist groups or their potential of returning to the battlefield, according to Matthew Waxman, who was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, the Defense Department's head official for detainee matters, from August 2004 to December 2005.
"Maybe three-quarters of the detainees by 2005 were no longer regularly interrogated," said Waxman, who's now a law professor at Columbia University.
At that time, about 500 men were still being held at Guantanamo.
So far, the military commissions have publicly charged only six detainees — less than 1 percent of the more than 770 who've been at Guantanamo — with direct involvement in the 9-11 terrorist attacks; they dropped the charges in one case. Those few cases are now in question after the high court's ruling Thursday.
About 500 detainees — nearly two out of three — have been released.
During a military review board hearing at Guantanamo, Mohammed Akhtiar had some advice for the U.S. officers seated before him.
"I wish," he said, "that the United States would realize who the bad guys are and who the good guys are."
HOW FOOT SOLDIERS, FARMERS GOT SWEPT UP
How did the United States come to hold so many farmers and goat herders among the real terrorists at Guantanamo? Among the reasons:
After conceding control of the country to U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, top Taliban and al Qaida leaders escaped to Pakistan, leaving the battlefield filled with ragtag groups of volunteers and conscripts who knew nothing about global terrorism.
The majority of the detainees taken to Guantanamo came into U.S. custody indirectly, from Afghan troops, warlords, mercenaries and Pakistani police who often were paid cash by the number and alleged importance of the men they handed over. Foot soldiers brought in hundreds of dollars, but commanders were worth thousands. Because of the bounties — advertised in fliers that U.S. planes dropped all over Afghanistan in late 2001 — there was financial incentive for locals to lie about the detainees' backgrounds. Only 33 percent of the former detainees — 22 out of 66 — whom McClatchy interviewed were detained initially by U.S. forces. Of those 22, 17 were Afghans who'd been captured around mid-2002 or later as part of the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, a fight that had more to do with counter-insurgency than terrorism.
American soldiers and interrogators were susceptible to false reports passed along by informants and officials looking to settle old grudges in Afghanistan, a nation that had experienced more than two decades of occupation and civil war before U.S. troops arrived. This meant that Americans were likely to arrest Afghans who had no significant connections to militant groups. For example, of those 17 Afghans whom the U.S. captured in mid-2002 or later, at least 12 of them were innocent of the allegations against them, according to interviews with Afghan intelligence and security officials.
Detainees at Guantanamo had no legal venue in which to challenge their detentions. The only mechanism set up to evaluate their status, an internal tribunal in the late summer of 2004, rested on the decisions of rotating panels of three U.S. military officers. The tribunals made little effort to find witnesses who weren't present at Guantanamo, and detainees were in no position to challenge the allegations against them.
...................................By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
They shouted "Allahu Akbar" — God is great — as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar's head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face.
Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst."
But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.
"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.
An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.
McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.
This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.
The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.
Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.
While he was held at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, Akhtiar said, "When I had a dispute with the interrogator, when I asked, 'What is my crime?' the soldiers who took me back to my cell would throw me down the stairs."
The McClatchy reporting also documented how U.S. detention policies fueled support for extremist Islamist groups. For some detainees who went home far more militant than when they arrived, Guantanamo became a school for jihad, or Islamic holy war.
Of course, Guantanamo also houses Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who along with four other high-profile detainees faces military commission charges. Cases also have been opened against 15 other detainees for assorted offenses, such as attending al Qaida training camps.
But because the Bush administration set up Guantanamo under special rules that allowed indefinite detention without charges or federal court challenge, it's impossible to know how many of the 770 men who've been held there were terrorists.
A series of White House directives placed "suspected enemy combatants" beyond the reach of U.S. law or the 1949 Geneva Conventions' protections for prisoners of war. President Bush and Congress then passed legislation that protected those detention rules.
However, the administration's attempts to keep the detainees beyond the law came crashing down last week.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that detainees have the right to contest their cases in federal courts, and that a 2006 act of Congress forbidding them from doing so was unconstitutional. "Some of these petitioners have been in custody for six years with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention," the court said in its 5-4 decision, overturning Bush administration policy and two acts of Congress that codified it.
One former administration official said the White House's initial policy and legal decisions "probably made instances of abuse more likely. ... My sense is that decisions taken at the top probably sent a signal that the old rules don't apply ... certainly some people read what was coming out of Washington: The gloves are off, this isn't a Geneva world anymore."
Like many others who previously worked in the White House or Defense Department, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the legal and political sensitivities of the issue.
McClatchy's interviews are the most ever conducted with former Guantanamo detainees by a U.S. news organization. The issue of detainee backgrounds has previously been reported on by other media outlets, but not as comprehensively.
McClatchy also in many cases did more research than either the U.S. military at Guantanamo, which often relied on secondhand accounts, or the detainees' lawyers, who relied mainly on the detainees' accounts.
The Pentagon declined to discuss the findings. It issued a statement Friday saying that military policy always has been to treat detainees humanely, to investigate credible complaints of abuse and to hold people accountable. The statement says that an al Qaida manual urges detainees to lie about prison conditions once they're released. "We typically do not respond to each and every allegation of abuse made by past and present detainees," the statement said.
LITTLE INTELLIGENCE VALUE
The McClatchy investigation found that top Bush administration officials knew within months of opening the Guantanamo detention center that many of the prisoners there weren't "the worst of the worst." From the moment that Guantanamo opened in early 2002, former Secretary of the Army Thomas White said, it was obvious that at least a third of the population didn't belong there.
Of the 66 detainees whom McClatchy interviewed, the evidence indicates that 34 of them, about 52 percent, had connections with militant groups or activities. At least 23 of those 34, however, were Taliban foot soldiers, conscripts, low-level volunteers or adventure-seekers who knew nothing about global terrorism.
Only seven of the 66 were in positions to have had any ties to al Qaida's leadership, and it isn't clear that any of them knew any terrorists of consequence.
If the former detainees whom McClatchy interviewed are any indication — and several former high-ranking U.S. administration and defense officials said in interviews that they are — most of the prisoners at Guantanamo weren't terrorist masterminds but men who were of no intelligence value in the war on terrorism.
Far from being an ally of the Taliban, Mohammed Akhtiar had fled to Pakistan shortly after the puritanical Islamist group took power in 1996, the senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. The Taliban burned down Akhtiar's house after he refused to ally his tribe with their government.
The Americans detained Akhtiar, the intelligence officer said, because they were given bad information by another Afghan who'd harbored a personal vendetta against Akhtiar going back to his time as a commander against the Soviet military during the 1980s.
"In some of these cases, tribal feuds and political feuds have played a big role" in people getting sent to Guantanamo, the intelligence officer said.
He didn't want his name used, partly because he didn't want to offend the Western officials he works with and partly because Afghan intelligence officers are assassinated regularly.
"There were Afghans being sent to Guantanamo because of bad intelligence," said Helaluddin Helal, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for security from 2002 to early 2004. "In the beginning, everyone was trying to give intelligence to the Americans ... the Americans were taking action without checking this information."
Nusrat Khan was in his 70s when American troops shoved him into an isolation cell at Bagram in the spring of 2003. They blindfolded him, put earphones on his head and tied his hands behind his back for almost four weeks straight, Khan said.
By the time he was taken out of the cell, Khan — who'd had at least two strokes years before he was arrested and was barely able to walk — was half-mad and couldn't stand without help. Khan said that he was taken to Guantanamo on a stretcher.
Several Afghan officials, including the country's attorney general, later said that Khan, who spent more than three years at Guantanamo, wasn't a threat to anyone; he'd been turned in as an insurgent leader because of decades-old rivalries with competing Afghan militias.
Ghalib Hassan was an Interior Ministry-appointed district commander in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, a man who'd risked his life to help the U.S.-backed government. Din Mohammed, the former governor of that province and now the governor of Kabul, said there was no question that local tribal leaders, offended by Hassan's brusque style, fed false information about him to local informants used by American troops.
The Pentagon declined requests to make top officials, including the secretary of defense, available to respond to McClatchy's findings. The defense official in charge of detainee affairs, Sandra Hodgkinson, refused to speak with McClatchy.
The Pentagon's only response to a series of written questions from McClatchy, and to a list of 63 of the 66 former detainees interviewed for this story, was a three-paragraph statement.
"These unlawful combatants have provided valuable information in the struggle to protect the U.S. public from an enemy bent on murder of innocent civilians," Col. Gary Keck said in the statement. He provided no examples.
Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, until recently the commanding officer at Guantanamo, said that detainees had supplied crucial information about al Qaida, the Taliban and other terrorist groups.
"Included with the folks that were brought here in 2002 were, by and large, the main leadership of al Qaida and the Taliban," he said in a phone interview.
Buzby agreed, however, that some detainees were from the bottom rung.
"It's all about developing the mosaic ... there's value to both ends of the spectrum," he said.
Former senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials, however, said McClatchy's conclusions squared with their own observations.
"As far as intelligence value from those in Gitmo, I got tired of telling the people writing reports based on their interrogations that their material was essentially worthless," a U.S. intelligence officer said in an e-mail, using the military's slang for Guantanamo.
Guantanamo authorities periodically sent analysts at the U.S. Central Command "rap sheets on various prisoners and asked our assessment whether they merited continued confinement," said the analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "Over about three years, I assessed around 40 of these individuals, mostly Afghans. ... I only can remember recommending that ONE should be kept at GITMO."
'WAR COUNCIL' REWRITES DETAINEE LAW
At a Pentagon briefing in the spring of 2002, a senior Army intelligence officer expressed doubt about the entire intelligence-gathering process.
"He said that we're not getting anything, and his thought was that we're not getting anything because there might not be anything to get," said Donald J. Guter, a retired rear admiral who was the head of the Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps at the time.
Many detainees were "swept up in the pot" by large operations conducted by Afghan troops allied with the Americans, said former Army Secretary White, who's now a partner at DKRW Energy, an energy company in Houston.
One of the Afghan detainees at Guantanamo, White recalled, was more than 80 years old.
Army Spc. Eric Barclais, who was a military intelligence interrogator at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan from September 2002 through January 2003, told military investigators in sworn testimony that "We recommended lots of folks be released from (Bagram), but they were not. I believe some people ended up at (Guantanamo) that had no business being sent there."
"You have to understand some folks were detained because they got turned in by neighbors or family members who were feuding with them," Barclais said. "Yes, they had weapons. Everyone had weapons. Some were Soviet-era and could not even be fired."
A former Pentagon official told McClatchy that he was shocked at times by the backgrounds of men held at Guantanamo.
" 'Captured with weapon near the Pakistan border?' " the official said. "Are you kidding me?"
"The screening, the understanding of who we had was horrible," he said. "That's why we had so many useless people at Gitmo."
In 2002, a CIA analyst interviewed several dozen detainees at Guantanamo and reported to senior National Security Council officials that many of them didn't belong there, a former White House official said.
Despite the analyst's findings, the administration made no further review of the Guantanamo detainees. The White House had determined that all of them were enemy combatants, the former official said.
Rather than taking a closer look at whom they were holding, a group of five White House, Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers who called themselves the "War Council" devised a legal framework that enabled the administration to detain suspected "enemy combatants" indefinitely with few legal rights.
The threat of new terrorist attacks, the War Council argued, allowed President Bush to disregard or rewrite American law, international treaties and the Uniform Code of Military Justice to permit unlimited detentions and harsh interrogations.
The group further argued that detainees had no legal right to defend themselves, and that American soldiers — along with the War Council members, their bosses and Bush — should be shielded from prosecution for actions that many experts argue are war crimes.
With the support of Bush, Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the group shunted aside the military justice system, and in February 2002, Bush suspended the legal protection for detainees spelled out in Common Article Three of the 1949 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war, which outlaws degrading treatment and torture.
The Bush administration didn't launch a formal review of the detentions until a 2004 Supreme Court decision forced it to begin holding military tribunals at Guantanamo. The Supreme Court ruling last week said that the tribunals were deeply flawed, but it didn't close them down.
In late 2004, Pentagon officials decided to restrict further interrogations at Guantanamo to detainees who were considered "high value" for their suspected knowledge of terrorist groups or their potential of returning to the battlefield, according to Matthew Waxman, who was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, the Defense Department's head official for detainee matters, from August 2004 to December 2005.
"Maybe three-quarters of the detainees by 2005 were no longer regularly interrogated," said Waxman, who's now a law professor at Columbia University.
At that time, about 500 men were still being held at Guantanamo.
So far, the military commissions have publicly charged only six detainees — less than 1 percent of the more than 770 who've been at Guantanamo — with direct involvement in the 9-11 terrorist attacks; they dropped the charges in one case. Those few cases are now in question after the high court's ruling Thursday.
About 500 detainees — nearly two out of three — have been released.
During a military review board hearing at Guantanamo, Mohammed Akhtiar had some advice for the U.S. officers seated before him.
"I wish," he said, "that the United States would realize who the bad guys are and who the good guys are."
HOW FOOT SOLDIERS, FARMERS GOT SWEPT UP
How did the United States come to hold so many farmers and goat herders among the real terrorists at Guantanamo? Among the reasons:
After conceding control of the country to U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, top Taliban and al Qaida leaders escaped to Pakistan, leaving the battlefield filled with ragtag groups of volunteers and conscripts who knew nothing about global terrorism.
The majority of the detainees taken to Guantanamo came into U.S. custody indirectly, from Afghan troops, warlords, mercenaries and Pakistani police who often were paid cash by the number and alleged importance of the men they handed over. Foot soldiers brought in hundreds of dollars, but commanders were worth thousands. Because of the bounties — advertised in fliers that U.S. planes dropped all over Afghanistan in late 2001 — there was financial incentive for locals to lie about the detainees' backgrounds. Only 33 percent of the former detainees — 22 out of 66 — whom McClatchy interviewed were detained initially by U.S. forces. Of those 22, 17 were Afghans who'd been captured around mid-2002 or later as part of the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, a fight that had more to do with counter-insurgency than terrorism.
American soldiers and interrogators were susceptible to false reports passed along by informants and officials looking to settle old grudges in Afghanistan, a nation that had experienced more than two decades of occupation and civil war before U.S. troops arrived. This meant that Americans were likely to arrest Afghans who had no significant connections to militant groups. For example, of those 17 Afghans whom the U.S. captured in mid-2002 or later, at least 12 of them were innocent of the allegations against them, according to interviews with Afghan intelligence and security officials.
Detainees at Guantanamo had no legal venue in which to challenge their detentions. The only mechanism set up to evaluate their status, an internal tribunal in the late summer of 2004, rested on the decisions of rotating panels of three U.S. military officers. The tribunals made little effort to find witnesses who weren't present at Guantanamo, and detainees were in no position to challenge the allegations against them.
1 年 ago
in Hell…to the Naw! on Jack and Jill Politics
What about Tavis Smiley and if they fill the position from NBC ranks David Shuster is the man
1 年 ago
in Friday Open Thread…..yeah, it’s Friday on Jack and Jill Politics
Obama's 17 State Strategy
by: Chris Bowers
Fri Jun 13, 2008 at 11:39
While the Obama campaign will keep staff to all 50 states, and while it is keeping its volunteer campaign infrastructure in place in all 50 states as well, today it is sending 3,600 organizing fellows to 17 states. Unless plans have changed in the last seventeen days, the seventeen states are as follows:
In an email to people accepted into their Organizing Fellowship Program, the Obama camp listed the 17 states below as the ones where they need the most resources:
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Iowa
Michigan
Missouri
North Carolina
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
Nevada
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin
So, Obama will run a 50 state campaign, but it will be layered with a 17 state focus. This isn't a contradiction, at least not as I understand the 50-state strategy. The strategy does not dictate that resources are spent equally across the entire nation, just that some resources are spent everywhere. Certain areas are still more heavily targeted, but no area is ignored.
Overall, I would have ignored Washington, and used those resources on Alaska, Connecticut, Montana and Nebraska-02 instead. (Combined, those three states and one congressional district have roughly the same population as Washington). Given Bob Barr and the large African-American population, Georgia probably makes more sense than an alternate possibility, targeting Indiana and the Dakotas. (Combined, Indiana and the Dakotas have roughly the same population as Georgia).
I look at the list in more detail in the extended entry.
Chris Bowers :: Obama's 17 State Strategy
Thoughts on the targeted and the targeted-nots:
Georgia, huh? This is perhaps the biggest surprise on the list, but the Obama campaign seems ready to make a play for it. One factor might be that Libertarian nominee Bob Barr is from Georgia, and he has won elections here before. As Barr drains votes from McCain, increased African-American turnout could make the state close. Still, even with Barr at 6-8%, McCain still leads here by 10%. I have to believe that Obama has already put Sam Nunn on his short list if he is targeting Georgia, and that makes me very nervous.
Not targeting Arizona. Despite implications, even from the McCain campaign, that Arizona might be in play this year, the Obama campaign isn't shooting for it. That is probably pretty smart. While nominees sometimes lose their home states (Gore, for example), when the state already leans toward that party (Bush won Arizona by 6.32% in 2000, and 10.47% in 2004), it seems highly unlikely. Good call to not heavily target the state.
No West Virginia: While it is a good move to not target West Virginia with organizers in and of itself, hopefully the Obama campaign will still run paid media there, as southeast Ohio shares media markets with West Virginia.
No Indiana: While polling in Indiana is close, apparently the Obama campaign does not think it is a top target.
No Maine, Minnesota: Over the past two cycles, Maine and Minnesota were both considered swing states, particularly Minnesota. This time around, the Obama campaign appears to believe they have Minnesota, and Maine's 1st congressional district, in the bag. Avoiding ME-01 because it already leans your way and is only worth one vote makes sense, but what about...
No Minnesota, but Oregon?: It is a bit of a surprise to Oregon on this list, but not Minnesota. Pollster.com shows Obama ahead by identical 50.8%-39.0% amounts in Minnesota and Oregon, and both states will also feature competitive Senate elections. Neither really feel like swing states this time, to tell you the truth. But it gets worse when you see...
Washington? Really? Obama is ahead by a whopping 16.2% in Washington. In fact, according to Pollster.com, my Presidential forecast, and fivethirtyeight.com, Obama's Washington lead is surpassed only by his lead in D.C., Hawaii, Illinois and Vermont. If your 5th best jurisdiction is a swing state, then I'm Elmer Fudd. This really feels unnecessary.
New Jersey and Oregon, but not Connecticut? While I am a little surprised to see New Jersey on the list, it isn't all that surprising. What does surprise me is that the Obama campaign is hitting New Jersey but not Connecticut, given that the two states are extremely similar in this election. Either way, both will probably be closer than, Oregon, a state that has the same number of electoral votes as Connecticut.
Where are the small states? A case could be made for Alaska, the Dakotas, Delaware, Montana, and Nebraska-02 as swing states. While I have no problem avoiding Delaware (it can be reached by PA media and already leans pretty blue anyway), Democrats have been on real winning streaks in the Dakotas and Montana recently, and polls show both Montana and North Dakota in single digits. The calculation must be that these states are simply too small, population wise and electoral vote wise, but with a widely distributed population, for resources to be effectively spent there. Obama avoided South Dakota in the primaries as well.
Alaska would have been great: While polling shows Obama down by 7-9% in Alaska, this year it will feature highly competitive congressional campaigns for both the House and the Senate. Also, Anchorage makes up 40% of the state's population, making the population much easier to target. Further, Bob Barr should do well in Alaska, as the state is more pro-third parties than any other in the nation (except possibly Maine), and also has a real libertarian bent. It is a big disappointment to not see more targeting in Alaska, especially given what strikes me as a waste of resources in Washington.
Lots of tricky decisions, but with the exceptions I listed above the fold I generally agree with them. Run a 50 state campaign, but layer it over the top with seventeen highly targeted states. If Obama wins the seventeen states listed above, plus the remaining Kerry states, he will win 379 electoral votes.
by: Chris Bowers
Fri Jun 13, 2008 at 11:39
While the Obama campaign will keep staff to all 50 states, and while it is keeping its volunteer campaign infrastructure in place in all 50 states as well, today it is sending 3,600 organizing fellows to 17 states. Unless plans have changed in the last seventeen days, the seventeen states are as follows:
In an email to people accepted into their Organizing Fellowship Program, the Obama camp listed the 17 states below as the ones where they need the most resources:
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Iowa
Michigan
Missouri
North Carolina
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
Nevada
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin
So, Obama will run a 50 state campaign, but it will be layered with a 17 state focus. This isn't a contradiction, at least not as I understand the 50-state strategy. The strategy does not dictate that resources are spent equally across the entire nation, just that some resources are spent everywhere. Certain areas are still more heavily targeted, but no area is ignored.
Overall, I would have ignored Washington, and used those resources on Alaska, Connecticut, Montana and Nebraska-02 instead. (Combined, those three states and one congressional district have roughly the same population as Washington). Given Bob Barr and the large African-American population, Georgia probably makes more sense than an alternate possibility, targeting Indiana and the Dakotas. (Combined, Indiana and the Dakotas have roughly the same population as Georgia).
I look at the list in more detail in the extended entry.
Chris Bowers :: Obama's 17 State Strategy
Thoughts on the targeted and the targeted-nots:
Georgia, huh? This is perhaps the biggest surprise on the list, but the Obama campaign seems ready to make a play for it. One factor might be that Libertarian nominee Bob Barr is from Georgia, and he has won elections here before. As Barr drains votes from McCain, increased African-American turnout could make the state close. Still, even with Barr at 6-8%, McCain still leads here by 10%. I have to believe that Obama has already put Sam Nunn on his short list if he is targeting Georgia, and that makes me very nervous.
Not targeting Arizona. Despite implications, even from the McCain campaign, that Arizona might be in play this year, the Obama campaign isn't shooting for it. That is probably pretty smart. While nominees sometimes lose their home states (Gore, for example), when the state already leans toward that party (Bush won Arizona by 6.32% in 2000, and 10.47% in 2004), it seems highly unlikely. Good call to not heavily target the state.
No West Virginia: While it is a good move to not target West Virginia with organizers in and of itself, hopefully the Obama campaign will still run paid media there, as southeast Ohio shares media markets with West Virginia.
No Indiana: While polling in Indiana is close, apparently the Obama campaign does not think it is a top target.
No Maine, Minnesota: Over the past two cycles, Maine and Minnesota were both considered swing states, particularly Minnesota. This time around, the Obama campaign appears to believe they have Minnesota, and Maine's 1st congressional district, in the bag. Avoiding ME-01 because it already leans your way and is only worth one vote makes sense, but what about...
No Minnesota, but Oregon?: It is a bit of a surprise to Oregon on this list, but not Minnesota. Pollster.com shows Obama ahead by identical 50.8%-39.0% amounts in Minnesota and Oregon, and both states will also feature competitive Senate elections. Neither really feel like swing states this time, to tell you the truth. But it gets worse when you see...
Washington? Really? Obama is ahead by a whopping 16.2% in Washington. In fact, according to Pollster.com, my Presidential forecast, and fivethirtyeight.com, Obama's Washington lead is surpassed only by his lead in D.C., Hawaii, Illinois and Vermont. If your 5th best jurisdiction is a swing state, then I'm Elmer Fudd. This really feels unnecessary.
New Jersey and Oregon, but not Connecticut? While I am a little surprised to see New Jersey on the list, it isn't all that surprising. What does surprise me is that the Obama campaign is hitting New Jersey but not Connecticut, given that the two states are extremely similar in this election. Either way, both will probably be closer than, Oregon, a state that has the same number of electoral votes as Connecticut.
Where are the small states? A case could be made for Alaska, the Dakotas, Delaware, Montana, and Nebraska-02 as swing states. While I have no problem avoiding Delaware (it can be reached by PA media and already leans pretty blue anyway), Democrats have been on real winning streaks in the Dakotas and Montana recently, and polls show both Montana and North Dakota in single digits. The calculation must be that these states are simply too small, population wise and electoral vote wise, but with a widely distributed population, for resources to be effectively spent there. Obama avoided South Dakota in the primaries as well.
Alaska would have been great: While polling shows Obama down by 7-9% in Alaska, this year it will feature highly competitive congressional campaigns for both the House and the Senate. Also, Anchorage makes up 40% of the state's population, making the population much easier to target. Further, Bob Barr should do well in Alaska, as the state is more pro-third parties than any other in the nation (except possibly Maine), and also has a real libertarian bent. It is a big disappointment to not see more targeting in Alaska, especially given what strikes me as a waste of resources in Washington.
Lots of tricky decisions, but with the exceptions I listed above the fold I generally agree with them. Run a 50 state campaign, but layer it over the top with seventeen highly targeted states. If Obama wins the seventeen states listed above, plus the remaining Kerry states, he will win 379 electoral votes.
1 年 ago
in Friday Open Thread…..yeah, it’s Friday on Jack and Jill Politics
Good morning d,maybe you can define success and how many lives are you willing to sacrifice to attain it
1 年 ago
in Friday Open Thread…..yeah, it’s Friday on Jack and Jill Politics
Ronnie b sorry I couldnt answer you sooner I was making a mix for my stepson who just left the army.I got the speech from realclear politics
1 年 ago
in Friday Open Thread…..yeah, it’s Friday on Jack and Jill Politics
For the Iraq cheerleaders
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As the Iraq war continues with no clear end in sight, the cost to taxpayers may balloon to $2.7 trillion by the time the conflict comes to an end, according to Congressional testimony.
In a hearing held by the Joint Economic Committee Thursday, members of Congress heard testimony about the current costs of the war and the future economic fallout from returning soldiers.
At the beginning of the conflict in 2003, the Bush administration gave Congress a cost estimate of $60 billion to $100 billion for the entirety of the war. But the battle has been dragging on much longer than most in the government expected, and costs have ballooned to nearly ten times the original estimate.
William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis, told members of Congress that the Iraq war has already cost taxpayers $646 billion. That's only accounting for five years, and, with the conflict expected to drag on for another five years, the figure is expected to more than quadruple. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told members of Congress that the war costs taxpayers about $430 million per day, and called out the Bush Administration.
"It is long past time for the administration to come clean and account for the real costs of the war in Iraq," said Schumer. "If they want to disagree with our estimates or with other experts ... fine - they should come and explain why."
The Bush Administration, which was invited to give testimony, declined to participate.
The Pentagon has previously said that the war costs approximately $9.5 billion a month, but some economists say the figure is closer to $25 billion a month when long-term health care for veterans and interest are factored in.
Health care: In testimony before the committee, Dr. Christine Eibner, an Associate Economist with research firm RAND, said advances in armor technology have kept alive many soldiers who would have been killed in prior wars. But that has added to post-war health care costs for veterans, especially for "unseen" wounds like post traumatic stress disorder, major depression and traumatic brain injury.
Two-year post-deployment health care costs for the 1.6 million service members currently in Iraq and Afghanistan could range from $4 billion to $6.2 billion, according to Eibner. For one year of treatment, the costs are substantially lower, ranging from $591 million to $910 million. Eibner admitted that the study did not take into account long term care, and her estimates probably underestimate the total costs.
However, Eibner noted that an increasing number of soldiers are not seeking the care that they need, which affects their ability to get and maintain jobs. And, that, she said, must change.
"Many service members are currently reluctant to seek mental health treatment due to fear of negative career repercussions," said Eibner. "Policies must be changed so that there are no perceived or real adverse career consequences for individuals who seek treatment."
Unemployment: Furthermore, many veterans who recently completed their service are coming back to a difficult job and housing market.
Among veterans who completed their service within the last 1 to 3 years, 18% were unemployed, and 25% earned less than $21,840 a year, according to a recent report commissioned by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"Trying to convince [job interviewers] that my service will translate into skills ... at a bottling factory or a distributing company is almost like you're speaking French to someone who doesn't speak French," said Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America policy associate Tom Tarantino.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer agreed, saying the government does a poor job at readying veterans for post-Army life.
"We haven't figured out how to convert a warrior to a citizen yet," Schweitzer told the committee.
Foreclosure: Many soldiers who come home from active duty are also finding difficulty keeping their homes.
"Military families are already shouldering heavy burdens to care for and support families while their loved ones are serving abroad or recovering at home," said Schumer. "Knowing that so many more are losing their homes to foreclosure is heartbreaking -- and its just plain wrong."
The senator said that Army personnel returning from duty are at a 37% higher risk of foreclosure, because the areas populated by military families have substantially larger foreclosure rates.
"Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan deserve better," testified Tarantino.
Tarantino recommended Congress quickly sign into law an update to the World War II GI Bill, which would help ease the economic hardships returning solders are feeling.
"More than any other single piece of legislation, the GI Bill will make a difference in the economic futures of the troops returning every day from Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.
First Published: June 12, 2008: 12:07 PM EDT
...................................
We maybe bankrupt as a nation but at least we got Saddam
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As the Iraq war continues with no clear end in sight, the cost to taxpayers may balloon to $2.7 trillion by the time the conflict comes to an end, according to Congressional testimony.
In a hearing held by the Joint Economic Committee Thursday, members of Congress heard testimony about the current costs of the war and the future economic fallout from returning soldiers.
At the beginning of the conflict in 2003, the Bush administration gave Congress a cost estimate of $60 billion to $100 billion for the entirety of the war. But the battle has been dragging on much longer than most in the government expected, and costs have ballooned to nearly ten times the original estimate.
William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis, told members of Congress that the Iraq war has already cost taxpayers $646 billion. That's only accounting for five years, and, with the conflict expected to drag on for another five years, the figure is expected to more than quadruple. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told members of Congress that the war costs taxpayers about $430 million per day, and called out the Bush Administration.
"It is long past time for the administration to come clean and account for the real costs of the war in Iraq," said Schumer. "If they want to disagree with our estimates or with other experts ... fine - they should come and explain why."
The Bush Administration, which was invited to give testimony, declined to participate.
The Pentagon has previously said that the war costs approximately $9.5 billion a month, but some economists say the figure is closer to $25 billion a month when long-term health care for veterans and interest are factored in.
Health care: In testimony before the committee, Dr. Christine Eibner, an Associate Economist with research firm RAND, said advances in armor technology have kept alive many soldiers who would have been killed in prior wars. But that has added to post-war health care costs for veterans, especially for "unseen" wounds like post traumatic stress disorder, major depression and traumatic brain injury.
Two-year post-deployment health care costs for the 1.6 million service members currently in Iraq and Afghanistan could range from $4 billion to $6.2 billion, according to Eibner. For one year of treatment, the costs are substantially lower, ranging from $591 million to $910 million. Eibner admitted that the study did not take into account long term care, and her estimates probably underestimate the total costs.
However, Eibner noted that an increasing number of soldiers are not seeking the care that they need, which affects their ability to get and maintain jobs. And, that, she said, must change.
"Many service members are currently reluctant to seek mental health treatment due to fear of negative career repercussions," said Eibner. "Policies must be changed so that there are no perceived or real adverse career consequences for individuals who seek treatment."
Unemployment: Furthermore, many veterans who recently completed their service are coming back to a difficult job and housing market.
Among veterans who completed their service within the last 1 to 3 years, 18% were unemployed, and 25% earned less than $21,840 a year, according to a recent report commissioned by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"Trying to convince [job interviewers] that my service will translate into skills ... at a bottling factory or a distributing company is almost like you're speaking French to someone who doesn't speak French," said Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America policy associate Tom Tarantino.
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer agreed, saying the government does a poor job at readying veterans for post-Army life.
"We haven't figured out how to convert a warrior to a citizen yet," Schweitzer told the committee.
Foreclosure: Many soldiers who come home from active duty are also finding difficulty keeping their homes.
"Military families are already shouldering heavy burdens to care for and support families while their loved ones are serving abroad or recovering at home," said Schumer. "Knowing that so many more are losing their homes to foreclosure is heartbreaking -- and its just plain wrong."
The senator said that Army personnel returning from duty are at a 37% higher risk of foreclosure, because the areas populated by military families have substantially larger foreclosure rates.
"Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan deserve better," testified Tarantino.
Tarantino recommended Congress quickly sign into law an update to the World War II GI Bill, which would help ease the economic hardships returning solders are feeling.
"More than any other single piece of legislation, the GI Bill will make a difference in the economic futures of the troops returning every day from Iraq and Afghanistan," he said.
First Published: June 12, 2008: 12:07 PM EDT
...................................
We maybe bankrupt as a nation but at least we got Saddam
1 年 ago
in Friday Open Thread…..yeah, it’s Friday on Jack and Jill Politics
June 12, 2008
Tax Relief for the Middle Class
Barack Obama
Kaukauna, Wisconsin
I just had the pleasure of sitting down with Ryan and Jenny Micke, and hearing about some of the challenges that they're facing in these tough economic times. We're going to continue our dialogue in a few moments, but I want to start by talking a little bit about my plan to provide meaningful tax relief for working people.
Americans work longer and harder than the people of any other wealthy nation. We've built the largest economy that the world has ever known, and the biggest middle class in history. But for the last eight years, we've failed to keep the fundamental promise that if you work hard you can live your own version of the American dream. Instead, folks are working harder for less. The cost of everything from gas, to groceries to tuition is skyrocketing. It's harder to save, and harder to retire. At kitchen tables like Ryan and Jenny's, it's easy to feel like that dream of opportunity that should be the right of all Americans is slipping away.
This troubling story is written into communities across the country. It's the story of empty factories shut down forever because the jobs were shipped overseas and nothing took their place. It's the story of a mother who can't afford health care for her sick child; a father who lost his job and can't afford a tank of gas to look for another; a child facing a future where they'll have to pay off hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to pay for George Bush's tax cuts. And I am running for President of the United States of America because the story of this downturn starts in Washington, and Washington has to change.
These difficult times are not an accident of history - they are a consequence of a tired and misguided economic philosophy in Washington. It's a philosophy that values wealth but not the work that creates it. That's how we've ended up with tax loopholes that allow companies to stash profits and ship jobs overseas. That's why we have seen tax cut after tax cut for the wealthiest Americans who don't need them and didn't ask for them. And that's why we're burdened with a tax code that's too complicated for ordinary folks to understand, but just complicated enough for Washington lobbyists who know how to work the system.
This philosophy is supported by an old brand of politics that uses understandable anti-tax sentiment to shift the tax burden on to working people. Meanwhile, the gaps in wealth grow wider and the costs to the middle class are greater. CEOs make more in a day than their employees make in a year. Our economy suffers through cycles of bubble and bust when the pain on Main Street trickles up to Wall Street. Even before our current crisis, we went through the first sustained period of growth since World War II that saw median incomes go down.
So there will be a very clear choice in this election. John McCain will dust off the old political playbook that George Bush used in the last two elections, and the disastrous tax policies that have failed the American people. I am running to lead this country in a new direction.
We both favor tax cuts. The difference is that Senator McCain wants to continue a Bush tax code that rewards wealth; I want to reform our tax code so that it rewards work. That's why the typical middle-class family will get three times more from my tax cut than the one John McCain has proposed, while nearly a quarter of his tax cuts go to households making over $2.8 million every year. That's right - $2.8 million. That's where John McCain wants to focus his tax relief in this struggling economy.
And Senator McCain once knew better. He said that he couldn't vote for the Bush tax cuts in good conscience because they were too skewed to the wealthiest Americans, but now he wants to make those same tax cuts permanent. Later, he said it was irresponsible to cut taxes during a time of war because we couldn't afford them, but now he'd continue running up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt while spending billions of dollars a day in Iraq. There's nothing conservative about that.
You know, I often say that John McCain is running to serve out George Bush's third term, but when it comes to taxes that's not being fair to George Bush. Because the fact is, Senator McCain is now calling for a new round of tax giveaways that are twice as expensive as the original Bush plan and nearly twice as regressive, and he has no concrete plan to pay for it. He'd spend nearly $2 trillion over a decade in tax breaks for corporations, including $1.2 billion for Exxon Mobil. Think about that. While you're paying four dollars at the pump and your children's future is being mortgaged under a mountain of debt, Senator McCain wants to give billions of dollars in tax breaks to Big Oil, and opposes a windfall profits tax on oil companies like Exxon to help families struggling with high energy costs.
I think that's exactly what we need to change in Washington. We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace. We can't keep pursuing policies that favor Wall Street over Main Street, because that approach ends up hurting both. It's time to turn the page. I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and put a tax cut into the pockets of working people, and struggling homeowners, and seniors. And we'll simplify our tax code so that folks don't have to work the system to get a fair deal.
First, we will provide real tax relief for the middle class by cutting taxes for 150 million Americans. We'll reward work through a "Making Work Pay" tax credit of $500 for American workers - and $1,000 for working families like Ryan and Jenny's - to offset the payroll tax that you're already paying. This will give the middle class a break with rising costs while giving our economy a boost. And because this credit would be greater than their income tax bill, this would eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.
The second part of my plan eases the burden on struggling homeowners through a universal homeowner's tax credit. This will immediately benefit 10 million homeowners who don't itemize - including Ryan and Jenny - who will get a break of 10 percent off their mortgage interest rate. For most middle class families, this will add about $500 each year. And this credit will extend a hand to many of the millions of families stuck in the subprime crisis by giving them some breathing room to refinance or sell their homes.
The third thing I'll do as President is keep our promise with America's seniors. Since the New Deal, we've had a basic understanding in this country. If you work hard and pay into the system, you've earned the right to a secure retirement. But even though seniors have held up their end of the bargain, many struggle to keep pace with costs, which can become a worry for an entire family. So I'll eliminate income taxes for all seniors making less than $50,000. This will eliminate income taxes for 7 million Americans, at a savings rate of roughly $1,400 each year. Seniors in this country should retire with the dignity and security they have earned.
Finally, it's time to cut through the complexity in our tax code. Deductions and exemptions are built into the system, but ordinary people don't have the time to figure them out without paying for a tax preparer. When I'm President, we'll put in place a system where 40 million Americans with a job and a bank account who take the standard deduction can do their taxes in less than five minutes. Meanwhile, under John McCain, you could have to fill out three tax forms all using different tax rules just to pay your taxes. Under my plan, there's no more worry. No more wasted time and expense. Your pre-prepared return will come to you in the mail. This will save Americans more than $2 billion in tax preparer fees and more than 200 million hours of work.
To pay for this, we'll restore a sense of fairness. That means standing up to the special interest carve outs, closing those corporate loopholes and tax breaks, and letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire. It's time for folks like me who make over $250,000 to pay our fair share. I am not afraid to have this debate about taxes and fairness - but let's be clear about what we're debating. If you are a family making less than $250,000, my plan will not raise your taxes - not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. In fact chances are you will get a tax cut, and one that is larger than what Senator McCain is proposing. It's time to grow our economy by renewing our stake in our common prosperity.
It's time to end a philosophy in Washington that tells people like Ryan and Jenny that "you're on your own," because we're all in this together as Americans. Most Americans aren't asking for a lot. They don't need overseas tax shelters or a long list of loopholes. They just want a fair shake. And they could stand a break. My tax cut is guided by the simple principle that what's good for Main Street is good for our entire economy. That's how we'll get people the relief they need, while getting our economy back on the right track.
Barack Obama is a Democratic Senator from Illinois and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination
Tax Relief for the Middle Class
Barack Obama
Kaukauna, Wisconsin
I just had the pleasure of sitting down with Ryan and Jenny Micke, and hearing about some of the challenges that they're facing in these tough economic times. We're going to continue our dialogue in a few moments, but I want to start by talking a little bit about my plan to provide meaningful tax relief for working people.
Americans work longer and harder than the people of any other wealthy nation. We've built the largest economy that the world has ever known, and the biggest middle class in history. But for the last eight years, we've failed to keep the fundamental promise that if you work hard you can live your own version of the American dream. Instead, folks are working harder for less. The cost of everything from gas, to groceries to tuition is skyrocketing. It's harder to save, and harder to retire. At kitchen tables like Ryan and Jenny's, it's easy to feel like that dream of opportunity that should be the right of all Americans is slipping away.
This troubling story is written into communities across the country. It's the story of empty factories shut down forever because the jobs were shipped overseas and nothing took their place. It's the story of a mother who can't afford health care for her sick child; a father who lost his job and can't afford a tank of gas to look for another; a child facing a future where they'll have to pay off hundreds of billions of dollars in debt to pay for George Bush's tax cuts. And I am running for President of the United States of America because the story of this downturn starts in Washington, and Washington has to change.
These difficult times are not an accident of history - they are a consequence of a tired and misguided economic philosophy in Washington. It's a philosophy that values wealth but not the work that creates it. That's how we've ended up with tax loopholes that allow companies to stash profits and ship jobs overseas. That's why we have seen tax cut after tax cut for the wealthiest Americans who don't need them and didn't ask for them. And that's why we're burdened with a tax code that's too complicated for ordinary folks to understand, but just complicated enough for Washington lobbyists who know how to work the system.
This philosophy is supported by an old brand of politics that uses understandable anti-tax sentiment to shift the tax burden on to working people. Meanwhile, the gaps in wealth grow wider and the costs to the middle class are greater. CEOs make more in a day than their employees make in a year. Our economy suffers through cycles of bubble and bust when the pain on Main Street trickles up to Wall Street. Even before our current crisis, we went through the first sustained period of growth since World War II that saw median incomes go down.
So there will be a very clear choice in this election. John McCain will dust off the old political playbook that George Bush used in the last two elections, and the disastrous tax policies that have failed the American people. I am running to lead this country in a new direction.
We both favor tax cuts. The difference is that Senator McCain wants to continue a Bush tax code that rewards wealth; I want to reform our tax code so that it rewards work. That's why the typical middle-class family will get three times more from my tax cut than the one John McCain has proposed, while nearly a quarter of his tax cuts go to households making over $2.8 million every year. That's right - $2.8 million. That's where John McCain wants to focus his tax relief in this struggling economy.
And Senator McCain once knew better. He said that he couldn't vote for the Bush tax cuts in good conscience because they were too skewed to the wealthiest Americans, but now he wants to make those same tax cuts permanent. Later, he said it was irresponsible to cut taxes during a time of war because we couldn't afford them, but now he'd continue running up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt while spending billions of dollars a day in Iraq. There's nothing conservative about that.
You know, I often say that John McCain is running to serve out George Bush's third term, but when it comes to taxes that's not being fair to George Bush. Because the fact is, Senator McCain is now calling for a new round of tax giveaways that are twice as expensive as the original Bush plan and nearly twice as regressive, and he has no concrete plan to pay for it. He'd spend nearly $2 trillion over a decade in tax breaks for corporations, including $1.2 billion for Exxon Mobil. Think about that. While you're paying four dollars at the pump and your children's future is being mortgaged under a mountain of debt, Senator McCain wants to give billions of dollars in tax breaks to Big Oil, and opposes a windfall profits tax on oil companies like Exxon to help families struggling with high energy costs.
I think that's exactly what we need to change in Washington. We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace. We can't keep pursuing policies that favor Wall Street over Main Street, because that approach ends up hurting both. It's time to turn the page. I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and put a tax cut into the pockets of working people, and struggling homeowners, and seniors. And we'll simplify our tax code so that folks don't have to work the system to get a fair deal.
First, we will provide real tax relief for the middle class by cutting taxes for 150 million Americans. We'll reward work through a "Making Work Pay" tax credit of $500 for American workers - and $1,000 for working families like Ryan and Jenny's - to offset the payroll tax that you're already paying. This will give the middle class a break with rising costs while giving our economy a boost. And because this credit would be greater than their income tax bill, this would eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.
The second part of my plan eases the burden on struggling homeowners through a universal homeowner's tax credit. This will immediately benefit 10 million homeowners who don't itemize - including Ryan and Jenny - who will get a break of 10 percent off their mortgage interest rate. For most middle class families, this will add about $500 each year. And this credit will extend a hand to many of the millions of families stuck in the subprime crisis by giving them some breathing room to refinance or sell their homes.
The third thing I'll do as President is keep our promise with America's seniors. Since the New Deal, we've had a basic understanding in this country. If you work hard and pay into the system, you've earned the right to a secure retirement. But even though seniors have held up their end of the bargain, many struggle to keep pace with costs, which can become a worry for an entire family. So I'll eliminate income taxes for all seniors making less than $50,000. This will eliminate income taxes for 7 million Americans, at a savings rate of roughly $1,400 each year. Seniors in this country should retire with the dignity and security they have earned.
Finally, it's time to cut through the complexity in our tax code. Deductions and exemptions are built into the system, but ordinary people don't have the time to figure them out without paying for a tax preparer. When I'm President, we'll put in place a system where 40 million Americans with a job and a bank account who take the standard deduction can do their taxes in less than five minutes. Meanwhile, under John McCain, you could have to fill out three tax forms all using different tax rules just to pay your taxes. Under my plan, there's no more worry. No more wasted time and expense. Your pre-prepared return will come to you in the mail. This will save Americans more than $2 billion in tax preparer fees and more than 200 million hours of work.
To pay for this, we'll restore a sense of fairness. That means standing up to the special interest carve outs, closing those corporate loopholes and tax breaks, and letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire. It's time for folks like me who make over $250,000 to pay our fair share. I am not afraid to have this debate about taxes and fairness - but let's be clear about what we're debating. If you are a family making less than $250,000, my plan will not raise your taxes - not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes. In fact chances are you will get a tax cut, and one that is larger than what Senator McCain is proposing. It's time to grow our economy by renewing our stake in our common prosperity.
It's time to end a philosophy in Washington that tells people like Ryan and Jenny that "you're on your own," because we're all in this together as Americans. Most Americans aren't asking for a lot. They don't need overseas tax shelters or a long list of loopholes. They just want a fair shake. And they could stand a break. My tax cut is guided by the simple principle that what's good for Main Street is good for our entire economy. That's how we'll get people the relief they need, while getting our economy back on the right track.
Barack Obama is a Democratic Senator from Illinois and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Holla at us!! on Jack and Jill Politics
There should be a thread called Idiot Alert here is my entry
ANTI-OBAMA "MOVEMENT" SPOKESWOMAN INTERVIEWED ON FOX THINKS OBAMA IS A TERRORIST WHO PRACTICES POTENTIALLY LETHAL MIND-CONTROL HYPNOSIS
From NewsHounds:
Hannity & Colmes hosted crackpot Cristi Adkins, a die-hard Hillary Clinton fan who is now supporting John McCain. Adkins' website makes the outlandish accusation that Obama is "the home-grown terrorist sleeper cell." ...
Adkins said she was there as part of some coalition called, "Just Say No Deal." The website states: "We are a coalition of millions with one thing in common: NObama." ...
There's video at the NewsHounds link. Hannity and Colmes take this guest quite seriously.
How reliable is she? I think all you need to know is the fact that she posted this comment at a fellow Obama-basher's blog back in March:
Be Aware of the Hypnotic Power of the O'Bama Kool Aid…
Is It DANGEROUS?
Yes, Obama is a powerful speaker, make no mistake about that. As with all motivation speakers like Anthony Robbins and Marshall Sylver, he has a hypnotic quality about him. However, what's he really saying? As his voice lowers in pitch, softens a bit, you'll also notice the lights are lowered, the background music gets the audience pumped, he meets your gaze eye to eye during the rally and his voice seems to lull you into the 'feelings' of hope, inspiration and excitement. But when you leave the rally, you are left with one message. 'Change.' The amazing principle of Group Think is applicable, but there is another side to the coin.
...who is this empowering man that can inspire thousands of young, innocent, voters to go to the poles, even on blistery, dangerous highways during an ice storm..such as it was in Virginia and Maryland on February 12? ...
It is the same power that convinces thousands of unsuspecting enthusiasts to drink the red Kool Aid which leads to their ultimate destruction. It's called Mind Control, or in some circles, Hypnosis.
Mr. Obama is highly skilled at bypassing the critical thinking mind and getting straight to the subconscious mind; he knows how to hit what really makes voters tick. It is said in the world of Mind Control, when you control someones emotions, you control them. This is same tool and technique highly recognized in the speaking industry and used by the Anthony Robbins and Marshall Sylvers of the world. Unlike Bush, who used the Fear of Terrorists, O'bama's fear hits even closer to home. It is a sublimina fear of being publicly ridiculed if you say anything negative about a 'well liked' black candidate. Other emotions target the votes as they hope to stay out of a recession, fear losing their homes, desire a better life with greener pastures, excitement builds as the democratic race is the best reality TV to observe….
Keep this in mind when you place your vote. Do you want to be vote with your heart and emotions, with the facts or jump on a band wagon with a mysterious pull to drink the Obama Kook Aid? ...
Cristi Adkins, RN Cht
There's your Fox News "expert."
Of course, judging from this PDF at her workplace, perhaps Cristi is just feeling professional jealousy:
Cristi is a registered nurse who provides holistic nursing and holds a Masters Certification as a Hypnotherapist by the National Guild of Hypnotists. Originally born and raised outside of Baton Rouge, LA in a small town called Denham Springs, but has since moved on to become one of the masters in subconscious reprogramming.
As Registered Nurse she specializes in the body-mind-spirit approach. As an activist in holistic medicine, Nurse Cristi served as the state representative for the American Holistic Nurses Association for the state of Utah in 1998-1999 to bring about awareness to the field of Holistic Medicine. Holistic principles back the Fatloss Forever! weight loss program.
...Cristi offers complimentary consultations for the following services:
Hypnotherapy
Meditation
Audio Spa with the Light Sound System
Ionic Detox Foot Spa
Weight Loss
Nutrition
Holistic Health
Call today for your initial consultation....
I'm not sure why Cristi didn't try to use her skills at hypnotic mind control to persuade voters not to vote for Obama, given the fact that she's a pro, while he's just an amateur (unless there's some truth to the rumors I've heard that he has a master's from the Bin Laden School of Mind Control and Global Domination).
Then again, maybe that's exactly what she's doing -- I'm feeling very sleepy....
..................................
Kudos to No More Mr. Nice Guy Blog
ANTI-OBAMA "MOVEMENT" SPOKESWOMAN INTERVIEWED ON FOX THINKS OBAMA IS A TERRORIST WHO PRACTICES POTENTIALLY LETHAL MIND-CONTROL HYPNOSIS
From NewsHounds:
Hannity & Colmes hosted crackpot Cristi Adkins, a die-hard Hillary Clinton fan who is now supporting John McCain. Adkins' website makes the outlandish accusation that Obama is "the home-grown terrorist sleeper cell." ...
Adkins said she was there as part of some coalition called, "Just Say No Deal." The website states: "We are a coalition of millions with one thing in common: NObama." ...
There's video at the NewsHounds link. Hannity and Colmes take this guest quite seriously.
How reliable is she? I think all you need to know is the fact that she posted this comment at a fellow Obama-basher's blog back in March:
Be Aware of the Hypnotic Power of the O'Bama Kool Aid…
Is It DANGEROUS?
Yes, Obama is a powerful speaker, make no mistake about that. As with all motivation speakers like Anthony Robbins and Marshall Sylver, he has a hypnotic quality about him. However, what's he really saying? As his voice lowers in pitch, softens a bit, you'll also notice the lights are lowered, the background music gets the audience pumped, he meets your gaze eye to eye during the rally and his voice seems to lull you into the 'feelings' of hope, inspiration and excitement. But when you leave the rally, you are left with one message. 'Change.' The amazing principle of Group Think is applicable, but there is another side to the coin.
...who is this empowering man that can inspire thousands of young, innocent, voters to go to the poles, even on blistery, dangerous highways during an ice storm..such as it was in Virginia and Maryland on February 12? ...
It is the same power that convinces thousands of unsuspecting enthusiasts to drink the red Kool Aid which leads to their ultimate destruction. It's called Mind Control, or in some circles, Hypnosis.
Mr. Obama is highly skilled at bypassing the critical thinking mind and getting straight to the subconscious mind; he knows how to hit what really makes voters tick. It is said in the world of Mind Control, when you control someones emotions, you control them. This is same tool and technique highly recognized in the speaking industry and used by the Anthony Robbins and Marshall Sylvers of the world. Unlike Bush, who used the Fear of Terrorists, O'bama's fear hits even closer to home. It is a sublimina fear of being publicly ridiculed if you say anything negative about a 'well liked' black candidate. Other emotions target the votes as they hope to stay out of a recession, fear losing their homes, desire a better life with greener pastures, excitement builds as the democratic race is the best reality TV to observe….
Keep this in mind when you place your vote. Do you want to be vote with your heart and emotions, with the facts or jump on a band wagon with a mysterious pull to drink the Obama Kook Aid? ...
Cristi Adkins, RN Cht
There's your Fox News "expert."
Of course, judging from this PDF at her workplace, perhaps Cristi is just feeling professional jealousy:
Cristi is a registered nurse who provides holistic nursing and holds a Masters Certification as a Hypnotherapist by the National Guild of Hypnotists. Originally born and raised outside of Baton Rouge, LA in a small town called Denham Springs, but has since moved on to become one of the masters in subconscious reprogramming.
As Registered Nurse she specializes in the body-mind-spirit approach. As an activist in holistic medicine, Nurse Cristi served as the state representative for the American Holistic Nurses Association for the state of Utah in 1998-1999 to bring about awareness to the field of Holistic Medicine. Holistic principles back the Fatloss Forever! weight loss program.
...Cristi offers complimentary consultations for the following services:
Hypnotherapy
Meditation
Audio Spa with the Light Sound System
Ionic Detox Foot Spa
Weight Loss
Nutrition
Holistic Health
Call today for your initial consultation....
I'm not sure why Cristi didn't try to use her skills at hypnotic mind control to persuade voters not to vote for Obama, given the fact that she's a pro, while he's just an amateur (unless there's some truth to the rumors I've heard that he has a master's from the Bin Laden School of Mind Control and Global Domination).
Then again, maybe that's exactly what she's doing -- I'm feeling very sleepy....
..................................
Kudos to No More Mr. Nice Guy Blog
1 年 ago
in Wednesday Open Thread - Holla at us!! on Jack and Jill Politics
Well my brother D I honor you and what you beleive in but this is where we agree to disagree. I do not believe Saddam was a threat to our national sercurity and the stupidity of this admin. has made things worse.
123Next 
