Obama's great good war

Start here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/18/AR2010111806856.html

"We've taken the gloves off, and it has had huge impact," one of the senior officials said.

Continue here: http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/11/murderous-us-government-explained.html

We need a reckoning

http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2274412

Eric Holder and Barack Obama have taken pains to tell the American people that water-boarding is illegal torture. So what? That's just their opinion. President Bush disagrees. The persistent failure to hold anyone accountable at any level for years of state-sanctioned abuse speaks louder than their words. It has taken this issue from a legal question to a matter of personal taste. What we choose to define as torture is now just another policy disagreement, like extending the Bush tax cuts or picking a caterer. This is precisely the kind of sliding-scale ethical guesswork the rule of law should preclude.

Uggh! She is repellent.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/clinton-calls-leaked-documents-attack-world/

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the leak of hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic documents is an attack not only on the United States but also the international community.

Yay! The system rocks!

http://mobile.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2010/11/17/gates/index.html

"The Obama administration continues to shield Bush-era torturers from accountability in civil proceedings by blocking judicial review of their illegal behavior," said Steven Watt, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture program has had his day in a U.S. court. The U.S. can no longer stand silently by as other nations reckon with their own agents' complicity in the torture program" . . . .

Read about immediate reaction to the wikileaks: http://m.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2010/nov/28/wikileaks-us-embassy-cables-live-blog?cat=news&type=article

Speaking of Michael

Now Michael Berube is a good guy. So I interpret him as such. I am sure he only wants to kill the bad guys (could not find something more recent via the great Google, sorry):

The anti-imperialist left correctly believes, for instance, that the American bombing of Kakrak in early July (a massive "intelligence failure" that killed about 50 Afghans attending a wedding party) was an atrocity; but it cannot admit that, on balance, the routing of the Taliban might have struck a blow, however ambiguous and poorly executed, for human freedom.

Now we could interpret him as being not too terribly worried about this bombing as it has "struck a blow ... for human freedom". But then so have each additional bombing since. But that would be wrong: Michael is a good guy and means well. I wish he would be a bit more charitable towards others though.

Here is what I have taken away from my reading of Chomsky, Zinn, et al:

War is almost always a net negative thing for everyone involved; and especially the innocent and those on whos behalf the war is being fought.

[ And of course it should be pointed out that we, eg. US, are the ones doing the deciding who the war is for: Particularly galling for the "anti-imperialists". ]

Finally this by Chris Floyd is required reading.

Republican Politicians Suck

Matt Taibbi: The Worst Congress Ever

"I remember one incident very clearly -- I think it was 2001," says Winslow Wheeler, who served for twenty-two years as a Republican staffer in the Senate. "I was working for [New Mexico Republican] Pete Domenici at the time. We were in a Budget Committee hearing and the Democrats were debating what the final result would be. And my boss gets up and he says, 'Why are you saying this? You're not even going to be in the room when the decisions are made.' Just said it right out in the open."

. . .

The GOP's "take that, bitch" approach to governing has been taken to the greatest heights by the House Judiciary Committee. The committee is chaired by the legendary Republican monster James Sensenbrenner Jr., an ever-sweating, fat-fingered beast who wields his gavel in a way that makes you think he might have used one before in some other arena, perhaps to beat prostitutes to death. Last year, Sensenbrenner became apoplectic when Democrats who wanted to hold a hearing on the Patriot Act invoked a little-known rule that required him to let them have one.

"Naturally, he scheduled it for something like 9 a.m. on a Friday when Congress wasn't in session, hoping that no one would show," recalls a Democratic staffer who attended the hearing. "But we got a pretty good turnout anyway."

Sensenbrenner kept trying to gavel the hearing to a close, but Democrats again pointed to the rules, which said they had a certain amount of time to examine their witnesses. When they refused to stop the proceedings, the chairman did something unprecedented: He simply picked up his gavel and walked out.

"He was like a kid at the playground," the staffer says. And just in case anyone missed the point, Sensenbrenner shut off the lights and cut the microphones on his way out of the room.

. . .

In 1977, when Democrats held a majority in the House, eighty-five percent of all bills were open to amendment. But by 1994, the last year Democrats ran the House, that number had dropped to thirty percent -- and Republicans were seriously pissed. "You know what the closed rule means," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida thundered on the House floor. "It means no discussion, no amendments. That is profoundly undemocratic." When Republicans took control of the House, they vowed to throw off the gag rules imposed by Democrats. On opening day of the 104th Congress, then-Rules Committee chairman Gerald Solomon announced his intention to institute free debate on the floor. "Instead of having seventy percent closed rules," he declared, "we are going to have seventy percent open and unrestricted rules."

How has Solomon fared? Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open. Of those, eleven were appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote -- H. Res. 255, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005.

In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, outside of appropriation votes. Under the Republicans, amendable bills have been a genuine Washington rarity, the upside-down eight-leafed clover of legislative politics.

. . .

And the cost? Republicans in the Clinton years spent more than $35 million investigating the administration. The total amount of taxpayer funds spent, when independent counsels are taken into account, was more than $150 million. Included in that number was $2.2 million to investigate former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros for lying about improper payments he made to a mistress. In contrast, today's Congress spent barely half a million dollars investigating the outright fraud and government bungling that followed Hurricane Katrina, the largest natural disaster in American history.

. . .

Sensenbrenner has done his bit to squelch any debate over Iraq. He refused a request by John Conyers and more than fifty other Democrats for hearings on the famed "Downing Street Memo," the internal British document that stated that Bush had "fixed" the intelligence about the war, and he was one of three committee chairs who rejected requests for hearings on the abuse of Iraqi detainees. Despite an international uproar over Abu Ghraib, Congress spent only twelve hours on hearings on the issue. During the Clinton administration, by contrast, the Republican Congress spent 140 hours investigating the president's alleged misuse of his Christmas-card greeting list.

. . .

When one considers that Congress has forsaken hearings and debate, conspired to work only three months a year, completely ditched its constitutional mandate to provide oversight and passed very little in the way of meaningful legislation, the question arises: What do they do?

The answer is easy: They spend. When Bill Clinton left office, the nation had a budget surplus of $236 billion. Today, thanks to Congress, the budget is $296 billion in the hole. This year, more than sixty-five percent of all the money borrowed in the entire world will be borrowed by America, a statistic fueled by the speed-junkie spending habits of our supposedly "fiscally conservative" Congress. It took forty-two presidents before George W. Bush to borrow $1 trillion; under Bush, Congress has more than doubled that number in six years. And more often than not, we are borrowing from countries the sane among us would prefer not to be indebted to: The U.S. shells out $77 billion a year in interest to foreign creditors, including payment on the $300 billion we currently owe China.

. . .

Favors for campaign contributors, exemptions for polluters, shifting the costs of private projects on to the public -- these are the specialties of this Congress. They seldom miss an opportunity to impoverish the states we live in and up the bottom line of their campaign contributors. All this time -- while Congress did nothing about Iraq, Katrina, wiretapping, Mark Foley's boy-madness or anything else of import -- it has been all about pork, all about political favors, all about budget "earmarks" set aside for expensive and often useless projects in their own districts. In 2000, Congress passed 6,073 earmarks; by 2005, that number had risen to 15,877. They got better at it every year. It's the one thing they're good at.

Even worse, this may well be the first Congress ever to lose control of the government's finances. For the past six years, it has essentially been writing checks without keeping an eye on its balance. When you do that, unpleasant notices eventually start appearing in the mail. In 2003, the inspector general of the Defense Department reported to Congress that the military's financial-management systems did not comply with "generally accepted accounting principles" and that the department "cannot currently provide adequate evidence supporting various material amounts on the financial statements."

Required Video: Does your philosophy cover this?

 

Required Reading on the Financial Crisis

 
Here are some interesting links I have found recently:

• Danny Schechter: Will the Mortgage Industry Pay for Its Crimes?
  
• NPR's Fresh Air Episodes
  1. Michael Greenberger: Our Confusing Economy, Explained
  2. Elizabeth Warren: Your Credit Report: Know Its Perils, Keep It Clean
  3. Michael Greenberger: Could Wall Street Woes Set Off A Global Crisis?
• Mike Whitney: The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Bill Maher: Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein on the rise of fascism in America.



[Hat-tip Raw Story]

Hillary Clinton: Bad for Iraqis, Iranians, Americans and Democrats

This drove me to write this post.

Hillary voted for the Iraq invasion, each subsequent funding request, and the belligerent Senate resolution on Iran.

It should be extremely clear to anyone. Do not vote for Hillary.

Her Iraq related votes:

• (-) Voted to Agree To: H.J.Res. 114; Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002
• (-) Voted to Reject: Durbin Amdt. No. 4865; To amend the authorization for the use of the Armed Forces to cover an imminent threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction rather than the continuing threat posed by Iraq.
• (-) Voted to Reject: Levin Amdt. No. 4862; To authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces, pursuant to a new resolution of the United Nations Security Council, to destroy, remove, or render harmless Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons-usable material, long-range ballistic missiles, and related facilities, and for other purposes.
• (-) Voted to Reject: Byrd Amdt. No. 4868; To provide statutory construction that constitutional authorities remain unaffected and that no additional grant of authority is made to the President not directly related to the existing threat posed by Iraq.
• (+) Voted to Agree To: Byrd Amdt. No. 4869, As Amended; To provide a termination date for the authorization of the use of the Armed Forces of the United States, together with procedures for the extension of such date unless Congress disapproves the extension.
• (-) Voted to Agree To: S. 1689 As Amended; Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan Security and Reconstruction Act, 2004
• (-) Voted to Agree To: Biden Amdt. No. 1190 As Modified; To express the sense of the Congress that the United States remain engaged in Iraq in order to ensure a peaceful, stable, unified Iraq with a representative government.
• (-) Voted to Pass: S.762, As Amended; Supplemental Appropriations Act to Support Department of Defense Operations in Iraq for Fiscal Year 2003
• (-) Voted to Agree To: Warner Amdt. No. 3260, as Modified; To authorize appropriations for a contingent emergency reserve fund for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• (-) Voted to Reject: Kerry Amdt. No. 4442; To require the redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq in order to further a political solution in Iraq, encourage the people of Iraq to provide for their own security, and achieve victory in the war on terror.
• (-) Voted to Agree To: Motion to Table McConnell Amdt. 4269; To require the withdrawal of the United States Armed Forces from Iraq and urge the convening of an Iraq summit.
• (+) Voted to Agree To: Feingold Amdt. No. 3164; To safely redeploy United States troops from Iraq.
• (+) Voted to Agree To: Levin Amdt. No. 2898; To provide for a reduction and transition of United States forces in Iraq.
• (+) Voted to Agree To: Feingold Amdt. No. 2924; To safely redeploy United States troops from Iraq.
• (+) Voted to Agree To: S. J. Res. 9; United States Policy in Iraq Resolution of 2007

Her Iran related vote and statements:

• Voted to Agree To: Kyl Amdt. No. 3017 as Modified; To express the sense of the Senate regarding Iran.
• Statement of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Support of Stop Iran Now Rally
• Clinton: No Military Action on Iran Without Congressional Authority

Other voices:

Arthur Silber
Chris Floyd

Iran, the Downfall of America & More

Culled from various sites:

• Daniel Ellsberg: A Coup Has Occurred (consortiumnews.com)
• Iran Reformist Warns Democracy at Stake:

  One of Iran's top reform politicians said Wednesday that demonizing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — such as in this week's Columbia University forum — only strengthens hard-liners' hand as Iranians rally around their otherwise unpopular leader.

• Gates seeks $190 billion for wars: Any of that going to be used on Iran, hmm?!?
• Glenn Greenwald takes down Dianne Feinstein, but does he realize that she represents the core of the Democratic party?
  

George Carlin on America's Owners