Next meeting:
TBA
Proposal for fundraising/networking
party to be held in July.
At Local 47, AFSCME,
1606 Walnut St,
6:30PM-9:00PM
People have asked about parking near where we meet,
there
is no parking in the immediate vicinity. Folks can park at
nearby
Septa stations and take the train or subway in or Larry Petkov
at
215-563-6357 can obtain a parking space for you in a nearby parking
garage.
Contacting
us:
Sign up for our RiseUp
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but those posts will be moderated.
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Webmaster
&
miscellaneous questions.
Our view of the current war in
Iraq:
- The
Iraqi Government has requested that
US troops leave their country. The Iraqi Government refuses
to define shooting at American troops as a "terrorist" action.
Meaning: it's open season on Americans!
- Even hard-core
Neocons like David Frum (Came up with the term "Axis of Evil"
to
describe Iraq, Iran & North Korea) realizes that the war is
lost
and that the US can, at best, return to square one and restore what was
lost..
- Far from having a national "all-for-one, one-for-all"
feeling, the American political leadership is on
the
attack against domestic political opponents
- As the truth about the war trickles out from the
front
lines, the US all-volunteer military is getting fewer
and
fewer recruits with even strong
supporters of the war refusing to serve. The general
public is also rapidly losing enthusiasm.
- US allies
aren't providing much
help either.
- Iraqi have suffered an estimated 655,000
deaths as a direct result of the US invasion. Living standards for
Iraqis have dropped
sharply from what they were in February 2003
- Meanwhile, Big
Oil is attempting to lock in highly favorable contracts on
the
development of new Iraqi fields that would have the effect of robbing
the Iraqi public of billions.
- The military resistance in Iraq is 95%
Iraqi and is a force that's costing America more
casualties every month.
- The war in Iraq has
made
the US less
secure as
jihadists
from all over the Mideast have used Iraq as a training ground.
- The idea of spreading
democracy to a foreign country through an
invasion
and a military
occupation has proven to be sheer wishful thinking.
.
It's time to withdraw. The
war was a crime against humanity to begin with and the alternative is
to go through what happened in Vietnam in 1975, a panicked helicopter
exodus from the
rooftops.
PRAWN's
mission is to:
- Network groups, organizations, and individuals to
stop the
repression caused by "never ending wars" at home and abroad, by the US
corporate military state
- Support organizations having common ground
- Educate and activate the general public
Local Resource Organizations
National Organizations
"Political Allies Newsletter" email listserve which is
sent
out a
few times a month. There are actions you may want to support &
local, national & international articles, most of which are not
printed in
the Phila Inquirer or NY Times. Topic titles are listed. You may read
any
portion, file away for another time or delete any or all.
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|
Upcoming Event
THE VISITOR
JULY 3 - "THE VISITOR", 103 minutes, rated PG - 13 for
some profanity, Directed by Thomas McCarthy ("The Station Agent" )
and starring Richard Jenkins and Hiam Abbass. (More)
First Fridays, 7
p.m.,
at the Peace Center of Delaware County/Springfield Friends
Meetinghouse, 1001 Old Sproul Road, Springfield, Delaware County, with
light refreshments and after-film discussion. Co-sponsored by the
Brandywine Peace Community.
For more
information or directions, www.delcopeacecenter.org, or call 610.544.1818
Panel discussion
CONSPIRING FOR CHANGE: the politics of
protest in the post 9-11 world
Friday 6:30pm 10 July
details
For more info on the cases check out:
www.rnc8.org
www.freethesf8.org
for more info on the event contact neRNC8support@riseup.net
2009 Summer Film Series
19 May - 11 Sep
7:00pm or dusk
Calvary Church @ 48th St & Baltimore Ave
Clark Park @ 45th St & Regent St
Showings are free
International Action Center (IAC)
email or
215-724-1618
Speaker
Pelosi explains
meaning of chart. A look
at various predictions. Republican arguments demonstrate that they don't
have a clue as to what they're talking about. Paul
Krugman says the stimulus isn't big enough.
Bit of an improvent. The beginning of the end? We can only hope!
five years after the
US invasion
The Reagan Question: Are
You Better Off Now Than You Were Eight Years Ago?
Economics comparison of 2000 and 2007
The
"burn rate" for the money the US is spending per month in Iraq was
nearly $5 billion a month in 2003 and has steadily grown to where, in
2007, it had reached about $11 billion
per month.
According to Barack Obama during a presidential debate, the price has
dropped to $10 billion a month.
The Strange Bedfellows
coalition has put an ad into the WaPo about the FISA cave-in. (PDF 1 & 2)
They're collecting
money to shame the enabling Washington DC press corps and
their corporate sponsors.
Institute
for National
Strategic Studies (INSS) did a study
of the
Iraq War (60 page PDF),
concluding that it is a “major
debacle,” a
“classic case of failure,” and a conflict that may not be winnable."
Update: Contains lots of points of agreement with
Bush
Administration (i.e., that Saddam Hussein attempted
to assassinate
the elder George Bush, among many others) but these can be seen as
tactical agreements, made so that other points have more credibility
(i.e., "This is not a DFH
screed!").
The
Senate Intelligence Committee Phase II report (PDF)
Part
I
Part
II
on the lies that the Bush
Administration told
the
American People in order to drag us into the Iraq War.
Post-"Surge,"
casualties in Iraq
start climbing back up
Icasualties "Casualty
Trends"
shows that US military fatalities reached an average of 30 per week in
Jun 07, declined to around 5 a week by Jan 08, but have remained
consistent at around 8 per week since then.
Update: Apr 08 is the
deadliest month on record since Sep 07.
To mention
another issue, consider conservatives (red) vs liberals (blue) and how
Republicans would like to shift
that balance
even further.
Seems the
plans made for the Iraq War fall into the category of what we
call
"wishful thinking." The idea here was that the occupation
force
in Iraq was going to fall to 5000 by December 2006.
Oops!
Media
Tank says
FCC is considering
reviewing rules
for media
ownership
This
may pave the way for further concentration of the
already-overconcentrated media
Media Tank
and other Philadelphia groups
ran a public hearing
with
FCC Commissioner
Michael Copps here in Philadelphia
on
January 18th, 2007. Archive of
presentation.
PhillyIMC story
Status
of Public
Access TV
Philadelphia
is about America's
only major city without public access TV. This
means that
noncommercial groups can't get airtime to explain their point of view
on any issue. They must depend on commercial media to do that
and
we have seen with the United
Church of Christ ads how willing they are to do that.
Thanks to the
Adelphia company
no longer being a player (PDF
on Adelphia's
sale of its assets.) in the cable TV business, Time-Warner and Comcast
are
now divvying up its assets. Adelphia used to own a
substantial
chunk
of Philly's cable TV market and those assets are now slated for
Comcast, which
currently owns the other
three-quarters of the city. Comcast has been
legally
obligated to provide free access to community groups since 1983 and the
reason it has not done so
is the subject of a long-running feud between the cable giant and the
city. PCAC
opposes
allowing Comcast to swallow up that last portion "until Comcast make a
public commitment to
fully fund public access." The Philadelphia
Grassroots Cable Coalition also points out that "Cable rates
have
risen more than three times the rate of inflation, with rate hikes in
Philadelphia of 5% or more annually."
Especially
noteworthy
To
order Cindy Sheehan's groundbreaking and thought-provoking new book: Myth
America, 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and a Case for
Revolution, go
to www.CindySheehansSoapbox.com
and make a minimum $10 donation and Cindy will e-mail you the PDF
of the e-Booklet.
Letters
from
Palestine Fabrizio
Galimberti says: "I have
spent many summers working in a refugee camp (Aida Camp in Bethlehem)
in the
West Bank, and I used to send emails to my children describing my
experience.
These emails slowly acquired a life of their own, mixing chronicles and
reflections, and the heart-rending humiliations inflicted on the
Palestinian
people by Israel’s ruthless occupation of their homeland were brought
into
sharp relief."
PDF
Who
Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think: Book
Review Essay. A
relatively thin book (135 pages) that covers many issues with
Muslims and how the West deals with them. No, there is no "clash of
civilizations." What most Muslims hate about the US is the failure of
the neoconservative movement to live up to the best ideals of our
forefathers. They hate the fact that the neocons appear to have dragged
the rest of America down into the sewer with them.
The fellows
behind Media
Matters
write Free
Ride: John
McCain and the Media, which examines how the media just loves
John
McCain and how they cover for him at every opportunity. Firedoglake
discussed this book
on March
29th. McCain had 135
appearances on high-profile talk shows between 1997 and 2006.
One
of his more infamous appearances (But that indicts the media more than
it does McCain) was his November
12th appearance on Meet the Press. That's right, he appeared
shortly after the Democratic
sweep of the House & Senate to deliver an anti-Democratic
message!
Naomi
Klein writes ,
that presents a very
frightening picture of how modern capitalism makes profits off of
disasters. It's a story of privatization
via shock therapy run amuck. Klein's theory is
discussed in
the context of the California
wildfires of late October 2007 and Grover Norquist's
expressed
desire to annihilate government's role in society.
Susan
Faludi writes ,
about how gender
roles were shaped and
twisted and bent to serve political ends. Faludi probably
pays
more attention to what the right wing was saying at the time than most
folks were aware of, which may explain why some consider the book
overheated. Faludi
talks about how the
"cult of the codpiece" was going to
save us all from the "Islamofacist Menace" in the "War On Terror."
Copied
the PDF of the
Congressional Research
Service's examination of whether it was legal for Bush to have the NSA
spying
for him without FISA warrants.
Short
answer: NO! DailyKos
describes it as a
subtle, polite, well-worded "smackdown".
Also, letter
sent by "
Other meetings/protests
In
front of
the Recruiting Office at Broad & Cherry Streets last
Friday of
each
month from 5:00pm to 6:00pm. September
07
The
Northwest Peace Coalition has been holding weekly candlelight
vigils at 7:30 pm each Wednesday at the intersection of Germantown
Avenue and Bethlehem Pike (near Borders Books) in Chestnut Hill.
Northwest Peace and
Justice
Movement and the Unitarian Society of Germantown will begin
on
December 8 to hold a peace vigil every Wednesday at 5:00 pm, outside
the Unitarian Society, 6511
Lincoln Drive (just north of Wayne
DelCo Drinkng
Liberally
meets at John Harvard's Brew House, 1001 Baltimore Pike #1B
(Springfield Square South) (map) monthly starting February 5th
6:30pm-8:30pm
Archive
of Action Items
Oh,
and just how DO Iraqis
feel about the "liberation" of their country?
From The
Angry
Arab News Service
Remembering the life of
Dr George Tiller
Health Care rally in
support of HR 676, the Single Payer option
Young woman passes in front of
t-shirts set up to commemorate 300-plus victims of gun violence in the
Philadelphia area. The members of Heeding
God's Call were on trial nearby.
Protest
at the Army Experience Center, a US Government experiment in hi-tech
recruiting.
Witness
For Peace
retreat 3-5 April 2009. We discussed ways to energize and expand the
peace movement along with local actions we could take.
Sixth
Anniversary of the start of the Iraq War
Pictures from demonstration at City Hall
Oh, and if you ever hear anybody talking about the "honeymoon" between
Obama and the press corps ever ending? There never
was any such thing.
Cover
of Nation
Magazine, video of pre-inauguration "Arrest
Bush" protest, video of inauguration
(Final scene includes new President walking by) and photos
from the Boston Globe.
To remind
our
new president that we're still here and still active
Israel attacks Gaza
hours after above rally/march completed.
Photo-essay.
Cynthia McKinney's boat attacked
outside Gaza.
Atlanta
Journal-Constitution piece
on attack. Update
on McKinney. How the residents of Sderot
(An Israeli town bordering Gaza and the target for Hamas' missile
attacks) feel about the invasion of Gaza and visuals as to what the " Qassams"
(missiles) look like.
And
just how do Americans feel about the election of
Barack Obama
as our 44th President?
File
is a PPT slideshow, which can be viewed with either
Microsoft
Office Powerpoint no-cost viewer or
with Open Office
no-cost office suite.
Philly Against War stages
a rally at City Hall
Did we gain a victory? Did the Armed
Forces Recruiting Station move away because we were protesting in front
of it once a month? Hey, ya never know!
IVAW Winter
Soldier event, A 25-mile march from the Constitution Center to Valley
Forge.
March on
Congressman Joe Sestak's office
Human
Chain Event - took place in coordination with 10 other
American cities all on the
same day. Other
demonstrations.
 29 Sep
protest blog
Yet another Tombstones
display!
Celeste Zappala with Iraq War vets behind her
We
decided to
start up yet
another
regular monthly protest! Sept07
We
were
concerned that we
might have a sparse demonstration in August. Code Pink
saved us by
showing up
at our monthly rally near Senator Specter's home!!
Declaration of Peace rally in Philly
One of the Grannies
for Peace outside the recruiting station on June 28th.
Combination of pictures from Rich
and Monique
during march in NYC on 29 April 06
Easter Peace Event
Protest - Break the Silence
Observing third anniversary of beginning of Iraq War by picketing near
Senator Specter's home.
Cindy Sheehan, Monique Frugier, Bill Perry
Winter Solstice Event near Senator Specter's house
Photos by Monique
The
main, serious, essential
question
Bush comes to speak in Philadelphia
These five pictures by Monique
Gold Star Mother Celeste Zappala
|
Info,
articles, etc.
I just have to thank
the good Lord above that Republicans are no longer in charge. Bill
Kristol advocates intervening in Iran on the side of the protesters. As
much as I have sympathy for them (Here are some tips to help them,
citizen to citizen), that's an awful
idea. The Iranian government certifies that Ahmadinejad won
fair and square. Er, um, OK. Demonstration violently
broken up.
Republican commenters think
Governor Sanford's (R-SC) going AWOL at government expense to meet up
with a lover in South America is just so
cute and darling and romantic. The appropriate military term is "Dereliction of
Duty." The guy should have been relieved of his duties several days
ago as he obviously has no interest in putting his job ahead of his
personal desires. The Wall St Journal is maintaining a deafening silence
over whether Sanford should be impeached. It's also very, very
interesting to see just how a South Carolina newspaper handled the news
on Sanford back in December!!!!
Update on the HuffPo
question at the press conference: The replacemet for Tim Russert, David
Gregory asks:
"If President Bush had done that,
don't you think Democrats would have said that's outrageous?"
"If?" Is Gregory serious!?!?! This is not a hypothetical. Jeff Gannon
was brought on to provide Bush with softball questions. Press
conferencs have become awash in trivia. Update on Dana
Milbank's attitude towards Gannon back in 2005. And yes, news shows
coordinate
topics with guests.
Republicans think it's
just awful how progressives are, pointing out that the very same
Republicans who decry the collapse of our moral standards are the very
same ones who are running around having extramarital affairs. Erm, it's
called having standards, it's
not a case of double standards. Democrats don't
run around talking about how morally superior they are, so
when they have extramarital affairs, no, it's not really the same
thing.
Aaugh! Shriek! The
economy isn't fixed yet! We still aren't back at full employment!
Well, erm, sorry, but it HAS only been a short while since money from
the $787 billion stimulus bill began flowing into the economy. These
things take a little time.
Grand, hollow,
meaningless, empty words on torture.
Some people just have way
too much imagination to be making political speeches.
Images and how
they effect political debate.
Amazingly, reporters are
still upset that a blogger was able to transmit the question of an
ordinary Iranian citizen to the President! Dudes, get over yourselves!!!!
We can add Joe Lieberman to
the list of people who had no trouble advocating
the wanton slaughter of millions of Iranians who is now suggesting
that Obama's manhood can be questioned because he won't go to war to
support Iranian protesters.
Oh good grief! I've heard
of some really, really
sto-o-o-pid, moronically idiotic conspiracy theories, but this one really
takes the cake. Unlike with the whole Jimmy/Jeff
Gannon/Guckert story, both President Obama and the Huffington Post
reporter were quite open and explicit about what they were doing. Obama
wanted to take a question from an Iranian via the HuffPo.
I left an Oxdown diary that
asked about a piece on the Global Security site suggesting that the CIA
was manipulating events in Iran. Response was generally skeptical.
Another fellow picked up the idea and posted another diary. I'd
certainly prefer not to believe it.
Update: This is what we call dispositive
proof that the Iranian protest movement is for real and that they
have a very real and serious grievance with their government. Doesn't
mean the CIA isn't trying to
influence events, but it seems pretty doubtful that they're really
having all that much of an effect.
Interesting piece on how
Iran has been dealing with the
Internet and political dissent. Natcherly, Western corporations are
deeply involved!
An Iranian brings up 1991
and the elder George Bush and how the Iranian leadership is hoping Obama
will repeat that mistake. Nobody blamed Saddam Hussein for
slaughtering Kurds & Shiites, they blamed Bush for giving Hussein
such an easy target.
Neda Agha Soltan becoms
martyr to rebellion.
Are we coming up on a
Tiananmen Square-style massacre in Iran's capital of Tehran? Sure hope
not, but it's
not at all clear what the US could do in response, nor
does it appear a good idea to raise hopes that can't be
fulfilled. Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Khameni weighs
in with his version of what's going on.
Paul Krugman weighs
in on the firing of Dan Froomkin.
Heh! Fox News "neglected" to
cover the scandal of a Republican presidential contender. Ri-i-i-ght!
It's very, very sad that
the WaPo couldn't stand the idea of their
best columnist whacking away at President Obama from the left. Dan
Froomkin will not be missed, as he's sure to keep writing from a
different post, but the WaPo is now left with delusional people like
Charles Krauthammer, who obviously never
got the memo that the great neocon project to re-design the Middle
East is now lying in the dust, with a broken neck in an advanced state
of decay.
An on-scene descrition of what's
going on in Iran. Upon Ayatollahs & Grand
Ayatollahs. No, we
can't credit Bush with anything that's going on in Iran. Anyone who
thinks the US can rescue the situation in Iran by galloping in guns
blazing, doesn't
have a clue.
Norm Coleman admits
what's up with his refusal to accept November's election
results. Not sure why he feels that the Republican Party is an
entity worth presrving, though.
Definition of "public
option" for health insurance begins to recede into distance. Not
really sure precisely what it means anymore. What's motivating the
opponents of Single-Payer Health Care? That's
simple. Greed.
*Sigh!* It was incorrect to call Iranian Prime
Minster Ahmadinejad a dictator. Past tense. Having clearly
stolen the latest election, it's now okay to call him that.
And you [Bill O'Reilly] routinely
attack, you routinely attack, people on the
left, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Moore, who you think their rhetoric
leads potentially to acts of violence. It never has led to one act of
violence. But you've already driven that crazy guy in
Knoxville last year who read your writings and then went and shot up a
church and shot liberals, that's already happened once, and you don't
feel any responsibility at all, now that it's happened a second time,
Bill? Talk about blood on your hands.
Joan
Walsh smacks Bill O'Reilly around.
The right wing gets bloodier
and bloodier.
Somehow, the DHS report
on right-wing extremism is being held up as part of the problem. Can
out-of-control talk radio hysterics lead to murder? Sure
looks like it. And why isn't
David Neiwert being interviewed on every other talk show?!?!?!
Update: Neiwert
was interviewed on Anderson Cooper 's AC360. Bravo!
Hmm, let's see...Karl Rove
calls Maureen Dowd a "bitter,
twisted, deranged columnist" because she pointed out that Bush
slacked off through half of his terms and alowed all sorts of disasters
to occur on his watch. Now, I'm not sure I disagree with Rove's
description of Dowd, but in any contest of who's correct on Bush's
performance in office, Dowd wins hands down!
Allright, this
is cute!
Four protests
in Philly in a short time period.
So how is Obama's Cairo
speech working? Quite
well, thank you very much.
Update: Obama
wins the Lebanon election, defeating Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Obama is preparing to
celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday. Actually, Reagan was a really
crappy president.
The "debate" over Supreme
Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor has become so
detached from reality, the traditional media doesn't feel any
obligation to even try to
honor basic, fundamental reality.
President Obama tries
a whole new approach to the Middle East, one that doesn't rely solely upon force and
threats of force. But no, there were no
apologies, despite much wringing of hands on that score.
Slight backpedaling on hysterical
criticism about Jodge Sotomayor.
Update: Is there any significant distinction between "racist" and
Gingrich's new term "racialist"? No.
Glenn Beck and Bill
O'Reilly see
no difference between lone, unaffiliated killer who killed a
military recruiter and Dr Tiller 's murderer, who acted upon the
active, if indirect, advocacy of them and people in their movement.
Right wing attempts to gin
up "Dealergate"
non-story into a "scandal."
Bill O'Reilly very
strenuously defends himself against the charge that he advocated
the murder of Dr Tiller.
Michelle Malkin tries
to claim that there is the killer of late-abortion provider, Doctor
George Tiller and there is the responsible right wing, which is not to
blame for his murder. Then
again, there's Bill O'Reilly, who never advocated violence against
Dr Tiller, but continually referred to him by name and associated him
with Nazis and other killers.
[Update: O'Reilly will
adddress the charge that he provoked the killing of Dr
Tiller] There is also the DHS report on the violence
of right-wing extremists, which many right-wingers interpreted as
an attack on themselves.
Looking good for Senator Al
Franken of Minnesota to finally
take his rightfully-won and richly-deserved seat.
Seriously, Jeffrey Rosen
and his defender Jonathan Chait really
should just give it up. Rosen's piece on Sotomayor was a despicable
smear, a gossipy hit job and Rosen & Chait inaccurately blame
"bloggers" and "blogging" for Rosen's complete lack of morality and
decency.
Scribbled a round-up piece
because there
was just so much news out there.
May
Opinion writer from Daily
News writes about a sentence taken from a Sotomayor speech. Talking
Points Memo posts YouTube from President Obama (unwisely) saying
that she perhaps would have re-worded her speech, but
also shows complete context of sentence. Not surprisingly, complete
three paragraphs that the sentence came from add a lot of depth to her
observation.
A profile of a prominent
opponent of Santomayor.
Summary of wild,
insane, outta control right-wing slurs against Sotomayor.
Awful funny about how Antonin Scalia was known for being hot-tempered, but how "temperament"
never became an issue with white
male SC nominees.
Book on the Iraq
resistance.
Newt Gingrich calls Sotomayor a
"racist." One would think
that sort of comment would raise eyebrows all over the place.
Republican Senator denounces Gingrich. Media remain silent.
The official report on Guantanamo
"recidivists" ("Terrorists" who were imprisoned at Gitmo and have
since "returned to the fight") seems to a very highly dubious, "dodgy" document.
US hesitation to allow
Guantanamo prisoners to be held on American soil is , surprise, surprise, making
Europe unenthusastic about taking them.
Amazing example of the
media ignoring someone's self-serving and
highly biased statements. George Will declares that Sonia Sotomayor
did not "save baseball." Um, Will is the Director of both the Baltimore
Orioles and the San Diego Padres. Ya think he just might be a little biased?!?!
So Second Circuit
Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor is the nominee to replace
retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Good! After she was smeared by The
New Republic a few weeks back, I'm happy to see that she has an
opportunity to get her reputation back. One very foolish
attack on her is that "Hey, she & GeeDubya both graduated from
ivy league schools, so they're equal in intellect!" Um, no. Bush was a
"legacy student," the son of an ivy league graduate and graduated with
a "Gentleman's C." Sotomayor "pulled herself up by her bootstraps"
(came from an impoverished background) and worked very hard to
graduate summa cum laude. But yeah, other than that, they're
just
the same.
Scotusblog reviews
her appellate decisions.
A "Greatest Hits" compilation of stupid
comments about Sotomayor. We're not even into the 2nd 24-hour
period yet!!!
Former UN Ambassador John
Bolton opines on the Obama Administration's approach to nuclear arms, appears to favor the
"special interest" of arms manufacturers as opposed to the
interests of the American people.
*Sigh!* Iran fails to come up even to the sorry free-speech standards
of G.W. Bush! Tsk, tsk, tsk.
So, it appears that the
Republican Party is now split into two factions, the Colin
Powell - Meghan McCain
branch and the Rush
Limbaugh - Dick
Cheney - Karl
Rove - Newt
Gingrich - Fox
News - etc., etc., branch.
Good two-parter
on the two speeches by President Obama and Dick Cheney.
Aaargh!!! The stupid! It
burns!!!
The debate on whether
Speaker Pelosi was
properly informed of waterboarding back in 2002 is over. Amazingly
enough, people are trying to keep the "story" alive.
Whoa! Dude! A traditional
media source that knows
how to read?!?!?! Time Magazine actually
reads the source documents concerning Speaker Pelosi and the CIA
briefers!!! Sure wish that
would happen more often.
Supervillains and supermax
prisons, the sheer and utter stupidity of the "We can't hold the Gitmo
terrorist suspects in the US, they're
too dangerous!1!!1!!&!!"
Update: Excellent
point!
Obama's speech - good
overview, highs & lows. More.
An examination of "preventive
detention."
Cheney's speech - utter fail!
More.
McClatchy News weighs in.
It's far
from clear that drawing Speaker Pelosi into a dispute about torture
and what Democrats knew about it, that Republicans are benefiting
themselves. They're instead making the idea of a torture commission
look pretty good right now.
Update: Vote to
investigate just Speaker Pelosi and not the Bush Administration for
torture fails by 252 to 172.
Bloggers being parasites on
the traditional media. That may have been true at one point. Is it
still true? Ehh, not
really. Actualy, the story is a good deal more complicated than
that now.
*Sigh!* One step forward,
one step back. Uruguay
decides gays can serve openly in their military, but US Republican
Party National Committee Chairman declares that same-sex spouses are a "burden
on businesses."
Good two-part
series on the Uighurs, 17 men who have been held at Guantanamo since
2001. Why they're still there is a very, very good question.
The evidence that the Bush
Administration consciously
and deliberately used torture to justify launching a war against
Iraq.
Comic relief: RNC Chairman
Michael Steele and Representative Michele Bachmann have teamed up
to do battle with ACORN. FDL on Bachmann
and Steele.
DKos on ACORN.
It remains very unclear
that either Nancy
Pelosi (Minority House Leader at the time) or Jay
Rockefeller (Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence then) were briefed in 2002 by the CIA on whether or not
the CIA was torturing people. Pelosi apparently learned in 2003 and
Rockefeller in 2005.
Update: Speaker Pelosi
has given what's referred to as a "plenary
answer," i.e., an all-sufficient, comprehensive answer that
completely disposes of the question:
Pelosi had an answer that really
answers all the questions, a plenary
answer you might say: she supports a Truth Commission [...]
That
says it all. She wants it all investigated. The whole point of this
storm about Pelosi is that her critics want her to be embarrassed and
stop supporting a Truth Commission or any sort of examination of what
happened. But she's not. She still says there should be an
investigation.
Wow!!!!1! G W Bush will
appear in Woodward,
OK!!! Whatta coup!!! [/snark] Yeah, I'm sure the competition was SO fierce to get the former prez to
appear there.
Liz Cheney defends her dad
against the entirely accurate charge that waterboarding is
illegal, immoral and useless.
Iranian-American reporter
Roxana Saberi released from Iranian custody where she was held upon the
baseless accusation of being a spy. This is absolutely and
unambiguously a good thing. It's
just a pity that Iran comes off as so
much better in how they treat journalists as opposed to how the US
treats them.
In the ten years of the
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law on how the armed services deal with gays
and lesbians, the US
has spent $190.5 million discharging 13,000 military personnel.
Benefits? Well, the US appeased social conservatives. A-a-and, well,
that's about it.
A report by the General Accounting
Office found that 83 of the
largest 100 publicly traded US companies had subsidiaries in tax havens
or "financial privacy" jurisdictions, as do 63 of the largest US
federal contractors (PDF).
And yet, strangely
enough, Republicans and Blue Dogs aren't getting behind Obama's
push to close off-shore tax haven loopholes.
CBS golf analyst David
Feherty suggests that US
soldiers are eager to kill Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and oh yes, Usama bin Laden.
Update: CBS distances
themselves from Fenerty.
Further update: Feherty
apologises.
Whoof! 2010 Budget document
weighs
in at 1374 pages and $3.4 trillion. President cuts $17 billion in
administrative expenses, Republicans laugh
and jeer and boo and hiss. Good news, though, Abstinence-only
sex "education" is zeroed out!
Update: Republicans very
displeased that one of their favorite programs is being so
disrespected.
Hmm, Senator Specter, who
just jumped from the Republican to the Democratic Party, wants an easy
primary and then back to his old position. Congressman Joe Sestak
(D-PA) wants to make things difficult for Specter. Go
Joe!!! Here's a straw
poll where we can encourage Sestak to run.
Democrats
strip Specter of his committee chairmanships! Yee-hah! Sorry,
but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is
pathetic on Specter.
Speaker Pelosi accused of
approving torture back in 2002-3. Problem: It's
really not clear by the documents that she
was actually informed of any such thing. Even if she had been informed, it's really not
clear what her options for protest were.
Bush administration lawyers
committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums
authorizing brutal interrogations
Disbarment
is recommended, but not prosecution.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor smeared
by the New Republic in a truly appalling hit piece. Makes one
almost wish that journalists had to get certified and approved so we
could yank TNR's authorization to write. Sotomayor is not
officially on the list for people to replace departing Supreme Court
Justice David Souter, but if she was, her
reputation has been destroyed anyway.
President Obama has stated
that health
care
is a major priority of his. One would think, then, that the opposition
party would have a clear idea of what their own plan was. Wel-l-l-l, not
so much, actually.
Traditional
media bored
by President Obama's 100th-day press conference. Fox News claims
that it was right not to cover the press conference as it didn't
produce any news.
Erm, since when must a presidential press
conference be exciting?!?!? When was this rule adopted? If reporters
are bored, I'd suggest they find another line of work.
Wow! What's
the weather like in what right-wingers refer to as "reality"?
Y'know, in the place where
...George W. Bush
tried to change the "tone" and Fox News "makes more of
an effort to be balanced than any of the other networks and all the
biggest newspapers in America."
Charles
Krauthammer writes an
insane op-ed where torture can be justified under the
standard, usual "ticking time bomb" secnario and under one extremely
broad catch-all:
The second exception
to the no-torture rule is the extraction of
information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value
information likely to save lives.
What in the heck doesn't fit under that
exception?!?!? And how on Earth could anyone prove that the torturers
didn't have a good-faith belief their victim didn't fall under these
guidelines?
Member of "The
Village" interviews Speaker Pelosi about whether she agreed with CIAs
torture. Pelosi makes the extremely
good point that the CIA did not inform Congress
as to what they were doing.
Kathleen
Sebelius confirmed
as Health & Human Services Secretary! Despite intense
opposition from anti- abortionists and religious conservatives, the
vote was 65 to 31 in favor. As America is suffering an H1N1 (Swine flu)
emergency at the moment, Republicans picked a spectactularly bad
time to oppose an HHS
nominee.
Senator
Specter (Now a D-PA) switches parties. Kind
of annoying that Democrats didn't demand any price for him
doing so as he
needs the Democrats far more than they need him.
Rush [Limbaugh] counseled
Specter to take Sen. John McCain
(R-AZ) and his daughter, Meghan, with him, and then pondered who else
in the
Senate should make the switch.
Sounds like a deal! We'll take the relatively sensible ones, y'all can
take the wingnuts!
President
Obama's 100-day mark. MMFA examines the relentless idiocy,
triviality and mind-numbing stupidity that the press corps
has brought to their looking at the President.
Obama gets
an "A" for style.
As in foreign policy, it will take at least a year to judge
Obama's performace, that's probably the best he could have
done.
Very
interesting post on torture. Very important point: it's critically
important to know
the right questions to ask before you can do the necessary
research to answer them.
Republicans lose
NY-20 Congressional race!
Back in January,
[RNC Chairman
Michael] Steele boasted, "That win will send a powerful signal to the
rest of the country ... that our game is not up."
D'oh! So-o-o-o, now that "that win" turned out to be a loss, does that
mean their game is
up? It only
took eight weeks to turn a 21-point lead into a hairsbreadth
loss.
Meghan McCain speaks
the truth that the traditional media dares not speak itself:
It's very
unprecedented for
someone like Karl Rove or Dick Cheney to be
criticizing the president. My big criticism is just, you had your eight
years, go away.
Other losers had the decency and propriety to just fade away or, like
Al Gore, to wait at least 21 months before speaking out against the new
administration. Rove and Cheney didn't even wait until Obama's first 100 days were
up.
BTW, Cheney has
requested documentation to show that torture works, but the
documents he has requested are from 2004-5, a time when the revisioist
effort was in full swing.
What torture
proponents
consider to be not-torture was officially
considered torture back in 2002. Oh, and yes, they were fully
aware "...that it would produce 'unreliable information.' " Oh, but to
insist that the law be enforced would make the US a "banana
republic."
Kudos to both
Norah
O'Donnell and Liz Cheney. To O'Donnell for actually
asking tough questions and to Cheney for actually consenting
to be
interviewed by someone who didn't just praise her as people do her dad.
Needless to say, Cheney's answers to O'Donnells' questions are
completely delusional.
Yes, there's
evidence that Democrats were complicit in torture policies,
but
for most of us, we don’t care if the person has
a (R) or
(D) behind their name when they were instituting a policy of torture.
If Democrats were complict, we have zero problems with punishing them
too. Also,
Democrats spent the
last several
years vehemently complaining about the
"politicization of the Justice Department" under Alberto
Gonzales. Yet
so many of these same Democrats are now demanding that
the Obama DOJ
refrain from prosecuting Bush criminals based on purely
political grounds: namely, that those
prosecutions will
interfere with Obama's political agenda. [emphasis in original]
Unfortunately,
Democrats
are clearly part of the problem.
President
Obama strongly
urges
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to release the Iranian-American
reporter Roxana Saberi, expressing complete
confidence that she is not a spy. Seems to be the two
presidents
versus Iranian hard-liners as Ahmadinejad appears to genuinely
want her released.
Fox News tries
to invent
a
scandal by analysing the handshake between President Obama
and
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Meghan McCain
finds it "creepy"
that Karl Rove is
following her Twitter-feed.
Just how
effective
were the torture methods used on KSM and Abu Zubaydah? Obviously not
very, considering how many sessions were needed to produce garbage.
Fox News of course, remains
very enthusiastic about waterboarding.
Further
thoughts on the "Teabagger
protests" and how various arms of the media work with each
other.
Norm Coleman continues
to drag his heels
and continues to waste everyone's time by trying to drag out his
hopeless quest to be declared the winner of the November 2008
Senatorial race against Al Franken. Even the right-wing
blog Powerline is wondering why Coleman is dragging things
out.
Here's
an idea! Let's use Coleman's stubbornness against him and
other
Republicans!
Oh good grief! Can
we
please dispense with this idiotic nonsense about how
short-term
fluctuations in the stock market tells us anything
meaningful
about the news of the day?
No-o-o-o!!!1!#1!!
Republicans are declaring Sarah
Palin's future as leader of the party dead!
Obama DoJ releases
Bush torture memos. link goes to President's comments and to PDFs at
the ACLU. Memos are very largely unredacted. There are a few
blacked-out sections, but not very many at all. Commentary from Greenwald,
Digby,
Looseheadprop,
Ackerman
and Emptywheel.
Who does a traditional media TV show bring on to discuss the memos?
Why, Gordon
Liddy, of course! What? Don't we always
bring on
criminals to discuss criminals?
Unsurprising,
predictable
news of
the day: The NSA, given the authority to undertake wide-ranging
wiretapping without judicial supervision, overstepped
its authority. What did people expect? It's not at all clear
why anybody
thought the NSA would properly supervise itself.
With the "Teabagger
Party"
demonstration in Atlanta, GA being the largest at 7000, total
attendance for the parties nationwide is estimated at around
250,000 (About half of what the Spice
Girls' reunion tour drew). Philadelphia, PA only drew 200. Photos.
Pretty unimpressive,
overall. Fox News contributed some very overheated,
extremist rhetoric. Glenn Beck is really
amazed
that the "Teabaggers" are being identified as "Glenn Beck, Michelle
Malkin followers" and then proceeds to defend the militia movement as
having a point. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos has some viciously
critical things to say about
ANSWER, Code Pink and Mumia, but he's also got a lot of sensible things
to say about demonstrations in general and the "Teabaggers" versus
other lefties over the past several years.
Hmm. Very,
very
interesting. A report from the Department of Homeland Security details
threats from right-wing extremists and
conservatives respond
as if they've
been attacked.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being concernd about the powers
of the Federal Government, as right-wingers are now, but where
were all these guys during the Bush Administration? Where was all of
their touching concern about civil liberties then?!?!
The Republican
National
Committee has now removed
all doubt and has officially endorsed the "Teabagger
Parties."
Norm Coleman
has absolutely,
positively, unequivocally lost the position of Minnesota
Senator to
Al Franken. Why hasn't Norm conceded? Obviously,
because the Republican Party doesn't want Democrats to gain that 59th
seat.
Update: Inky uses APs vague,
fuzzy description of contest results on page A5.
Very happy to
see the
rescue of the Captain
of the freighter that was hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia.
There are times and places where violence is called for. This was one
of those. I heard that someone is under the impression that pirates
have been romaticized. Uh, no. I enjoyed the movies
with Johnny Depp and Kiera Knightley too, but I don't think anybody was
seriously confused.
Update: Conservatives are cracking
up over the rescue.
Summary of what's
going on
with Obama Administration and secrecy/Executive privilege issues. As
much as we aprove of certain issues, we can't condone or forgive what's
happening with warrantless wiretapping, keeping people behind bars
without charges, etc.
Veterans of
the Second Battle of Fallujah are working with game programmers/
artists to make
a video game out of it.
No, the
"teabagger" events are not
grassroots events where people organized them from the
bottom-up. They're controlled,
organized and funded from the top-down.
Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri
al-Maliki agrees
to let Russia drill for oil in Iraq! This is a fairly big
deal as
one of the reasons the left concluded that the Iraq War was an imperial
war for oil was that France and Russia were both booted out of Iraq as
soon as US troops finished occupying the place. For Russia to come back
in apparently means that the US has abandoned its imperial project.
Only US media to pay attention was McClatchey.
Fox News is
now trying to
claim they have nothing
to do with the "teabagger" parties that they're relentlessly
advertising and fundraising for.
Oh, and hey,
remember all
those Republican Governors who didn't want that stimulus money?
Wel-l-l-l, it seems their
state legislators do and they were pretty darned loud about
their
preference, too!
Wolf Blitzer: How
worried are you that the new government of Israel under Prime
Minister Netanyahu will launch a strike to take out Iran's nuclear
facilities?
VP Joe Biden: ... I think it would be ill-advised to do that.
*Whew!* Thank you
VP
Biden!!!!!
Update: Very,
very interesting comment on why the US didn't go to war with
Iran.
Apparently, Europe didn't like the idea!
Harold Koh is being
smeared by Republicans who want to protect Dear Leader Bush
and his
henchman Cheney. At stake is whether or not the US will be run by the
Rule of Law or whether it will be run by the political leaders of the
moment.
The secrecy/immunity
claims of the Obama Administration just go too far. Even
Keith
Olbermann, who has been an enthusiastic Obama backer, has been
criticizing him. There appears to be less and less difference between
this president and the last one.
Photo
collection of
President Obama's European
tour.
Yeah, that is
a very good
question. Why IS
Newt Gingrich considered newsworthy?
Apparently,
the shooter in Pittsburgh PA, Richard Andrew Poplawski listened
to people like Glenn Beck (Fox News) and Wayne
LaPierre (NRA). He believed that the
US:
was secretly
controlled by a cabal that would eradicate freedom of
speech, take away his guns and use the military to enslave the
citizenry.
Gee, where
could he have gotten that idea?!?!?
Update: Beck tries
desperately to convince his viewers that he's not to blame.
Blames conspiracy
theorists for all the negative press he's getting.
Awww! Poor
"Joe The Plumber" gets
booed in Pennsylvania! Very sad that his bookers don't appear
to have realized they were sending him to very liberal, pro-labor areas
of the state. At least Bush's bookers knew enough to send him only to
places where he'd get welcomed!
A McDonald's
Quarter-Pounder with cheese clocks in at 510 calories. Rush Limbaugh considers
it outrageous that the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine asked that a burger be labeled a "dietary disaster." How many
calories is this burger? 4,800!!!
Norm Coleman
appears to have hit
the end of the road in contesting Al Franken for the title of
Minnesota's Senator. 'Bout frakin' time!!!
The
sheer and utter barbarism of Glenn Beck's political statements are
really getting to the point where we have to ask why
Fox
News is giving this guy a platform. He's now suggesting that
in
order to not have to deal with the inconvenience of dealing with the
Uighers (Enemies of China, but the US has no grudges against them), the
US should simply execute such people "on the battlefield."
March
Looks like the
Democrats
have won NY-20! This is a special election in a district where Republican
voters outnumber Democrats by 70,000.
The liberal blogs didn't help the winning candidate because the
Democrat is a "Blue Dog" (Not disloyal to America, but disloyal to
Democratic principles). Not so much a victory for Democrats, but a crushing
loss for Republicans. Senate Minority Leader John Boehner was
originally saying that the race was going to be hugely
significant.
Now, errrr, not so much.
Update: As of 11:00am the next day, there's still no clear winner. Quite
sad considering how confident they were just a little while
ago.
Senator Jim
Webb (D-VA) has taken an unusually
sensible and principled stand on our criminal justice system.
We have 5% of the world's
population; we have 25% of the world's known prison population.
...
...either
we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or
we are doing something dramatically wrong...
Interesting thoughts on certainty,
righteousness and politics. No, I haven't listened to Rush
Limbaugh for any extended period of time, but I have heard and read far
more than enough to know that the following claim concerning
him:
I have never heard
the man utter a single racist, hateful or stupid word.
is just too silly a statement to be taken seriously. The piece is worth
a read for what it says about making generalizations about people we
don't know.
One of the
more moronically idiotic ideas to appear about our President is that
he's far too dependent
on a teleprompter. Obama proved during the Presidential
Debates of 2008 that he is more than capable of thinking on
his feet and to sound intelligent and informed while doing
so.
Republicans
put out a "budget" proposal that, curiously for a budget
proposal, contains almost
no numbers.
Hans von
Spakovsky, a "loyal Bushie" who contributed to Bush
Administration vote suppression schemes, is now finding
"politicization" in Donna Brazile's speaking about Women's
History.
The Obama
press conference reviewed by two audiences, the American people
understood that Obama is on
a different, longer-view clock than most of Twittering-class
Washingtonians are, but the news media found the conference boring
and long and Obama professorial.
Funny
thing, AIG executives get million-dollar bonuses, citizens get angry,
media just sorta leaves the departed Bush Administration out
of the picture.
In fact, a poll gets taken, trying to determine who's responsible for
the bonus mess and gee, wow, amazingly enough, the Bush Administration
is left
off of the list of people and institutions that deserve
blame.
Bill O'Reilly attacks
a
blogger at Think Progress with an ambush interview, after
which he
airs a very highly selective video, leaving out all of his bad
behavior. Of course, the blogger was never given the chance to do a
proper sit-down interview and was never given a chance to
present
her side on the show.
Obama rips
Cheney! On 60
Minutes, Obama
says he has no use for Cheney's anti-terrorist policies!
Update: Republcans
beg Cheney "Please return to your undisclosed location!"
A month ago,
in the
Republican Party's official response to the State of the Union,
Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said he
thought spending $140 million for "volcano monitoring" was a waste of
money. Well, guess what? A
volcano that was being monitored just blew. Had the
volcano not
been monitored, thousands would
have died. Fortunately, monitoring ensured that people living nearby
could make a safe getaway.
Ooh! Good
news! Harold
Hongju Koh, an
opponent of torture, is named the State Dept Legal Advisor.
Speaking of State, cool piece on how
Clinton is using technology to improve outreach and public
education.
US relations
with Iran are looking
pretty good! Bill Kristol of
course thinks the new policy amounts to appeasement, but
Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is looking
for concrete actions as opposed to nice
words.
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