ReBelle Nation

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Parent Company Trap

News Corp. Executives Actually Recently Met With Saudi Billionaire In Mosque Controversy

TURN OFF FOX STICKERS FREE
http://colorofchange.org/turnofffox?id=1866-986505

'Ground Zero Mosque': A Conservative Undermines His Own Crusade
Should a fellow appointed to a federal commission created to promote religious tolerance overseas be a member of the opposition to the Cordoba House project, which has been dubbed the "Ground Zero mosque" by its critics?

Leonard Leo, one of Washington's little-known but influential insiders, is a longtime conservative activist and a top official of the Federalist Society, a right-wing legal outfit. During the George W. Bush administration, he was one of a quartet of conservative power brokers dubbed the Four Horseman, who held daily conference calls to shape judicial strategies for the White House. He's also chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an organization that is solely funded by the federal government to monitor and encourage religious freedom abroad. It is not a powerful agency; its annual budget is $4.3 million. (Leo and his fellow commissioners do not receive salaries.) But his position on the commission does afford Leo, who was appointed to the USCIRF by Bush in 2007, and his fellow commissioners perches of prominence. They release reports decrying religious repression overseas. They issue press releases. They attend conferences. They testify before Congress. On the commission's website, Leo describes the commission's noble mission: "to advance the visibility of and serious thinking about how the United States can best address" the challenge of religious "intolerance." He notes, "In short, we are committed to ensuring" that religious freedom "extends to all corners of the globe."

But perhaps not to Lower Manhattan. As my colleague Nick Baumann and I recently reported, Leo, when not overseeing this religious freedom commission, is a director of Liberty Central, a Tea Party-related group that is energetically opposing the Cordoba House project.

Conservative activist Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, last year launched Liberty Central, with the aim of connecting the Tea Party movement to Washington's conservative establishment. She has declared that President Obama is guiding the country toward "tyranny," and the group's mission, according to its website, is to "return to a government that adheres to our core Founding Principles -- limited government, personal responsibility, individual liberty, free enterprise, and national security." And Thomas recruited Leonard Leo to be a director of her group.
LinkHere

Stewart: ‘Is Fox News a terrorist command center?’

2010-08-22T20:50:00.000-05:00

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition

The GOP Plot to Screw the Economy and the Middle Class

2010-07-28T20:46:00.000-05:00

We're only three months away from the midterm election when a shockingly large number of American voters will inexplicably vote for Republican candidates. I have no idea if this will mean a Republican takeover of the House or Senate or both, but there will definitely be enough voter support for Republicans to significantly reduce the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
Why? Because too many voters tend to be low-information, knee-jerk Springfield-from-The-Simpsons types, and the Republicans have lashed their crazy trains to this new wave of inchoate roid-rage to help sweep them into more congressional seats.
Here are a few of the ongoing economic conditions facing a vast majority of Americans, many of whom are all revved up to vote Republican in November. According to Michael Snyder of the Business Insider:
• 61 percent of Americans ">Oh, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that wages for the highest 20 percent of earners rose by nearly 300 percent since 1979, while wages for the bottom and middle 20 percent increased only by 41 percent -- combined. Plotted on a graph, middle and working class wages have flatlined for 30 years. Roll all of these tragic figures into a slow growth recovery and here we are. Most of us in the middle class are screwed. LinkHere

Stumbling Toward a Bleak Horizon

2010-07-28T18:10:00.001-05:00

“The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families!

In recent speeches, President Barack Obama warns that the Republicans, if they take over Congress in November, will support policies that will usher in a new recession, as if the current recession is over.
“They are the same policies,” Obama said, “that led us into this recession. They will take us backward at a time when we need to keep America moving forward.”
Obama wants to push “distractions” like the Shirley Sherrod affair and the BP oil spill out of media so we can all get back to focusing on the economy. Wake me up when reality intrudes into a “debate” that is flawed on all sides.
The “recovery,” so breathlessly trumpeted by Obama and other politicians who want it to be true, is not generating the new jobs we need. The resumption of unemployment benefits will help those who were cut off but not all who need them. Foreclosures are rising, and government programs to stop them are not working.
It is unlikely that the current policies can remedy any of this and it is certain that the Republican demand for extending George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich will not create jobs.
There is no jobs bill about to be enacted. Many of the industries where blue-collar workers toiled are going or gone. Bailed-out General Motors just spent $3.5 billion to buy a new lending company to get those subprime loans restarted to move cars off the lot. Is this moving “backwards” or not?
Unemployment is worse than we know. The Daily Finance site reports that the firm TechnoMetrica which monitors the stats is finding the real figures shocking.
“The June poll turned up 27.8% of households with at least one member who's unemployed and looking for a job, while the latest poll conducted in the second week of July showed 28.6% in that situation. That translates to an unemployment rate of over 22%, says Mayur, who has started questioning the accuracy of the Labor Department's jobless numbers.”
The site adds, “For years, many economists have pointed to evidence that the government data undercounts the unemployed. Economist Helen Ginsburg, co-founder of advocacy group National Jobs For All Coalition, and John Williams of the newsletter Shadow Government Statistics have been questioning these numbers for years.
“In fact, Austan Goolsbee, who is now part of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in a 2003 New York Times piece titled ‘The Unemployment Myth,’ that the government had ‘cooked the books’ by not correctly counting all the people it should, thereby keeping the unemployment rate artificially low.”
Those books are apparently still being cooked. The Obama administration now admits there will no movement in the rate until 2012.
What may be more serious is the erosion of the middle class that is well underway. Business insider cites these statistics:
--83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
--61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
--66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1 percent of all Americans.
--36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
--A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
--24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
--Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
--Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975
While the middle class is shrinking, their wealth is being transferred to the rich. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has been livid in denouncing this:
“The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families!
“During the last 15 years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy, they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.
“Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made a combined $25 billion but because of tax policy their lobbyists helped write, they pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses, and police officers.”
The words of Shirley Sherrod (the Agriculture Department official who was forced out of her job because of a right-wing activist’s deceptively edited video portraying her as a black racist) are worth repeating regarding the growing economic inequality facing Americans.
Sherrod’s fuller comments included this insight LinkHere

Department of Defense can’t account for 96 percent of money administered in Iraq reconstruction fund.

2010-07-27T18:53:00.001-05:00

Darn that happened on Georgies watch, they certainly ignored it then.

Yesterday, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released its findings on how the money was spent from a special Iraq reconstruction fund set up by the Department of Defense (DOD) between 2003-2007. The account used Iraqi oil money to fund the reconstruction of Iraq. SIGIR concluded that 96 percent of the $9.1 billion the reconstruction program cannot be accounted for by the DOD:
A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the US Department of Defence is unable to account properly for 96% of the money. Out of just over $9bn (£5.8bn), $8.7bn is unaccounted for, the inspector says. [...]
The funds in question were administered by the US Department of Defence between 2004 and 2007, and were earmarked for reconstruction projects. But, the report says, a lack of proper accounting makes it impossible to say exactly what happened to most of the money.
SIGIR also notes that the “U.S. military continues to hold at least $34.3 million of the fund, even though it was required to return it to the Iraqi government in December 2007.” The “Department of Defense comptroller promised to report back to the inspector general’s office by November on progress made.” LinkHere

Fox News' Shirley Sherrod Mediagasm (VIDEO)

2010-07-23T19:17:00.000-05:00

Link Here

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle

2010-07-23T19:08:00.000-05:00

Source: The Nation

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle

In the first few days after BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight.

Work crews in Grand Isle, Louisiana, still stand out. In a region where nine out of ten residents are white, the cleanup workers are almost exclusively African-American men. The racialized nature of the cleanup is so conspicuous that Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, sent a public letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward on July 9, demanding to know why black people were over-represented in "the most physically difficult, lowest paying jobs, with the most significant exposure to toxins."

Hiring prison labor is more than a way for BP to save money while cleaning up the biggest oil spill in history. By tapping into the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get workers who are not only cheap but easily silenced—and they get lucrative tax write-offs in the process. LinkHere

"Grassroots" Karl Rove group funded almost entirely by billionaires

2010-07-23T13:57:00.002-05:00

Grass Roots Hmmmmmm?

Four of them, including three from Dallas, have put up 97 percent of the money for his new political operation

Virtually all of the $4.7 million raised by Karl Rove's new conservative outfit was contributed by just four billionaires, three of whom are based in Dallas, Texas, and two of whom made their fortune in the oil and gas industry. LinkHere

Andrew Breitbart, right-wing race-baiter, exposed as the fraud he is

2010-07-21T17:12:00.001-05:00

Sherrod: I'm a Victim of Breitbart, Fox 'Racism'

July 21, 2010 11:40 am ET by Joe Strupp
Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department Georgia Director of Rural Development, says she is a victim. A victim of poor reporting and, as she contends, clear bias and racist coverage from both Andrew Breitbart and Fox News.
"When you look at their reporting, this is just another way of seeing that they are (racist)," Sherrod told me about Fox in a lengthy interview Tuesday night. "But I have seen that before now. I saw their reporting as biased during the Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration."
Sherrod was forced to resign on Monday after a portion of a taped speech she gave last March was posted at Breitbart's Biggovernment.com.
In the edited tape, she spoke about how she had not initially helped a white farmer as much as she could have in 1986 when he was going to lose his farm. In the posting, Breitbart made it appear as though the story had occurred during her time as a federal official and not 24 years ago when she worked for a non-profit organization.
Breitbart also did not include the entire context of the speech, in which she later explained that she learned from the situation and ended up helping the farmer, Roger Spooner and his wife. Both Spooners spoke out several times Tuesday to support Sherrod and voice that they would have lost their farm if not for her help.
Breitbart has since posted the full version of the tape, but his original posting also remains.
"It was a time when I realized that they did some of the same things to white farmers that they did to black farmers," Sherrod said about the speech. "I thought that all white farmers got the best treatment, but I found out in this case that was not so."
Explaining the speech further, Sherrod said, "I am trying to say to the people there that it is time for us to move forward. We do not want to forget the past and be in a position that racism is there and we don't see it. We want to move together. Our area of the state cannot grow and thrive until we learn to get along."
But after Breitbart posted the video clip, Sherrod said the lack of context and explanation sparked anger against her. She said she found out about the clip when someone e-mailed a link to her and asked about it.
"I couldn't believe it. I found this out when someone sent me (a link to) the tape, people who follow him, who put it out there," Sherrod said about Breitbart. "I got crank calls right away. Someone sent me an e-mail and link and said 'shame on you' and other stuff. I was sitting in a meeting and I was really upset.
"I texted back that they were so wrong and that they need to know the message and they got it wrong."
Sherrod said Cheryl Cook, USDA deputy undersecretary, called her Monday and said she had to be on administrative leave."
She adds: "People were calling and writing the Department of Agriculture in Athens, Ga., and Washington to tell them about it. That I needed to be fired. That a racist like me had no business working for the department. That is the way they intimidate people and it worked."
By the end of the day Monday, she was forced to resign.
Sherrod, 62, said her first reaction was shock that, after a career working for civil rights and as the daughter of a father murdered by racists, she would be seen in such a terrible light.LinkHere

Came across this classic. Ahahahahahah Love it

2010-07-21T01:50:00.001-05:00

jbones

"The Republican National Committee has announced it's changing the emblem ofthe Republican Party - from an elephant to a condom. The Republican NationalChairman explained that the condom more clearly reflects the Party's currentstance... owing to the fact that a condom accepts inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, andgives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed. Please makecertain your Republican friends make the appropriate changes on any of their campaign literature."

Alan Grayson To Republicans Blocking Unemployment: 'May God Have Mercy On Your Souls'

2010-07-20T23:27:00.002-05:00

"And I will say this to the Republicans who have blocked this bill now for months and kept food out of the mouths of children," Grayson concluded. "I will say to them now, may God have mercy on your souls."

http://www.wimp.com/threetenors

2010-07-20T23:10:00.000-05:00

Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won Ukraine's version of "America's Got Talent." She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and "sand painting" skills to interpret Germany's invasion and occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

Simply Beautifull

2010-07-20T22:39:00.001-05:00

Perhaps there is hope for mankind after all. Watch the short video, and God bless.

2010-07-20T22:17:00.001-05:00

What has Obama done so far?

2010-07-18T04:20:00.000-05:00

"Compassionate conservatives" party of "family values" you think? I'd shut my mouth if I was you, Diaper Dave

2010-07-16T15:48:00.003-05:00

David Vitter Thinks Rachel Maddow Doesn't Look Like A Woman

Greg Sargent captures Louisiana Senator and prostitute enthusiast David Vitter in a moment of what passes for jocularity in the Vitterverse, on Rush Radio 99.5 in New Orleans.
At issue: MSNBC host Rachel Maddow's femininity (relative to the women Vitter pays to have sex with him, presumably).

Report: Gore Accuser Failed Lie Detector Test

2010-07-15T15:35:00.001-05:00

Source: Fox12 Oregon
PORTLAND, Ore. -- A masseuse who accused former Vice President Al Gore of groping and kissing her at a downtown hotel in 2006 failed a lie detector test and had a history of falsely accusing people of mistreating her, according to a report in this week's Portland Tribune newspaper.

Tribune editors said they found out about Molly Hagerty's sex abuse allegation against Gore 3 ½ years ago, but they didn't print an article because the newspaper's reporters thought her story lacked credibility.

The National Enquirer first reported the story last month and detailed Hagerty's accusations that Gore made unwanted sexual contact at Hotel Lucia in Portland.

Tribune editor Mark Garber said Hagerty's lawyer asked her to take a lie detector test and she failed, but that wasn't the reason they didn't print the story. He said the newspaper reporters' "personal interaction" with Hagerty raised red flags. LinkHere

That nightmare is over, or is it

2010-07-15T15:08:00.002-05:00

The Bush Revival: How Jeb, Rove, Gillespie Are Leading The GOP Again

Jon Kyl: Extend Bush Tax Cuts For Wealthy Even If They Add To Deficit

2010-07-12T15:05:00.004-05:00

Republican Low Life

Top Senate Republican Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) insisted on Sunday that Congress should extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans regardless of their impact on the deficit, even as he and other Republicans are blocking unemployment insurance extensions over deficit concerns.
"[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes," said the Arizona Senator during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. "Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to -- if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."
White House aides immediately seized on the comments. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs wrote on Twitter, "Kyl says wealthy need big Bush tax cuts while middle class families are on their own to fend for themselves as a result of Bush economy."
In private, administration officials say that the framing of the argument couldn't be more advantageous: "It's cutting taxes for the wealthy and letting the unemployed to fend for themselves," said one White House ally.
"If all of this has a familiar ring to it, it's because unpaid for tax cuts for the rich at the expense of working people is the same backward policy Republicans used to put the nation in this hole, and it's the same policy they promise to return to if put in a position of power again," added Hari Sevugan, press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. LinkHere

Powerful Private Equity Firm Sued Over 'Reckless' Mortgage Fund

2010-07-11T16:49:00.003-05:00

How soon they forget, only took 18 months

The world's second-biggest private-equity firm was sued this week over its "reckless and grossly negligent" management of a failed mortgage bond affiliate that cost investors nearly $1 billion, according to suits filed in Delaware and New York.
The Carlyle Group, which oversees more than $90 billion across six continents, stands accused of paying its executives "excessive and unjustified" fees while managing its hedge fund, Carlyle Capital Corporation, into the ground, the Financial Times and Bloomberg News report, citing the two lawsuits. CCC, which invested in mortgage-backed securities and "leveraged finance assets," collapsed in March 2008 after it "failed to meet more than $400 million of margin calls on mortgage-backed collateral," Bloomberg reports.
By the end of 2007 the fund had $21 billion in debt but just $75 million to meet margin calls, the FT reports, citing the lawsuit.
Investors in the fund allege that Carlyle Group officials took more than $20 million in fees and more than $50 million in other benefits, the FT reports, citing the lawsuit, despite that within a year the failed hedge fund had unrealized losses exceeding $270 million.
"In the short space of eight months, the entirety of CCC's capital was spectacularly lost under the reckless and grossly negligent direction, supervision, management and advice of the defendants," Bloomberg reports, citing the lawsuit. The Carlyle Group "preferred" its own "corporate interests" over that of the hedge fund, the lawsuit alleges, according to the FT.
The $945 million hedge fund sought annual returns of at least 12 percent, according to the Delaware-filed suit, Bloomberg reports. While the fund called for leverage of about 19 times capital, the actual leverage exceeded 30 times capital, Bloomberg reports, citing the lawsuit.
"CCC's losses were the direct result of a determinedly reckless 'bet the farm' approach, brazenly pursued in the self-interests of the Carlyle Group," Bloomberg reports, citing the lawsuit.

Link Here

Bank Of America Says 'Error' That Hid $10.7 Billion In Debt Was An Accident

Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank by assets, said it wrongly classified as much as $10.7 billion of short-term repurchase and lending transactions as sales from 2007 to 2009 to reduce its end-of-quarter assets.
Bank of America said the inaccuracies aren’t material and “don’t stem from any intentional misstatement of the Corporation’s financial statements and was not related to any fraud or deliberate error,” according to a May 13 letter released yesterday from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“A $10.7 billion accounting error would be a material event for about 99.9 percent” of U.S. banks, said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University School of Law. “It’s hard to see how the SEC can accept BofA’s rejoinder as being sufficient.”
SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment.
The SEC sent letters to finance chiefs at about two dozen firms in March asking whether they employed accounting strategies like those at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The bankrupt securities firm was accused of using repurchase agreements called Repo 105s to move assets off its balance sheet to hide leverage, thereby improving its capital ratios.
$2.3 Trillion
Bank of America had disclosed in a March 31 financial filing that “certain sales of agency mortgage-backed securities should have been recorded as secured borrowings rather than sales,” bank spokesman Jerry Dubrowski said. “The handful of transactions did not have a material impact on the company’s balance sheet or earnings. They need to be viewed in the context of our $2.3 trillion balance sheet.”
In April, the SEC asked Bank of America to disclose whether its transactions were intentionally mislabeled, and to prove that the trades were immaterial. The Charlotte, North Carolina- based bank said in an April 13 letter that it stopped the transactions after the first quarter of 2009, the SEC said.
The Bank of America transactions involved six so-called dollar-roll trades completed during 2007, 2008 and 2009. The amount of the trades represented 0.1 percent of total assets in the December 2008 quarter and improved the company’s Tier 1 capital leverage ratio by one basis point, or one-hundredth of a percentage point, during the September 2008 quarter, the bank said. LinkHere

San Diego ACORN Worker Suing 'Undercover Pimp' James O'Keefe and Pals

2010-07-11T05:05:00.000-05:00

For OpEdNews: Gustav Wynn - WriterAs was widely predicted, a former employee at the San Diego ACORN office has brought a lawsuit against right-wing activist journalists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles who surreptitiously recorded him while posing as a pimp and a half-naked hooker seeking accomplices in the commission of crimes of prostitution, statutory rape and kidnapping.
Juan Carlos Vera was fired after O'Keefe's San Diego ACORN exposé was released. The segment seemed to show Vera discussing crimes agreeably. Called 'undercover reporting', the sting was shown to the world in exclusives given to hyper partisan Fox TV host Sean Hannity who wholly tarred ACORN for condoning underage prostitution and human trafficking.
After informing an unprecedented vote by Congress to defund ACORN (later found unconstitutional), ACORN was cleared of all criminal wrongdoing in the videos, and in particular the footage showing Vera was ordered investigated by California Attorney General Jerry Brown who cut a strange backroom deal with O'Keefe in exchange for access to the full unedited San Diego tapes.
Brown's office reportedly agreed not to bring criminal charges against O'Keefe and Giles for violating state privacy laws. After reviewing the tapes however, Brown concluded the tapes were "severely edited", suggesting Vera "may be able to bring a private suit".
LinkHere

Court rejects US bid to keep drilling moratorium

2010-07-08T19:31:00.001-05:00

Source: AP

NEW ORLEANS – A federal appeals court has rejected the U.S. government's effort to keep a six-month deepwater drilling moratorium in place.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled soon after a Thursday afternoon hearing in a lawsuit filed by companies that oppose the drilling ban.

The Interior Department said the moratorium was necessary while it studied deepwater drilling risks in the wake of the BP oil spill.

The moratorium was previously struck down by a lower court on June 22. LinkHere

Majority Of Judges Hearing Drilling Moratorium Appeal Attended Oil-Funded Junkets

Last month, Judge Martin Feldman, a federal trial judge in Louisiana, handed down a poorly-reasoned opinion lifting the Obama Administration’s temportary moratorium on new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Judge Feldman’s most recent financial disclosure form indicates that he is heavily invested in oil companies.
Today in New Orleans, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will consider whether to stay Feldman’s decision. According to a new report by the Alliance for Justice, however, it is unlikely that these Fifth Circuit judges will approach the case without the perception of bias.
Judges Jerry Smith and Eugene Davis, both of whom are assigned to today’s panel, attended expense-paid “junkets for judges” sponsored by an oil-industry front group:
[Judge Smith] attended a seminar hosted by the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE) in Big Sky, Montana, for which he was reimbursed transportation, lodging, and meal expenses. FREE is a think-tank that promotes free-market environmentalism rather than environmental regulation and is funded largely by corporations like ExxonMobil and conservative foundations. FREE hosts industry-funded seminars for judges, often including leisure activities such as golf and horseback riding, to “explain why ecological values are not the only important ones.” The year that Judge Smith attended the seminar, FREE received $70,000 from ExxonMobil, of which $20,000 was for “Federal Judicial Seminars,” $30,000 was for “General Operating Support,” and $20,000 was for a “Climate Seminar.” . . .
Additionally, in 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008, Judge Davis attended the same seminar as Judge Smith run by the FREE Foundation, the free market environmentalism group described above, and sought corresponding reimbursement for transportation, food, and housing. Judge Davis has attended another of other judicial seminars, and in fact, was ranked tenth in the country on a list of judges who accept free trips.
Both men also worked as oil-industry litigators before their appointments to the federal bench, and Judge Davis owns as much as $30,000 in oil investments. The third judge on the panel, Judge James Dennis, has not received any free trips from the oil industry, but he is heavily invested in oil stocks with investments that may total as much as $305,000.
Should this oil-soaked panel nonetheless decide to reinstate the drilling moratorium, the industry may appeal that decision to the full Fifth Circuit. Of the sixteen active judges eligible to hear such an appeal, ten of them have oil investments, including the court’s Chief Judge. In addition to owning as much as $330,000 in oil investments, Chief Judge Edith Jones ranked fourth of a list of judges who have attended junkets.
A full list of the Fifth Circuit’s judges and the extent of their financial holdings in oil companies is copied below: LinkHere

HITTING THE 'MUTE' BUTTON

2010-07-07T20:37:00.003-05:00

International Economic Group Hammers Congress For Abandoning The Unemployed BLAME THE UNEMPLOYED: Senators Bash Jobless As Drug-Addicted, Lazy

Republicans: The Party of Unemployment

From now until Nov. 2, the Republican Party will be the party of unemployment. The logic is straightforward: The more people who are unemployed on Election Day, the better the prospects for Republicans in the fall election. They expect, with good cause, that voters will hold the Democrats responsible for the state of the economy. Therefore anything that the Republicans can do to make the economy worse between now and then will help their election prospects.
While it might be bad taste to accuse a major national political party of deliberately wanting to throw people out of jobs, there is no other plausible explanation for the Republicans' behavior. The Republicans have balked at supporting nearly every bill that had any serious hope of creating or keeping jobs, most recently filibustering on bills that provided aid to state and local governments and extending unemployment benefits. The result of the Republicans' actions, unless they are reversed quickly, is that hundreds of thousands more workers will be thrown out of work by Election Day.
The story is straightforward. Nearly every state and local government across the country is looking at large budget shortfalls for their 2011 fiscal years, most of which begin July 1, 2010. Since they are generally required by state constitutions or local charters to balance their budgets, they will have no choice except to raise taxes and/or make large cutbacks and layoff workers to bring spending and revenue into line.

Bobby Jindal Signs 'Guns-In-Church' Bill Into Law

2010-07-07T17:05:00.008-05:00

A truely sad day, hmmmmmm?

Tazzie

Will the RNC put their money where their mouth is and allow concealed carry at their next convention? If not, why not?

If you're like most Americans, there's probably been a time in your life when you've been sitting in church, listening to a particularly ennui-inducing homily or enduring another warbly version of "Holy Holy Holy" and thought, "Man! I could really reach for some steel right now, squeeze off a few rounds, and let these fools know what the score is!" Well, in Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal has recently signed into law a measure that would allow you to at least feel comforted by the presence of your gun in the house of the Lord. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law one of the more controversial bills from the recent legislative session, one allowing guns to be carried into houses of worship.
[...]
[State Representative Henry] Burns' [R-Haughton] bill would authorize persons who qualified to carry concealed weapons having passed the training and background checks to bring them to churches, mosques, synagogues or other houses of worship as part of a security force.
I am only too sure that a law allowing mosque-goers to carry guns to service will not rile up Louisiana's paranoiacs at all! LinkHere

Jon Stewart on unemployment

2010-07-07T15:23:00.001-05:00

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

America's Got Nothing

Rove Admits His ‘Shadow RNC’ Attack Group Functions Largely Because Of The Citizens United Decision

2010-07-06T17:44:00.001-05:00

Given the weak leadership of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove launched a “shadow RNC” in April called American Crossroads, vowing to spend $50 million to influence this Fall’s election. After an embarrassing first month of fundraising, Crossroads raised $8.5 million in June, “from an even split of individuals and corporations.”
On Fox News today, Rove directly credited his group’s success to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which overturned the decades-old ban on corporate money in politics:
HOST: Some suggest that the money that goes to American Crossroads might otherwise go to an organization like the RNC.
ROVE: Well that’s not correct, because American Crossroads is collecting money in excess of the individual contribution limits the RNC has allowed to give. What we’ve essentially said, is if you’ve maxed out the to senatorial committee, the congressional committee or the RNC and would like to do more, under the Citizens United decisions, you can give money to the American Crossroads 527, or Crossroads GPS, so we’re not tapping the people who — if you’ve giving to American Crossroads, you’re fully capable, in all likelihood, of giving the maximum to one of the national committee organizations. LinkHere

Chris Matthews Nails It

2010-07-06T17:35:00.002-05:00

He [President Obama] is going to destroy this country, and we're either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist."

Alan Keyes

By the way, over a decade ago, Keyes had a nightly program on MSNBC. Are you ready for the punchline? It was called, Alan Keyes Is Making Sense. I'm not kidding you.

Just in case you happened to miss Hardball last night on MSNBC, Chris Matthews' special report, The Rise of the New Right , was one of those rare (these days) moments of essential viewing that we would be wise not to ignore. It will probably be repeated several times in the next few weeks and I urge you to keep your eye out for it. Seriously, if Matthews doesn't get an Emmy for this program there is no justice in this world.

The program is the most comprehensive look yet (at least on non-public television) at the crack-up the Conservative movement in this country is now going through. Let's face some serious facts here, boys and girls: The right wing in this country has always been (since the days of the Confederacy and before) a tad crazy - not to mention dumber than doggy dung. What is happening to them now is beyond anything in their long and entertainingly weird history. In effect they've totally lost it. Here's a quaint little soundbite from last night's program that illustrates perfectly what I'm talking about. The words were uttered by some pathetic, bat shit-crazy woman at last year's "March on Washington":

"We are losing our country. We think the Muslims are moving in and taking over. We do not believe our president is a Christian - and he let us believe that. The president is a liar. God bless Joe Wilson."

Isn't that sweet? We can only assume she was not referring to the same "Joe Wilson" who is married to Valerie Plame, but that's just a hunch on my part.

Once upon a time people this - "ill informed" shall we say? - were to be found mostly on the fringes of the American political scene. Not even in the days of old Joe McCarthy did it get this strange - not on such a national level anyway. Back in the good ol' days, the type of behavior we are witnessing today was pretty much restricted to KKK rallies in the deep south and the editorial offices of the Wall Street Journal. A half a century ago political extremism hadn't yet gone mainstream. It has now. In fact it's ready for prime time! For this we can all thank the nice people at FOX Noise.

It was Rupert Murdoch's "News Group" that promoted this movement from its inception. Murdoch himself has denied this accusation over and over again, but the videotapes are there - and video doesn't lie - unless, of course, it's a taped replay of a typical Sean Hannity program. The Plutocracy, with FOX as its propaganda arm, has brilliantly managed to convince a huge segment of the American public - a lot of whom could barely be qualified as middle class - that the problem with this country is all those damned, bleeding heart Liberals. The question needs to be put to them: "Where were you assholes when George W. Bush was driving this nation into the economic ditch?"

"We need to defeat these bastards. We need to wipe them out."

-Rush Limbaugh
LinkHere

Here is a link to where you can watch The Rise of the New Right in all its nasty entirety on the Hardball website:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp=37742996�&from=en-us_msnhp&snid=18424736

Saddam Hussein Struck Out of History to Split Iraq Even More

2010-07-06T16:47:00.001-05:00

Source: pravda ru
Iraq’s Ministry for Education has decided to erase the memory of the former dictator of the nation Saddam Hussein. The scientific conference, which took place in Iraq last week, decided to not mention the name of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in textbooks on history. It was also decided not to use such word combinations as the “US incursion” or the “US occupation.”

The head of the committee for educational programs of the ministry stated that new education programs were not supposed to become a reason for discord in the society.

As for the word combinations related to the US military presence, Iraqi education ministry officials most likely decided to please US Vice President Joe Biden, who was visiting Baghdad at the time when the conference was being held.

The decision to strike Saddam Hussein’s name out of the history of Iraq may lead to unexpected results. The name of the Iraqi dictator may fall into the national mythology, which is a dangerous phenomenon. It is worthy of note that American tax payers will have to cover the costs connected with the production of new textbooks on the history of Iraq. LinkHere

Survey Ranks Obama 15th Best President, Bush Among Worst

2010-07-02T18:02:00.004-05:00

Source: US News & World ReportPresident Obama ranks 15th out of 44 in a poll of the best and worst presidents while former President George W. Bush earns a place in the bottom five, according to the Siena College Research Institute's recent survey of 238 presidential scholars released Thursday. Obama secured a top ten place in two skill set categories, communication ability (7th) and ability to compromise (10th), and in two personality trait categories, imagination (6th) and intelligence (8th). Background, described as family, education, and experience, proved his lowest score at 32nd.This is the 5th time the institute has conducted the survey of U.S. presidents, which is done a year after a new president takes office. The inaugural survey in 1982 ranked then-President Ronald Reagan at 16th. "Obviously, there's not great validity to it since they've only been in office for one year," says the survey's co-director and statistician Douglas Lonnstrom. "But it's a benchmark for us to see how they move." Bush made the top twenty in only two categories, luck (18th) and willingness to take risks (19th), and he sits in the bottom five in 12 of the 20 categories, notably 42nd in intelligence, foreign policy accomplishments, and communication ability. Lonnstrom points out the unpopular former president has time on his side, explaining it takes four or five decades to know a president's true worth. "Right now there's a lot of emotion about Bush," he says. "Time passes and people become more objective, and so we'll see."Read more:

Survey: Obama Ranked 15th Best President, Bush 39th

HUFFPOST SUPER USEMegWe 1 hour ago (8:15 PM)

I have a good friend who is a tough old broad, very smart blue collar, who used to drive truck, and her husband and three sons are also currently truck drivers. All four of these guys are on the road all this weekend, which I understand is unheard of over the 4th of July. They are busier than h e l l , with some companies paying premium rates to have their goods moved. This has been going on for several weeks now. She is convinced that the economy is a lot better than the statistics show, and that corporate America is doing a number on the President. I believe her. They are pulling out all of the stops with their mouthpieces in the Republican party and MSM. I don't usually give a second though to so-called "conspiracy theories," but people, we have a huge fight on our hands. Stay safe Mr. President!

Listen All Y'all, It's a Republican Sabotage

2010-07-02T03:51:00.000-05:00

Tuesday morning on CNBC, the spazzy white guys in lower Manhattan were debating how the administration and Congress can best repair the economy, and mainly the jobless numbers. At one point, Rick Santelli, the hyperkinetic shoutcaster and instigator of the tea party movement, began to flail around, waving his arms above his head while yelling, "Stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending!"
And contrary to accusations from one of the other spazzy white panelists, Santelli insisted he wasn't calling for more tax cuts. Just a freeze in government spending. Somehow.
Fine. Show us another time in American history when a spending freeze -- and a spending freeze alone -- jump-started an economic recovery following a deep recession and high unemployment. Show us. Where in the world is Santelli getting this?
It doesn't really matter from which hole Santelli's latest television meltdown was extricated. Suffice to say, there is no historical precedent for any such thing. In fact, the often-referenced spending cuts of 1937 caused the opposite effect: a backslide in the economic recovery during the Great Depression. Oh, sorry. There we go again -- referencing actual "history" instead of just screeching incongruous, contradictory and unsubstantiated nonsense, which seems to be the accepted style of discourse these days.
Santelli's rant is just another performance in a broader strategy by the Republicans and tea party movement to deliberately sabotage the economic recovery. Not unlike Santelli's "stop spending" idea, this is a strategy which also, to the best of my knowledge, has no historical precedent. For the first time ever -- and this is worth repeating -- one of the two major political parties in America is sabotaging a delicate economic recovery for the sake of humiliating the president and his party, and subsequently recapturing a political majority. LinkHere

17 senators from states with double-digit jobless rates repeatedly vote to filibuster unemployment benefits.

2010-07-01T16:56:00.002-05:00

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, 15 million Americans have lost their jobs. Almost half of them have been out of work for six months or more, and there are currently nearly five workers actively seeking work for every available job. However, the Senate has been unable to extend job benefits because of a Republican filibuster, which has been joined by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE). On three separate occasions, Democrats tried to break the filibuster but were unsuccessful. And while no senator voting to continue the filibuster should be allowed to escape responsibility, many voting to sustain it are from states that have been hit particularly hard by the unemployment crisis. Here are the 17 senators from states with double-digit unemployment who are willing to leave their constituents without a safety net:

Senator(s) State Unemployment Rate Votes Against Cloture (Out Of Three)
Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby (R) Alabama 10.8% Three each
Sen. George LeMieux (R) Florida 10.4% Three
Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson (R) Georgia 10.2% Three each
Sen. Richard Lugar (R) Indiana 10.0% Three
Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning (R) Kentucky 10.4% Three each
Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran (R) Mississippi 11.4% Three each
Sen. John Ensign (R) Nevada 14.0% Three
Sen. Richard Burr (R) North Carolina 10.3% Three
Sen. George Voinivich Ohio 10.7% Three
Sen. Lindsey Graham South Carolina 11.0% Two (Missed vote on 6/17)
Sen. Jim DeMint South Carolina 11.0% Two (Missed vote on 6/30)
Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander (R) Tennessee 10.4% Three each

1.3 million people have lost their benefits this month alone, and this is actually an historic step on the part of the Senate, as “never before has Congress cut off benefits when unemployment was so high.” But perhaps Republicans in the Senate agree with Sharron Angle that unemployed people are simply “spoiled” and “afraid to get a job”? LinkHere

Presidential scholars: Bush is the worst president of the modern era, bottom five of all time.

2010-07-01T16:21:00.001-05:00

Source: Think Progress

Presidential scholars: Bush is the worst president of the modern era, bottom five of all time.

Since 1982, the Siena Research Institute has polled presidential scholars on whom they view to be best and worst presidents in American history, based on a variety of issues from “integrity” to economic stewardship. This year’s poll of 238 scholars found that President Franklin Roosevelt was once again ranked on top, joined by Presidents Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt to complete the top five. However, President George W. Bush did not fare well since the last poll was conducted in 2002. He dropped 16 places to 39th, making him the worst president since Warren Harding died in office in 1923, and one of the bottom five of all time, according to the experts:

*****Today, just one year after leaving office, the former president has found himself in the bottom five at 39th rated especially poorly in handling the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence. Rounding out the bottom five are four presidents that have held that dubious distinction each time the survey has been conducted: Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin Pierce.

Bush was rated second from the bottom on “intelligence,” “foreign policy accomplishments,” and “handling of U.S. economy.” This despite promises from Bush supporters that “history will be very kind” to the former president, as his Attorney General John Ashcroft put it. Bush’s father’s legacy “held constant” in this year’s poll, with George H.W. Bush coming in at 22nd. President Reagan “dropped two places from 16th overall in 2002 to 18th today.” President Obama was ranked 15th. (HT: Taegan Goddard) LinkHere

Turks Shot Multiple Times On Gaza Aid Ship: Forensics

2010-06-30T18:57:00.001-05:00

Source: Agence France-Presse

ANKARA — All but two of the nine Turks killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot more than once, and five died from bullet wounds to the head, according to forensic reports.
The documents, penned this month, were made available to AFP Tuesday by lawyers for the victims' families, who have petitioned Turkish prosecutors to investigate the May 31 bloodshed on the Turkish Mavi Marmara ferry.

"The findings make it clear the Israeli forces shot to kill the activists and not to overpower them," one of the lawyers, Yasin Divrak, told AFP.

The youngest victim, 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, a dual Turkish-US national, was shot five times, including twice in the head, the report said.

A bullet that pierced his face was fired from close range, it said, adding he was hit also in the back of the head. LinkHere

UNFRIKINGBELIEVABLE, did they forget Iraq?

2010-06-30T18:50:00.001-05:00

Source: The Guardian

Tony Blair, in his inevitable career progression from world leader to elder statesman, picks up another award, this time the 2010 Liberty Medal, a prize given annually by the National Constitution Centre in Philadelphia.

In announcing the $100,000 prize, Philadelphia's mayor Michael Nutter praised Blair's "relentless pursuit of a long-elusive peace in Northern Ireland as British prime minister and his dedication to the Middle East peace process".
...
Blair's peace efforts in the Middle East presumably don't encompass his support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Philadelphia blogger Duncan Black noted: "I guess Tony Blair won this for his success in helping to liberate souls from the earthly existence." LinkHere

US House passes historic Wall Street overhaul

2010-06-30T18:47:00.000-05:00

Source: AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US House of Representatives gave its final approval Wednesday to the biggest overhaul of Wall Street rules since the Great Depression of the 1930s, leaving the landmark bill in the Senate's hands.

Lawmakers voted 237-192, largely along party lines, for the compromise legislation that President Barack Obama has made his top domestic priority -- and a weapon for bludgeoning his Republican foes ahead of November elections.

The US Senate was expected to take up the measure after the week-long July 4 recess, amid an 11th-hour hunt for the 60 votes needed to ensure passage over any Republican parliamentary delaying tactics.

"The party is over, no longer again will recklessness on Wall Street cause joblessness on Main Street," Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said shortly before the vote. Link Here

Updated: Supreme Court vacates Siegelman decision

2010-06-29T18:38:00.002-05:00

Edited on Tue Jun-29-10 05:01 PM by EarlG
Source: Raw Story

Breaking: Supreme Court vacates conviction of Don Siegelman

By Larisa Alexandrovna
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 -- 10:30 am

In a surprise decision Tuesday morning, the United States Supreme Court vacated an earlier ruling by a lower court in the case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who was convicted of bribery and honest services fraud in 2006 in a case that has widely been criticized as politically motivated.

The ruling was vacated in light of a ruling last week in the case of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling which partially struck down the so-called "honest services" fraud statute. On the heels of that decision, the Supreme Court issued a surprise ruling in the Siegelman case on Tuesday morning. LinkHere

UPDATE from TPM:

Big News on Siegelman

Josh Marshall June 29, 2010, 10:35AM

Last week we mentioned that the Supreme Court's decision in the Skilling case could end up having a big effect on a lot of outstanding public corruption cases. Most of our readers know about the Don Siegelman case because of very serious suspicions that the case was based on a politicized prosecution. But the Supreme Court has just sent Siegleman's case back to the 11th Circuit "for further consideration in light of Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S."
LinkHere
Edited by Admin to update this story at the request of the original author.

Part One – The Political Prisoner
Part Two – Exclusive interview with jailed governor’s daughter, Dana Siegelman
Part Three – Running Elections from the White House
Interview with Dana Jill Simpson and alleged Rove smear campaign
Part Four – How Bush pick helped prosecute top Democrat-backed judge
Part Five – Mississippi Justice: Bush US Attorney targeted my wife, supporters and friends
Part Six - Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys
Justice Department investigating two US Attorneys for political prosecution
Part Seven - Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco and the GOP teamed up to crush Democrats in the South
Government opposes appeal by imprisoned attorney to visit dying wife
Democrat claiming political prosecution appeals decision to prohibit visit to dying wife
Judge who ruled on appeal of prosecuted Democrat was Karl Rove protege
Supreme Court ruling may not help Democrats targeted by Bush US Attorneys

John Pilger: There Is a War on Journalism

2010-06-29T17:37:00.014-05:00

LinkHere

Matt Taibbi's Lara Logan Takedown: 'Lara Logan, You Suck'

Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi unleashed on CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan in a post titled, "Lara Logan, You Suck" Monday.
"Lara Logan, come on down! You're the next guest on Hysterical Backstabbing Jealous Hackfest 2010!" his post began.
Taibbi was responding to Logan's appearance on CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday, during which she trashed Rolling Stone writer Michael Hastings for violating an "unspoken agreement" and publishing anecdotes in his article on General McChrystal that she feels were meant to be off-the-record. Logan also maligned Hastings' methods of gaining McChrystal's trust in order to facilitate their interview.
Taibbi:
Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn't mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here's CBS's chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that's killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag. And the part that really gets me is Logan bitching about how Hastings was dishonest to use human warmth and charm to build up enough of a rapport with his sources that they felt comfortable running their mouths off in front of him....If I'm hearing Logan correctly, what Hastings is supposed to have done in that situation is interrupt these drunken assholes and say, "Excuse me, fellas, I know we're all having fun and all, but you're saying things that may not be in your best interest! As a reporter, it is my duty to inform you that you may end up looking like insubordinate douche bags in front of two million Rolling Stone readers if you don't shut your mouths this very instant!" I mean, where did Logan go to journalism school - the Burson-Marsteller agency?
Taibbi didn't limit his critique to just Logan — he connected her comments to a larger pattern among mainstream journalists, whether they cover wars in Afghanistan or presidential campaigns in the US, who he says prioritize access over fact-finding and truth-seeking:
Most of these reporters just want to be inside the ropeline so badly, they want to be able to say they had that beer with Hillary Clinton in a bowling alley in Scranton or whatever, that it colors their whole worldview. God forbid some important person think you're not playing for the right team!Meanwhile, the people who don't have the resources to find out the truth and get it out in front of the public's eyes, your readers/viewers, you're supposed to be working for them -- and they're not getting your help.
Read Taibbi's full post at RollingStone.com.

McChrystal tells Army he'll retire

Farmer who put up sign claiming Democrats are ‘party of parasites’ has taken $1 million in farm subsidies.

2010-06-24T19:17:00.003-05:00

har5125 says:
Trying to defend himself, Jungerman told the press, “That’s just my money coming back to me. I pay a lot in taxes.
If he earned enough to put in over a million dollars in taxes then why did need subsidies?

Missouri farmer David Jungerman has raised the hackles of local residents with a politically-charged sign he’s placed on his “45-foot-long, semi-truck box trailer” on his farm. The trailer reads: “Are you a Producer or Parasite Democrats – Party of the Parasites.” Now, the Kansas City Star reveals that Jungerman has been the recipient of over a million dollars of federal farm subsidies since 1995:
The Raytown farmer who posted a sign on a semi-truck trailer accusing Democrats of being the “Party of Parasites” received more than $1 million in federal crop subsidies since 1995. [...]
After a story about Jungerman’s trailer ran in Sunday’s Star, however, some readers called him a hypocrite for criticizing others for getting government help while taking government subsidies paid for by taxpayers.
Jungerman said he put up the sign to protest people who pay no taxes, but, “Always have their hand out for whatever the government will give them” in social programs.
Trying to defend himself, Jungerman told the press, “That’s just my money coming back to me. I pay a lot in taxes. I’m not a parasite.” He also said that the sign is aimed at national Democrats, not local Democrats, many of whom are “are old-fashioned Harry Truman Democrats,” who Jungerman says are “more conservative than many Republicans.” For the record, Harry Truman campaigned on establishing a single-payer health care system and famously vetoed tax cuts, making him much more progressive than many of today’s Democrats LinkHere

Lawmakers Urge Obama To Show Greater Support For Israel

2010-06-24T16:18:00.002-05:00

Source: RTTNews

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) joined with 85 other senators in urging President Barack Obama to reaffirm US support for Israel's right to self-defense.

In a letter to the president, the senators argued that Israel is important for the US's national security, and that the US needs to stand with Israel when it "faces multiple threats from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the current regime in Iran."

The letter goes on to commend the Obama Administration for defending Israel against rebukes from the United Nations, blaming a Turkish charity for instigating a conflict involving a Gaza flotilla earlier in June.

They expressed concerns over the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) and asked the administration to consider adding the IHH to the list of foreign terrorist organizations."

LinkHere
ProSense
PDF
**
Members of the Democratic caucus who signed the letter (* where I couldn't make out the names):

Reid
Durbin
Schumer
Murray
Menendez
Levin
Gillibrand
Burris
Kaufman
Casey
Warner
Begich
Bayh
Pryor
Baucus
Cardin
*
Lautenberg
Landrieu
Kohl
Boxer
Nelson
Lieberman
Wyden
Lincoln
Cantwell
Hagan
Feingold
McCaskill
Tester
Feinstein
Carper
Nelson
Specter
Brown
Inouye
Shaheen
Mikulski
Franken
Johnson
Conrad
Reed
Bennett
Udall
Dorgan
Stabenow
Klobuchar
Rockefeller
*
*

Jewish dance group attacked in Germany

2010-06-24T16:17:00.000-05:00

A JEWISH dance group was attacked with stones by a group of children and teenagers during a performance at a street festival in the Germany city of Hannover.
One dancer suffered a leg injury and the group then cancelled their performance.
The teenagers also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs during the Saturday afternoon attack, Hannover police spokesman Thorsten Schiewe said.
Police said the incident is under investigation and that they do not have an exact number of attackers yet.
Mr Schiewe said there were several Muslim immigrant youths among the attackers.
Two suspects, a 14-year-old and a 19-year-old, were being questioned, he said.
Alla Volodarska, whose Progressive Jewish Community of Hannover group held the performance, said that members were still in shock.
"What happened is just so awful. The teenagers started throwing stones the moment our dance group was announced, even before they started dancing." LinkHere

Joe Barton Will Keep Energy Committee Post After Apologizing To GOP Colleagues

2010-06-23T18:06:00.002-05:00

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) convened privately with his GOP colleagues Wednesday and apologized for the controversy he created last week by expressing public sympathy for BP during a much-awaited hearing with the oil company's CEO. The apology appears to have done enough to convince his party's leadership to allow Barton to maintain his position as the leading Republican on the House Energy Committee.
According to the Washington Post's Greg Sargent, House Minority Leader John Boehner recently made it official, "telling reporters that Barton will be keeping his committee slot."
Democrats, still intent on hammering the issue until the November elections responded with a release from DNC spokesperson Brandi Hoffine:
Joe Barton can't seem to stop apologizing -- but the only apology that Barton actually owes is the one he has yet to offer. And that's to the residents of the Gulf Coast who've suffered at the hands of the company that Barton has went to great lengths to defend.LinkHere

The Runaway General

2010-06-23T15:52:00.001-05:00

Stanley McChrystal, Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House

Stanley McChrystal, the general and chief architect of the counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan, was relieved of his command on Wednesday, following a series of disparaging quotes that he and his aides made about the president and civilian leadership.
It was a remarkable conclusion to a frantic two-day period of frenzied coverage, climaxing with a Rose Garden appearance in which the president explained his rationale. In the end, it will remain a confounding episode for both historians and politicos alike. It was not McChrystal's connections to a scarring episode of detainee abuse and the cover-up of a revered soldier's death or his disparagement of the vice president's proposal for Afghanistan that did the general in. It was a series of interviews with Rolling Stone magazine, of all things.
"The conduct represented in the recently published article," said President Obama, "does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general."
Indeed, as Obama spoke in front of a throng of reporters at the Rose Garden, it seemed nearly surreal to imagine that a freelance reporter -- fortuitously embedded with McChrystal during an alcohol-filled bus trip from Paris to Berlin (the flight had been canceled due to volcanic activity in Iceland) -- had put the wheels in motion. McChrystal, after all, had made gaffes before, including publicly mocking Joe Biden's preference for a limited troop presence in Afghanistan ("Chaos-stan" he chided). More than that, he had been either intimately connected or directly tied to two very controversial episodes in recent military history. And no one seemed to notice.
McChrystal was the head of Special Operations command in Afghanistan when Army Ranger and former football star Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire. He approved the paperwork awarding Tillman a Silver Star for dying in the line "of enemy fire" -- and he was "accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions" contained therein, according to an investigation -- despite knowing (or at least suspecting) that Tillman had died in an episode of fratricide. That episode barely registered with the public or, for that matter, Congress, when McChrystal went before the Senate Armed Services Committee waiting to take over control in Afghanistan. The one person who questioned whether more answers were needed was journalist Jon Krakauer who had just penned a book on Tillman's death and thought the general's explanations were "preposterous" and "unbelievable."
The second episode was even less well-known. Years after the Tillman death, McChrystal was mentioned several times in a report by Human Rights Watch which documented the abuse and torture of detained prisoners at Camp Nama in Iraq. A soldier, quoted anonymously in the findings, recalled seeing McChrystal at the facility "a couple of times." It was also reported that the general himself said there was no way that the Red Cross would ever be allowed through the door at Nama -- where treatment of detainees was so bad, it earned the nickname Nasty Ass Military Area.
"It is not easy to say what his role was accurately because the entire program of detention and interrogation going on there remains highly classified," said John Siston, an author of the Human Rights Watch report. "But HRW was able to learn enough to say that he was in the chain of command that oversaw the operations of that special task force and the interrogation unit that took care of the detainees that that special task force detained." LinkHere

vtopa
If it wasn't for independent reporting like Rolling Stone, we'd never have known about the Stanley McChrystal thing. Forget CNN, FOX, and the like. We need real reporting.Please sign the petition to give Helen Thomas' front row seat not to Fox or Bloomberg, but to National Public Radio!!! NPR!

http://www.petitiononline.com/nprfront/petition.html

Shadow RNC’ attack group raises only $200 last month.By Lee Fang at 2:26 pm ‘Shadow RNC’ attack group raises only $200 last month.

2010-06-22T18:52:00.002-05:00

Disgruntled with perceived mismanagement by Chairman Michael Steele, Republican consultants Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie founded a network of right-wing attack groups to rival the power of the Republican National Committee. The “shadow RNC” consists of organizations like American Crossroads, a 527 to run campaign ads and the American Action Forum, a Wall Street-funded clearinghouse for pro-corporate ads and events. While Gillespie promised to raise $50 million dollars for his new venture, the Politico points to disclosures which reveal a far more modest haul:
The group, American Crossroads, raised only $200 last month, according to a report it filed Monday with the Internal Revenue Service, bringing its total raised since launching in March to a little more than $1.25 million. [...] Trevor Rees-Jones, president of Chief Oil and Gas, a privately held energy company in Dallas, in April contributed $1 million to American Crossroads while B. Wayne Hughes of Lexington, Ky., the chairman of Public Storage, contributed $250,000 in March.
In sum, outside of two large checks, American Crossroads has failed to attract any widespread support so far. While the low fundraising numbers may lead some critics to discount Rove and Gillespie, both have many connections to deep-pocketed donors. Gillespie has been meeting with financial executives, and Rove has recruited a top official from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to assist with his efforts. On the other hand, the right-wing establishment promised in 2008 to press forward with a similar attack network, called Freedom’s Watch, which eventually dissolved despite months of similar hype. LinkHere

Barton & BP, Together Again - Main

2010-06-22T18:37:00.001-05:00

Barton's Apology to BP Opens Door for Opponent

LinkHere

"How Republicans Would Govern"

Stewart Nails GOP For Flip Flopping On Escrow Fund

2010-06-22T18:13:00.002-05:00

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Day 62 - The Strife Aquatic

Obama Admin To Battle Oil And Chemical Firms Over Superfund Tax

Rand Paul To Unemployed: Take a Pay Cut, Stop Asking For Handouts, And Get Back To Work

2010-06-21T17:03:00.001-05:00

Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul has a blunt message for the millions of Americans who remain unemployed in the long-term: "Accept a wage that's less than [you] had at [your] previous job" and "get back to work."
According to Paul, the issue is "bigger than unemployment benefits" and the Tea Party-backed Senate hopeful made his position on the matter clear in an interview with talk radio host Sue Wylie on WVLK-AM last week.
"As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that's less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again," Paul explained. "Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen."
Paul's advice for the increasing proportion of the long-term unemployed came in response to a question from Wylie on Republicans successfully blocking a measure that would have extended $120 billion in unemployment benefits to jobless Americans in the Senate last week.
The Kentucky Senate hopeful stressed, "It's all a matter of making priorities" and rooted his argument in a comparison between the dismal condition of the United States economy and that of its European counterpart. "I'm not sure what the answer is," Paul said. "In Europe, they give about a year of unemployment. We're up to two years now in America."
Via Talking Points Memo comes audio of Paul's remarks. LinkHere

US Supreme Court lifts ban on sale of GM crop

2010-06-21T16:07:00.002-05:00

Kablooie

We will be living under the cloud of GWBush for decades.
His SCOTUS picks will insure that our country continues down the same path that brought us the economic meltdown and gulf oil spill.

Jim.

7 - 1 decision - only Stevens in dissent.
And Stevens is retiring.

Source: afp

AFP - The US Supreme Court overturned Monday a decision to ban biotech giant Monsanto's sale of genetically modified alfalfa despite farmers' fears that other crops could be contaminated.

LinkHere

McCaskill says she has votes to end Senate practice of secret holds

2010-06-20T17:12:00.000-05:00

Source: The Hill

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said Saturday she's secured the votes to force a rules change ending the Senate's practice of secret holds.

McCaskill said on Twitter that she had secured the support of two more senators to give her the 67 votes necessary to change the rules in the Senate to abolish the traditional practice of being able to anonymously hold up nominees to positions requiring Senate confirmation.

Sens. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) were the last two signatories.

McCaskill tweeted Saturday:

First battle won!With Sens Bond and Brownbeck now have 67 Senators on my letter calling for the end to secret holds.Now gotta get a vote. LinkHere

BP to raise $50 bn, sue Anadarko

2010-06-20T16:53:00.001-05:00

Source: AFP

"BP is trying to raise 50 billion dollars to cover the cost of the Gulf of Mexico spill and is preparing to sue its partners in the oil field, British newspapers said on Sunday.

The Sunday Telegraph said BP is readying to take legal action against US firm Anadarko, its main partner in the field, for its share of the clean-up costs.

The broadsheet cited a "senior BP source" as saying Anadarko was "shirking its responsibilities", not accepting its liabilities and that legal action in the United States is now likely to follow.

The Sunday Times said BP is working on a plan to raise 50 billion dollars to cover the cost of the oil spill, which would start next week with a bond sale to raise 10 billion dollars.

A further 20 billion dollars would come from bank loans, while the final slice is expected to come from asset sales over the next two years, the broadsheet said." LinkHere

BP Relied On Cheaper Wells Despite Risk... Internal Document: BP Thought Spill Could Be 100-Times Larger Than It Told Congress

2010-06-18T22:45:00.000-05:00

Israeli army seeks recruits in the US

Getting Shit Done

2010-06-18T01:47:00.003-05:00

And that's why Obama's incrementalism, his refusal to pose as a presidential magician, and his resistance to taking the bait of the fetid right (he's president - not a cable news host) seems to me to show not weakness, but a lethal and patient strength. And a resilient ambition.

[Re-posted from earlier today]
What are the odds that Obama's huge success yesterday in getting BP to pledge a cool $20 billion to recompense the "small people" in the Gulf will get the same attention as his allegedly dismal speech on Tuesday night? If you take Memeorandum as an indicator, it really is no contest. The speech is still being dissected by language experts, but the $20 billion that is the front page news in the NYT today? Barely anywhere on the blogs.
This is just a glimpse into the distortion inherent in our current political and media culture. It's way easier to comment on a speech - his hands were moving too much! - than to note the truly substantive victory, apparently personally nailed down by Obama, in the White House yesterday. If leftwing populism in America were anything like as potent as right-wing populism - Matt Bai has a superb analysis of this in the NYT today - there would be cheering in the streets. But there's nada, but more leftist utopianism and outrage on MSNBC. And since there's no end to this spill without relief wells, this is about as much as Obama can do, short of monitoring clean-up efforts, or rather ongoing management of the ecological nightmare of an unstopped and unstoppable wound in the ocean floor.
I sure understand why people feel powerless and angry about the vast forces that control our lives and over which we seem to have only fitful control - big government and big business. But it seems to me vital to keep our heads and remain focused on what substantively can be done to address real problems, and judge Obama on those terms. When you do, you realize that the left's "disgruntleist" faction needs to take a chill pill. LinkHere

BP Supervisor Was Fired For Expressing Safety Concerns

2010-06-18T01:19:00.000-05:00

Ken Abbott, a former project control supervisor on BP's Atlantis deepwater oil rig, was fired in 2009 after expressing concerns about the safety of the operation.
"I got a lot of pressure from the lead engineers and from the managers saying, 'Don't do that; don't push so much; we don't want to mess with that,'" Abbott told HuffPost in an interview Wednesday. "I feel like the real reason I was fired was because I was trying to raise a safety issue, and you know BP has a long history of getting rid of people who try to raise safety issues. I was one of those victims."
"Management sets the tone," Abbott added. "If they think that production is more important than safety, then that's the tone of the company, and that was the tone at Atlantis." LinkHere

How Joe Barton Managed To Have A Worse Day Than Tony Hayward

2010-06-17T19:13:00.003-05:00

DannyEV

It's okay for a corporation to shake down the citizens of his country--but not okay for that country to require accountability for destruction of it's environment, endangering industries, wildlife and lifestyle of entire communities.

watta treasonous b@st@rd. SO typical of republicans

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, went out on a limb today to do something maybe no other American would think to do: He apologized to BP for having to put $20 billion into a fund for Gulf spill damages. Only Barton called it a "slush fund" and a "shakedown."
Barton's apology to BP led at first to a delicate dance, as some Republicans tried to move away from the so obviously toxic statements without outright condemning Barton, and later a full court press as Republican leaders publicly called Barton's comments "wrong."
The leaders reportedly gave him an ultimatum: "Apologize, immediately. Or you will lose your position, immediately."
Eventually, Barton, who would become the energy committee's chairman should the Republicans take the House this fall, said he was sorry. He first apologized if anyone had "misconstrued" his statement, and shortly after apologized for using the word "shakedown" and retracted his original apology (to BP, that is).
Nonetheless, House GOP leaders came down on Barton hard.
"The oil spill in the Gulf is this nation's largest natural disaster and stopping the leak and cleaning up the region is our top priority. Congressman Barton's statements this morning were wrong," House GOP leaders John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence said in a statement.
It's worth nothing that the leaders have not condemned a statement put out yesterday by the Republican Study Committee, a conservative bloc of more than 100 House members led by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), that called the escrow account a "Chicago-style political shakedown." Nor has the RSC apologized. However, by Thursday evening the release appeared to have been removed from the RSC's site, replaced with the message "We are sorry, but this document is not published."
Boehner told reporters earlier today that he disagrees with Barton's characterization of the government's response. He also said he's "glad" BP is "being held accountable."
NRSC chairman Sen. John Cornyn said he "shares" Barton's concern that "this has really become a political issue for the President and he's trying to deal with it by showing how tough he's being against BP." LinkHere

Angry GOP, Democratic Reps Call For Joe Barton To Resign From Committee .. Earlier: Barton Says White House Subjected BP To A 'Shakedown' .. Robert Gibbs: 'Both Parties Should Repudiate His Comments'

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Day 59 - Judgment Day - The Strife Aquatic

Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater Owner Erik Prince’s Rumored Move to UAE and Obama Admin’s Expansion of Special Forces Operations Abroad

Autistic Student Eric Duquette Amazes Audience With Graduation Speech

2010-06-17T16:59:00.001-05:00

Awesome achievement Eric, Congratulations

The parents of Rhode Island high school student Eric Duquette were told their son would end up in an institution.

Instead, Duquette went on to become salutatorian of his high school class -- and was accepted at every college to which he applied, ABC News reports.

Duquette was diagnosed with autism at an early age and didn't talk until he was five. His mother worked with him to learn to talk, even teaching him sign language. Today, Duquette speaks English and Spanish.

And addressing his classmates this week, Duquette inspired his peers with wise words.

"Daniel Webster wrote that 'if my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest,'" Duquette said. "For me, learning to communicate did mean regaining all the rest."

Duquette will start at Rhode Island College in the fall LinkHere

Is Blackwater's Erik Prince Moving to the United Arab Emirates?

2010-06-17T02:25:00.007-05:00

"It is nobody’s business where Mr. Prince (or anyone else) chooses to live. So I’m afraid I will not be able to confirm any rumors."
Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo

Sources close to Blackwater and its secretive owner Erik Prince claim that the embattled head of the world's most infamous mercenary firm is planning to move to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Middle Eastern nation, a major hub for the US war industry, has no extradition treaty with the United States. In April, five of Prince's top deputies were hit with a fifteen-count indictment by a federal grand jury on conspiracy, weapons and obstruction of justice charges. Among those indicted were Prince's longtime number-two man, former Blackwater president Gary Jackson, former vice presidents William Matthews and Ana Bundy and Prince's former legal counsel Andrew Howell.

The Blackwater/Erik Prince saga took yet another dramatic turn last week, when Prince abruptly announced that he was putting his company up for sale.
While Prince has not personally been charged with any crimes, federal investigators and several Congressional committees clearly have his company and inner circle in their sights. The Nation learned of Prince's alleged plans to move to the UAE from three separate sources. One Blackwater source told The Nation that Prince intends to sell his company quickly, saying the "sale is going to be a fast move within a couple of months."

Mark Corallo, a trusted Prince advisor and Blackwater spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny the allegation that Prince is planning to move to the United Arab Emirates. "I have a policy on not discussing my client’s personal lives—especially when that client is a private citizen," Corallo, who runs his own crisis management and PR firm, said in an e-mail to The Nation. "It is nobody’s business where Mr. Prince (or anyone else) chooses to live. So I’m afraid I will not be able to confirm any rumors."
A source with knowledge of the federal criminal probe into Blackwater's activities told The Nation that none of Prince's indicted colleagues have flipped on Prince since being formally charged, but rumors abound in Blackwater and legal circles that Prince may one day find himself in legal trouble. Former Blackwater employees claim they have provided federal prosecutors with testimony about what they allege is Prince's involvement in illegal activity.
If Prince's rumored future move is linked to concerns over possible indictment, the United Arab Emirates would be an interesting choice for a new home—particularly because it does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. "If Prince were not living in the US, it would be far more complicated for US prosecutors to commence an action against him," says Scott Horton, a Columbia University Law lecturer and international law expert who has long tracked Blackwater. "There is a long history of people thwarting prosecutors simply by living overseas." The UAE, Horton says, is "definitely a jurisdiction where Prince could count on it not being simple for the US to pursue him legally." LinkHere

Hypocracy thy name is GOP

2010-06-16T21:30:00.001-05:00

Thune Says GOP Now Wants To Make Sure Spending For Iraq And Afghanistan Wars Is Offset

Since the Republicans lost control of Congress and the White House, they have conveniently decided it’s time to rein in spending after helping President Bush bequeath the current administration with a more than $1 trillion deficit.
Part of that campaign has been to target the once sacrosanct emergency war funding. Republicans made a fuss last year because the war funding bill contained money for the IMF. Last month, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said war funding needs to be paid for. Today on ABC’s Top Line, Sen. John Thune (R-ND) indicated that most Republicans are starting to hold this view:
THUNE: Republicans are increasingly, I think, dug in on the issue of making sure that new spending is offset. … Frankly, I think that there is even a growing consensus among Republicans that we need to start budgeting for this, we need to start figuring out how to pay for it. And I think that’s kind of the majority view among Republicans now.

The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim has noted the obvious hypocrisy here:

Obama BP Meeting: Company Agrees To $20 Billion Escrow Account For Victims

2010-06-16T16:31:00.002-05:00

Well he didn't need all those theatrics to get the job done now did he, Another one for Obama, Who the hell was it that got 20 billion no caps in 15 mins, I think that essentially is a President taking charge, without being God and capping the well with his own two hands. This is going to blow their friking minds all those nay sayers and opinionators he just blew them away again, Just thinking maybe all those states will not want the money, just like they didn't want the stimulus, just surmising here Down Under

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senior administration officials tell The Associated Press that BP has agreed to finance a $20 billion fund to pay the claims of people whose jobs and way of life have been damaged by the devastating Gulf Coast oil spill.
The independent fund will be led by lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, who oversaw payments to families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama met on his own turf with top BP officials on Wednesday to press his demands that the London-based oil giant pay into a claims fund for victims of the worst oil spill in the nation's history.
BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, CEO Tony Hayward, and other officials walked slowly as a group from the Southwest Gate of the White House, where they were dropped off, and climbed the steps leading to the West Wing.
The meeting comes the morning after Obama vowed to an angry nation that "we will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused." BP is the majority owner of the deep water well that blew out on April 20, killing 11 rig workers and triggering the spill.
It was Obama's first meeting with BP officials since the spill. While Hayward has served as the voice of the company, the White House has been emphasizing the role of the company's chairman, Svanberg, instead. LinkHere

BP to set aside $23bn for oil spill costs

BP boss says sorry, agrees to $23bn clean-up fund after pressure from Barack Obama.

2010-06-15T19:07:00.002-05:00

Democrats Block GOP Effort To Roll Back Provisions Of Health Care Law

The vote Tuesday to repeal the mandate failed 187 to 230.

Your country would like to know.

2010-06-15T18:05:00.004-05:00

Where Is Dick Cheney During the Gulf Oil Spill?

marignymitch
He's in an undisclosed location counting his petrodollars.

Janet Ritz, 06.15.2010
Publisher, editor, the-environmentalist.org
Halliburton was a player in this worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States. It was their cementing of the well that did not hold. They were involved. Is that why Mr. Cheney has been so silent?

http://www.ombwatch.org/node/38

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/08/fratto-midnight-regulations/

Under Cheney’s Influence, Wyoming’s Oil Ties Flooded MMS

Cheney's Halliburton stock options rose 3,281% last year, senator finds

Fox propaganda no retraction of story they hammered for months and months . ... equals NO INTEGRITY.

2010-06-15T17:46:00.005-05:00

Vindication a little late, I think!!!!!!! ACORN Vindicated of Wrongdoing by the Congressional Watchdog Office

John Atlas, 06.15.2010
For years Republicans accused ACORN of corruption and used phony tapes to lead an effort to successfully strip the group of federal funding in 2009. Now, months later, the group has been exonerated from any wrongdoing.

APNewsBreak: Losing SC Senate candidate protesting

2010-06-14T15:33:00.001-05:00

Source: AP

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Former state lawmaker Vic Rawl on Monday formally protested the results of the U.S. Senate primary he lost last week to an unknown, unemployed military veteran.

South Carolina Democratic Party Executive Director Jay Parmley said Rawl filed his protest with the party just before the noon deadline.

Greene stunned state party leaders last Tuesday when he defeated Rawl in the primary. Neither candidate had done much campaigning, but Greene had raised no money and had no ads or website.

Rawl says experts who have analyzed the data say they've noticed irregularities in the vote totals. He planned an afternoon news conference in Charleston. LinkHere

6 Days Before Explosion, BP Engineer Called Deepwater Horizon A 'nightmare Well'

2010-06-14T15:27:00.002-05:00

Source: AP

(AP) WASHINGTON (AP) - Six days before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP drilling engineer called the rig a "nightmare well" that had caused the company problems in the past.

The comment by BP engineer Brian Morel came in an e-mail April 14. On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion killed 11 people and sent tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf in the nation's worst environmental disaster.

The e-mail was among dozens of internal documents released Monday in Washington by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating the explosion and its aftermath. Committee leaders said BP made a series of questionable decisions before the explosion that "posed a trade-off between cost and well safety." LinkHere

This release of documents is the basis for this story:

BP’s Well Failure Due to Effort to Save $10 Million?

Well Design. On April 19, one day before the blowout, BP installed the final section of steel tubing in the well. BP had a choice of two primary options: it could lower a fu ll string of “casing” from the top of the wellhead to the bottom of the well, or it could hang a ” liner” from the lower end of the casing already in the well and install a “tieback” on top of the liner. The liner-tieback option would have taken extra time and was more expensive, but it would have been safer because it provided more barriers to the flow of gas up the annul ar space surrounding these steel tubes. A BP plan review prepared in mid-April recommended against the full string of casing because it would create “an open annulus to the wellhead” and make the seal assembly at the wellhead the “only barrier” to gas flow if the cement job failed. Despite this and other warnings, BP chose the more risky casing option, apparently because the liner option would have cost $7 to $10 million more and taken longer.

Centralizers. When the final string of casing was installed, one key chall enge was making sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. As the American Petroleum Institute’s recommended practices explain, if the casing is not centered, “it is difficult, if not impossible, to displace mud effectively from the narrow side of the annulus,” resulting in a failed cement job. Halliburton, the contractor hired by BP to cement the well, warned BP that the well could have a “SEVERE gas flow problem” if BP lowered the final string of casing with only six centralizers instead of the 21 recommended by Halliburton. BP rejected Halliburton’s advice to use additional centralizers. In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: ” it will take 10 hours to install them . .. . I do not like this.” Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: “who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.” much more:

Congratulations well done, first time I have ever respected a Bush

2010-06-13T19:38:00.001-05:00

Israel proceeds with own flotilla probe

2010-06-13T18:33:00.002-05:00

JERUSALEM — Israel has proposed an inquiry commission into its bloody attack on a Gaza-bound flotilla two weeks ago, to be headed by a retired Israeli judge and to include two high-ranking foreign observers.
A government statement said the "independent public commission" proposal would be brought before Israel's Cabinet on Monday for approval.
Chairing the commission would be Yaakov Turkel, a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice, the statement said. The two foreign observers would be Lord William David Trimble of Ireland, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and retired Brig. Gen. Ken Watkin, the former chief military prosecutor in Canada.
Israel has come under withering criticism for its May 30 raid on the flotilla, in which nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Arab world's top diplomat declared support Sunday for the people of blockaded Gaza in his first visit to the Palestinian territory since Hamas violently seized control of it three years ago.
The visit was latest sign that Israel's deadly raid on a flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza has eased the diplomatic isolation of the Islamic militant group.
Israel, meanwhile, appeared to grow more isolated in the fallout over the May 31 raid as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly canceled plans Sunday to visit Paris.
Barak's office said he canceled his trip while Israel forms a committee to investigate the raid. The statement denied that the decision was connected to attempts by pro-Palestinian groups to seek his arrest.
Israeli defense officials said Barak was concerned about the unwanted attention his visit would attract. In particular, they pointed to the heavy media attention and difficult questions he would face as well as the heightened security arrangements the visit would require. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.
Activists have previously tried unsuccessfully to arrest Barak and other Israeli officials in Europe under the principle of universal jurisdiction. LinkHere

Top Arab diplomat visits Gaza

Call by Arab League chief for Israeli blockade to be 'broken' hailed by Hamas.

Turkey blasts new Israeli raid panel

Says won't be 'impartial'; Int'l observers on panel have no votes.

Mr President this view show how hypocracy knows no bounds, it is "obscene, offensive, and reprehensible"

2010-06-13T18:29:00.002-05:00

This past Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered a wide-ranging speech at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, D.C. The senator’s lecture touched on areas such as Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and several domestic policy issues.
During one point of his speech, Schumer turned his attention to the situation in Gaza. He told the audience that the “Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution,” and also that “they don’t believe in the Torah, in David.” He went on to say “you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.”
New York’s senior senator explained that the current Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip — which is causing a humanitarian crisis there — is not only justified because it keeps weapons out of the Palestinian territory, but also because it shows the Palestinians living there that “when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement.” Summing up his feelings, Schumer emphasized the need to “to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go”:
SCHUMER: The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not. Their fundamental view is, the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them our land — this is Palestinian thinking [...] They don’t believe in the Torah, in David [...] You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay. The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re going to get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense. LinkHere

At last someone says something worthwhile.

2010-06-13T02:51:00.002-05:00

Saudis clear Israel to bomb Iran?

2010-06-12T06:57:00.001-05:00

Riyadh opens air space for run on nuke facilities, paper says

LONDON - Saudi Arabia will allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran's nuclear facilities, the London Times reported on Saturday.
Quoting unnamed U.S. defense sources, the newspaper said Riyadh conducted tests to be sure its own jets would not be scrambled and missile defenses not be activated so Israeli bombers could pass by without problems.
The path would shorten Israel's bomb run, The Times said. LinkHere

Saudis Deny Report They Will Allow Israeli Planes Over Country (Arutz Sheva)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/news.aspx/138017

Saudi denies deal on Iran blitz (Gulf Daily News)

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid...

KSA rejects claim of deal with Israel to attack Iran (Saudi Gazette)

http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.re...

Filmmaker's unedited video of Gaza convoy raid

2010-06-12T06:52:00.002-05:00

g20bric
Filmmaker's unedited video of Gaza convoy raid

Over one hour of unedited, uncensored video from Israel’s raid on the Mavi Marmara Gaza Flotilla is now in the public domain, thanks to the efforts of Brazilian filmmaker Iara Lee.

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/middle-east/2010/06/11/filmmakers-unedited-video-gaza-convoy-raid

Israeli Attack on the Mavi Marmara // Raw Footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsMJmvS0AY&feature=player_embedded#!

Don't you just love it?

2010-06-10T22:56:00.001-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A little to late for that I think Mr. President

2010-06-10T12:16:00.002-05:00

White House officials make nice with labor

In a private meeting currently under way with labor leaders, top White House officials are working hard to smooth over tensions in the wake of an anonymous administration official's claim that unions had flushed $10 million down the toilet in Arkansas, and are stressing that they respect labor's decision, sources say.
The private make-up session is directly at odds with the tough tone the White House official struck in the wake of the primary, and is also at odds with Robert Gibbs' subsequent quasi-endorsement of the sentiment. In the meeting, a White House official asked labor to put the anonymous comment behind them, a source at the meeting says.
Representing the White House at the meeting, which is currently underway at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, are top advisers Patrick Gaspard and Jen O'Malley. On the labor side are AFL-CIO's political directors.
Here's what's going down as we speak, according to a source who is present. Labor officials pointedly told the White House reps that they stood by their effort in Arkansas and were proud of it, and that they would continue making endorsement decisions not according to the letter next to the incumbent's name, but solely on who was better for their members.
In response, Gaspard, the White House official with perhaps the deepest roots in labor, assured those present that he understood that unions should remain independent. He asked the labor officials not to let one comment foul up relations between labor and the White House.
Gaspard also assured those assembled that he understood that labor's first responsibility is to their members.
So it looks like the White House does regret dumping on labor after all, and does understand that the judicious move here is to walk back the criticism and insults, if only in private. More as I learn it. LinkHere

Veteran White House Reporter Helen Thomas Retires After Israel Remarks

2010-06-10T11:33:00.002-05:00

Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas has retired amid a firestorm of criticism over comments she made on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Widely known as “the dean of the White House press corps,” Thomas is the most senior White House correspondent and has covered every president since John F. Kennedy. In a brief video interview with the website RabbiLive.com, Thomas said her message to Israelis is to "get the hell out of Palestine." Thomas also suggested Israeli Jews should return to Poland, Germany or the United States. Thomas later issued a statement saying, "I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon." We speak to former Senator James Abourezk, the first Arab American in the Senate. [includes rush transcript] LinkHere

More Outrage Over Helen Thomas Comment Than Murder of US Citizen

The knives are out for Helen Thomas.
There is more outrage in this country over some bumbling comments she recently made than over the murder of a US citizen and eight others by our ally, Israel, on the high seas. Never mind the fact that she has apologized while Israel still refuses to apologize. LinkHere

2010-06-10T10:56:00.001-05:00

Years of Internal BP Probes Warned that Neglect Could Lead to Accidents

EXCLUSIVE: New Video Smuggled Out from Mavi Marmara of Israel’s Deadly Assault on Gaza Aid Flotilla

2010-06-10T09:29:00.006-05:00

In a Democracy Now! exclusive, we bring you a sneak preview of previously unseen raw footage from the Mavi Marmara that will be formally released at a press conference at the United Nations later in the day. The footage shows the mood and the activities onboard the Mavi Marmara in the time leading up to the attack, and the immediate reaction of the passengers during the attack. We are joined by filmmaker and activist Iara Lee, one of the few Americans on the Mavi Marmara ship. Her equipment was confiscated, but she managed to smuggle out an hour’s worth of footage. LinkHere Watch a 5 minute cut of Lee’s footage here:

Framing the Narrative: Israeli Commandos Seize Videotape and Equipment from Journalists After Deadly Raid

After the Israeli military raided the Gaza aid flotilla and killed nine of the activists on board, they detained almost everyone else—700 activists and journalists—hauled them to the Israeli port of Ashdod, and kept them largely out of communication with family, press and lawyers for days. The Israeli government confiscated every recording and communication device it could find—devices containing almost all the recorded evidence of the raid. The Israelis selected, edited and released footage they wanted the world to see. We speak to two veteran reporters who were covering the Gaza Freedom Flotilla for Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald. [includes rush transcript] LinkHere

Palestinian Member of Israeli Knesset Receives Death Threats After Surviving Israeli Raid on Gaza Aid Flotilla

Hanin Zoabi was aboard the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the flotilla where all nine activists were killed, and she witnessed some of them bleed to death. When she returned to Israel to speak in the Knesset, she was verbally assaulted by parliament members for her participation in the flotilla. [includes rush transcript] LinkHere

Palestinian President Abbas Faces Uproar for Aiding US-Israeli Derailment of UN Report on Gaza Assault

Palestinian outrage continues over the Palestinian Authority’s decision to back the postponement of a Human Rights Council vote on the Goldstone investigation into Israel’s assault on Gaza. The move reportedly came after heavy American and Israeli pressure. We speak with Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. [includes rush transcript] LinkHere

Sarah Palin Demands Hardball Regulations and a Takeover of BP

2010-06-10T02:57:00.003-05:00

Sarah Palin and the GOPs' platform is very simply: we believe the opposite of anything the president, the Democrats and the progressives say, regardless of whether it's contradictory, crazy or stupid.

On her Facebook page this week, Sarah Palin outlined a pretty solid case for tough government regulations against corporations. (By the way, none of the sentences ended with the word "also," nor did the entry read like a really bad local newspaper letter to the editor, so I assume it was ghost-written.)
Yes, seriously. Sarah Palin is in favor of the federal government planting its gigantic boot on the throats of energy companies. She put it in writing. Not only that but she even proposed that our socialist, anti-capitalist, wealth-redistributing president call her on the phone so she can describe to him specifically how to impose all kinds of big government regulations against BP and others.
It's about damn time.
I knew if we just continued to make the case for serious government regulation of corporations, we'd finally win some minds and hearts -- even minds as airy, and wolf-snipering hearts as hardened as Sarah Palin's.
Here's the centerpiece of what she wrote:
Unless government appropriately regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable, the public will not trust them to drill, baby, drill. And we must!
I can only assume she was suggesting that "we must!" regulate and drill. For the record, we're already drilling offshore, so enough of this hackish "drill, baby, drill" screeching. There are already 3,858 oil and gas platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico alone, according to NOAA. Here's a convenient map with yellow dots indicating all of the locations where we're already, you know, drilling, baby, drilling:

I understand, however, that most Republicans aren't satisfied and want more drilling. They want the moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits to end, and they want new exploration for oil in heretofore untapped leases all along the entire coast of the United States. The problem is that it would take around 10 years to get platforms online and producing in the areas where there are untapped leases, and the deepwater platforms that are ready to drill now don't have the failsafe mechanisms -- and the regulations Sarah wants -- in place yet. So how about this compromise: we continue to drill with the existing offshore wells, but, as Sarah Palin suggests, we regulate the hell out of them? Once those regulations are in place, maybe we can talk about new offshore leases rather than drilling willy-nilly.
But that doesn't appear good enough for Sarah Palin's southern allies.
Rand Paul, who Sarah endorsed, doesn't want any regulation whatsoever.
Bobby Jindal, when he's not hyperventilating into a bag or begging for taxpayer wealth to be redistributed from elsewhere to Louisiana, is demanding that new deepwater oil platforms be allowed to immediately begin pumping before new regulations are put in place. LinkHere

Helen Thomas Says Media 'Played Dead' In Run-Up To Iraq War

2010-06-09T18:00:00.011-05:00

Shame on you Mr President, you just threw away a true journalist in every sense of the word.

You have just deminished yourself around the world, in your peace efforts.

Murder on the High Seas is not "offensive and reprehensible."

I think certainly a must read, what knowledge to just throw away!!!!!!

That’s the reason we’re so easily led down the garden path—nobody’s asking “why?” The question “why?” should always be there. What is the reason this other government or these people would do this to us? But I had the impression that throughout the whole country, truth took a holiday. There’s been very little search for truth, except for a few people who have spoken out.

This interview with Helen Thomas was conducted in March. We were holding it for an upcoming issue of Vice magazine, but in light of what’s going on with her now, we’ve decided to run it online today.

“Uh, wait, what’s going on with her now,” you say. Oh, you live in a cave. OK then. Helen Thomas just made some comments about Israel that Israelis, President Obama, and a lot of other people vehemently didn’t like. Not to put too fine a point on it, she pretty much said that Jews need to “get the hell out of Palestine” and go home to “Poland, Germany and America.” A tad indelicate, yes. But not surprising given her reputation for being headstrong and outspoken. And has Helen Thomas ever made her position on Israel and its actions a secret? Nope. Besides, if we were 89 years old and had spent the last five decades watching a steady flow of spin and doubletalk issuing forth from the mouths of countless men (and a select few women) standing behind a podium with the White House seal on it, we might be getting a little grumpy by now too.

“But hold on a minute,” you say. “Who’s Helen Thomas again?” Really, kid? Lebanese-American member of the White House Press Corps since 1960. Pioneering female journalist. The little old lady who sits in the front row at Presidential press conferences and asks the questions that the other reporters are too scared to ask. A journalist who truly challenges politicians, who wants them to be able to explain and justify their decisions and positions, whose most valued question is ‘why.’ Now she has been hounded into quitting the job that was her life. Her agent for speaking engagements has summarily dropped her. She is being vilified by many and lauded by others but no matter what, we believe that she is owed a huge debt of respect and gratitude for the work she’s done in the name of true democracy. We fear that the White House Press Corps has lost its conscience in losing Helen Thomas. Whether anyone has the balls to carry on what she has started remains to be seen.
PS: Yes, she does discuss Israel in this interview, if you’re curious about whether there’s a timely money shot to sink your teeth into. But there’s a lot more going on here. Don’t let Helen Thomas’s views on Israel alone define her for you.

Vice: When I watched you at press conferences during the George W. Bush years, you seemed pretty disgusted with your fellow journalists.Helen Thomas: In the run-up to the Iraq War, no one asked for proof of weapons of mass destruction. It was very, very clear that President Bush wanted to go to war at any cost. And he would not go back to the UN and allow them three more months to look and see if it was really true. We went to war on lies. I think 9-11 was definitely used to terrorize the people away from taking any stand against the government, because they felt it was a real crisis and I guess they—halfway at least—believed the government. Using terrorists is a very effective propaganda weapon.

Is it just me or did the mainstream press seem particularly flabby after 9-11?They were afraid of not being considered real patriots, and I’m sure the big communications corporations got orders from on high. So they played ball.

In your decades at the White House have you witnessed this kind of complacency before?Well, the Watergate scandal was the turning point in the White House in modern times. We took all the [Nixon administration’s] denials, and when they turned out to be absolutely wrong, when it turned out to be disinformation, it made reporters much more wary in that brief interval that followed. But of course 9-11 made everyone into a prime citizen again, and afraid to ask. The Pentagon was also very effective in propagandizing, as was the State Department, as was the White House. So, again, I think that journalists became afraid to be called unpatriotic if they didn’t support a war, even one that was obviously not true.

You were surprised by this?LinkHere

On the Vilification of Helen Thomas

By Robert Scheer
The media tirade against Helen Thomas is as illogical as it is hysterical. The few sentences uttered by her were, as she quickly acknowledged, wrong—deeply so, I would add. But they cannot justify the road-rage destruction of the dean of the Washington press corps. Suddenly this heroic woman who broke so many gender barriers and dared to challenge presidential arrogance was reduced to nothing more than the stereotypical anti-Israel Arab that it is so fashionable to hate.
“Thomas, of Lebanese ancestry and almost 90, has never been shy about her anti-Israel views,” writes Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, in a non sequitur reference to a reporter born in Winchester, Ky., in 1920 when few—Jews included—supported a Jewish state in Palestine and whose parents were Christians. Obviously Cohen, who attacks Thomas for “revealing how very little she knew” about the history of Israel, is unaware that Lebanese Christians have been the staunchest allies of the Jewish state. Indeed, they provided the shock troops who, under Israeli cover, massacred the unarmed inhabitants of Palestinian refugee camps. To attribute Thomas’ views on Israel to her Lebanese parents is no less offensive than it would be to suggest that a Jewish reporter cannot be objective because, as in my case, his mother escaped anti-Semitism in Russia.
Thomas’ fall from grace as a media icon began with her daring to criticize the abysmal coverage of the buildup to the Iraq war. How ironic that her opposition to the U.S. invasion is offered as an example of hostility to Israel when that war did so much to increase the power of Iran, Israel’s most significant enemy in the region. After all, Israel claims that the presumed military threat from Gaza is fueled by Iran, which enjoys much support in Shiite-led Iraq—previously governed by Tehran’s archenemy Saddam Hussein.
As someone who has long supported a two-state solution for the historically disputed land of Palestine, I have no trouble condemning Thomas’ ill-considered remarks that Israeli Jews should go back to the lands from where they came. I am opposed to denying legitimacy to desperate immigrants seeking a better life anywhere, be they in Arizona or the Middle East. What I don’t understand is why this basic respect for human rights doesn’t apply to the people who call themselves Palestinian and who are illegal immigrants not as a matter of birth but only in the political calculus of those who find their indigenous presence at best an inconvenience and at worst an insolvable threat. Why is it morally acceptable to deny Palestinians the right to full citizenship in their birthplace and instead insist, as Israel’s leaders often have, that they should be content to live under the flag of nations like Egypt, Syria and Jordan that have long oppressed them? LinkHere

Why Courage Is Hard to Find

Will Fox News Get Helen Thomas's Front-Row Seat?

Why do you think this is happening now more than ever before?I think it’s the whole business of communications, the stranglehold of the ultra-right on propaganda. It’s scaring people. Three or four hours every afternoon they have these very ultra-right people on the air, who I think are using the government and using the American people, betraying them and destroying our whole sense of honesty.

US Backs International Role In Flotilla Probe

2010-06-08T17:34:00.003-05:00

Tempest

As long as Israel is in charge of the probe
It will be a whitewash.

Source: AFP
(AFP) – 15 minutes ago
WASHINGTON — The United States Tuesday backed calls for an international participation in Israel's probe into its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla saying it was "essential" to ensure credibility.

"We understand that the international participation in investigating these matters will be important to the credibility everybody wants to see," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said. LinkHere

Ain't that the truth!!!!!!

2010-06-08T17:22:00.003-05:00

The Real Helen Thomas Scandal

Last week, Israeli commandos boarded a relief ship attempting to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip and, during a clash with pro-Palestinian activists, shot nine people to death. It was an old-fashioned, bona fide "international incident," a fiasco that raised alarming questions about the current trajectory of Israel's security, the wisdom of its government, as well as the fate of Obama's Middle East policies and U.S. security in general.
Within a few days, though, the Washington media's "Israel narrative" abandoned those questions and focused instead on the ugly words and sudden retirement of cranky 89-year-old White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Somehow, the debate shifted from Israel behaving badly to Helen Thomas behaving badly.
I'm not going to defend Thomas -- what she said was deeply offensive. But in the overall scheme of things, it was a trivial incident, and DC's sudden obsession with it -- to the exclusion of a lot of other, more important things -- is especially ironic given the parlous state of the Israeli situation.
The Washington media universe may not have set a new speed record here for spinning itself, Tasmanian devil-style, from grave and difficult to trivial and ironic. (That seems, after all, to be what it does nearly every hour of every day.) But it did set a kind of distance record for leaping the moral gulf between important, complex issues and easy, knee-jerk ones.
If you withhold judgment for just a moment on Israel and the Palestinians, all you see are difficult issues, stark moral choices, no-win scenarios. The appalling economic conditions in Gaza, the awful paradox of a democratically-elected Hamas, the unintended consequences of Israel's unyielding military and diplomatic posture, the blowup with Turkey, potential impacts for terrorist recruitment, Iran, ad infinitum. But American politicians flee from these issues. Instead they fell over one another defending Israel for doing something indefensible. (Yes, of course the blockade-running is a provocation. But if you're smart, you don't kill provocateurs.)
The media and punditocracy follow the politicians. And pretty soon you've got Liz Cheney denouncing Turkey -- our ally -- for all but countenancing the destruction of Israel. Add Helen Thomas into this combustible mix, and a serious engagement with these issues (never a likelihood, but still) becomes impossible.
There are two problems here: The default media posture for hard issues is he-said-she-said, and when you try that with the Middle East all you get is people hurling accusations back and forth. That might work for cable chat shows, but not for understanding what's really going on in the Middle East. Worse, few in the media are smart or brave enough to weigh these issues. If they were, we might get more pushback on the vacuous political debate on Israel here in the United States. For instance, read Peter Beinart's carefully-argued piece on the failure of the American Jewish establishment in the New York Review of Books. Beinart's arguments are alarming. But he is simply too reasonable and nuanced to get much of a hearing in a media that feeds on outrage and is dealing with a situation that is a bottomless BP well of outrage. Reasonable won't cut it when you're arguing with Liz Cheney. LinkHere
This post first appeared on my True/Slant blog.

U.S. demands IDF probe how American lost eye at West Bank protest

2010-06-08T03:51:00.000-05:00

And the murdered American doesn't count?

Source: Haaretz
Emily Henochowicz, 21, an art student in New York, came to Israel six weeks ago as an exchange student at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

"The United States embassy has demanded an investigation into how an American citizen lost her eye last week at the Qalandiyah checkpoint after being struck by a tear gas grenade.

Emily Henochowicz, 21, an art student in New York, came to Israel six weeks ago as an exchange student at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. She has participated in a number of protests in the West Bank. Last Monday, after the takeover of the Mavi Marmara, Henochowicz took part in a demonstration at the Qalandiyah checkpoint together with a few dozen protesters. Border Policemen fired tear gas grenades to disperse the protest, one of which struck Henochowicz in the face. She was taken to Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, where she underwent surgery. In addition to losing her left eye, Henochowicz is suffering from fractures to her face. She returned to the United States on Saturday night for continued treatment.

Henochowicz's father, a doctor, is originally from Israel and she also has Israeli citizenship.

The U.S. embassy has been in continuous touch with the family. Haaretz has learned that the embassy conveyed a demand that Israel investigate the incident. A Swedish activist, Soren Johanssen who was reportedly standing near Henochowicz, was quoted as saying: "They fired many canisters at us in rapid succession. One landed on either side of Emily, then the third one hit her in the face."

Another protester, Jonathan Pollak, was quoted as saying that Border Policemen had intentionally aimed at the demonstrators." LinkHere

Senator: Deepwater Well Integrity May Be Shot, Meaning Oil Could Be Leaking Straight Up From The Sea

2010-06-08T03:48:00.001-05:00

Source: MSNBC, The Business Insider

This may be the real nightmare scenario in the Gulf. Some have speculated that the inner integrity of the Deepwater well could be blown (not just the top) and that oil could be leaking out from the side, making it hard to imagine how you might go about plugging the thing.

On MSNBC today, Senator Ben Nelson said he'd heard such report, and is looking into such things. Let's hope not. LinkHere

Stone Cold Liar!!!!!!! Hell Yes.

2010-06-07T19:31:00.001-05:00

But then what do you expect from a Cheney

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Helen Thomas RETIRING Effective Immediately

2010-06-07T19:12:00.003-05:00

The White House Monday called Thomas' remarks "offensive and reprehensible."

And the killing of 9 people, 4 with 30 bullets shot into them is not obscene, "offensive and reprehensible."

Mr President

Freedom of speech is okay, as long as it is not against Israel for it barbaric and reprehensible behavour?

Helen Thomas, the 89-year-old veteran White House correspondent, will retire effective immediately in the wake of her offensive comments on Israel.
"Helen Thomas announced Monday that she is retiring, effective immediately," a Hearst Newspapers statement said. "Her decision came after her controversial comments about Israel and the Palestinians were captured on videotape and widely disseminated on the Internet."
Thomas, who transitioned from reporter to columnist in 2000 but kept her front-row seat at White House briefings, had come under fire for her statement that Israel should "get the hell out of Palestine" and that Jews in Israeli should return to Germany, Poland, or the US.
Thomas apologized for the comments, saying:
"I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."
The White House Monday called Thomas' remarks "offensive and reprehensible."

Now why would that, not be surprising?

2010-06-07T01:08:00.004-05:00

GEORGE Bush has admitted that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded during his administration, and he wouldn't hesitate to give the order again

As Obama Refuses to Condemn Flotilla Assault, Survivors Recount Shootings, Beatings Aboard Mavi Marmara

Did The Bush Administration Experiment On Detainees?

Not only were terrorism suspects tortured, they were also used as human guinea pigs, a new report alleges.

Sun Jun. 6, 2010 9:00 PM PDT
In the course of trying to prove that its "enhanced" interrogation program was legal, the Bush administration may have broken the law, according to a new report (PDF) by Physicians for Human Rights. The watchdog group claims that in an attempt to establish that brutal interrogation tactics did not constitute torture, the administration ended up effectively experimenting on terrorism detainees. This research, PHR alleges, violated an array of regulations and treaties, including international guidelines on human testing put in place after the Holocaust.
According to the report, which draws on numerous declassified government documents, "medical professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA" frequently monitored detainee interrogations, gathering data on the effectiveness of various interrogation techniques and the pain threshholds of detainees. This information was then used to "enhance" future interrogations, PHR contends.
By monitoring post-9/11 interrogations and keeping records on the effectiveness of various techniques, medical professionals could also provide Bush administration lawyers with the information they needed to set guidelines for the use of so-called "enhanced" interrogation tactics. For instance, attorneys in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) who were devising the legal rationale for the interrogation program could use the research to determine how many times a detainee could be waterboarded. Or, based on the observations of the medical personnel monitoring the interrogation sessions, they could assess whether it was legally justifiable to administer techniques like stress positions or water dousing in combination or whether these methods needed to be applied separately.
Physicians for Human Rights makes the case that since human subject research is defined as the "systematic collection of data and/or identifiable personal information for the purpose of drawing generalizable inferences," what the Bush administration was doing amounted to human experimentation:
Human experimentation without the consent of the subject is a violation of international human rights law to which the United States is subject; federal statutes; the Common Rule, which comprises the federal regulations for research on human subjects and applies to 17 federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense; and universally accepted health professional ethics, including the Nuremberg Code... Human experimentation on detainees also can constitute a war crime and a crime against humanity in certain circumstances.
Ironically, one goal of the "experimentation" seems to have been to immunize Bush administration officials and CIA interrogators from potential prosecution for torture. In the series of legal papers that are now popularly known as the "torture memos," Justice Department lawyers argued that medical monitoring would demonstrate that interrogators didn't intend to harm detainees; that "lack of intent to cause harm" could then serve as the cornerstone of a legal defense should an interrogator be targeted for prosecution. In 2003, in an internal CIA memo cited in the PHR report, the CIA's general counsel, Scott Muller, argued that medical monitoring of interrogations and "reviewing evidence gained from past experience where available (including experience gained in the course of U.S. interrogations of detainees)" would allow interrogators to inoculate themselves against claims of torture because it "established" they didn't intend to cause harm to the detainees. LinkHere

Rethinking Big Government

2010-06-06T19:33:00.001-05:00

Look toward the Gulf of Mexico this morning. Most of the states in that region seem to be an ever-so-slightly, deeper shade of blue. Most of the people in that area of the country in the past have tended to vote for Conservatives. Most of them have been brainwashed into believing that so-called "BIG GOVERNMENT" is bad. And yet all of them, I'm am certain, are saying quiet prayers of thanksgiving as the sun now rises on those troubled waters, that their government is big enough (we hope) to cope with the current catastrophe. Most of the states that make up the gulf region are doing some serious soul searching today. Most of them. Mississippi, I'm sorry to inform you, is terminally and incurably red. [SIGH]
Perhaps we have arrived at that moment where the essence of the argument against big government has started to shift in a slightly different direction. Shouldn't the argument be focused - not on "big government" - but rather on "good government"? Efficiency versus incompetence? We are now a nation of over three-hundred million people. The very idea that the government should be made smaller - or done away with entirely - is beyond idiotic. Rather than wasting our precious time trying to come up with ways of shrinking it, we should all be working overtime trying to improve it.

"Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."

-Ronald Reagan's
first Inaugural Address
January 20, 1981

As the decades ebb away and the judgment of history becomes more dispassionate, this truism will become increasingly apparent:

Ronald Reagan was a fool. LinkHere

Blinding the Witnesses

2010-06-06T18:43:00.003-05:00

There is something way too literal about Israel shooting out the eye of a witness to its crimes.
This photograph of Emily Henochowicz's bandaged face needs to be seen by the world. LinkHere

While the Obama administration has refused to condemn the Israeli flotilla raid outright, survivors of the assault continue to challenge Israeli military claims that soldiers acted in self-defense after rappelling onto the lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara. We speak to two passengers who were aboard the ship: Kevin Neish of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and Kevin Ovenden of Viva Palestina. [includes rush transcript]

43 Years After Surviving Israeli Attack on USS Liberty, US Veteran Joe Meadors Seized by Israeli Forces on Gaza Aid Flotilla

Joe Meadors was on one of the other Free Gaza boats that was seized early Monday morning. For Meadors, this marks the second time he has been aboard a ship attacked by Israeli forces in international waters. In 1967, Meadors was a signalman aboard the USS Liberty, a US Navy electronic intelligence-gathering ship that was attacked by Israeli planes and torpedo boats in 1967. Thirty-four Americans were killed and more than 170 were wounded in the attack. [includes rush transcript]

Thousands Mourn Turkish Victims of Flotilla Attack
Up to 20,000 people gathered in Istanbul on Thursday to pay tribute to the nine activists killed in the attack. The coffins were carried through central Istanbul draped in Turkish and Palestinian flags. The youngest of the nine victims was nineteen-year-old US citizen Furkan Dogan. Dogan was born in Troy, New York and moved to Turkey when he was two years old. An autopsy showed he was shot at close range, once in the chest and four times in the head.
Passenger: Israeli Troops Fired at Unarmed Passengers, Ignored SOS Calls
As the dead are laid to rest, survivors of the flotilla attack continue to speak out about the assault on the Mavi Marmara. After returning to London, British peace activist and flotilla passenger Sarah Colborne said Israeli troops ignored SOS calls from the passengers aboard the ship.
Sarah Colborne: "We wrote a sign in Hebrew saying, 'SOS! Need medical assistance. People are dying. Urgent.' Hanin Zoabi, who’s a Knesset member, an Israeli Knesset member, took that sign to the front—to the back of the boat, where the soldiers were pointing at her. They ordered her to go back."
Colborne says she also witnessed Israeli troops shooting unarmed passengers and handcuffing medics accompanying the aid mission.
Israeli Military Retracts Claim Passengers "Al Qaeda Mercenaries"
The Israeli military, meanwhile, has been forced to retract its claim that passengers aboard the flotilla were agents of al-Qaeda. An Israel Defense Forces press release sent out two days after the assault says approximately forty flotilla passengers "are mercenaries belonging to the Al Qaeda terror organization." The independent journalist Max Blumenthal says both he and an Israeli colleague asked the Israeli military press office to substantiate its claim. No evidence was provided, and one day later the press released was modified. The original headline was changed from "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found to be Al Qaeda Mercenaries" to "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers." Commenting on the retraction, Blumenthal writes, "The more Israel’s claims about the flotilla’s terrorist links are challenged, the more they fall apart."
Swedish Dockers Boycott Israeli Goods, Ships in Flotilla Protest
Israel continues to face worldwide protest over the flotilla assault. In Sweden, the Swedish Dockers’ Union has announced a more-than-week-long boycott of all ships and goods originating from or destined to Israel. We’ll have more on the flotilla assault after headlines.

"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-activists-autopsy-results

Arianna Battles Liz Cheney Over Gulf Spill, Halliburton, Gaza Crisis On 'This Week' (VIDEO)

2010-06-06T17:06:00.006-05:00

Friking Hell, Bush, Cheney were a terrorist organization that the world had to live with for 8 years. Don't talk to me about a terrorist organization, Hamas was Bush Cheneys democratically elected government, but like Sadam, it did not suit their purpose at the time.

Murder by any other name!!!!!!!!!

superstition 2 minutes ago (6:20 PM)
"A 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, an American citizen, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back...

'Next time we'll use more force'

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177134

Arianna appeared as a guest on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, along with Liz Cheney, Markos Moulitsas, and George Will.

Arianna squared off with Cheney over the Gulf oil disaster, calling out the Bush-Cheney administration for its role in fostering the crisis.

"The truth is that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney administration wanted: full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies that are supposed to be overseeing the industry," Arianna said. "We are seeing this as the inevitable result of what they wanted."

"It is truly amazing," Cheney responded. "I actually heard that George Bush was responsible for the breakup of Tipper and Al Gore's marriage, too. It's incredible, the extent to which people are now trying to shift blame. ... The left -- you guys have for years been demonizing Bush and Cheney, and I'm sure you’ll be demonizing them for years going forward. But we have a catastrophe on the Gulf coast, a catastrophe that happened on this administration's watch, which this administration is failing to clean up."

"We have the poster child of Bush-Cheney crony capitalism, Halliburton, involved in this," Arianna said. "They, after all, were responsible for cementing the well. Here's Halliburton, after it defrauded the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars -- "

"I don't know what planet you live on," Cheney shot back. "What you are saying has no relationship to the truth, no relationship to the facts."

"I live on this planet," Arianna said. "Halliburton was involved in this. How can you say there is no relationship?" LinkHere

Israel Navy reserves officers: Allow external Gaza flotilla probe

Officers denounce operation as 'military and diplomatic failure', slam government for placing blame on the activists.

A group of top Israel Navy reserves officers on Sunday publicly called on Israel to allow an external probe into its commando raid of a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla last week, which left nine people dead and several more wounded.

In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, the Navy officers denounced the commando raid as having "ended in tragedy both at the military and diplomatic levels."

"We disagree with the widespread claims that this was the result of an intelligence rift," said the officers. "In addition, we do not accept claims that this was a 'public relations failure' and we think that the plan was doomed to failure from the beginning."

"First and foremost, we protest the fact that responsibility for the tragic results was immediately thrust onto the organizers of the flotilla," wrote the officers. "This demonstrates contempt for the responsibility that belongs principally to the hierarchy of commanders and those who approved the mission. This shows contempt for the values of professionalism, the purity of weapons and for human lives."

The Navy officers' letter came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was convening his top ministers to deliberate a United Nations proposal to create a joint international committee alongside Turkey and the United States to investigate the circumstances of the deadly raid. LinkHere

Israeli Military Retracts Claim Passengers "Al Qaeda Mercenaries"

The Israeli military, meanwhile, has been forced to retract its claim that passengers aboard the flotilla were agents of al-Qaeda. An Israel Defense Forces press release sent out two days after the assault says approximately forty flotilla passengers "are mercenaries belonging to the Al Qaeda terror organization." The independent journalist Max Blumenthal says both he and an Israeli colleague asked the Israeli military press office to substantiate its claim. No evidence was provided, and one day later the press released was modified. The original headline was changed from "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found to be Al Qaeda Mercenaries" to "Attackers of the IDF Soldiers Found Without Identification Papers." Commenting on the retraction, Blumenthal writes, "The more Israel’s claims about the flotilla’s terrorist links are challenged, the more they fall apart."

Israeli Ambassador To U.S. Rejects International Investigation Of Flotilla Deaths

Defenders of the Mavri Mamarra
This item was sent by Ken O'Keefe from Istanbul at 10.00hrs 05.06.2010 and provides an eyewitness account of events on the Mavri Mamarra when Israeli commandos stormed the vessel.

Gaza Convoy Tapes Edited, Israel Acknowledges

Banks Say No. Too Bad Taxpayers Can’t.

2010-06-06T03:41:00.002-05:00

FROM the earliest days of the credit crisis, the nation’s big financial institutions have been less than forthcoming about ballooning loan losses buried inside their books. To some degree this is understandable: denial is a powerful thing, after all, and writing off troubled loans during a period of severe stress is, for bankers, the equivalent of getting a root canal.

As profits rebound at many of these institutions, however, artful dodging becomes more disturbing. And when disguising problems winds up harming the taxpayer — the same folks who rode to the rescue of banks with billions of dollars — the denial is downright exasperating.
Among the more glaring bookkeeping fictions on big banks’ balance sheets today are the values they assign to all of the bounteous second mortgage loans. doled out during the mortgage bonanza. As any realist will attest, many of these loans are worth little, and yet there they sit, at fantasy levels, on banks’ ledgers.
Refusing to face reality on second liens ultimately hurts shareholders. But taxpayers are the ones holding the bag when institutions try to avoid losses by refusing to buy back problem loans they have sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants that are wards of the state.
Fannie and Freddie helped grease the nation’s housing machinery before and during the boom years, scooping up loans from all corners of the country. The more of these that Fannie and Freddie bought, the easier it was for banks to write new mortgages.
To protect themselves from getting piles of garbage loans shoveled their way when they buy mortgages, Fannie and Freddie require lenders or loan servicers to sign contracts requiring those firms to repurchase loans that don’t meet certain standards relating to borrower incomes, job status or assets. Loans that were extended fraudulently, or deemed to have been predatory, are also candidates for buybacks.
Surprise, surprise: banks don’t want to repurchase these loans. So when Fannie or Freddie identify problem mortgages and request repayment, a battle royal begins. Banks may argue, for example, that the repayment requests have flaws of their own.
But for us as taxpayers, watching this battle from the sidelines, one growing concern is how aggressively Fannie and Freddie will pursue their requests. If banks refuse to buy back flawed loans, taxpayers will have to cover more of the losses.
A lot of money is at stake here, and the figure is growing all the time. According to March 31 figures from Freddie, for instance, the amount of problem loans that it has asked other firms to buy back stood at $4.8 billion — up 26 percent from $3.8 billion just three months earlier.