A Controversial and/or Informative Site [Archive] - Page 30

Saundra Hummer

December 31st, 2008, 03:00 PM

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Stop Praying for Peace, and Think!
By
sameh abdelaziz
December 31, 2008 at 14:36:47
www.opednews.com

I argued in a recent op-ed that the collective punishment of 1.5 million citizens would not stop the crude rockets fired from the Gaza strip. It didn’t stop Hezbollah in 2006, and will not stop Hamas now. Instead, Israel will continue to lose credibility as a western style democracy, while the victims of this aggression become an added fuel to the rage of Arabs -Christians and Muslims- and the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide.

This Arab and Muslim discontent against a world that seems to ignore their plight, and have double standards when it comes to their suffering is THE reason behind the incomprehensible acts of terror, and the increase in extremism

In another article, published on November 2006, I argued that the Jewish American community has a vast interest in finding solution to the Palestinian predicament, to avoid an immanent repercussion. Such backlash is already evident in many western European countries. It is also starting to take shape in the United States, represented in recent rallies across many American cities, critical opinion pieces on the blog sphere, negative comments published in major newspapers, and even in some mainstream media outlets.

The ability of the American Jewish lobby to influence the American foreign policy in the Middle East is indisputable, and the question is not if, but when, these organizations will conclude that it is in the best interest of Israel, and Jews worldwide to create a viable Palestinian nation.

However, the most disturbing part of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the fact that these killing fields continue, while all participating and interested think tanks, governments and area experts, know the final solution, but are reluctant to take the required steps to make it a reality.

In an article published recently in the Washington Post by Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the two former National security advisors –a republican and a democrat- described the American interests in solving this crisis, and they argued that it should be a top priority for the Obama administration

In another article published in January of 2008 –Decoding the Middle East- there are very specific steps that should guide the American policy in this volatile region. The article also highlights the Israeli’s potential economic payback, expected from establishing complete political ties with all Arab and Muslim nations. Such political and economical benefits to Israel are only possible, after establishing a Palestinians homeland.

It is incomprehensible for America to continue defending the Israeli position as tit-for-tat while the root cause of the problem is a forty-one years old occupation. This last occupation on earth is in odd with international laws and human sensibility. These unattainable arrangements impose on America, certain positions in the international institutions that minimize our ability to forge collisions on other international matters of importance.

The Israeli and American positions may have been possible during the cold war, when the two super powers fought in many small regional wars. It was attainable when America was the single super power. However, this position becomes suicidal in the new emerging environment. The new world order -multi polar system- will depend entirely on international cooperation, and America can’t afford in such environment to continue its unilateral policies towards Israel. Click here.

The fifth day of bombardment by the Israeli’s against the most densely populated area in the world, should serve as a reminder that it is our duty and obligation, to reject such massacres. It is also an opportunity to reexamine the simple facts.

1) The governments on the Palestinian and Israeli sides are equally incapable of reaching an agreement on their own.

2) The unconditional support of the American government to Israel is a major obstacle to a final and lasting peace agreement in the Middle East. Sometimes, even in the face of American interests and security.

3) The Israeli lobbies are capable of influencing the American foreign policy, and subsequently the Israeli’s government decisions.

4) The specifics of a lasting peace agreement in the Middle East are documented, and widely known.

5) It is in the best interest of Israel -security and economy- to create a viable Palestinian homeland.

6) The defeat of extremism and terrorism will happen only when the world takes away from terrorists their biggest recruiting tool (the Palestinian suffering).

I am an Egyptian American born in Alexandria. I immigrated to the US in the late eighties, during this time lived in many places in US and Europe. I work as an IT manager and love it. I love to travel, it makes me feel young, and it awakes in me sense of adventure and curiosity. I love knowing people from different cultures; it never fails to amaze me how we all live in our little worlds that never meet. History is my second amazement, it always differ depending on who is winning, that leads me to my third hobby, politics is it history or human nature that is the culprit?

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COMMENTS
Jaff Sassani: We are an organization in Iran and Iraq to mobilize the Jaff people in both countries to have Voice in the Kurdistan politics and defend our people's rights. This is our short term goals. Our long term goals we like to establish the Aryan (Iranian) Economic Union (AU) similar to
the EU. We believe that our people and the Kurdish people will be free when all the Iranian people Get united for establishing the AU which every sub nations of the Aryan (Iranian) nations...

to see more of bio, click on member name. Go on-site with link at end of article to gain access to bio and other information.
The people need to read more to understand the Arabs

Why the people with humanity values does not want confront the Arabs and say we are tired of your terrorist ideologies and holly wars of “Jihads”. How many more millions of people have to die so the Islam will be the tool for Arabs to take others land.

Yes for the people who do believes in the justice. And they are acknowledging the true history of the Arabs and the people got hurt from them. Since they come up with their religions “Islam” and used it to take other people’s land has been ok for them. No for the hypocrites who are just one sided. The Arabs has oil power and money power, they are allowed to kill millions of people and take their lands without to many human lovers like President Carter to speak out the truth.

Why you never hear President Carters and other human lovers to speak out about our people in Kurdistan and other Iranian lands. Every one has so much humanity when it is coming to the Palestinians. Yes oil lovers, you are showing your true humanity.

The majority of the Arabs are the people do like wars always. They are not looking for peace because of the Islamic teaching and the culture they are brought up. They are making the World unstable because of their terrorist ideologies. The Arabs used to have only Saudi Arabia and part of the Yemen’s land. They are in positions of the land from Morocco to Iraq what else they want.

The Arab and Jewish people’s problem can be solved based on truth about the past. When the Arab Imperialists are going to acknowledge the truth? By admitting the crime they did commit against the humanity in the past. The Jewish people are in title of more land than what they have now because they are the original people from the region.

The Arab took the land of western Persian Gulf, Iraq, and half of Syria from our Iranian people just like few years ago Saddam Hussein took part of Kirkuk, Mousel, Daylia from our Kurdish in this modern ages. Now Noori Maliki the Iraqi PM want the land because he is clamming that the land belongs to his father from Basra/Iraq.

When they are going to think about peace and stop the war of land in the region.

by Jaff Sassani (15 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 51 comments) on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 2:58:28 PM
Go on-site to gain access to links within this article. (Excuse me if I left something out. SRH) Just click on the following link/URL:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Stop-Praying-for-Peace-an-by-sameh-abdelaziz-081231-434.html ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Saundra Hummer

December 31st, 2008, 04:54 PM

:: :: :: Marriage Compared to Civil Unions Lawyers
What are the differences between marriage and civil unions?
Where Can I Go to Marry My Same-Sex Partner?Currently, Massachusetts is the only state in the nation where same-sex marriage is legal. However, you must be a resident of Massachusetts to marry there. Multnomah County, in Oregon (which includes Portland), also currently allows same-sex marriage. The governments in Oregon and Massachusetts are still debating the issue, and so it is possible that the marriages performed in these places may eventually be invalidated.

What is Marriage?
Wholly apart from its moral or religious significance, marriage is simply a legal status that is given to a couple by a state government. While it is issued by the government of a specific state, the status of marriage is recognized by all states and nations the world over. Getting married brings with it numerous rights, protections and obligations at both the state and federal level for both people.

What is a Civil Union?
Civil unions exist only in Vermont. A civil union is a legal status that provides protection to couples (either same-sex or heterosexual) at only the state level. Federal protections such as tax and social security benefits are unavailable to the civilly united.

What is Domestic Partnership?
A few states and cities have adopted domestic partnerships as a way to give some marriage rights to same-sex couples. However, not all the rights given by marriage are the same for a domestic partnership. For example, in New Jersey, if a domestic partner buys property, the property is held solely by that individual instead of jointly by the partners as it would be in marriage.

What are the differences between marriage and civil unions?
There are significant differences between the benefits and responsibilities of marriage and civil unions. People who are married usually enjoy more benefits than those in civil unions, including:

. Legal recognition of the relationship in other states
. The ability to divorce in any state, regardless of where married
. Tax benefits available to married couples only
. Immigration benefits when petitioning for a non-citizen spouse
. Federal benefits, such as medical and life insurance

My State Doesn't Allow Same-Sex Marriage or Civil Union. What are My Options for Protecting my Partner and Family?
There are several options for same-sex couples who cannot legally gain the benefits and protections of married persons. These include:

. Second parent adoption of your children
. Creating power of attorney in your partner
. Crafting a durable and specific will
. Planning your estate carefully
. Creating medical power of attorney in your partner

Do I Need an Attorney to Protect my Family and Partner By the above Options?
Because of the complexity and wide variation of these legal processes, consultation with a family lawyer in your city or state would be of immeasurable benefit. A lawyer can explain all your options and help you understand what types of legal strategies are right for you and your family.

Consult a Lawyer - Click Here to Present Your Case Now!

Related Articles:
• Non-marital Agreements

• Living Together Contracts - Cooling Off Clauses

• Adoption by Gay and Lesbian Parents

• Same-Sex Parenting

• Living Together Contract - Property and Finance Clauses

Related Forums:
• Family Law Forum

Related Blogs:
• Family Law Blog

http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/marriage-compared-to-civil-unions.html :: :: :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

December 31st, 2008, 05:28 PM

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Saundra Hummer

January 2nd, 2009, 04:06 PM

* * * * * * * The Patrician, Elitist Corruption
of the
Bush Dynasty
and
Where Was George H. W. Bush on November 22, 1963 Anyway?
By mark karlin
Created 12/30/2008 - 9:56am
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
I am very careful not to speculate. What I do is begin with the curious fact that G.H.W. Bush has said he could not remember where he was on November 22, 1963. That makes him just about the only adult alive at the time who has that memory defect.
-- Russ Baker, author, Family of Secrets -- The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America [1]
* * *
BuzzFlash has often said that "conspiracy theories" exist because a threshold of people believe that the official version of an event or personal history does not pass the believability test. But then the fun begins, because theories are just that, so you become an advocate of one perspective or the other, hopefully based on the strength of the argument and the backing of documentation. But that becomes more difficult as time passes and access to the unofficial version of events becomes more difficult.

Russ Baker has assembled the case to be made for the dark underside of the Bush dynasty, sort of a corrupt patrician elitist mob that relocated from New England to Texas (and Florida).

Choose what you want to believe from Baker's book, but he's a credible journalist who has a case to make, and he's got a lot of tasty Bush family morsels to chew upon.

We interviewed him about his just published, Family of Secrets -- The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America [2]
* * *
BuzzFlash: These are the last days of Bush dynastic rule, unless Jeb -- running for Florida Senator in 2010 -- makes a run for the presidency in 2012 or 2016. Why did you release this expose on the Bush dynasty now?

Russ Baker: There was so much disinformation out there, and so many layers of secrecy and obfuscation, that it took me five years to complete my reporting. As for relevance, there is no better time than now to try and comprehend what we have just been through--and how it is likely to affect us as Barack Obama takes over. Some countries have convened “truth commissions” to come to terms with their own tragic epochs. But here in the U.S., we tend to want to shut the door and move on. As I discovered, there was an entire hidden stratum of truth underlying the rise of the Bushes -- a truth that, if not reckoned with, threatens to derail the reforms we all hope are on the horizon.

BuzzFlash: Over the years, one of the most discussed allegations about George Herbert Walker Bush was that he was a CIA operative back in the later '50s and early '60s and was lurking around the periphery of the Kennedy assassination. You discuss this in your book, of course. What, in summary, do you suggest was “Poppy” Bush's role with the Kennedy assassination and the CIA at the time?

Russ Baker: I am very careful not to speculate. What I do is begin with the curious fact that G.H.W. Bush has said he could not remember where he was on November 22, 1963. That makes him just about the only adult alive at the time who has that memory defect. Seeking to understand why he would not want to answer that question, I discovered that, in fact, he had been in Dallas that day. After that, he traveled to a nearby city, and then placed an odd phone call that established in FBI files a record of his being outside Dallas at the time of the call.

As intriguingly, it turns out that G.H.W. Bush was a friend of the intelligence operative who befriended and guided Lee Harvey Oswald after his return to Dallas from the Soviet Union. I also provide much evidence that Bush Sr. had a connection to the CIA long before his short period as CIA director. There is much more, covering chapter after chapter of Family Secrets. [3] Let's just say for now that there is enough to raise the eyebrows to the ceiling.

BuzzFlash: Obviously it is more than just irony, according to your book, that George Herbert Walker Bush became head of the CIA, and that the Langley headquarters was named after him.

Russ Baker: Taking into account that George H.W. Bush was head of the Agency for just a single year, it cannot be considered inconsequential that he was selected over far longer-serving directors for this honor. It does seem to suggest that his contributions to the agency went beyond that one year -- and that these were both highly valued and never publicly acknowledged.

BuzzFlash: From my perspective, one of the most controversial sections of your book deals with “Poppy” Bush's alleged role in getting Nixon out of office. I don't think that BuzzFlash's friend, John Dean, is probably too happy with your conclusions, although I haven't had a chance to ask him. So why was Bush the Father involved in booting Nixon out of office?

Russ Baker: The Watergate revelations in Family of Secrets [4] surprised me as much as they will surprise readers. I had, frankly, taken the conventional story for granted until I started doing my own investigative work. I was trying to understand the nature of the relationship between Nixon and the Bush family, which has never been properly explored elsewhere. The reasons for ousting Nixon? It appears that certain elements closely tied to Bush Sr. -- parts of the national security apparatus, the military, industrialists and oilmen -- got fed up with Nixon's surprising degree of independence early in his administration, and considered his initiatives a real threat. As with other aspects of the book, the public would be well advised not to conclude anything from summaries such as this, but to read the facts and decide for themselves.

As for John Dean, I began with the conventional-wisdom assumptions about Watergate. I thought of him as the reborn liberal, the regular on BuzzFlash, MSNBC and the like. But my research kept leading me to a story that is more complicated, to say the least. The facts suggest someone much more implicated in the events that led to Nixon's downfall, and in a way I did not expect. There are some little-understood relationships to consider, some phone records, some little-known Nixon tapes to review.

BuzzFlash: Stepping back from the specifics of your book, you basically are contending that we have had a shadow government for most of at least 50 years. Who decides who is in such a shadow government?

Russ Baker: It certainly isn't you or me. My guess, based on years of reporting and observation, is that oligarchies in this country function much as they do elsewhere. They are better hidden, however, in part -- paradoxically -- because we think our society is so open, such that hidden centers of power could not exist. We deride those who seek more thorough explanations as “conspiracy nuts” and the rest. We are dealing with some sophisticated operators, moreover -- who know that Americans feel their country could not possibly harbor the same sorts of tendencies we see everywhere else. Coups, oligarchies, sure -- somewhere else.

BuzzFlash: A few years back, many of our readers purchased the Kevin Philips book, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. I remember interviewing Philips, and amidst his loathing of the Bush dynasty, he was quite forceful in describing them as basic “crooks.” Do you agree?

Russ Baker: I am a fan of Kevin, and consider Family of Secrets [5] an effort to build upon his important work. In this case though, I think he understates what is going on. I believe that the Bushes, and the people who back them, view themselves as operating on another plane, and they think that they are better than the rest of us. Essentially, they see themselves as saviors of civilization -- their idea of civilization -- and this sense of entitlement and self-justification, which runs deep, gives them license to do things that are inimical to freedom and truth.

Some of these are now commonly known -- from widespread spying on Americans to imprisonment without charges. Others, it appears, are more personal, more ruthless, and more venal. The stuff we assume only happens on foreign soil, or in Hollywood films. The sense of moral entitlement, of knowing what is right, meshes, by the way, with the certitude of their odd bedfellows in the Religious Right. The two came together in the person of George W. Bush.

BuzzFlash: Is George “W” Bush smart enough to know what larceny he is up to? Or does it just come instinctively? I don't think that you'll get many arguments from BuzzFlash readers that he is the runt of the litter.

Russ Baker: I think George W. Bush is much smarter than many people realize. His well-known limitations with regard to attention span, communication and the like do not negate his talents in other respects. In Family of Secrets, [6] I provide many examples of his practical skills: cultivating a highly misleading personal resume, keeping and burying family secrets, memorizing large amounts of data, and so on. George W. was a key tactician for his father's presidential campaign; he designed his own strategy for corralling the religious right. He once explained to an aide how to plant stories deep in order to let reporters think they were discovering them. No dummy.

BuzzFlash: How does the shadow financial government of Texas gas and oil work as a unit with the riverboat gamblers and frauds on Wall Street?

Russ Baker: I think I will leave that for my next book.

BuzzFlash: There's a basic assumption in your findings that the U.S. government serves corporate and the personal financial interests of elected officials. Please explain how this relates to the Bushes.

Russ Baker: I don't know that the government serves the personal financial interests of elected officials so much as the interests of corporations and the wealthy. Those in turn take care of elected officials who serve them, when the latter leave government. The old revolving door. What distinguishes the Bushes is the extent to which they view government as existing almost solely to advance the interests of their own narrow swath of society.

BuzzFlash: Before we finish up, we just have to ask about your take on the documentation of Senator Prescott Bush's financial relationship to dealings with the Nazis.

Russ Baker: I have looked at some of the documentation. I don't know that Prescott was particularly trying to help the Nazis -- he and his firm had a long-standing relationship with powerful German industrialists, and when Hitler came to power, well, business was business. Horrifying and amoral, if not immoral, to be sure, but consider the sorts of regimes Wall Street has dealt with over the years.

BuzzFlash: What is the biggest “bombshell” in Family of Secrets [7]?

Russ Baker: Based on early feedback, I'd say there are a number of contenders. Could be the four chapters of never-before-revealed facts surrounding the JFK assassination. Or the evidence I have uncovered suggesting a new interpretation of Watergate. Some are most intrigued by the new examples of George W. as a naughty fellow and moral hypocrite -- including on the matter of abortion. And some say that my examination of W.'s military service record is especially effective in settling the dispute over whether this eager-beaver “warrior king” skipped out on his own military obligations. Finally, some are most struck by the new evidence of a cynical calculation behind George W's so-called religious rebirth.

For me, the big story is simply the cumulative sense, based on hundreds and hundreds of fresh facts, of the extent to which elites write our history. And the realization that, as we flee the Bush years, we remain utterly in the dark about so much.

BuzzFlash interview by Mark Karlin.
* * *
Resources:
Family of Secrets -- The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America [8] (Hardcover), by Russ Baker, available from the BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace.

http://russbaker.com/ [9]

Who What Why/The Real News Project [10]

Biography: Russ Baker [11]
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

Source URL:
http://buzzflash.com/articles/articles/interviews/140
Links:
[1] http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1421
[2] http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1421
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[4] http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1421
[5] http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1421
[6] http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1421
[7] http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1421
[8] http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1421
[9] http://russbaker.com/
[10] http://whowhatwhy.com/
[11] http://russbaker.com/about/
[12] http://www.buzzflash.net/submit.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbuzzflash.com%2Farticl es%2Finterviews%2F140
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Interview Bush FamilyRuss Baker CIA Watergate

Published on BuzzFlash.org (http://buzzflash.com/articles)

Go on-site to gain access to links within this article, there are numerous ones. * * * * * * * * *Just Released: The Bush Family of Secrets -- The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America.
Russ Baker
(Hardcover).
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
“Shocking in its disclosures, elegantly crafted, and faultlessly measured in its judgments, Family of Secrets is nothing less than a first historic portrait in full of the Bush dynasty and the era it shaped. From revelation to revelation, insight to insight—from the Kennedy assassination to Watergate to the oil and financial intrigues that lie behind today's headlines—this is a sweeping drama of money and power, unseen forces, and the emblematic triumph of a lineage that sowed national tragedy. Russ Baker's Family of Secrets is sure to take its place as one of the most startling and influential works of American history and journalism.”

—Roger Morris, former senior staff member, National Security Council, and author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician and Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America

“In an era dominated by corporate journalism and an ideological right-wing media, Russ Baker’s work stands out for its fierce independence, fact-based reporting, and concern for what matters most to our democracy…A lot of us look to Russ to tell us what we didn’t know.”

—Bill Moyers, author and host,
Bill Moyers’ Journal (PBS)
The dark underside of the Bush family dynasty.
An online reviewer:
French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said that "words are loaded pistols." In the hands of Russ Baker, they are hydrogen bombs. On each and every page of his masterpiece, "Family of Secrets," he exploses the myths and lies that powerful forces have perpetratred on the American consciousness. He digs beneath the surface in a form of journalistic archeology to reveal the hidden history of one of America's most powerful families, leaving no stone unturned. Moreover, he names all of his sources and documents the materials he relies on to unmask the hypocrisy behind the myth. From Prescott Bush's ties to Nazi Germany to Poppy Bush's secret role in the Watergate scandal that ousted Richard Nixon, which was, in fact, a "silent coup," to George W. Bush's deceit in launching the war in Iraq, Russ Baker unmasks the truth with a relentless brilliance unmatched by his peers. His publisher, Bloomsberry, is to be congratulated for its confidence in Russ Baker at a time when most publishers are hedging their bets and looking over their shoulders in acts of self-censorship. Baker's revelations about George W. Bush's private life is worth the price of the book alone. Here is Bush, forcing himself on a Danish beauty, stripping to the nude, while getting another girl friend he knocks up an abortion, and then later, as president, opposing abortion and cutting funding for organizations that provide information about birth control. How he managed to get the Danish beauty to go on record, as he does with other key players in Watergate and the Kennedy assassination, is nothing short of astonishing. He traces the true history of Poppy Bush's career, from his early ties to the CIA he pretended never existed while declaring himself "out of the loop," to his strange phone call from Dallas to the FBI on the day of Kennedy's assassination, pointing a finger at a suspect who was in fact totally innocent, to his manipulation of Watergate to get rid of Nixon, is a secret story forced out of the shadows by the powerful documentation by Baker in this tour de force that keeps you turning the pages in asonishment. What he discloses is America's War of the Roses, as powerful families fight to the death for ultimate power. The history of Lee Harvey Osward in the world of wealth, power and intelligence that was Dallas, Texas at the time, is amazing. The anodyne courses in political science and history at American colleges and universities need very much to inject Family of Secrets into the curriculum so that young Americans can be more able to understand what America is truly about as a new president strives to change and reform it. It puts the dots together in a way that makes any further naivety amongst Americans impossible. What he tells us simply cannot be ignored. One can fully expect the Establishment media to go after this book in typical fashion, as they make their usual attempt to cover up what can no longer be denied. Family of Secrets takes to what Cyril Connolly so aptly descibed as the "blood crossroads of literature and politics." After Family of Secrets, neither will ever be the same.
About the Author:Award-winning investigative journalist Russ Baker has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Nation, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Esquire, and served as Columbia Journalism Review contributing editor. Baker’s appearances include NPR, Fox News, and Air America. In 2005, he founded the Real News Project, a nonprofit investigative news organization. His exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record received a 2005 Deadline Club award

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS * * * * *

Saundra Hummer

January 2nd, 2009, 05:02 PM

<><><><><>January 1, 2009 at 17:53:41We Lived to Tell the Story: Lebanon Rescued Usby
Cynthia McKinney
http://www.opednews.com
Yesterday, we met with the President of Lebanon, the Chief of the Military, and the Interior Minister who all thanked us for responding and risking our lives on a mission of mercy; we profusely thanked them for rescuing us.

What would we have done, stranded out at sea, prohibited from reaching our destination, low on fuel, with a badly damaged boat if Lebanon had not accepted us? Lebanon sent their ships to find us. Lebanon rescued us. Lebanon welcomed us. And we are truly thankful.

It's official now. We've been told that the sturdy, wood construction of our boat, Dignity, is the reason we are still alive. Fiberglass would probably not have withstood the impact of the Israeli attack and under different circumstances, we might not be here to tell the story. Even at that, the report that came to us yesterday after the Captain and First Mate went back to Sour (Tyre) to inspect the boat was that it was sinking, the damage is extensive, and the boat will take, in their estimation, at least one month to repair. Tomorrow, we will bring the Dignity from Sour to Beirut. And now, we must decide what to do and from where we will do it and how we are to get back to wherever that might be.

My personal, and I know the group's, thanks must go to Al Jazeera, that allowed three of their reporters to be onboard with us on our voyage. As a result, Al Jazeera carried the story of the Dignity live, from castoff in Cyprus when our spirits were high, right up through the manacing maneuvers of the huge, super fast Israeli ships before they rammed us, the Israeli calls on the ship phone after the ramming calling us terrorists and subversives and telling us to return to Cyprus (even though the Israelis later claimed that they didn't know who we were, they knew enough about us to tell us where we had come from), and the fact that we didn't have enough fuel to follow their instructions, right up to their threat to fire at us if we didn't turn around, ending with our beaten-up boat limping into Sour harbor in Lebanon. Al Jazeera carried our story as "breaking news" and performed a real service to its audience and to us. Al Jazeera called the Israelis to inquire about the incident right as it was happening and I am sure the Israelis were prepared to leave none to tell the story. Al Jazeera told the story and documented it as it was happening.

One of those Al Jazeera reporters with us was Sami El-Haj, who was detained in Guantanamo by the United States for six incredibly long years. What an honor to even exchange glances with such a humble man who had endured so much pain at the hands of the U.S. government. I apologized to him that my tax dollars were being used in such a despicable way. And Sami's crime according to the U.S.? Born in Sudan, and reporting for Al Jazeera in Afghanistan, Sami was the wrong color, the wrong nationality, the wrong religion, reporting for the wrong news outfit, telling us the truth about a wrong war. And for that he survived incarceration for six long years. Sami El-Haj, Guantanamo prisoner number 345.

Another incredibly committed journalist who was with us was CNN's Karl Penhaul. Karl reported the truth even when his own station was repeating Israeli disinformation. The fact that we were traveling with these alert journalists added to the flat-footedness and obvious crudeness of the Israeli response. Sadly, Israel has changed its story too many times to count, and that's because they are not telling the truth.
We lived to tell the story. Karl's incredible reporting, just a portion of our story, can be seen on CNN at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.aid.boat/index.html where there's also video and a photo of our damaged boat. A little more of the story and film of the extensive damage can be seen at:http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.aid.boat/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

This video and the photos of Karl's report is particularly interesting given that Israel claims that our boat was only scratched and that, in actuality, our captain, while trying to outmaneuver them, damaged their warship.

I'm told that CNN only played my full statement once--and that's the time that it aired live. Of course, they cut the reference to the U.S.S. Liberty. What are they afraid of?

Last night I was on PressTV.com, along with others who were on the Dignity, and we debated a representative from WINEP, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I reminded the audience that the Palestinians don't have nuclear weapons, depleted uranium munitions, white phosphorous, or F-16s, but the Israelis do. The facts, however, tend to get garbled after being processed by the "Grand Wurlitzer" organ of state-sponsored disinformation utilizing the world's press.

With the truth clearly on our side, Israel has been reduced to releasing the ridiculous bombast below, given to me by a reporter who came to our hotel in Beirut for a visit. With their multiple, conflicting stories, it is clear that the Israelis did not expect us to live to tell the truth.

On the drive from Sour through Saida to Beirut, we were welcomed like heroes because our ordeal had been seen by everyone on Al Jazeera. The mayor of Sour came to welcome us. The mayor of Saida insisted that we stop there, on our way to Beirut, for a special ceremony. But there was something else that was visible along our drive, and that is the devastation that Lebanon, itself, has received as a result of the Israeli war machine. The scars of the war are still evident everywhere. I will write more on that tomorrow.

Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Oppose the transfer of weapons to Israel.Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers Go on-site to gain access to this function, click link at end of article.
Cynthia Ann McKinney (born March 17, 1955) is a former United States Representative and the 2008 Green Party nominee for President of the United States. McKinney served as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993–2003 and 2005–2007, first representing Georgia's 11th Congressional District and then Georgia's 4th Congressional District. She is the first African-American woman to have represented Georgia in the House.[1] In the 1992 election, McKinney was elected in the newly re-created 11th District,[2] and was re-elected in 1994. When her district was redrawn and renumbered due to the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Miller v. Johnson,[3][1][4] McKinney was easily elected from the new 4th District in the 1996 election, and was re-elected twice without substantive opposition. McKinney was defeated by Denise Majette in the 2002 Democratic primary, in part due to Republican crossover voting in Georgia's open primary election, which permits anyone from any party to vote in any party primary,[5] and in part due to her "controversial profile, which included a suggestion that [George W.] Bush knew in advance of the September 11 attacks." (from wikipedia)
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Anita Stewart is a licensed medical professional, artist, freelance writer, blogger and photographer, independent publicist and New Media and Virtual Outreach expert. Anita was born in Detroit and grew up in a rock and roll radio station in Pennsylvania that her father owned, so news, media and music has always been an important part of her life. Anita is a USAF veteran. While attending the University of Maryland, where she received a degree in English with a minor in film and journalism, she wo...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Anita StewartAnita Stewart is a licensed medical professional, artist, freelance writer, blogger and photographer, independent publicist and New Media and Virtual Outreach expert. Anita was born in Detroit and grew up in a rock and roll radio station in Pennsylvania that her father owned, so news, media and music has always been an important part of her life. Anita is a USAF veteran. While attending the University of Maryland, where she received a degree in English with a minor in film and journalism, she wo...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Cynthia, the WORLD IS WATCHING!

Stay safe! You are so brave. Israel is despicable for putting out a statement like that!

by Anita Stewart (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 52 comments) on Thursday, January 1, 2009 at 6:59:09 PM
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I'm sixty-seven and I live in Northern California. I graduated from college in 1963 and from law school in 1966. I retired in 2001, after working 23 years for the United States Forest Service. I have radical politics, and before going to work for the Forest Service in 1978 I spent ten years trying to contribute to the revolution.

GLloyd RowseyI'm sixty-seven and I live in Northern California. I graduated from college in 1963 and from law school in 1966. I retired in 2001, after working 23 years for the United States Forest Service. I have radical politics, and before going to work for the Forest Service in 1978 I spent ten years trying to contribute to the revolution.
Thank you, Cynthia McKinney.

Not only for your commitment and courage and perspective but for your exceptional reporting skills.

And speaking of the latter: you wrote "I'm told that CNN only played my full statement once--and that's the time that it aired live. Of course, they cut the reference to the U.S.S. Liberty. What are they afraid of?" Like all the major newspress in the U.S., CNN is afraid that the truth, presented clearly and by someone of doubtless veracity, will further undermine whatever remaining shreds of credibility they have with the majority of American citizens. In particular, they're terrified of being replaced by the internet like the movies were replaced by television in the quarter century after 1950.

Keep up your wonderful work and exquisite reporting. The last casualty of war is a lie.

by GLloyd Rowsey (68 articles, 17 quicklinks, 44 diaries, 545 comments) on Friday, January 2, 2009 at 2:51:07 AM
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A resident of the Holy Land who lives in the Judean Hills just outside Jerusalem. Joe has a background in technology and media, and supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He also supports the separation security wall so long as Palestinian groups including the Hamas government reject peace with Israel and continue to send suicide bombers. Once Hamas declares that it wants peace and will stop the suicide bombers, the wall can come down.
Joe also believes that any...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Joe Ben AvrahamA resident of the Holy Land who lives in the Judean Hills just outside Jerusalem. Joe has a background in technology and media, and supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He also supports the separation security wall so long as Palestinian groups including the Hamas government reject peace with Israel and continue to send suicide bombers. Once Hamas declares that it wants peace and will stop the suicide bombers, the wall can come down.
Joe also believes that any...
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My Bio? I am a human being.
Elsie BrennerMy Bio? I am a human being.
Comment is hidden

Reason:

Dear Mrs. McKinney

You seemed like a nice enough person when we met and so I am concerned for your safety. Those people have been killing each other for quite a long time and though I'm sure you have good intentions I'm not sure the means you have chosen to try and help are very wise (because there are people on BOTH sides of that dispute who would gloat in the death of a former US congressperson). I'd suggest you get the hell out of dodge while you can. Good luck.

Ben

by BenMarbleMD (22 articles, 0 quicklinks, 221 diaries, 325 comments) on Friday, January 2, 2009 at 9:06:11 AM

Go on-site to view the numerous comments (many of which are interesting), and to access any links within her article.
http://www.opednews.com/flyer/news_20090102_1.html <><><><><><><>

Saundra Hummer

January 3rd, 2009, 03:20 PM

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Six North American Sites Hold 12,900-year-old Nanodiamond-rich Soil
Nanometer-sized diamonds occur at the base a layer of sediment directly above the remains of extinct animals (mammoths, dire wolves, etc.) and artifacts from Clovis culture at the research site in Murray Springs, Arizona. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oregon)ScienceDaily
Go on-site to view photo's.
(Jan. 2, 2009) — Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust exist in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites, adding strong evidence for Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team.

These nanodiamonds, which are produced under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions created by cosmic impacts and have been found in meteorites, are concentrated in similarly aged sediments at Murray Springs, Ariz., Bull Creek, Okla., Gainey, Mich., and Topper, S.C., as well as Lake Hind, Manitoba, and Chobot, Alberta, in Canada. Nanodiamonds can be produced on Earth, but only through high-explosive detonations or chemical vaporization.

Last year a 26-member team from 16 institutions proposed that a cosmic impact event, possibly by multiple airbursts of comets, set off a 1,300-year-long cold spell known as the Younger Dryas, fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and led to the extinction of a large range of animals, including mammoths, across North America. The team's paper was published in the Oct. 9, 2007, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Now, reporting in the Jan. 2 issue of the journal Science, a team led by the University of Oregon's Douglas J. Kennett, a member of the original research team, report finding billions of nanometer-sized diamonds concentrated in sediments -- weighing from about 10 to 2,700 parts per billion -- in the six locations during digs funded by the National Science Foundation.

"The nanodiamonds that we found at all six locations exist only in sediments associated with the Younger Dryas Boundary layers, not above it or below it," said Kennett, a UO archaeologist. "These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America."

The Clovis culture of hunters and gatherers was named after hunting tools referred to as Clovis points, first discovered in a mammoth's skeleton in 1926 near Clovis, N.M. Clovis sites later were identified across the United States, Mexico and Central America. Clovis people possibly entered North America across a land bridge from Siberia. The peak of the Clovis era is generally considered to have run from 13,200 to 12,900 years ago. One of the diamond-rich sediment layers reported sits directly on top of Clovis materials at the Murray Springs site.

The eight co-authors on the Science paper were: Kennett's father, James P. Kennett of the University of California, Santa Barbara; A. West of GeoScience Consulting in Dewey, Ariz.; C. Mercer of the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan; Que Hee of the University of California, Los Angeles; L. Bement of the Oklahoma Archaeological Survey at the University of Oklahoma; T.E. Bunch and M. Sellers, both of Northern Arizona University; and W.S. Wolbach of DePaul University in Chicago.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Oregon.
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University of Oregon (2009, January 2). Six North American Sites Hold 12,900-year-old Nanodiamond-rich Soil. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 3, 2009, from:http://www.sciencedaily.com* /releases/2009/01/090101172136.htm Web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/
090101172136.htm ^^^^^

Saundra Hummer

January 3rd, 2009, 04:49 PM

:: :: :: :: ::

Did you hear FDR prolonged the Great Depression?
Conservatives' newest talking point -- designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package -- is breathtaking.
By
David Sirota
Jan. 02, 2009

If you're like me, you sometimes find yourself speechless when confronted with abject insanity.

If you're like me, for instance, you were dumbfounded when "Forrest Gump" beat out "Pulp Fiction" for best picture; when HBO's "Sopranos" received more accolades than "The Wire"; and when George W. Bush insisted Iraqi airplanes were about to drop WMD on American cities.

So if you're like me, you probably understand why I was momentarily tongue-tied last week after running face-first into conservatives' newest (and most ridiculous) talking point: the one designed to stop Congress from passing an economic stimulus package.

During a Christmas Eve appearance on Fox News, I pointed out that most mainstream economists believe the government must boost the economy with deficit spending. That's when conservative pundit Monica Crowley said we should instead limit such spending because President Franklin Roosevelt's "massive government intervention actually prolonged the Great Depression." Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett eagerly concurred, saying "historians pretty much agree on that."

Of course, I had recently heard snippets of this silly argument; right-wing pundits are repeating it everywhere these days. But I had never heard it articulated in such preposterous terms, so my initial reaction was paralysis, the mouth-agape, deer-in-the-headlights kind. Only after collecting myself did I say that such assertions about the New Deal were absurd. But then I was laughed at, as if it was hilarious to say that the New Deal did anything but exacerbate the Depression.

Afterward, suffering pangs of self-doubt, I wondered whether I and most of the country were the crazy ones. Sure, the vast majority of Americans think the New Deal worked well. But are conservatives right? Did the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolong the Great Depression?"

Ummm ... no.

On deeper examination, I discovered that the right bases its New Deal revisionism on the short-lived recession in a year straddling 1937 and 1938. But that was four years into Roosevelt's term -- four years marked by spectacular economic growth. Additionally, the fleeting decline happened not because of the New Deal's spending programs, but because Roosevelt momentarily listened to conservatives and backed off them. As Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman notes, in 1937-38, FDR "was persuaded to balance the budget" and "cut spending and the economy went back down again."

To be sure, you can credibly argue that the New Deal had its share of problems. But overall, the numbers prove it helped -- rather than hurt -- the macroeconomy. "Excepting 1937-1938, unemployment fell each year of Roosevelt's first two terms [while] the U.S. economy grew at average annual growth rates of 9 percent to 10 percent," writes University of California historian Eric Rauchway.

What about the New Deal's most "massive government intervention" -- its financial regulations? Did they prolong the Great Depression in ways the official data didn't detect?

Nope.

According to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, "Only with the New Deal's rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression." In fact, even famed conservative economist Milton Friedman admitted that the New Deal's Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was "the structural change most conducive to monetary stability since ... the Civil War."

OK -- if the verifiable evidence proves the New Deal did not prolong the Depression, what about historians -- do they "pretty much agree" on the opposite?

Again, no.

As Newsweek's Daniel Gross reports, "One would be very hard-pressed to find a serious professional historian who believes that the New Deal prolonged the Depression."

But that's the critical point I somehow forgot last week, the truism we must all remember in 2009: As conservatives try to obstruct a new New Deal, they're not making any arguments that are remotely serious.

-- By David Sirota
© 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/01/02/sirota_fdr_depression/
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About the writer
Bestselling author David Sirota's latest book is "The Uprising." He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network -- both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at http://www.credoaction.com/sirota
Go on-site to gain access to the numerous comments, some of which are interesting. Here's a link provided by one of the commentators on FDR and his programs#10 There is a good 5 part write up here: http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2006/200609_FDR_intro.html
FDR and his brain trust as well as his beloved wife did the very best they could for America. Take a little time and read the story...make up your own minds.
written by avahome:http://www.epluribusmedia.org/features/2006/200609_FDR_intro.htmlBUZZFLASH: http://www.buzzflash.com :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Dazedcat

January 3rd, 2009, 08:40 PM

Saundra Hummer

January 3rd, 2009, 10:53 PM

All anyone really has to do it talk to an old timer who remembers living through the Great Depression. Ask them what they thought about Roosevelt's New Deal.

Most who are still alive think he was literally a savior for the country. My parents who lived through it always did.

Modern day revisionism is extraordinary.

Regards;

My parents thought FDR was wonderful, and they listened to his "Fireside Chats" each time they were on, dropping all they were doing sitting next to the radio so as not to miss a word.

Rich's grandmother couldn't stand FDR, blaming all that went wrong with their finances on him. They, she, her father, her mother and her brothers and sisters owned thousands upon thousands of acres of land in the Central Valley in California and they had planted their Modesto land to lettuce one year, and just as they had the crates sitting in the fields to put the lettuce in, it snowed, it never snows in Modesto you know, so that was Roosevelts fault as well with her. I think they thought they should have received some sort of financial relief to help them through those times, but it didn't come.

Saundra Hummer

January 5th, 2009, 11:30 AM

<><><><><><><> A Final Report Card on the Reagan Years?By
Sam Pizzigati
Created 01/05/2009 - 8:59am
Summary:
Our current economic meltdown may finally have ended the era that began when Ronald Reagan became President. Now a new study — from the Congressional Budget Office — helps us understand the inequality that has us melting.

Two days before Christmas, with hardly anyone at all paying much attention, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office delivered up a final report card on the Reagan era. The highest grades? They went, almost exclusively, to the super rich.

You won't, to be sure, find any As, Bs, and Fs in this new Congressional Budget Office report card [1]. And the CBO's researchers certainly didn't set out to grade America on the years since Ronald Reagan became President a generation ago. But they've done just that. On taxes and income distribution, their new report makes vividly clear, the United States desperately "needs improvement."

[1]That may or may not be the message Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus from Montana had in mind, last year, when he asked the Congressional Budget Office to dig a little deeper into the data on taxes and income than the CBO had dug in a report [2] released late in 2007.

The CBO's December 2007 study, Historical Effective Tax Rates, 1979 to 2005, had looked at the federal taxes Americans at different income levels have been paying since the year before Ronald Reagan's election. But the report had a hole. Nothing in it indicated how the really rich have fared in the near three decades that the basic principles of Reaganomics — tax rate cuts, deregulation, and privatization — have set the public policy pace.

Senate Finance Committee chair Baucus asked the CBO to fill that hole — by focusing on the richest of the rich. The CBO's new report meets that request, with dramatic results.

Americans in the overall top 1 percent, the 2007 CBO data showed, did quite well in the Reagan era's first quarter-century. Their average incomes, after taking inflation into account, essentially tripled, rising 201 percent.

But these top 1 percent stats, the new CBO data help us understand, hardly tell the full story. The truly stunning income increases over recent decades have gone to the tippy-top of the U.S. income distribution, not the top 1 percent, but the top tenth — and top hundredth — of that top 1 percent.

The higher up you go on the income ladder, in other words, the sweeter the Reagan era.

Between 1979 and 2005, the bottom half of the top 1 percent saw their average incomes only double, after inflation. These incomes increased 105 percent. The next highest four-tenths of the top 1 percent somewhat raised the income bar. Their average incomes, after inflation, rose 161 percent.

That brings us to the top 0.1 percent of Americans. Their incomes, from 1979 to 2005, rose a staggering 294 percent after taking inflation into account. Not bad at all. But the top 0.01 percent did even better. The 11,000 households in this rarified air took home an average $35.5 million in 2005, a 384 percent increase over average top 0.01 percent incomes in 1979.

Need some perspective here? Let's compare Americans at the top to Americans in the middle. Between 1979 and 2005, the average income of America’s statistical middle class — the 20 percent of Americans in the exact middle of the U.S. income distribution — rose, according to the CBO figures, a mere 15 percent. That's less than 1 percent a year.

But many average Americans never actually saw that less than 1 percent. That's because the CBO takes a kitchen-sink approach to defining income. CBO researchers include in their “comprehensive income” calculations all the standard household revenue streams — wages, dividends, interest, and the like — and lots more, too, from food stamps and Social Security to employer-paid health benefits.

All these add-ins tend to inflate average household “incomes.” If your employer’s health insurance company jacks up prices, for instance, the extra dollars in premiums that your employer has to pay count as income to you, at least in the CBO calculations.

The CBO actually has a good reason to take this "kitchen-sink" approach to defining income. Conservative cheerleaders for the Reagan era have been arguing for years that the United States isn't growing that much more unequal, not when you calculate in the various benefits that poor and average Americans get from government and their employers.

But the CBO figures, by adding in all those benefits, neatly expose the flim-flam behind this cheerleading. The United States definitely has become substantially more unequal. Overall, after taxes, the very rich — the top 0.01 percent — have nearly quadrupled their share of the nation's income since 1979.

These super-rich Americans in the top 0.01 percent, even more amazingly, now pay a lower share of their incomes in federal tax than the merely rich.

The overall top 1 percent paid federal income tax at an average 19.4 percent rate in 2005. The top 0.01 percent paid at just a 17 percent rate, mainly because the richest of the rich get nearly half their income from capital gains — and capital gains enjoy preferential tax treatment.

Under George W. Bush, the tax rate on capital gains income — income from the sale of stocks, bonds, and other assets — dropped to 15 percent, less than half the current top 35 percent tax rate on “ordinary” income from paychecks.

[3]And that brings us to about the only hopeful news we can take, of late, from the Congressional Budget Office. No one on Capitol Hill has spoken out more clearly on the noxious consequences of preferential treatment for capital gains income than Peter Orszag, the CBO director until last month.

Taxing capital gains at a lower rate than other forms of income, as Orszag has testified [4] to Congress, “creates opportunities for tax avoidance and complicates the tax system.”

As CBO director, Orszag couldn’t do much about capital gains tax breaks for mega millionaires. Now he can. President-Elect Barack Obama last month named Orszag his choice to direct the Office of Management and Budget, the federal government’s most powerful fiscal agency.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much [5], the online weekly on excess and inequality.

An Economy for All 1825 K Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006
202-955-5665 (tel) | 202-955-5606 (fax)
www.ourfuture.orgLinks:
[1]http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=9884
[2] http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=8885&type=1&ei=cSpdSZjeHY_ftgeQwOnmBg&usg=AFQjCNHl3X4JnpBo9Pa8x5SX2wq4aVq7bQ&sig2=5UBHSN0FobWE4c3X271oug
[3]http://www.toomuchonline.org/signupfull.html
[4]http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings.asp?formmode=view&id=6429
[5] http://www.toomuchonline.org/index.html

Published on OurFuture.org

http://www.ourfuture.org

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009010205/final-report-card-reagan-years
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Saundra Hummer

January 5th, 2009, 04:21 PM

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Bill Richardson - Kissinger-American
by
Greg Palast
Excerpted from Armed Madhouse
January 5, 2009

Bill Richardson is out: Caught with his hand, if not exactly in the cookie jar, at least you could say his sticky finger were near it. I'm not surprised.

For years I've been investigating the second-most corrupt state in the USA (after Alaska). I like to check in on the enchanted state with my bud Santiago Juárez.

I knew it was not a polite question, but it was really bugging me, so I asked him, “Exactly how does a Mexican get the name William Richardson?”

Governor Richardson’s dad, Santiago explained, was a Citibank executive assigned to Mexico City. There he met Governor Bill’s mom, and-milagro!-a Mexican-American was born. Richardson gets big mileage out of his mother’s heritage, and that makes him, legitimately, a Mexican-American, a politically useful designation. But it’s just as legitimate to say that Richardson is a Citibank-American.

But Governor Richardson is more than that. Between leaving Bill Clinton’s cabinet where he was Secretary of Energy and grabbing a Hispanic-district seat in Congress, Richardson became a partner in (Henry) Kissinger and Associates. That would make Richardson a Kissinger-American as well.

In 2004, John Kerry won New Mexico-if you counted the votes. But they didn't - and George Bush won the state and the presidency by just 5,000 ballots. Everyone was talking about the theft of Ohio by Republicans, but few noted that New Mexico was stolen as well. But one fact drove me straight nuts: In the end, this state and its damaged elections were in the hands of Richardson, A Democrat and a Mexican-American one at that.

In New Mexico the issue of uncounted votes is more than skin deep. Lots of Mexican-American votes don’t tally, but Citibank-American votes never get lost. Kissinger American votes always count. The story of America’s failed elections is not about undervotes. It’s about underclass. Disenfranchisement is class warfare by other means. It just happens that in New Mexico, the colors of the underclass are, for the most part, brown and red.

Class War by Other Means
As community organizer Santiago told me:
You take away people’s health insurance and you take their right to union pay scales and you take away their pensions-taking away their vote’s just one more on the list.

Some New Mexico Democrats have no trouble at the voting booth. In Santa Fe, you find trust-fund refugees from Los Angeles wearing Navajo turquoise jewelry and “casual” clothes that cost more than my car. Each one has a personal healer, an unfinished film script and a tan so deep you’d think they’re bred for their leather. They’re Democrats and their votes count. Voting-or at least voting that gets tabulated - is a class privilege. The effect is racial and partisan, but the engine is economic.

The second- and third-highest undervotes in New Mexico were recorded in McKinley and Cibola counties-85% and 72% Hispanic and Native. But the undervote champ is nearly the whitest county in New Mexico: DeBaca, which mangled and lost 8.4% of ballots cast. White DeBaca, whose average income hovers at the national poverty level, is poorer than Hispanic Cibola. No question, disenfranchisement gives off an ugly racial smell, but income is the real predictor of vote loss.

And what about those Bernalillo ghost voters for Bush? Those spirits are, it turns out, quite well-to-do, haunting the mesas west of Albuquerque where the real estate provides unobstructed views of Georgia O’Keeffe sunsets.

This was my third investigation in New Mexico in twenty years. The first time, the state’s Attorney General brought me in to go over the account books of Public Service of New Mexico (PNM), a racketeering enterprise masquerading as an electric company. Too young to understand what I wasn’t supposed to know, I proudly mapped out the sewerage lines of deceit connecting the gas drillers, water lords and political elite of New Mexico. The AG’s office handed me a nice check - which I took not as a reward, but as a payment to leave the state. After a decade away, I returned as a reporter, to look into prisons-for-pro?t out?t Wackenhut Inc. In September 1999, a company insider told me, Wackenhut was cutting costs at its New Mexico jails by sending guards alone into the cell blocks. Ralph Garcia of Santa Rosa, who’d lost his ranch to drought, took the $7.95-an-hour job guarding homicidal neo-Nazis and Mexican mafia thugs in the local Wackenhut lock-up. Inexperienced, untrained and alone, he was stabbed to death by inmates just two weeks after the insider’s warning. So that’s how Garcia became one more impoverished Chicano who lost his vote. No question, that’s not your typical case of voter disenfranchisement, but that’s the reality of the “Land of Enchantment.” New Mexico is the New America, where growing income inequality is creating a feudal divide between the prison-owning class and the prisoner-and-guard class.

Vote spoilage is the owning class’s weapon of choice.

Whose flag does Bill Richardson carry in the nouvelle class war? When I was checking out the New Mexico vote in 2005, my old friends Public Service of New Mexico hit the front page, sued by the State of California for conspiring with Enron to rig the California power market. It is still in court. It was a scam called “Ricochet.” Enron and PNM say it was not illegal. It played out about the time Garcia was walking the cell block. Where was Richardson? He was in Washington, Clinton’s Secretary of Energy, playing chubby cheerleader for PNM’s plan for “deregulation” of the energy market. Deregulation made PNM’s games possible-and Richardson’s employment by Kissinger inevitable.

Richardson, Ready for Takeoff
What about all those suspect spoiled votes in Hispanic and Indian precincts stuck inside the machines? Why didn’t this Mexican-American Democrat ask for a recount? It didn’t just slip Richardson’s little mind: He actively did everything in his power to stop a recount. I was told that it was Richardson himself who encouraged Secretary of State Vigil-Giron to reject the $114,000 payment from pissed-off Democrats and the Green Party. The Governor was too busy to speak with me about this.

Halting the 2004 recount wasn’t enough for Governor Bill, however. He demanded the legislature pass a “reform” law that would require anyone wanting a recount of a suspicious vote to put up a bond of over one million dollars. As a result, “free and fair elections” are now effectively outlawed in New Mexico. You can have a choice of a “free” election or a “fair” election, but not both. Want fair? Then you have to pay a million to recheck the ballots. In other words, it’s against the law to buy votes, but in New Mexico not against the law to buy the vote count.

On his phony reform law, Richardson was called out by a fellow Democrat, State Senator Linda Lopez-an act of indiscreet defiance that would not be forgotten by the Governor’s circle.

The centerpiece of the law signed by the Governor: Ms. Fox-Young’s proposal to require photo ID for new voters. Maybe the former Cabinet Secretary and United Nations Ambassador Richardson couldn’t imagine that photo IDs would be a problem for some voters. After all, Mexican-Americans in Little Texas may have trouble producing acceptable IDs, but it’s no problem at all for a Kissinger-American like Governor Richardson. The Governor and Jimmy Carter both have passports, they have credit cards and they have chauffeurs who will vouch for them.

Richardson wouldn’t speak with me about the 2004 vote fiasco. Instead, he busied himself with his space program. He announced the state would chip in $200 million to build a “spaceport” to land private rocket ships that will be launched beginning in 2009 by Richard Branson, the British billionaire. Passengers have already bought tickets for $200,000 each (round trip, they hope). **************

Read the rest of this story by picking up Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse at Amazon.com or support his investigations by getting an autographed copy of the book at www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org Subscribe to Palast's reports at www.GregPalast.com ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Saundra Hummer

January 5th, 2009, 05:16 PM

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Click on the following URL:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6002539/Tribus-de-LOMO-Hans-Silvester
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Saundra Hummer

January 5th, 2009, 05:48 PM

:: :: :: :: :: :: ::
GERMAN INVESTIGATORS WORRIED

SPIEGEL ONLINE
01/05/2009 05:13 PM

Growing Links Seen Between Hells Angels and Neo-NazisMotorcycle gangs have long kept the police busy with violence and drug trafficking. But now investigators are alarmed by a new threat: Militant neo-Nazis are rising through the ranks of the Hells Angels in Germany.
DDP
Members of the Hells Angels outside a court in Hanover last year. Go on-site to view photo. :: :: ::
The man who generally goes by the nickname Maxe wanted to become a model citizen, at least that's what he said after his release from prison. Markus W. made headlines during a World Cup match over 10 years ago when he and other German football hooligans viciously attacked French policeman Daniel Nivel, leaving him severely disabled. For his part in the attack, Maxe served four years in a French prison for causing "grievous bodily harm."

After his early release in 2002, he promised to transform from a right-wing thug to a social worker. He wanted to study social sciences and work with people who "have problems with society." Maxe said he hoped that young people could benefit from his experience: "I can tell you, boys, violence doesn't pay."

But only 10 weeks after he was released from prison, police were once again investigating him on aggravated assault charges -- although they couldn't prove anything. Following the broadcast of the World Cup final soccer match between Germany and Brazil in the summer of 2002, he was involved in a brawl at a fair near his hometown of Hanover. Since then, Maxe has regularly appeared before judges on a variety of charges -- like insulting a Turk or assaulting an Algerian.

Although he no longer aspires to become a social worker, he has managed to climb the social ladder in one sense: Maxe has worked his way through the ranks in Hanover to become a leading member in the local charter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang.

Aside from his violent history, German authorities have been keeping an eye on Markus W. because he is part of an alarming development. All across Germany investigators have noted an increasing number of contacts between German motorcycle gangs and militant neo-Nazis.

Observations of the far-right scene by agents of the country's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, revealed connections to motorcycle gangs, the government said in a recent statement. It also noted "occasional" indications of "joint activities and meeting places as well as isolated cases of cooperation between right-wing extremists (especially skinheads) and motorcycle gangs, primarily at a local level."

Close Links Seen in Hanover
Such "joint activities" at a "local level" take place in Berlin, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Baden-Württemberg. According to investigators, though, the closest connections between motorcycle gangs and right-wing extremists exist at the Hanover charter of the Hells Angels.

The Hanover boss of the Angels, Frank H., has promoted Markus W. to the position of club secretary, making him his right-hand man and bringing him into the inner circle of this strictly hierarchical club, alongside the treasurer and the sergeant at arms, who is responsible for security. This marks a disturbing development for investigators at the State Office for Criminal Investigation (LKA) in Lower Saxony because the Hanover charter is not just any group -- it is recognized as the largest in Germany and one of the most influential in the worldwide Hells Angels organization.

The LKA in Lower Saxony says that the club in Hanover has connections to organized crime. A team of eight investigators is currently looking into the activities of the motorcycle gang. These law enforcement officials have dubbed themselves EG1, or the "one-percent investigating group," a reference to the Angels' claim that 99 percent of their members are law-abiding citizens, while only one percent are self-proclaimed outlaws.

'Structured Like a Company'
Although the Hells Angels do their best to maintain the myth of a peaceful club of rugged Boy Scouts on motorcycles, the investigators of EG1 say that many Angels operate like a criminal gang. They "delegate responsibilities and work in a calculated and systematic manner," says Frank Federau of the LKA, adding that they hire the services of PR professionals and top-flight lawyers. In some ways they are "structured like a company."

Investigators have discovered a complex network with right-wing links, from seemingly harmless tattoo parlors to paramilitary units. And they suspect that illegal sources of income are disguised behind security services, merchandising and events.

One such event was the Tattoo Convention held last year in Hanover -- organized by secretary Markus W., alias Maxe. He ensured that shops with close ties to the far-right scene were given every opportunity to display their services. They included a tattoo and piercing parlor located in a nearby town and managed by Hannes F. and Marcel U., two martial arts experts with long-term connections to the militant neo-Nazi scene. The two men have also come a long way in the Hanover charter of the Hells Angels, rising from "hangarounds" to "prospects" -- the final stage before being accepted in the club as a full-fledged member.

Shop owner Hannes F. takes obvious pleasure in serving his customers, and piercer Marcel U. appears particularly eager to welcome "customers who love to experiment." As a source of inspiration he presents tattoo designs that are popular among right-wing extremists, including Wehrmacht soldiers and mysterious runic symbols used by neo-Nazis. They also proudly display a photo album with a picture of a tattoo that is clearly reminiscent of Adolf Hitler's erstwhile deputy Rudolf Hess.

Research by investigators has shown that Hannes F. has been a member of a racist sect called "Artgemeinschaft" ("Community of Species") as well as of the neo-Nazi group "Hildesheim Kameradschaft." In March 2008, he had to appear before the district court in Halle, in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt. He was charged with working for the "Lower Saxony section" of "Blood and Honor," an international network that markets extreme right-wing bands and has been banned in Germany since 2000. The court found that there was convincing proof that Hannes F. had organized far-right events in the spirit of Blood and Honor even after the ban -- and he was given a fine.

Johannes K. was a co-defendant in the trial in Halle -- and he also has ties to the Hells Angels. He and Hannes F. know each other from the days when they were in Blood and Honor. K. has a tattoo parlor in Hildesheim. The shop drums up business for the motorcycle gang's activities in the red light scene, and sells Hells Angels' merchandising articles.

Combat Training
Johannes K. is a prime example of the myriad connections between motorcycle gangs and right-wing extremists. In addition to the tattoo parlor, K. also runs an army shop with special equipment "from soldiers, for soldiers." In his self-styled "Combat and Survival School," the military aficionado offers a variety of courses, including "marksmanship" training.

According to investigators, the paramilitary exercises organized by Johannes K. were also attended by a member of the "Self-Defense Service of Saxony-Anhalt." This militant group -- whose German abbreviation "SS-SA" blatantly alludes to the Nazi period -- serves as a "national security service" and provides guards at events held by right-wing extremist groups.

The Angels need a good deal of security to protect themselves from nosy outsiders. Even their local clubhouse -- Angels Place -- is guarded by burly men. It stands well protected at the end of a cul-de-sac in Hanover. Unwanted visitors are kept out by muscular guards. This is the local headquarters of Hells Angels boss Frank H., a huge former boxer who is well known to the authorities. Just last December, he threw a party for Angels from all across Germany and wished them "a real good time." Strippers worked hard to create the right party mood -- and the beer from in-house brand "81" did the rest. The name "81" stands for the eighth and the first letter of the alphabet: "HA" as in Hells Angels.

There were also a number of visitors to the party who get their kicks out of the number "18" -- in reference to the letters "AH" for Adolf Hitler. The logo "Max H8" was also visible on the clothing of a number of revelers: "H8" encodes the number "88," which stands for the banned Heil Hitler greeting still favored by many in the right-wing extremist milieu. At the same time, "Max H8" stands for "maximum hate."

Code of Silence
Although the police are continuously observing the club, it's hard to pin anything on the Angels. The motorcycle gang in Hanover officially maintains that it is totally apolitical. At least that is the explanation provided by press liaison Django. He says that symbols with a Nazi connection are not political statements, but merely a provocation by some members. The Hells Angels admit that some of their members have a long criminal record, but they point out that this is no reason to stop them joining. The main thing is that they respect the rules of the organization.

One of these rules is a ban on cooperating with the authorities. Motorcycle gangs, just like the Mafia, observe the omertà -- the code of silence. Just a few weeks ago, investigators in Lower Saxony looked on in frustration as the brotherhood of bikers got off lightly once again. A total of 14 Hells Angels from Bremen faced charges in Hanover in connection with the brutal attack on members of a rival gang, the Bandidos. After only two days of proceedings, the judge, public prosecutor and defense agreed to a deal, in large part because the state witness, a former Angel, suddenly refused to testify. As a result, 11 Hells Angels immediately got off with a suspended sentence.

"Gentlemen, stay out of trouble," said Judge Jürgen Seifert as he admonished the howling and hooting bikers. Wishful thinking. The gang members who had traveled to the trial brazenly clapped their hands. In the last row of spectators a smiling Angel applauded. He was wearing a Lonsdale sweatshirt -- a popular brand among right-wing extremists.

URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...599507,00.html

RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:
Hell's Angels vs. The Law: Biker Trial Abruptly Ends in Deal after Witness Balks (12/16/2008) http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,596770,00.html
Bandidos v. Hell's Angels: Biker Turf War Escalating in Germany (04/03/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,545216,00.html
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009
All Rights Reserved

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Saundra Hummer

January 5th, 2009, 06:14 PM

<><><><><><><><><> Obama's intel picks short on direct experience
Yahoo! News
Associated Press Writer Pamela Hess
Associated Press Writer – 45 mins ago

Featured Topics:
Barack Obama
Presidential Transition
Play Video AP – Obama fills key intelligence positions
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Play Video Barack Obama Video: Local Members Of Congress Weigh In On Obama Plan KDKA Pittsburgh AP – In this Sept. 27, 1996 file photo, then-White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta talks to reporters on … Go on-site to access photo's.
WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama's decision to fill the nation's top intelligence jobs with two men short on direct experience in intelligence gathering surprised the spy community and signaled the Democrat's intention for a clean break from Bush administration policies.

Former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, an eight-term congressional veteran and administrative expert, is being tapped to head the CIA. Retired Adm. Dennis Blair is Obama's choice to be director of national intelligence, a selection expected for weeks, according to two Democrats who spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama has not officially announced the choices.

The Obama transition team's long delay in selecting CIA and national intelligence directors is a reflection of the complicated demands of the jobs and Obama's own policies and priorities.

Obama is sending an unequivocal message that controversial administration policies approving harsh interrogations, waterboarding and extraordinary renditions — the secret transfer of prisoners to other governments with a history of torture — and warrantless wiretapping are over, said several officials.

The search for Obama's new CIA chief had been stalled since November, when John Brennan, Obama's transition intelligence adviser, abruptly withdrew his name from consideration. Brennan said his potential nomination had sparked outrage among civil rights and human rights groups, who argued that he had not been outspoken enough in his condemnation of President George W. Bush's policies.

And despite an internal list of former and current CIA officials who had impressive administrative credentials, all either worked in intelligence during the Bush administration's development of controversial policies on interrogation and torture or earlier, during the months leading up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Neither Panetta nor Blair are tainted by associations with Bush administration policies, in large part because they both come from outside the intelligence world. Blair was posted at the CIA for about a year.

Panetta could face tough questions at his nomination hearing about his background in intelligence. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who will chair the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Monday she was surprised by the pick, and neither was informed nor consulted.

"I know nothing about this, other than what I've read," she said. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."

A former senior CIA official who advises Obama defended the surprise choice of Panetta, who has no direct intelligence experience beyond a two-year stint in the mid-1960s as a U.S. Army lieutenant. The official said Panetta had been a consumer of CIA intelligence when he was at the White House. He said he was selected for his administrative, management and political skills which will allow him both to control and advocate for the agency.

He said Panetta will rely on the expertise of CIA officers to balance his lack of personal intelligence experience.

Veterans of the CIA were caught off guard by the selection.

"I'm at a loss," said Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA's counterterrorism center and 27-year veteran of the agency who now is managing director of Kroll, a security consulting company.

The lack of intelligence experience puts Panetta at "a tremendous disadvantage," Grenier told The Associated Press in an interview.

"Intelligence by its very nature is an esoteric world. And right now the agency is confronted with numerous pressing challenges overseas, and to have no background is a serious deficit. I don't say that he can't succeed. It may that he can compensate for the obvious deficit."

John Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, served with Panetta during the Clinton administration. He said Panetta's experience as a former Cabinet member will help elevate the CIA's status inside the White House. The CIA director was once the president's main intelligence adviser. That role shifted in 2004 to the newly created national intelligence director.

Obama "has drawn a former Cabinet-level official to take a sub-Cabinet position, which means for a much more powerful CIA in the constellation of intelligence agencies," Hamre said.

Panetta was director of the Office of Management and Budget and a longtime congressman from California. As White House Chief of Staff during the Clinton administration, he spearheaded the internal effort to find a new CIA chief that led to the selection of John Deutsch in 1995. Deutsch served for 18 months. After he resigned, CIA security officers found classified material on his home computer, a violation of security procedures.

Panetta also served on the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that released a report at the end of 2006 with dozens of recommendations for reversing course in the war.

With his wife, Sylvia, Panetta directs the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay. The university that he helped establish is on the site of the former U.S. Army base at Fort Ord. Panetta also served for two years on a review board that helped oversee two major reports on the history of sex abuse in U.S. Catholic dioceses.

Obama's selection of Blair, a former U.S. Pacific Command chief, had been expected.

Blair served in the Navy for 34 years and was chief of the U.S. Pacific Command during the Sept. 11 attacks. Blair also is a China expert, and he was an associate director for military support at the CIA.

Blair and Panetta would replace retired Adm. Mike McConnell and former Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, respectively. Both men had said they would stay in their positions if asked.

Related Searches:
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Saundra Hummer

January 6th, 2009, 12:25 PM

. . . . . . .
A
NEWSLETTER

Hello,

The massacre in Gaza continues unabated. So far, 600 people have been killed of them 89 are children and 30 are women. The ground invasion is in full swing, and the Times of London reported that Israeli army is firing white phosphorus shells. The phosphorus in the smoke-emitting shells causes agonizing, unquenchable burns, sometimes searing flesh right down to the bone. This weapon was previously used by US army in the assault on Fallujah.

Civilians are fleeing Gaza and we have poignant plea from a young journalist from Gaza who blogs on "Gaza Today" http://www.gazatoday.blogspot.com/. CC has been using Sameh A. Habeeb's reports to bring you the ground reality in Gaza. In his latest post he writes, " I migt stop reporting either if I die or I flee my home. Shells rain down beside my house now. Pray for me…Pray for Me…."

And that brings us to the question of God in the ongoing atrocity in Gaza. Dr Ghayur Ayub sees the picture of a young Gaza boy with a stone in his hand confronting a monstrous tank and he asks the question that is on everyone's mind, "Where is God?"

Yesterday, Liz Burbank, who runs the hard hitting news digest http://www.burbankdigest.com/ wrote to me pointing out one of the areas that CC failed in its coverage on Gaza, namely the US collaboration in the atrocities. Thanks to Max Kantar today we have insightful article on this issue.

We also have two articles on economy or alternative economy. Two writers one from Pakistan and another from USA are exploring the possibilities of a post capitalist economy. That shows, people all around the world are seriously thinking of an alternative for capitalism. That's heartening.

One another article of importance we have today is by Ramtanu Maitra. He argues that the huge money flowing through the opium trade in Afghanistan is financing the terrorist activities in South Asia and this terror network may have played a part in Mumbai terror attacks.

And finally my usual plea, if you find this news letter useful, kindly forward it to your friends and encourage them to join this mailing list.
http://www.countercurrents.org/subscribe.htm.

In Solidarity
Binu

89 Children And 30 Women
Amongst Gaza's Dead
By
Al Mezan
http://www.countercurrents.org/almezan060109.htm
On the 10th day of its aggression on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has seriously escalated its military operations, targeting mostly civilian targets, particularly homes. Air strikes and artillery shells hit tens of homes. IOF also targeted medical facilities and ambulances. A Civil Defense team was hit as it tried to fight a fire following the bombardment of a clinic. So far, 89 children And 30 women are killed in the attack

Day 10 Of Israeli War On Gaza
By
Sameh A. Habeeb
http://www.countercurrents.org/habeeb060109.htm
Death toll 600, injured 2800, New "Nakhba" & Refugees
Gaza: The Death And Life Of My Father
By
Fares Akram
http://www.countercurrents.org/akram060109.htm
For Fares Akram, The Independent's reporter in Gaza, the Israeli invasion became a personal tragedy when he discovered his father was one of the first casualties of the ground war

Israel Rains Fire On Gaza With Phosphorus Shells
By
Sheera Frenkel & Michael Evans
http://www.countercurrents.org/evans060109.htm
Israel is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen

Fallujah By The Sea: Aping America,
Israel Unleashes Chemical Weapons In Gaza
By
Chris Floyd
http://www.countercurrents.org/floyd060109.htm
The Israeli military is reportedly using napalm-like white phosphorus shells in its all-out attack on Gaza. The phosphorus in the smoke-emitting shells causes agonizing, unquenchable burns, sometimes searing flesh right down to the bone

Civilians Flee Homes In Encircled Gaza
By
Mel Frykberg
http://www.countercurrents.org/frykberg060109.htm
Civilians are fleeing their homes as Israel continues to blanket-bomb a now encircled Gaza

Where Is God?
By
Dr Ghayur Ayub
http://www.countercurrents.org/ayub060109.htm
Looking at a picture taken in Gaza, I saw a young Palestinian boy holding a tiny stone in his fragile hand aiming at a monstrous Israeli tank in front of him; my mind suddenly went blank. I closed my eyes. A question started pondering my mind desensitized by western media. ‘Where is God?’

The Degree Of US Responsibility In Gaza Bloodbath
By
Max Kantar
http://www.countercurrents.org/kantar060109.htm
Israel's largely "American-made" military includes "thousands of TOW, Hellfire, and 'bunker buster' missiles" as well as massive fleets of U.S. F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters—all crucial to Israel's murderous air strikes. Additionally, Israel has been dropping an array of American "GBU-39 small diameter bombs" on Gaza—bombs that "contain uranium oxide and [are known to leave] behind radioactive contamination."

In The US, Gaza Is A Different War
By
Habib Battah
http://www.countercurrents.org/battah060109.htm
To understand the frustration often felt in the Arab world over US media coverage, one only needs to imagine the same front page had the situation been reversed. If an Israeli woman had lost five daughters in a Palestinian attack, would The Washington Post run an equally sized photograph of a relatively unharmed Palestinian woman, who was merely distraught over Israeli missile fire?

Holocaust In Gaza
By
Rohini Hensman
http://www.countercurrents.org/hensman060109.htm
The regular attacks, combined with a blockade which deprived Palestinians in Gaza of food, fuel, potable water, medicines and educational materials, was the slow-motion shoah which had been taking place up to December 27. The full-scale bombing which began on that date is surely the ‘bigger shoah’ promised by Vilnai, and, according to Israeli reports, it was being planned as long back as February

Fact And Law Checking
The Wall Street Journal And Alan Dershowitz
By
Franklin Lamb
http://www.countercurrents.org/lamb060109.htm
In his January 3, 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled, Israel's Policy Is Perfectly 'Proportionate, Professor Dershowitz, defends Israel's operation "Molton Lead " and while doing so consistently misstates the Facts and the Law

Picking Up The Pieces In Gaza
By
Alice Gray
http://www.countercurrents.org/gray060109.htm
Perhaps Israel's leaders would do well to remember that terrorism has not only a physical but also a psychological infrastructure, an infrastructure that they are building even as they destroy tunnels and rocket launching platforms; that desperate people will resort to desperate measures, that suffering breeds hatred and hatred breeds revenge

Stop Censoring International News In America!
By
Timothy V. Gatto
http://www.countercurrents.org/gatto060109.htm
Americans must realize that our media is not telling the entire truth, not only about Israel and Gaza, but just about every international event. The media actually twists the truth to correlate with the State Department on foreign affairs. This gives the illusion that America is always on God’s side, and supports the “good fight”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States supports any country that can further their mindless wars against Islam and Arabs. When will this stop?

How John McCain Imploded
By
Robert S. Becker
http://www.countercurrents.org/becker060109.htm
Republican partisans grumble John McCain never had a chance, victimized by big money, hostile media, a Democratic year, and “outside” forces beyond his control. Does this array explain the shocking loss of GOP strongholds North Carolina, Iowa and Indiana? Or why this certain loser trailed Barack Obama by two points at the second Presidential Debate?

Towards Post Neo-Capitalism
By
Nimer Ahmad
http://www.countercurrents.org/ahmad060109.htm
What needed is the destruction of current system, a revolution, not within the boundaries of one or few nation-states, but a global revolution, not just to uproot this system but to uproot the attitudes and fixation towards knowledge, ideas and initiatives

Economic Withdrawal
By
David Kendall

http://www.countercurrents.org/kendall060109.htm

We can envisage a truly parallel system of business -- one that deliberately competes with the existing system, growing daily from the inside out, even as the "shell" of the old system crumbles all around us. As Mahatma Ghandi and others have suggested, let's "build a new society in the shell of the old"

Afghan Opium And Terror In South Asia
By
Ramtanu Maitra
http://www.countercurrents.org/maitra060109.htm
Ramtanu Maitra argues that the huge money flowing through the opium trade in Afghanistan is financing the terrorist activities in South Asia and this terror network may have played a part in Mumbai terror attacks

What Is Ganga River Basin Approach? Some Questions
By
Gopal Krishna
http://www.countercurrents.org/krishna060109.htm
While the commercial benefits of damming rivers has been talked about a lot, the in-stream and off stream monetary and non-monetary benefits and advantages of flowing rivers has not been assessed so far. Does basin approach mean undertaking that assessment?

Countercurrents And You !
http://www.countercurrents.org . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

January 6th, 2009, 02:13 PM

. . . . . . . . .
Why Is Society Being Dumbed Down?
Www.Mercola.Com
Health & Wellness
Gregory
- 7 hours ago - youtube.com
Go on-site to gain access to video, just click on the following line and then click on links furnished there.
http://www.care2.com/news/member/635819564/1007266

Dr. Mercola explores this question and expands on a new DVD Sweet Remedy. He welcomes Dr. Blaylock, a retired neurosurgeon, to comment on this tragedy.

Comments
Janet Wintle (81) Tuesday January 6, 2009, 7:11 am
This must be pushed to the frount page.
I give you all warning now of all the Pharmasutical so called Curs.
Do note take them!
Ask your Doctors for Alternative remedies. If he can not tell you change your Doctor or go and get yourself books on Herbs and remedies that have been handed down by the Ancients. Best buy is books written by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely. These are written in truth all books are very cheep and he did this as a way of teaching for these times. He tells you what to eat for health. He gives you the cures and explains all about the vitamins and minerals that are in the foods easy to read and understand. Following his rules you can restore your body to good heath and vitality. Bless you all my Friends and family. Janet ?

Tsandi Crew (94) Tuesday January 6, 2009, 7:20 am
I've been warning against it for at least a decade.....it's addictive, as well as the corn sugar (high fructose, my butt) addiction..it's evil. Greed again and again.

Janet Wintle (81) Tuesday January 6, 2009, 7:34 am
I forgot to tell you, I have just pored away 10 large bottles of so called Lemonade and pop that were bought by me for over the Christmas, for each bottle was sweetened with Aspartame. I then sent an E-Mail to the company Lowes Soft Drinks, based here in Cardiff, asking them why are they trying to poison us with this dreadful stuff.
I also sent an E-Mail to our Health Minister asking why is this being aloud.
I am waiting for the reply.
Read your labels watch what is in everything you eat. Take charge of your lives, Better still grow your own, cook your own live longer and enjoy what you create. Love you all Janet

Nick H. (594) Tuesday January 6, 2009, 7:42 am
I'm diabetic, and love my soda, so I drink diet pepsi. I'm at the point that most all of our foods have things in them that should be, so, I will enjoy what I do.

And observation: Americans are bombarded with information daily, and they become numb to it all. Then you have groups like republicans who put out false or misleading data, and it makes it worse. I thought people were so stupid by not seeing the truth here (especially the elections); but it's so confusing and overwhelming, they shut down to it all. Just look how the religious right can't see past their own nose.

Nancy M. (64) Tuesday January 6, 2009, 8:03 am
If anyone is that concerned about hfcs- high fructose corn syrup and also concerned about artificial sweeteners- such as aspartame- THEN WHY on earth are you buying soda? DRINK WATER! And purify it yourself with a brita filter (or other brand).

While I do believe that the government is "owned" by big business I truly believe that they are answering consumers demands without longterm thought of the consequences. People want lots of flavor but no calories are saccharin, cyclamates, Aspartame, and now sucralose are invented. We make sure they are not immediately toxic but noone studies the long term effects. Same with any number of medicines. Nobody makes you take them, it is your choice.

What is the advantage to society to make everyone that dumb? Why would a CEO or prime minister or president think that is a good thing. It costs more overall as people have more health problems, fewer people get a good college education, and people are not able to handle jobs.

littlewing n. (73) Tuesday January 6, 2009, 8:25 am
TY-No Diet soda or any in my House

http://www.care2.com/news/member/635819564/1007266

High Fructose is a danger, and it is even in the bread you eat. It is one ingredient believed to cause gall stones and I drank Arizona Iced tea, adding my own lemon, like there was no tomorrow, I had one in my hand constantly, even in winter when our house would get too warm from our wood heater/stove. It almost killed me, so do yourself a favor and buy your bread from a local bakery that doesn't use it and check out ingredients in anything that could have it in it and avoid soft drinks and other items with High Fructose in them at all costs. We for the most part don't eat squish bread any longer, buying bread from a local artisan bakery, although once in a while if we are hungry for regular sandwich, nothing elaborate, we will buy a loaf, but probley we've only purchased about 5 loafs in the past year and then it doesn't all get eaten up before it molds. I used to bake up breads, but haven't done that in a while, I think it's cheaper to buy it with the cost of electricity now. This controversy over Aspartame is an ongoing one, with denials and accusations that have been going on for years. I just know they say that diet drinks aren't going to help you stay slim if that's your wish. I haven't seen anyone drink a diet drink who was slim, it's a lost cause. SRH

Here's another article and it tells what I wasn't so good at explaining. Both Regular and Diet Soft Drinks Are Dangerous To Your Health
What's So Bad about Diet Soda?
Stacks of research have linked drinking regular soda with obesity. But diet soda's not the answer either. New research has found that adults who drink either regular soda (otherwise known as liquid candy) or diet soda have about a 50 percent higher risk of metabolic syndrome — a condition marked by high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high triglycerides and obesity. All these double your risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Another study, out of the University of Texas, noted that drinking even one diet soda a day increased the risk for being overweight by 41 percent. How? It may be that the sweet taste without the calories somehow affects our primitive appetite control mechanism in our brains. This then triggers cravings and causes us to eat much more food. It's like we are searching for those "missing" calories. Plus, most diet sodas contain aspartame, the artificial sweetener which breaks down in the body to formaldehyde, a known poison. So, when it comes to soda, I listen to my friend and colleague Dr. Jonny Bowden: "Bottom line: soda's just about the worst drink possible — and that goes for both regular and diet versions."

Stick to water. Even if you aren't on a fat loss program, you should still be drinking at least 64 ounces of water a day to maintain a normal healthy metabolism. If you have trouble getting enough, try keeping a 32-ounce bottle with you that you can refill. Put one in your car, office, gym bag, airplane, hotel room, business meeting, social gathering and every other possible event or place that I didn't mention. It should be a part of you wherever you go. Always. The best kind of water is either distilled or purified. However, almost all municipal water in this country is so good that we don't ever really need to import another bottle from France or some obscure island.

http://health.discovery.com/national-body-challenge/articles/whats-so-bad-about-diet-soda.html
. . . . .

Saundra Hummer

January 6th, 2009, 03:42 PM

. . . . .CAMPAIGN for AMERICA'S FUTURE
Published on OurFuture.org (http://www.ourfuture.org)

The Forgotten Math:
Pre-WWII New Deal Saw Biggest Drop
In Unemployment Rate in American History
By
David Sirota
Created 01/06/2009 - 2:05pm

On Christmas Eve, I appeared on Fox News to discuss the upcoming economic recovery package, only to be told that FDR's New Deal "prolonged the Great Depression" (you can watch the clip here [1]). This is the latest consevative talking point - one specifically aimed at stopping President Obama and the new Congress from passing a New Deal-sized package of public spending.

And so after appearing on Fox, I decided to devote my first newspaper column in the New Year [2] to looking into whether conservatives have any shred of evidence to support their claim that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression. And what do you know, they don't...at all. In fact, as government data shows, the pre-WWII New Deal era from 1933-1940 - even including the much-hyped recession of 1937-38 - saw the single biggest drop in the unemployment rate in American history (skip down to see the graphs and data that conservatives want us to forget [3]).

In my column, I cite data about this, noting that the economy grew at stellar rates and that unemployment dropped. I also concede that the New Deal wasn't perfect. But the basic macroeconomic data about jobs and growth - the data points we use to judge every presidential economic agenda - confirms this positive record.

Since my column came out, I've received an overflow of angry email from conservatives citing Amity Shlaes since-discredited book "The Forgotten Man" as "proof" that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression. But note - the operative phrase is "since-discredited." As University of California historian Eric Rauchway has noted [4], Shlaes both wholly omits some relevant data and deviously manipulates other numbers:

Shlaes makes a different argument about numbers, because she uses different numbers. She starts each chapter with a rat-a-tat of just-the-facts, but instead of GDP, which represents the overall economy, she quotes the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which represents the maybe 10 percent of Americans who owned stock...Let's look at a figure Shlaes gives twice in her book and again in her Wall Street Journal editorial: She has unemployment at 20 percent in the 1937-38 recession. That's appalling—almost as bad as 23 percent in 1932. Based on such a statistic, you could think the New Deal wasn't alleviating the Great Depression. But that number hides something: A third of the people Shlaes counts as unemployed had a job that the New Deal gave them through its relief programs.

By this measure, government jobs don't count as jobs, and therefore their estimates of unemployment are far higher. To understand how manipulative this is, imagine the howls of protest conservatives would be airing if, in criticizing George W. Bush, Democrats took today's unemployment data and then inflated it by counting the millions of people who work for federal, state and local governments as unemployed.

Shlaes is backed up by other conservatives, who are slightly more honest than her in acknowledging unemployment may have decreased during the New Deal. But these right-wingers then inevitably claim that unemployment only decreased a little bit in the New Deal, and only significantly dropped when World War II and the subsequent defense buildup started.

So to end this historical revisionism once and for all - to compare apples to apples, rather than apples to conservatives' fuzzy math - let's go to the great equalizer, the Census Data, and specifically Census document HS-29 (available in PDF [5] or Excel [6] formats). Quoting directly from Census data, here are the unemployment rates and total number of official unemployed at the beginning and end of the presidential terms since the Great Depression:

ROOSEVELT PRE-WWII NEW DEAL
1932 Unemployment Rate: 23.6% (12.8 million total unemployed)
1940 Unemployment Rate: 14.6% (8.1 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -9.0
Total unemployment percentage change: -36.7%

ROOSEVELT WWII
1941 Unemployment Rate: 9.9% (5.5 million total unemployed)
1944 Unemployment Rate: 1.2% (670,000 total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -8.7
Total unemployment percentage change: -87.9%

TRUMAN
1945 Unemployment Rate: 1.9% (1.0 million total unemployed)
1952 Unemployment Rate: 3.0% (1.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +1.1
Total unemployment percentage change: +81.0%

EISENHOWER
1953 Unemployment Rate: 2.9% (1.8 million total unemployed)
1960 Unemployment Rate: 5.5% (3.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.6%
Total unemployment percentage change: +110.03%

KENNEDY
1961 Unemployment Rate: 6.7% (4.7 million total unemployed)
1963 Unemployment Rate: 5.7% (4.0 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -1.0%
Total unemployment percentage change: -13.6%

JOHNSON
1964 Unemployment Rate: 5.2% (3.7 million total unemployed)
1968 Unemployment Rate: 3.6% (2.8 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -1.6%
Total unemployment percentage change: -25.6%

NIXON
1969 Unemployment Rate: 3.5% (2.8 million total unemployed)
1974 Unemployment Rate: 5.6% (5.1 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.1%
Total unemployment percentage change: +82.0%

FORD
1975 Unemployment Rate: 8.5% (7.9 million total unemployed)
1976 Unemployment Rate: 7.7% (7.4 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -0.8%
Total unemployment percentage change: -6.6%

CARTER
1977 Unemployment Rate: 7.1% (6.9 million total unemployed)
1980 Unemployment Rate: 7.1% (7.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: 0.0
Total unemployment percentage change: +9.24%

REAGAN
1981 Unemployment Rate: 7.6% (8.2 million total unemployed)
1988 Unemployment Rate: 5.5% (6.7 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -2.1%
Total unemployment percentage change: -19.0%

BUSH I
1989 Unemployment Rate: 5.3% (6.5 million total unemployed)
1992 Unemployment Rate: 7.5% (9.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: +2.2
Total unemployment percentage change: +47.2%

CLINTON
1993 Unemployment Rate: 6.9% (8.9 million total unemployed)
2000 Unemployment Rate: 4.0% (5.6 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change -2.9
Total unemployment percentage change: -36.3%

As you can see, in terms of the unemployment rate - that is, the percentage of the total workforce not working - the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the single largest drop in American history. Yes, I'll say that again for conservatives, just to make sure they get it: The PRE-WWII New Deal era from 1933-1940 - not the WWII era - saw the largest drop in the unemployment rate in American history. And by the way, that even includes the recession of 1937-1938. You can see it right here in graphical format:
Go on-site to view graph:http://www.ourfuture.org/print/32872Now, it is certainly true that the percentage drop of total unemployed was bigger in WWII than it was in the pre-WWII New Deal era. But as the data show, even by that metric, the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the second largest percentage drop in total unemployed in the 20th century, going from 12.8 million unemployed in Roosevelt's first year in office to 8.1 million unemployed at the end of his second term in 1940. That's a 36.7 percent drop - larger than the Clinton era (36.3%) and, yes conservatives, larger than the Reagan era (a mere 19%). At the absolute minimum, that would suggests the New Deal was a positive - not negative - economic force (and empirically more positive than, say, Reagan's free-market agenda). Again, here it is in graphical format:
Go on-site for graph: http://www.ourfuture.org/print/32872These are the hard and fast numbers conservatives would like us all to forget with their claim that history proves massive spending packages like the New Deal will supposedly harm our economy. Indeed, as the numbers show, we'll be very fortunate if Congress and President Obama delivers as robust an agenda as the New Deal delivered kind of job success that Roosevelt delivered in the pre-WWII New Deal era.
An Economy for All 1825 K Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20006
202-955-5665 (tel) | 202-955-5606 (fax) | www.ourfuture.org
Links:[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6rBiGj2kbE
[2]http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/
.....2008587334_opin05sirota.html
[3]http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009010206/forgotten-math-pre-wwii-new-deal-saw-fastest-drop-unemployment-rate-american-h#data
[4] http://www.slate.com/id/2169744/pagenum/all
[5] http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-29.pdf
[6] http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/02HS0029.xls
. . . . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

January 6th, 2009, 04:40 PM

. . . . . . . . . . . .
Ben Gurion told Nahum Goldman (one of the prominent Zionists leaders) before he died:

"I don't understand your optimism.," Ben-Gurion declared. "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipes us out".

I was stunned by this pessimism, but he went on:
"I will be seventy years old soon. Well, Nahum, if you asked me whether I shall die and be buried in a Jewish state I would tell you Yes; in ten years, fifteen years, I believe there will still be a Jewish state. But ask me whether my son Amos, who will be fifty at the end of this year, has a chance of dying and being buried in a Jewish state, and I would answer: fifty-fifty."

"But how can you sleep with that prospect in mind," I broke in, "and be Prime Minister of Israel too?"

Who says I sleep? he answered simply. (The Jewish Paradox by Nahum Goldman, p. 99)

Ben-Gurion was correct about many things: Thieves do not sleep well; usually they're afraid of retribution. This is exactly how the average Israeli feels. However, Palestinians and Arabs may disappoint him about couple of things:

. It has been three generation since Nakba, and Palestinians still hold on to their looted homes' keys (inside Israel) more than ever.

. He will be amazed how many Zionist Arabs (several Palestinian leaders among them) are ready to sell Palestinian rights so they can retain their positions of power and financial gains.

Any person around the world has the right to defend his home and family, however, in the West a Palestinian does not have that right despite that his home was stolen by Holocaust survivals. Westerners (especially Europeans) for centuries took turns gang rapping their Jewish citizens, and their guilty conscious burns them from the inside. This guilty conscious is the reason why the West covers up Israeli war crimes and continues to paints Israeli apartheid as "the only democracy in the Middle East". Somebody has to pay for their crimes against their European Jews so long it is not a Westerner who pays the price. History will tell that not only they have wronged Palestinians by making them pay for their crimes, but also they have wronged their Jewish citizens twice: Once for the many Holocausts they have committed against their Jews, and the second for locking them into an endless struggle with stubborn Arabs who would not sell their rights.
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Famous-Zionist-Quotes/Story638.html
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

January 7th, 2009, 12:00 PM

* * * * * * * THE PROGRESS REPORT
January 7, 2009
By
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers
ADMINISTRATION
The Bush Legacy Propaganda
President Bush repeatedly argues that neither he nor his contemporaries are yet able to fully assess his legacy. Rather, he and his advisers say -- again and again and again -- that "history will judge" whether he was an effective president. Despite this oft-repeated claim, the President seems disinclined to leave any of his legacy to chance. In recent weeks, he and his advisers have offered assessments of the Bush era that are increasingly at odds with reality. Condoleezza Rice, for example, argued that Bush engaged the United Nations more than any other president. And just yesterday, Bush told a crowd that Donald Rumsfeld did an "outstanding job" as Secretary of Defense. In a similar vein, the White House recently released a report entitled, "Highlights of Accomplishments and Results of the Administration of George W. Bush" that featured a list of "100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record." As Frank Rich wrote for the New York Times, "This document is the literary correlative to 'Mission Accomplished.'" As Rich notes, much of the legacy report's claims about the Bush administration's economic, social, and international accomplishments are only true under very narrow conditions, suggesting that the President hopes that Americans would blind themselves to the broader failures of his presidency.

TOLL ON ECONOMY: The Bush legacy document declares that Bush "instituted pro-growth policies" that produced "six years of uninterrupted economic growth and an unprecedented 52 consecutive months of job creation" and asks, "Did you know the President's tax relief helped fuel growth that led to the largest three year increase in revenues in 26 years?" In reality, the President's "pro-growth policies" served to weaken the economy by nearly doubling the federal debt, championing deregulation on Wall Street, and increasing the income gap. While Bush claims that his tax cuts provided needed economic stimulus and pulled the economy out of recession in 2001, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explained simply, "None of this is true." A recent Los Angeles Times poll found that 75 percent of Americans feel that Bush economic policies were responsible for the current weakened state of the U.S. economy. Further, Americans see the error of Bush's reckless economic deregulation, with 62 percent calling for more aggressive regulation on Wall Street. Bush, however, has not learned his lesson. Yesterday, he told the conservative publication Human Events, "I will continue to argue for low taxes, less regulation."

TOLL ON SOCIETY: In his legacy document, Bush claims credit for promoting a "culture of life" by banning the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research and instituting regulations allowing health care professionals to refuse to participate in medical procedures that violate their personal beliefs. His ban on federal funding for stem cell research "set research back five to six to seven years in this country," delaying potential treatments for a number of degenerative and life threatening diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Similarly, the President's regulatory change allowing health care providers to abstain from procedures they deem unethical allows virtually anyone in the health care sector -- including janitors, receptionists, and volunteers -- to refuse to assist patients with obtaining birth control, abortion, fertility treatments, sterilization, or even referrals to those who would provide such services. As family health insurance premiums nearly doubled, employers became less likely to offer coverage, and the total number of Americans without health insurance grew by 7 million individuals, Bush failed to meaningfully address the nation's health care crisis. In fact, he vetoed expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, denying 10 million low-income childrenaccess to health care. Thankfully, in failing to pass his unpopular Social Security privatization plan, the Bush presidency was not as damaging as it could have been. Had he been successful in the drive, retirees would have suffered massive losses as a result of the current financial crisis that he had a hand in creating.

TOLL ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: The legacy document also tells a story of how Bush "kept America safe and promoted liberty abroad." But this ignores the obvious fact that the attacks of 9/11 happened on his watch, not to mention the roughly 4,000 troops who have died in his wars. Further, while the President claims credit for expanding and strengthening the nation's counterterrorism tools, the U.S. military is weaker now than it was five years ago, the State Department is suffering from staffing shortages and low morale, and Bush's approval of illegal interrogation techniques harmed the CIA's intelligence-gathering initiatives and threatened troops abroad. The President's cowboy diplomacy and his disastrous invasion of Iraq led to unprecedented levels of U.S. unpopularity around the world. But Bush remains untroubled, saying recently, "I think I'll be remembered as a guy who was dealt some pretty tough issues and I dealt with them head-on and I didn't try to shy away."

UNDER THE RADAR
ADMINISTRATION -- BUSH REWARDS IRAQ WAR LOYALISTS WITH PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM: On Monday, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino announced that "President Bush will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, and former Prime Ministers Tony Blair of the United Kingdom and John Howard of Australia." Perino noted that the three leaders have been loyal to Bush foreign policy, stating, "All three leaders have been staunch allies of the United States, particularly in combating terrorism." Support for the Iraq war has become a good predictor of whether one will receive the president’s highest honor. Past recipients include Norm Podhoretz (2003), L. Paul Bremer (2004), Gen. Tommy Franks (2004), Gen. Richard Myers (2005), George Tenet (2004), and Gen. Peter Pace (2008). Given this standard, there are no better recipients than Howard and Blair. Howard joined Bush’s Coalition of the Willing and kept a large number of Australian troops in Iraq until his defeat last year. Similarly, Blair, derided in Britain as "Bush's poodle," had been Bush’s strongest Western ally and helped push the invasion of Iraq. Uribe also joined Bush in contributing forces to the Coalition of the Willing.

ENVIRONMENT -- EPA INACTION CONTRIBUTED TO TENNESSEE COAL ASH DISASTER: On Dec. 22, a billion gallons of toxic coal sludge burst through a retention wall in eastern Tennessee and spread across 300 acres, causing massive property and environmental damage. The New York Times reports today that the Tennessee dump and more than 1,300 other similar dumps across the United States are "unregulated and unmonitored," as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has refused to act after facing push-back from the Big Coal. "The lack of uniform regulation stems from the E.P.A.'s inaction on the issue, which it has been studying for 28 years," the Times reports. "In 2000, the agency came close to designating coal ash a hazardous waste, but backpedaled in the face of an industry campaign that argued that tighter controls would cost it $5 billion a year." Regulation is essential, however, as "environmentalists, scientists and other experts say that regulations could have prevented the Tennessee spill." In fact, in 2000 the EPA "came close to prohibiting ash ponds" like the one in eastern Tennessee, but never acted. "We're still working on coming up with those standards," said Matthew Hale, director of the office of solid waste at the EPA. "We don't have a schedule at this point." Yesterday, a coalition of environmental groups announced it would sue the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on behalf of 40 families, "arguing TVA broke federal law by not fully disclosing the extent of spill contamination."

ECONOMY -- PENCE CHALLENGES AMERICANS TO 'CHECK' HIS FACTS: GUESS WHAT? HE'S GOT THEM WRONG: Appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal yesterday, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) repeatedly claimed that the solution to the economic crisis was to "do what Ronald Reagan did" and implement "across-the-board permanent marginal tax reductions." Towards the end of his interview, however, a caller challenged Pence's idea, saying that deficits exploded under Reagan, forcing the first President Bush to raise taxes. Pence replied that the caller was right that Reagan "saw deficits and the national debt grow," but he claimed it was the fault of spending in Congress because Reagan's tax cuts "resulted in more than a doubling of the revenues." Pence then asked viewers to "check me on this" because "people can check things easily on the Internet these days." As Media Matters noted, revenues did not get close to doubling under Reagan. "According to the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), when adjusted for inflation to constant fiscal year 2000 dollars, receipts (revenues) increased from $1.077 trillion to $1.236 trillion during Reagan's term in office." Additionally, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has found that income tax "receipts grew noticeably more slowly than usual in the 1980s, after the large cuts in individual and corporate income tax rates in 1981." In contrast, "income tax collections grew much more rapidly in the 1990s," when "marginal income tax rates at the top of the income spectrum were raised," according to CBPP.

THINK FAST
A government spokesman said today that Israel "welcomes" a proposal from France and Egypt to end the fighting in Gaza that has gone on for 12 days. The precise details of the proposal are currently unknown. Earlier this morning, Israel "briefly suspended its fighting" and "agreed to do so for three hours each day to permit humanitarian relief goods to reach the beleaguered population."

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) lashed out at Eric Holder, President-elect Obama's nominee for Attorney General, yesterday, calling into question "the issue of [Holder's] character." "Sometimes it is more important for the attorney general to have the stature and the courage to say no instead of to say yes," Specter said, adding, "Further inquiry is warranted on the issue of Mr. Holder's independence to follow the facts without respect to political bias."

President-elect Obama has asked CNN's health care analyst Dr. Sanjay Gupta to be the next U.S. surgeon general. "Gupta would come to the post with an unparalleled public profile and background as a communicator." But Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman expresses concern about Gupta’s allegations that filmmaker Michael Moore "fudged the facts" in his movie SiCKO. (Watch the Gupta/Moore segment.)

Speaking of Leon Panetta’s qualifications to head the CIA, former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke remarked: "He was in the small handful of people who knew there was a terrorism problem long before anybody else had heard of al-Qaeda."

Today, President-elect Obama will join President Bush for a private meeting at the White House. They will then attend a luncheon with the three other living presidents -- Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter. It will be "the first time all the living presidents have gathered at the White House since 1981."

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters yesterday that the situation in Pakistan represents the biggest foreign policy challenge for the incoming Obama administration and despite the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, Iran will pose the biggest challenge for the United States in the Middle East.

Yesterday President-elect Obama warned of "trillion dollar deficits for years to come" unless policymakers "make a change in the way that Washington does business." But Obama also said that the new economic stimulus bill should contain no pork-barrel spending. "What I'm saying is, we're not having earmarks in the recovery package, period," Obama said.

"President Bush made another round of last-minute appointments Tuesday, giving 45 aides, supporters and others a parting gift as he leaves office: presidential appointments to boards and councils, with terms lasting three to six years after he leaves office." The appointments included Elliott Abrams, Michael Chertoff, and Michael Mukasey to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

And finally: Comedian Will Ferrell will be reprising his hugely popular portrayal of President Bush. Ferrell will be starring in "You're Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush" at New York’s Cort Theater from Feb. 5-March 15, and will air on HBO at a later date. The show "will take a chronological look at Bush’s life, and Ferrell said that viewers should "expect the unexpected" from the performance.

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FEATURES:
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GOOD NEWS
Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) will now require members to post their earmark "requests on their Web sites at the time they make them, and explain the purpose of the earmark and why it is a valuable use of taxpayer funds."

STATE WATCH
NEW YORK: Inundation of claims by laid-off workers briefly shut down state's unemployment insurance system.

MASSACHUSETTS: State proposes reorganization of agencies to aid homeless faster.

CIVIL RIGHTS: Sixteen states do not send out their absentee ballots early enough to allow troops abroad to fill them out on time.

BLOG WATCH
THINK PROGRESS: The return of Schiavo: Conservatives plan to revive embarrassing debacle to block President-elect Obama's Justice Department nominee.

WONK ROOM: On health care, Heritage Foundation rejects competition.

YGLESIAS: The think tank industrial complex.

TAPPED: New House rules will prevent the minority from using the motion to recommit to kill legislation in committee.

DAILY GRILL
"On domestic policy, Bush was asked if he made progress in some areas for which he hasn't and probably won't get credit. Topping his list was his unsuccessful drive in 2005 to reform Social Security."
-- The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes, 1/5/09

VERSUS
"I probably, in retrospect, should have pushed immigration reform right after the '04 election and not Social Security reform."
-- Bush, 1/6/09
A SUMMARY
Go on-site to access this newsletter's numerous links (which I haven't underlined or bold printed), and more.

http://www.thinkprogress.org
* * * * *

Saundra Hummer

January 7th, 2009, 12:50 PM

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Is shooting Palestinian ducks in the Gaza barrel a last attempt to exploit Bush's "Hate Crusade" against Muslims? January 7, 2009 at 11:45:54
by W. Christopher Epler (Bill)
www.opednews.com
This subject is far too big for one submission even though the story is as brief as it is bloody. It just goes back to May 14, 1948, when the UN abcadabred Israel into a real live country.

Most young people don't realize that the State of Israel is a VERY new international event, even though the vast population of Palestine has been Arabic since around the 7th Century.

Alas, this is a subject that no matter what you say, you're going to be hated by someone. For example, the Israeli's (now that they're there) surely have every right to defend themselves against what they call terrorists; even though for the Palestinians, the Israeli's are “invading” terrorists.

It's pragmatic to keep people ignorant of history, since contemporary events generally take on a PROFOUNDLY different meaning in the context of history.

For example, one realistically wonders how the United States, England, Spain, Germany, or Italy (or ANY country) would have responded if Palestine was not the unwilling "host" of a brand new country, but America had been informed by the UN that Washington and Oregon were now the State of Israel. What would Russia of done, or China, or even any of the Arab states if they discovered that their ancient lands were "appropriated" by a paper UN decree (after the brutal occupation of Palestine by the British from 1920 to 1948)?

Speaking of which, the indescribable obscenity of British Colonialism was literally all over the planet for decades. The British Empire could have take lessons in morality for Genghis Khan.

Of course, from the Palestinian point of view, this 100% arbitrary historical event (i.e., the magic international creation of Israel in the heart of Palestine) is the alpha and omega of violence that has happened, is happening, and almost certainly will continue to happen indefinitely.

But, when factoring in goons like Yasser Arafat, who apparently was sent by the devil to undo ANY possibility of realistic diplomacy between Israel and Palestine (in spite of some sincere efforts from the Israeli's), the whole Israeli/Palestinian "conflict" seemed hopeless.

The current goon, of course, is George W Bush who for the last eight years has:

(1.) Basically allowed America's foreign policy to be dictated by extremist right wing Israelis, via the neocon cabal and assorted special interest elite/fundamentalist acronyms. In short, we have been the tail wagged by the dog of "another country" -- much to the infinite shame of millions of Americans.

(2.) Now add to this Bush's dufus religious fanaticisms (e.g., the world is going to go *boom* any day now) which blended nicely with this dog/tail arrangement and justified anti Palestine and Muslim policies that can only be described as a kind of time warp Hate Crusade against Muslims.

However, there are indications that this dog/tail relation between Israeli right wing extremists and American foreign policy may finally be on its way out, and an ironic symptom of this sea change (even before Bush is flushed down the toilet of history) is the appearance of more and more pro Israel sites on the net which remind the world that the right wing, elite/fundamentalists of Israel no more speak for the entire State of Israel than do murderous Sarah Palin-type religious wackos speak for the entire United States of America.

For example, the Labor Party of Israel is MUCH more progressive than the DLC rags that used to be America's Democratic Party; plus murder in the name of God billionaire religious fanatics (of ANY country) are increasingly seen for the sociopaths they are.

"The times they are a changin’" and that includes America's dog/tail foreign policies and a growing international rejection of major national/international decisions justified merely (and absurdly) chiefly on "religious grounds" -- keeping in mind a given religion speaks only for a very small percentage of the human race.

Ironically, the intrusion of religious cults into the dynamics of our Constitutional Republic was probably the chief concern of our genius founding fathers, who built fire wall after fire wall to keep the church and state separation inviolate.

As usual, most of the rest of world is playing catch up with our magnificent constitution – which Geroge W. Bush called, “a piece of paper”. Hmmm, maybe he was talking about his “Daddy Degree” from Yale.

www.theliberationofrealism.blogspot.com

A liberal American, PhD mathematician, bipedal Earthling.www.theliberationofrealism.blogspot.com

A liberal American, PhD mathematician, bipedal Earthling
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We are an organization in Iran and Iraq to mobilize the Jaff people in both countries to have Voice in the Kurdistan politics and defend our people's rights. This is our short term goals. Our long term goals we like to establish the Aryan (Iranian) Economic Union (AU) similar to
the EU. We believe that our people and the Kurdish people will be free when all the Iranian people Get united for establishing the AU which every sub nations of the Aryan (Iranian) nations...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Jaff SassaniWe are an organization in Iran and Iraq to mobilize the Jaff people in both countries to have Voice in the Kurdistan politics and defend our people's rights. This is our short term goals. Our long term goals we like to establish the Aryan (Iranian) Economic Union (AU) similar to the EU. We believe that our people and the Kurdish people will be free when all the Iranian people Get united for establishing the AU which every sub nations of the Aryan (Iranian) nations...

to see more of bio, click on member name
President Bush are not Crusader

Bush and his family never hated the Arabs. In mater of fact they are friend and partner of the Saudi royal families through the oil companies directly or indirectly. The Americans are fooled especially christen conservatives. What makes you and millions of the Americans people to think that Bush’s “Hate Crusade” against Muslims? , Are even real and true.

President Bush are not Crusader, he is the business man and a leader. He does look for the future interest of his family. So people should understand that instead accusing him to be anti Muslim. He does not have any thing to do with the Israel war against the Hamas terrorist organizations. IT is the time for the Administration changes and Israel took advantage on timing to put down rocket from Hamas that is all.

by Jaff Sassani (17 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 113 comments) on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 1:06:30 PM
~ ~ ~
While I'm not in total agreement with what this article is opining on, I do believe there are nefarious reasons behind what Bush's policies are towards much of the Muslim world, of course there is Israel, our staunchest "friend in the region", and then too, remember there is Oil and the liquid gold of the future in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and it is water. SRH
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Saundra Hummer

January 7th, 2009, 04:50 PM

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ What Obama owes Congressional Republicans
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

This Monday the long-awaited melodrama began in earnest: Barack Obama offered a hand of friendship and compromise to Congressional Republicans, and they responded as though they cared.

Now let the clock begin: How long before the latter programmatically molests the former, and before the compromising former tells the swindling latter just where to get off?

But, who knows? Maybe this time a genuine bipartisan bond out of mutual concern for the nation can be formed, and dogs will lie with cats and Ann Coulter behave with civility and Barack Obama become one with the political universe, because all its inhabitants love and admire and respect him so much.

Or, political nerves will be shattered by, say, early February at the latest, simply because most bipartisan living arrangements have the life expectancy of a housefly or American marriage.

And that, I suppose, is the way things should be. After all, the loyal opposition on Capitol Hill wouldn't be doing its job if it merely sat back and rubber stamped -- is any of this sounding sickeningly familiar? -- whatever the big executive cheese wanted.

No, the loyal opposition is by definition meant to oppose -- even, to a degree, in times of national crisis; even, in fact, after they were the ones who largely spearheaded the wretched conditions that then so urgently required a vastly different approach. It's kind of a paradox thing.

We're adults. We understand that. It's just that modern Republicans are, well ... they're so darned, well ... they're just such asses. Such unmitigated baboons, ranging from clueless yokels to calculating racketeers. They got no class -- know what I mean?

That, I'm sure, is something that Mr. Obama already knows, having learned it, if nothing else, from a campaign trail so breathtakingly littered with unconscionable GOP calumny and malevolent lies.

But back to the happy cosmos of uncommon cooperation and today's targeted topic of concern. As the NY Times led off yesterday, on Monday Obama "took his economic recovery package to Capitol Hill ... and worked to build a bipartisan coalition to endorse his plan of tax cuts and new spending with an urgent appeal 'to break the momentum of this recession.'"

A troublesome passage -- not in the whole, but in one particular: "his plan of tax cuts."

For the question naturally arose, Just how much of "his plan' was indeed "their" -- you-know-whose -- plan? Just how much backroom pre-placating and how many ideological concessions, that is, went into the questionable thing?

Obama bluntly rebuffed the rising if not prevailing scuttlebutt of skulduggery: "The notion that me wanting to include relief for working families in this plan is somehow a political ploy, when this was a centerpiece of my plan for the last two years doesn't make too much sense."

An effective riposte, at least on the surface. It's incontrovertibly true that tax cuts were an integral "centerpiece" of Obama's campaign rhetoric; but it's also easily imaginable that Obama, while campaigning, would have rejected out of hand any suggestion that a stimulus package be loaded down with passive tax cuts to a tune of nearly 40 percent.

Because that, on the surface as well, appears to be more ideologically oriented than pragmatically grounded. And that, further, would appear to be an opening-volley concession in the form of "a political ploy."

Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps Obama's economic crew really did sit down and come to the fiscal conclusion that a stimulus package disturbingly close to a 50-50 split of tax cuts and spending was the best-advisable Keynesian way to go. Perhaps politics had nothing to do with it. And perhaps Ann Coulter will learn to be civil.

Oh, there I go again, being tawdrily suspicious. But here's the thing: If his economic crew really did sit down and come up with the above fiscal mix with their eyes and minds on nothing but the best possible pragmatic course of action, then I'm all for it. Let the additional tax cuts rain. Let them flood the stimulus package with antediluvian Lafferite intent.

But if Obama preshaped his crew's conclusions out of excessive political cleverness and a presumed need to ease Republicans' ideological sensibilities, then he's going to regret it.

Inside a year he'll be back, meeting with Congressional leaders, having watched $300 billion in additional tax cuts attenuate his recovery plan's effectiveness; he'll be asking for more spending, which Republicans will strenuously and ideologically oppose -- all of which will delay the entire point of the stimulus package: to stimulate.

And then he'll learn what he conscientiously owes Republicans, the ideological baboons, yokels and racketeers who got us into this mess to begin with: Nothing.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at: fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com
* * *
Did sucking up to the Repugs work for Clinton?
Submitted by ETS on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 1:01pm.
President Obama needs Congressional Republicans like a fish needs a bicycle, to borrow the old feminist phrase.

Robert Borosage says the same thing as P.M. Carpenter: sucking up, triangulation, reaching across the aisle, creating a comity of ideas and collegiality, bipartisanship, whatever you want to call it, with the current generation of obstructionist Republican politicians guarantees only failure.

True, some few "centrist" Republicans, such as Maine's Senatorial delegation may be amenable to some points of Obama's agenda, but the rest of these Congressional Republican Reaganistas are girdling their loins for battle. Delay, obstruction and dilution of bills important to the United States' continued fiscal health and economic wellbeing, not to mention the physical health and wellbeing of the citizenry, is the goal of Congressional Republicans.

That Congressional Republicans would deliberately derail or delay much needed economic reforms at this time in our nation's history borders on treason. But, in the chess game that is politics, perhaps President-elect Obama understands this and is quietly and carefully constructing a trap which will expose the GOP's bankrupt obstructionist policy.

We can only hope that president-elect Obama has learned from the mistakes of "Triangulating Bill" Clinton.

pelosi, reid
Submitted by christopherflynn on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 12:49pm.
both these twits are really republican moles-yeah, democrats truly need new progressive leadership...

Bipartisan rubbish
Submitted by SpikeHeels on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 12:24pm.
When the Republicans controlled all three branches their idea of bipartisan was to allow Democrats to vote. If the filibuster was mentioned by Democrats, the Republicans said they would get rid of it. To Republicans, bipartisan means that they get everything they want or nothing happens. They don't know how to play nice and they don't have to because Congressional Democrats will willingly roll over every time and take it in the rear.

Reid and Pelosi need to go. The Democrats need real leaders.

Republicans
Submitted by mwildfire on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 10:49am.
Personally, I think bipartisanship is a waste of time, because the Repubs have shown repeatedly through recent years that the only terms of compromise they will accept are 100% of what they want, and the Dems can have whatever's left over. Perhaps it's good politics for Obama to make an early show of reaching out, so if they bite his hand the onus is on them. But NOT restoring taxation on the bloated ticks who fed so well under Bush? We can't afford that, not if Obama is simultaneously going to increase spending for the stimulus, and give his long-promised tax cut to the bottom 90%, and hasn't got the balls to make long-overdue, drastic cuts in the military budget.
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If Reid & Pelosi did their jobs, Obama wouldn't need GOP
Submitted by yurbud on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 10:34am.
Reid & Pelosi act as if so long as there is ONE Republican in Congress, the GOP gets to set or veto the agenda.

They are either corrupt or being threatened behind the scenes. In either case, they are epic failures as leaders of any kind of opposition party.

Professorsmartass.com

Accommodating
Submitted by Musing on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 10:21am.
It is essential at this time that the stimulus package is passed. All along Obama promised tax cuts to all with incomes under $200,000 or families with incomes under $250,000. Where he may be accommodating the Republicans is by delaying his promised tax increases to those with the highest incomes. If the Republicans want to claim credit for the tax cuts they are rewriting history, if they want to claim credit for no tax increases they may have some justification. But that cannot last long - because Obama has signaled that this stimulus is one off deal - and Democrats do not like red ink but Republicans don't care because they know the Democrats will come along and fix things.

An Olive Branch
Submitted by PacoC on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 9:27am.
It seems as though Obama is intent on extending an olive branch to Republicans, just as Clinton did at the start of his administration. It seems likely that Republicans will respond to Obama just as they did to Clinton. They will grab the olive branch away and begin beating the new President with it as hard as they can.
Bi-partisanship has to begin with a mutual exchange of good intent. I doubt it will happen.

If you offer a hand in friendship to Jeffrey Dahmer...
Submitted by yurbud on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 10:36am.
He will eat it.

The only successful bipartisanship with the GOP will be of the Clinton variety on NAFTA, media consolidation and the like, which were no favor to the American people.

Professorsmartass.com

Right On, Paco!
Submitted by drprodny on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 10:29am.
I do NOT understand why the Dems feel they owe the Rethugs anything other than a harsh backhand, and a pick in the balls, at this point. To do otherwise after Eight Years of The Traitor Bush seems...unAmerican, somehow....

CLASS WARFARE IS ON--> --> ==> ==> --> --> ==> ==> --> --> ==>
Submitted by codypup on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 9:23am.
OBAMA owed them a handshake ---> and now they have had THAT. OBAMA does not otherwise owe them SHIT. He owes ME, and MY FAMILY, and MY FRIENDS. We elected him. THE GOP and THE WEALTHY fought him every inch of the way. He owes them NOTHING. -----SO WHAT DOES HE OWE ME... I want my american dream BACK. I want my rights to privacy back... my right to a job that pays LIVING WAGES... my right to have a chance to CLIMB UP THE SOCIAL LADDER... the right to afford a home if i work for it... THE RIGHT TO HAVE THE BILLIONAIRES OF THE WORLD PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE through a strong program of INCOME REDISTRIBUTION. Those who have MILKED THE SYSTEM, OBAMA owes me that he take YOUR OWNERSHIPS and transfer them to the PUBLIC for the PUBLIC GOOD.

America the stupid!
Submitted by Neva Stoltz on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 8:19am.
Reading all these liberal editorials on how bad the Republicans are and how good Obama and the Democrats are makes one realize the stupidity of America. Corruption in the Democrats is just as bad as in the Republican party. The tactics of the Democrats are showing to be even worst than the Republicans. Thank God! I changed from Democrat to Independent. I prefer not to be associated with either group. America needs to wake up and kick all of them out and start a new. Obama and the Democrats will give us just more of the same and probably much worst with Reid and Pelosi!

Oh, Neva the Closet Rethhug - er, "Hillaryinsta" is Back!
Submitted by drprodny on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 10:26am.
But I repeat myself, since the Clinstones have always been Closet Repigs - for all the good it's done them! Which for all their vaunted "intellect", makes Bil&Hil two of the stupidest people in Washington, DC, lacking even the basic "fight" part of survival skills?

You DO realize that, if your gal had actually won the election, the Rethuglicans would ALREADY be trying to impeach her?

Sure the Dems are craven weasels and with a handful of exceptions (like Russ Feingold) lack spine - eight years of The Traitor Bush's regime taught us that if nothing else. OTOH, their flaws are as morning dew on the leaves compared to the Constant State of High Treason that is every Republican's birthright since - Nixon, it seems....

The "Clinstones have always been Closet Repigs"...
Submitted by Yman on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 2:40pm.
... and two of the "stupidest people in Washington, DC" huh, "Doc"?

And yet ..... you voted for/supported them .... along with Ralph Nader, who you donated to and canvassed for, but who you now call a racist.

Guess we should take your word for who qualifies as the "stupidest" ......

........... given your demonstrated level of expertise.

Still bowing to your messiah, I see!
Submitted by Neva Stoltz on Wed, 01/07/2009 - 2:30pm.
Sorry I am not one of your secret repugs or whatever! I changed parties when the Democrats started looking like the same regime we had. Obama, Bush and Hillary, just more of the same! Your current president elect is as corrupt as the politics in Illinois. Been there and have seen it, experienced it and still detest it. Anyone rising as fast as your messiah did, leaves no doubt about his political turning, Chicago style! Like I said the stupidity of America is growing and at a really fast rate.

http://buzzflash.com/articles/carpenter/279 * * * * *
I feel Barack Obama rose as fast as he did, just because he wasn't in lock step with the current administration, one we were sick of and since we were ready for a drastic change, Barack Obama soared. Good for him, good for us. SRH. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Saundra Hummer

January 7th, 2009, 05:10 PM

<><><><><><><> The perils and joys of self-esteem
Garrison Keillor
January 7, 2009
chicagotribune.com
When you look at the audience numbers for TV and then add up the incarcerated felons, Alzheimer's patients and confirmed barflies in America, it dawns on you who is watching TV these days—people unable to lead normal productive lives—and yet they give out awards for this stuff. TV is wallpaper nowadays and those talking heads might as well be talking to the smoked trout in Murray's Deli, but we allow them their delusions.

And we allow the Current Occupant to leave the Mansion d'Blanc with a big grin in a couple weeks, his self-esteem apparently fully intact, imagining that his legacy will emerge golden and shining in a hundred years after all of us are deceased. He is one of the cheerfullest idiots you ever saw, a man who could burn down his own house and be happy that the patio was still standing. Had Congress impeached him, his defense would have been that he was not capable of understanding the charges.

Laura got the publishing contract, though the world is not abuzz waiting for her to tell us that he was not as dense as he looked. Sure. Right. But she will write it and then go on TV talk shows to flog it and she will be seen by thousands of people in airport waiting areas who will think, "My, she looks familiar. She reminds me of somebody."

The happy StairMaster president is on his way to a mansionette in Dallas, to be the decider of where to put the sofa. His successor, Mister Mambo, has cast his lot with Harvard and Yale and old Clinton hands, and soon enough, Lord knows, they will get the first of many comeuppances, and their shining faces will be chopfallen.

Meanwhile, you and I go on. I have just spent four days in an old Miami hotel under the sheltering palms, having read about how important dads are to their daughters' self-esteem, and so I brought my sandy-haired bright-faced girl down to the Largest Swimming Pool in Judeo-Christian Civilization and got to observe her excellent breast stroke and butterfly, and also her fine social skills in the art of approaching other little girls and becoming fast friends within minutes. Self-esteem did not seem to be a problem.

As for me, I sat and wrote sonnets, including one about self-esteem.

Life is absurd. A man can count on that.

Here I am on the front page, standing alone,

Refusing to hide my face behind my hat,

Which, in my case, I do not even own.

MAN, 66, NABBED FOR PUBLIC EXPOSURE.

All I did was go take a leak in the bushes.

I didn't run through the park with no clothes or

Flash anyone. Ridiculous. Absolutely atrocious.

The injustice! Some gumshoe at the P.D.

Was out to enhance his crime-stopping reputation

And now I am an outcast crying bootlessly

For the crime of emergency urination.

With fortune and men's eyes I'm in disgrace

But you still love me and I refuse to hide my face.
It was inspired, if you must know, by observing a man taking a leak in the bushes at a park where a Cuban band was playing, and a line of dancers formed impromptu next to the stage and did a lovely salsa step, so simple, graceful, slide slide turn slide, arms up, turn step step slide, and you had to think, O my God how beautiful we are. And beyond was the man disgracing himself, and he was beautiful too.

Garrison Keillor is a radio host and author.
oldscout@prairiehome.us
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0107keillorjan07-column,0,1780146.column <><><><><>

Saundra Hummer

January 8th, 2009, 01:02 AM

:tearhair:

At least three rockets fired from Lebanon land in the north of Israel as Israeli planes make 60 air strikes on Gaza in a single night.

For more details:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news

Saundra Hummer

January 8th, 2009, 01:27 AM

. . . . . . . . .
News Analysis
Israel Strikes Before an Ally Departs
By
SCOTT SHANEJanuary 5, 2009

For nine days, as European and United Nations officials have called urgently for a cease-fire in Gaza, the Bush administration has squarely blamed the rocket attacks of the Palestinian militant group Hamas for Israel’s assault, maintaining to the end its eight-year record of stalwart support for Israel.

Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said the United States did not want a “one-way cease-fire” that allowed Hamas to keep up its rocket fire, and Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday echoed the point, declaring that only a “sustainable, durable” peace would be acceptable.

Many Middle East experts say Israel timed its move against Hamas, which began with airstrikes on Dec. 27, 24 days before Mr. Bush leaves office, with the expectation of such backing in Washington. Israeli officials could not be certain that President-elect Barack Obama, despite past statements of sympathy for Israel’s right of self-defense, would match the Bush administration’s unconditional endorsement.

“Obviously Bush, even by comparison with past U.S. presidents, has been very, very pro-Israel,” said Sami G. Hajjar, a longtime scholar of Middle East politics and a visiting professor at the National Defense University. “Despite Obama’s statements, and his advisers who are quite pro-Israel, the Israelis really didn’t know how he’d react. His first instinct is for diplomacy, not military action.”

Mr. Hajjar said that in addition to relying on the backing of Mr. Bush, Israeli officials may not have wanted to begin their relationship with the new president by forcing him to respond to their military action. On Dec. 19, just one month before Mr. Obama’s inauguration, Hamas declared an end to an Egyptian-mediated truce with Israel that had taken effect in June, and rocket attacks from Gaza have been increasing since then.

Mr. Obama has disappointed many commentators in the Muslim world by steadfastly declining to condemn the Gaza operation, and he maintained his silence over the weekend as Israel began a ground invasion. “President-elect Obama is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time,” said Brooke Anderson, chief national security spokeswoman for Mr. Obama, repeating what has become a mantra for the incoming administration.

Mr. Obama’s stance has been interpreted by Hamas spokesmen and others as tacit assent both to Israel’s actions and to the Bush administration’s policy. Aides to the president-elect say he has spoken with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the situation in Gaza but they do not expect him to carve out a distinct position before his inauguration.

In the meantime, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, while expressing concern about the deaths and suffering of Palestinian civilians, have offered unqualified understanding for Israel’s assault.

In an interview Sunday with Bob Schieffer of the CBS News program “Face the Nation,” Mr. Cheney said Israel “didn’t seek clearance or approval from us” before beginning a ground invasion on Saturday. But he said that in previous discussions, Israeli officials said they would respond forcefully to rocket attacks, “and if they did, they would be very aggressive in terms of trying to take down Hamas.”

Asked whether sending troops into Gaza was a mistake, the vice president replied that “it’s important to remember who the enemy is here,” adding, “You haven’t had a conflict between two U.N. charter-member states, you’ve got a U.N. member state being attacked by a terrorist organization.”

Leading Democrats, including Senators Harry Reid of Nevada and Dick Durbin of Illinois, both of whom appeared on programs on Sunday, have also expressed support for Israel. “I think this terrorist organization, Hamas, has got to be put away,” Mr. Reid said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas comes as a dismal coda to the Bush administration’s second-term push for Middle East peace, which has occupied much of Ms. Rice’s tenure as secretary of state. For Mr. Obama, who flew to Washington on Sunday to join his family, it adds a new crisis to an agenda already packed with challenges, beginning with the economy.

During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama promised a new, positive approach to the Muslim world, including “America Houses” offering English lessons in Muslim countries and an “America’s Voice Corps” to spread the truth about American values. Mr. Obama’s aides have said he will unveil the new approach with a speech in a Muslim capital during his first 100 days in office. But Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and Mr. Obama’s studied silence about it, threatens to short-circuit his plans for an American image makeover.

Critics abroad and at home have noted that Mr. Obama’s “one president at a time” policy did not prevent the president-elect from speaking out against the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, in November, when he condemned what he called the “hateful ideology” of militant Islam.

In the absence of any new statement, many have recalled Mr. Obama’s remarks last July in the Israeli town of Sderot, where he implicitly recognized Israel’s right to respond militarily.

“If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” he told reporters. The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, quoted Mr. Obama’s statement in justifying the attack on Hamas during a news briefing on Dec. 29.

Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University who studies presidential transitions, said Mr. Obama’s predicament exemplified the treacherous weeks between election and inauguration, and the way inspiring visions inevitably give way before unexpected events.

“On a campaign, you control what you talk about and when you talk about it,” Ms. Kumar said. “When you begin governing, you have to respond to what happens in the world.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/washington/05diplo.html
Go on-site to gain access to the numerous links within this article. Just click on the previous link. . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

January 8th, 2009, 02:51 AM

...............
Rockets hit Israel from Lebanon
Page last updated at 09:30 GMT,
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Rockets have been fired into northern Israel from Lebanon, raising fears the Israeli offensive in Gaza may spread.

Israel's army responded with artillery to a barrage of at least three rockets. No group has claimed responsibility.

Israeli media later reported a second rocket attack, but an army spokesman said this was a false alarm.

The exchanges came as Israel launched 60 air strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight, targeting facilities used by the militant Hamas group.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the rocket fire from Lebanon.

Correspondents say this is a dangerous moment in the current conflict.

Mobile phone footage of damage caused by a rocket fired from Lebanon into northern Israel. Go on-site to view photo, maps, etc.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7817135.stm
The rocket attacks from Lebanon have raised concerns about a wider war, says the BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen.

It is is not clear if the rockets were fired by Hezbollah or by one of the armed Palestinian groups that operate in Lebanon.

If Hezbollah mounted the attack there is a grave risk of a very strong Israeli reaction, our correspondent says.

The Palestinians in Lebanon do not have the capacity to fight a war with Israel, but Hezbollah does.

Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to secure a truce in Gaza continue, with a senior Israeli official due to travel to Cairo to hear details of a ceasefire plan drawn up by Egypt and France.

A Hamas delegation is expected in the Egyptian capital at some stage for parallel "technical" talks, Egyptian diplomats said. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas is due to arrive on Friday.

Schools closed At least three Katyusha rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel early on Thursday, with some reports putting the number of rocket attacks at five.

One rocket hit the Nahariya area, north of the city of Haifa.

At least two people were slightly wounded and a number of others were suffering from shock, Israeli officials said.

MAP/GRAPH
Language of Hamas
Gaza offensive - in maps
Points of view on Gaza
In pictures: Conflict continues
Israel immediately responded with five artillery shells into Lebanon, calling it a "pinpoint response at the source of fire".

An army spokesman described it as an "isolated event".

But shortly afterwards, reports came in of a further rocket attack from Lebanon, although the army later called it a false alarm.

Schools have been closed and residents told to stay indoors, local officials said.

Lebanon's government said it was investigating who fired the rockets and stressed it remained committed to peace, the Associated Press reports.

The latest attacks come a day after the leader of militant group Hezbollah, a strong ally of Hamas, spoke openly about the possibility of a renewed conflict with Israel.

Hassan Nasrallah said Hezbollah had already put its fighters on high alert along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Northern Israel came under attack from rockets fired by Hezbollah during the brief war with Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

In 2007, Palestinian militant groups fired rockets from Lebanon into Israel.

Air attacks In Gaza, Israel continued its offensive overnight with 60 airstrikes targeting police sites, 10 Hamas tunnels, weapons storage facilities, launching pads "and a number of armed gunmen", the Israeli army said.

Naval and artillery units "continued to support the ground forces" with one soldier lightly wounded, the army added.

Shopping for 'basic needs' in Gaza market
VIDEO: Go on-site to view
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7817135.stm
Palestinian sources say an air attack destroyed a mosque in Gaza City but there has been no independent confirmation of this.

Unconfirmed reports also spoke of a tank advance with helicopter support towards Khan Younis, also in the south, shortly after midnight.

The bombardment followed a three-hour pause in fighting on Wednesday to allow vital humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Aid agencies report that Gazans rushed into the streets to buy essential supplies and visit relatives in hospital during the lull.

UN aid workers welcomed Israel's promise of brief daily ceasefires but said only a total end to fighting would allow them to distribute aid to those who need it.

Israel said on Wednesday it accepted the principles of a Franco-Egyptian truce proposal, which was backed by Washington, but wanted to see the details.

The UN Security Council seemed deadlocked over the crisis.

Arab countries want the Council to vote on a resolution calling for a ceasefire while Britain, France and the US are pushing for a weaker statement welcoming the Franco-Egyptian initiative.

The US could well veto any vote as it is a permanent member of the Security Council, the BBC's Laura Trevelyan reports.

Nearly 700 Palestinian and 11 Israeli lives are said to have been lost since the offensive began 12 days ago.

Casualty claims in Gaza cannot be independently verified.

While the BBC has had Palestinian producers reporting from Gaza, Israel only allowed Western TV crews to enter on Wednesday, embedded with its army.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7817135.stm ..............

Gina

January 8th, 2009, 12:56 PM

Saundra Hummer

January 8th, 2009, 02:10 PM

* * * * *33 VIDEO: " WATCH AS ALL 44 PRESIDENTS MORPH INTO EACH OTHER."
Brenda
- 43 minutes ago - flixxy.com

Nice job! Beginning with George Washington all the way to Barack Obama, each President morphs into the following one. Someone did a lot of work on this. Set to Ravel's "Bolero".

http://www.flixxy.com/presidents-morphing.htm * * *

Saundra Hummer

January 8th, 2009, 02:20 PM

Hi Sandi,

I don't think I can manage reading all your 14.000 somewhat posts anytime soon (if ever!), but am definitely starting at the beginning in this thread :-)

It seems there is a cease post in the Israel's Bombardment of Gaza thread now and since that one is more for debate & discussion, I figured to post something informative in here. It is however linked to my recent discovery of a Dutch music project from musician Merlin (Merlijn in Dutch) Twaalfhoven and his friends. Music For Gaza is about raising awareness and money for the music school in Gaza which suffered damage due to the bombings just recently. The school itself had only been operative since a month. Merlin has initiated some unique music projects in difficult regions where political and cultural differences keep people apart. Like in Nicosie, the Greek and the Turkish... In Bethlehem, where there is a wall keeping people segregated and isolated. This particular project, "Carried By The Wind" managed to rise above the wall, literally, in sound. Sounds of music.

There is more and the link below here offers more information, including links to the video on YouTube and other interesting things.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=57761582416

I especially enjoyed reading about the Qattan Centre For The Child in Gaza City... until yesterday I didn't know of its existence. I am glad I know now. And I think more people in the Western worlds should learn about the positive things going on in Middle Eastern countries and/or the Gaza Strip.

It's not just Israeli's, Zionists, Hamas, Hezbollah, extremists and whatnot.

Anyway, my few eurocents here,

(time to get back to the CD Review editing area, i have 2 pending... should anyone else be interested to JOIN the editorial staff of AAJ.........)

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/contributor_center.php

cheers!
Gina

Thanks and I don't think I could read them all myself, ha.

I came on here looking for information on Frank Rosolino and then came to wish I hadn't learned all that had happened, as he was a special friend. The most most heartbreaking of events since Charlie Parker.

So many people were hurt by everything that happened. To know Frank was to love him, and I've known so many people who felt the same about him. I only wish his son didn't have to suffer so, and have to live questioning all of it for the rest of his life. I wish his only memories could be of the great guy and good friend most of us came to know. I spent an afternoon and evening with he and his brother at a big trombone jam session one summer afternoon, and Frank asked him to tell me all about their childhood and teenage years, it was a great time, a happy time. He treated me special and I could always count on him to make my day.

Thanks for the message and your post.

Saundra Hummer

January 10th, 2009, 05:59 PM

* * * 2009's Biggest, Brightest Full Moon RisesBy
Robert Roy Britt
Space.com
posted: 3 HOURS 59 MINUTES AGO

(Jan. 10) - If skies are clear Saturday, go out at sunset and look for the giant moon rising in the east. It will be the biggest and brightest one of 2009, sure to wow even seasoned observers.
Earth, the moon and the sun are all bound together by gravity, which keeps us going around the sun and keeps the moon going around us as it goes through phases. The moon makes a trip around Earth every 29.5 days.
Moons of 2009Paul Connors, AP14 photos The first full moon of 2009, occurring tonight, will be the largest and brightest of the year. Many of the full moon names we use today date back to Native Americans, who labeled them to track seasons. Click through the gallery to learn about the 13 full moons this year and their names.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)

But the orbit is not a perfect circle. One portion is about 31,000 miles closer to our planet than the farthest part, so the moon's apparent size in the sky changes. Saturday night the moon will be at perigee, the closest point to us on this orbit.

It will appear about 14 percent bigger in our sky and 30 percent brighter than some other full moons during 2009, according to NASA. A similar setup occurred in December, making that month's full moon the largest of 2008.

Tides will be higher, too. Earth's oceans are pulled by the gravity of the moon and the sun. So when the moon is closer, tides are pulled higher. Scientists call these perigean tides, because they occur when the moon is at or near perigee. (The farthest point on the lunar orbit is called apogee.)

This month's full moon is known as the Wolf Moon from Native American folklore. The full moon's of each month are named. January's is also known as the Old Moon and the Snow Moon.

Space.com StoriesSaturday Night Special: Biggest Full Moon of 2009
Strange Rock Formations on Mars Explained
Dead Exploded Star Resurrected in 3-D
Astronauts Primed for Space Station Power Boost
Full Moon Names for 2009

More Stories
A full moon rises right around sunset, no matter where you are. That's because of the celestial mechanics that produce a full moon: The moon and the sun are on opposite sides of the Earth, so that sunlight hits the full face of the moon and bounces back to our eyes.

At moonrise, the moon will appear even larger than it will later in the night when it's higher in the sky. This is an illusion that scientists can't fully explain. Some think it has to do with our perception of things on the horizon vs. stuff overhead.

Try this trick, though: Using a pencil eraser or similar object held at arm's length, gauge the size of the moon when it's near the horizon and again later when it's higher up and seems smaller. You'll see that when compared to a fixed object, the moon will be the same size in both cases.

If you have other plans for Saturday night, take heart: You can see all this on each night surrounding the full moon, too, because the moon will be nearly full, rising earlier Friday night and later Sunday night.

Interestingly, because of the mechanics of all this, the moon is never truly 100 percent full. For that to happen, all three objects have to be in a perfect line, and when that rare circumstance occurs, there is a total eclipse of the moon.

A departing fact: The moon is moving away as you read this, by about 1.6 inches a year. Eventually this drift will force the moon to take 47 days to circle our world.

Amazing Space Images
Go on-site to view photo's of the moon and other images
Go on-site for comments as well as the photo's, some are pretty clever; interesting and off the wall.
http://news.aol.com/article/2009s-biggest-brightest-full-moon-rises/300886?icid=200100397x1217048585x1201086995 * * * * * * *

Saundra Hummer

January 10th, 2009, 06:26 PM

$ $ $ $ $ $The Great Crash of 1929
(Paperback)
By
John Kenneth Galbraith
$ $ $
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
THOM HARTMANN'S INDEPENDENT THINKER REVIEW
OF THE MONTH FOR BUZZFLASH
January 10, 2009Bush Left Us a Depression, As Did Hoover. The Thom Hartmann 'Independent Thinker' Book of the Month, Exclusively on BuzzFlash.com. And this is a timely one and a classic: The Great Crash of 1929 (Paperback), By John Kenneth Galbraith
The Republican Great Depression of 1929-1939 has been an unending source of mystery, fascination, and disinformation for the past four generations. As you’re reading these words, there’s a huge push on by conservative think-tanks and wealthy political activists to reinvent the history, suggesting that Roosevelt prolonged the Depression or that New Deal programs were ineffective. At the same time, folks like David Sirota are valiantly pushing back with actual facts and statistics, showing that Roosevelt’s New Deal was startlingly effective, particularly when compared with the Republican policies of 1920-1929 that formed the bubble that crashed in 1929, and the Republican failures to deal with its consequences during the last three years of the Herbert Hoover administration (1929-1933).

To really understand what brought about the great crash, however, it’s most useful to read an historical narrative written by one of the world’s preeminent economists when that world-changing event was still fresh in his and his readers’ minds. “The Great Crash” is that book, first written by Galbraith in 1953-54 (and published in 1955) and updated for modern readers in 1997 (the author is now deceased).

Reading The Great Crash is an eerie experience; it’s as if somebody had taken the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush years – particularly the W. Bush years – and written a screenplay about them, just changing the names. The parallels between the Republican zeal for deregulation and “free” markets of the bubble 1920s and the bubble 1990s and 2000s are shocking, particularly given that Ben Bernanke’s PhD theses was on the Republican Great Depression and there is no shortage of so-called “experts” on the topic in the Bush administration and both political parties.

Still, in retrospect, there it is. And its damn near impossible to read this book without coming to the conclusion that when the current generation knowledgable of the Republican Great Depression of 2007-201? dies off, as the generation that remembered the RGD of 1929 has largely recently died off, history will again repeat itself. There will always be greedy men and women, and there will, in all probability, always be Republicans trying to elevate greed into a noble philosophical construct.

There was even, in late 1929, the era’s own Bernie Madoff – a fellow by the name of Clarence Hatry. All the players are there. An incompetent president, regulators willing to look the other way, libertarian ideologues who think they’ll change the world for the better (and get rich at the same time), Democrats and free-market skeptics yelling, a hype-driven press, insiders making out, average people getting wiped out. It’s all there.

And, perhaps most interesting, because this is history, we get to find out how it turned out, what helped and hurt, and extrapolate from that what we should be doing now.

The Great Crash is a quick Saturday afternoon read at a comfortable and well-written 194 pages. It’s difficult to put down once you start; it reads like a novel. And you’ll be infuriated, entertained, and – ultimately – enlightened and better prepared to deal with the further downturn that is certainly coming.

Thom Hartmann is a New York Times bestselling Project Censored Award winning author and host of a daily talk show on Air America Radio. You can learn more about Thom Hartmann at his website and find out what stations broadcast his program. You can also listen to Thom over the Internet.

THOM HARTMANN'S INDEPENDENT THINKER REVIEW OF THE MONTH FOR BUZZFLASH
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Saundra Hummer

January 10th, 2009, 06:35 PM

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Tragedy and Conflict Between Medicine and Scientology in the Death of Jett Travolta
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 01/09/2009 - 5:26pm. Reader Contribution
A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by A BuzzFlash Reader and M.D.
It is hard to avoid hearing about the controversy over the death of young Jett Travolta, the 16-year-old son of Hollywood megastars John Travolta and Kelly Preston. Young Jett reportedly died as a result of a seizure disorder, with Jett having been taken off antiseizure medication shortly before his death. Almost immediately, there have been allegations that the couple's adherence to Church of Scientology teachings contributed to the death of their child.

PHOTO:
Jett and John Travolta
(AP Photo/Rogers & Cowan)
Go on-site to gain access to this and numerous comments on this article. Some are interesting and there are accusations of scientologists having written some of them. Why wouldn't they?

So far, the media has seemed unsure how to cover this story, rightfully self-conscious, not wanting to exploit the tragic death of a child or attack his grieving parents unfairly. Sadly, "expert" guests brought forth by the media have often been editors of Hollywood tabloid shows and magazines. Despite extensive coverage, at this point the media does not seem to have asked essential questions and examined and included proper medical perspective on an essentially medical tragedy. From the perspective of my medical training, and from the information that has been released thus far -- Jett Travolta's death appears to have been not only very tragic but also very preventable.

Jett had been on a medication called Depakote. In recent interviews, the Church states that they are not against the use of Depakote for seizures. However, the Church does take a position against the use of Depakote for psychiatric mood disorders, which today is an even more common use of Depakote. The problem is, with Scientology preaching so vehemently, and using hostile rhetoric against the use of medications for psychiatric disorders, it is easy to see how an anti-medication culture might develop within Scientology. Church members, having heard "pills are not the answer" so often, might make a tragic mistake and stop a medication that they have heard so many times is harmful. The Church has taken a position against the use of any and all medications for psychiatric purposes.

With this in mind, it is easy to see how Church members might get exaggerated ideas of the harmfulness of any medication that is also used in psychiatry, such as Depakote. Statements from family indicate that the primary reason the medication was stopped was concerns that Depakote was harming Jet. And since psychiatry is a part of medicine, fear and mistrust of the medical community in general could develop. Another factor in Scientology is the extensive use of vitamin therapy and other alternatives treatments which might cause delay in seeking critically needed medical care.

In their public statement, the family's lawyers say his parents consulted with doctors before stopping his medication. However, they have yet to say that any physician actually agreed with this decision. Without actually saying it, family lawyers imply that Jett's physicians supported the decision to take him off antiseizure medication but have yet to name any of these physicians. For someone in Jett's condition, and with Jett not being in a hospital, I cannot imagine any physician recommending that he be taken off all antiseizure medication, as he was.

Shortly before his death, Jett was reportedly having grand mal seizures at a rate of one or more per week, which would place his health and safety at great risk. If this is so, the safest and most appropriate place for Jett would have been in a hospital, where Jett could be closely monitored while necessary changes were made to his antiseizure medication regime and until he was stabilized and having seizures much less frequently. Intravenous medication is often required in situations like this, which is another reason why a hospital would be the right setting for Jett. Simply stated, this is how I and all other physicians I know would attempt to treat Jett.

Another controversial aspect of Jett's death is whether or not Jett had autism -- and if he did, whether this was improperly treated as a result of the couple's adherence to Scientology. Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by severe impairment in a child's ability to communicate and interact socially. According to some media reports, Jett was mostly nonverbal -- although the Travolta family has not acknowledged this publically. If this is true, then it would be highly likely that Jett had autism. However, autism is a psychiatric diagnosis, and the Church of Scientology is on record stating that psychiatric disorders are "psychological" rather than "medical" and do not exist or need medical treatment. As of yet, the Church has refused to answer questions over whether autism is a genuine medical condition needing genuine medical treatment.

Underlying this story is the Church's position on psychiatry, and, indeed, every year Scientologists gather to protest the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Headlines were made several years ago when Scientologist and actor Tom Cruise attacked psychiatry on NBC's Today Show and criticized actress Brooke Shields for taking antidepressant medication. Videos have been leaked by former members to the internet which show the Church's leader David Miscavige speaking of plans to eradicate psychiatry entirely.

Scientology's animosity towards psychiatry is reported to come directly from the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard, the Church's founder and former science fiction writer of some note. Hubbard's hostility towards psychiatry could be rooted in lawsuits during the 1950s, when the medical and psychiatric establishment alleged that techniques used in Hubbard's Dianetics amounted to practicing medicine without a license. Recently Scientology opened a "museum" in Los Angeles with the not-so-subtle name "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death," in which exhibits claim that psychiatrists were responsible for the Holocaust. Considering the fact that that most psychiatrists in Germany at that time were Jewish and had to flee Germany or be murdered by the Nazis, this would seem to be a hard case to make, especially considering Hitler's own hatred of psychiatry.

Scientology has a reputation for aggressively and personally attacking its critics, which is probably why the major anti-Scientology internet group goes by the name of 'Anonymous.' I certainly have no affiliation with them, but after much thought, I have also decided to submit this article anonymously. As a resident physician training in psychiatry, I am obviously entering this fray. I don't relish the thought of being someone else's enemy or target, but I suppose I am destined to be hated by Scientologists, perhaps referred to as a 'Psych', 'SP', or 'suppressive person.' But psychiatry is indeed medicine -- whether or not Scientologists care to admit it or understand it. I know I love trying to make life better for mental health patients, and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

However, in this case what is truly important is the terrible loss of an innocent child and the suffering of his grieving family. By all credible accounts, the Travolta family loved Jett tremendously and would never have done anything to knowingly harm him. But in examining Jett's story from a medical perspective, it certainly appears that for some reason Jett did not receive the medical care he needed and the results were indeed tragic. Sadly, Jett Travolta may have been the innocent victim of a decades old conflict between the ideas of Scientology and medicine. In trying to make sense out of senseless tragedy, perhaps along with healing will come the wisdom to prevent another child from sharing a similar fate.

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1880 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Saundra Hummer

January 10th, 2009, 06:54 PM

XXX
George W. Bush, War Criminal? The Bush Administration's Liability for 269 War Crimes.
(Hardcover) By
Professor Michael Haas
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS “Michael Haas's book on the Bush administration's war crimes is a carefully researched, fact-based assessment of many of the crimes committed by George Bush and his people, both domestically and internationally. America will not find its way again in the world until the Bush administration has been held accountable for them. Haas's identification of these crimes is an important step in advancing that goal.”
–Vincent Bugliosi, author, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (2008)
“This important and timely book, making use of evidence that is wholly within the public domain, establishes beyond any doubt that George W. Bush should and must be charged with the commission of war crimes--and not just one war crime--but 269 war crimes. It is a handbook of Bush war crimes that must be used by all of us: activists, politicians and anyone who cares about a better world. The Bush administration has taken us, as Cheney said it would, "to the dark side." Haas's book gives us the hope at least that the criminals in the Bush administration and Bush himself can be brought to justice.”
–Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights
From the Publisher:This compilation is the first to cite a comprehensive list of specific war crimes in four categories-illegality of the decision to go to war, misconduct during war, mistreatment of prisoners of war, and misgovernment in the American occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Haas accuses President Bush of conduct bordering on treason because he reenacted several complaints stated in the Declaration of Independence against England, ignored the Constitution and federal laws, trampled on the American tradition of developing international law to bring order to world politics, and in effect made a Faustian pact with Osama Bin Laden that the intelligence community blames for an increase in world terrorism. Osama Bin Laden remains alive, he reports, because Bush preferred to go after oil-rich Iraq rather than tracking down Al Qaeda leaders, whose uncaptured presence was useful to him in justifying a "war on terror" pursued on a military rather than a criminal basis without restraint from constitutional checks and balances.

The worst war crime cited is the murder of at least 45 prisoners, some but not all by torture. Other heinous crimes include the brutal treatment of thousands of children, some 64 of whom have been detained at Guantánamo. Sources document the use of illegal weapons in the war from cluster bombs to daisy cutters, napalm, white phosphorus, and depleted uranium weapons, some of which have injured and killed American soldiers as well as thousands of innocent civilians. Children playing in areas of Iraq where depleted uranium weapons have been used, but not reported on request from the World Health Organization, have developed leukemia and other serious diseases.

"Bush's violations of the Constitution as well as domestic and international law have besmirched the reputation of the United States," Haas writes. "In so doing, they have accomplished a goal of which the Al Qaeda terrorists only dreamed-to transform the United States into a rogue nation feared by the rest of the world and loved by almost none."

BUZZFLASH REVIEWShttp://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/1430XXXXXX

Saundra Hummer

January 10th, 2009, 11:38 PM

.
~~~~~~~
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."

Groucho Marx
~~~
"Quote me as saying I was misquoted."

Groucho Marx
~~~
"Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain constantly alert."

Bruce Schneier
~~~
"Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men, the other 999 follow women."

Groucho Marx
~~~
"We americans, we're a simple people... but piss us off, and we'll bomb your cities."

Robin Williams
in
"Good Morning Vietnam"
~~~
"The meek shall inherit the earth---they are too weak to refuse."

(anon)
~~~
"Authority is a device which enables one to remain constantly in error without suffering the adverse effects of recriminiations."

Patrick Mackeown
~~~
"I wish I had an answer to that, because I'm tired of answering that question."

Yogi Bara ~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

January 11th, 2009, 10:54 AM

:: :: :: :: ::
A NEWSLETTER
from
THE PEN

Tell The Senate To Reject Nominee
Admiral Blair Who Greenlighted Genocide
True progressives have found various Obama appointments so far to leave much to be desired . . . even to the point of being disturbing. But the nomination of Admiral Dennis Blair for Director of National Intelligence cannot be permitted to pass under any circumstances.

As reported by Democracy Now, when genocidal monsters in the Indonesian military were committing massacres in East Timor, Admiral Blair DEFIED his orders to get them to stop, and instead gave them encouragement to continue. He then lied to Congress about it all. No such loose cannon with such blood on his hands can be allowed in the new administration. The links to both these video stories can be found on the Reject Blair Action Page below:

Reject Blair Action Page:
http://www.usalone.com/reject_blair.php
Director of National Intelligence requires Senate confirmation, so please also call your Senators directly tollfree at 800-828-0498, 800-473-6711, especially if you have new Senators coming in, ask for them by name and leave your message opposing this appointment.

Torture Question You Voted For Is Now Breaking National News Story

All of our participants who voted for the special prosecutor for torture question had a real impact this week. The fact that we the people voted this question number one on the Obama "change" site made the New York Times, got a featured segment on Keith Olbermann and there is more to come.

As our focus shifts now to prosecuting the current criminal residents of the White House for what they have done, we are happy to report we just got in the first huge delivery of the new "Convict Dick & W" caps. We'll be working all weekend to get the ones you have already requested ready for shipment, so there is still time to get in on the first mailing if you request yours now.

Convict Dick & W Caps: http://www.usalone.com/convict_cap.php
And the extra special news is that just before we went into production we asked the embroidery digitizer to hang a little cowboy hat on the "W" in the "Convict Dick & W". Yes, a little cowboy hat for a very small and cowardly man, the cowboy from Connecticut, our first presidential convicted felon to be, George W. Bush. It's perfect, in red, white and blue.

We are not setting a price for these. You can have one for a contribution of any amount. We just want to put as many out there as possible. And we will have much more news for you soon about planned actions to pressure prosecutors at all levels to step up to the plate and do their duty.

AIDS Bike Ride Support Page
We heard from one of our participants already about the upcoming AIDS/Lifecycle 8 bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, starting May 31, 2009, to raise awareness for those living with HIV/AIDS. We would like to set up a support page for this worthy event on our site. So please if there are any other of our participants interested who are involved in this please email back so we can include you.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at http://www.usalone.com/in.htm
usalone290b:239567

Copyright 2008, Patent pending
All rights reserved
:: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

January 11th, 2009, 04:46 PM

<><><><><> Bush Makes Plans for a Cushy Retirement

George W. Bush will devote much of his post-White House time to developing his presidential library — while enjoying plenty of perks for the rest of his life.

On Jan. 20, Bush and his wife Laura will move into their new $2 million, 8,500-square-foot home in Dallas, close to the site of his planned presidential library at Southern Methodist University.

“We’re working on a conceptual design for the building,” Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation, told McClatchy newspapers.

He said Bush will be involved in planning the structure, which is expected to cost $300 million and will include a library and policy institute.

Construction will be paid for with private funds, and Bush will likely take part in fundraising efforts.

But the foundation will not reveal the names of past or future donors, the Dallas Morning News reports.

"It's our decision not to disclose who the donors are," Langdale said, citing the preference of some donors to remain anonymous.

Once the library is completed in 2013, the National Archives and Records Administration will assume operation of the facility at taxpayers’ expense.

Bush will maintain an office close to the site, in space acquired by the General Services Administration, which will also pay for a staff to assist him for the remainder of his life.

Bush’s pension will be about $200,000 a year, with federal cost-of-living adjustments in the future.

He will also receive transition expenses, travel expenses for any official activities attended by a former president, medical coverage, Secret Service protection for 10 years — and as a former commander in chief, a state funeral upon his death, with full military honors.
<><><>

Saundra Hummer

January 12th, 2009, 05:44 PM

<><><><><>Bush Defends Record in 'Exit Interview'

By
JENNIFER LOVEN
AP
posted: 1 HOUR 52 MINUTES AGO

WASHINGTON (Jan. 12) - In a nostalgic final news conference, President George W. Bush defended his record vigorously and at times sentimentally Monday — and admitted mistakes, too, including his optimistic Iraq speech before a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner in 2003.

The president also plans to deliver a televised farewell address to the nation on Thursday night.

Ron Edmonds
AP

PHOTO:Go on-site to gain access to the numerous photo's, links and survey within this article as well as the comments.
President George W. Bush gestures at a White House news conference on Monday. (LINK & SURVEY)

Political Machine: Bush Discusses 'Mission Accomplished' Mistake (LINK)
<><><>
After starting what he called "the ultimate exit interview" Monday with a lengthy and personalized thank-you to the reporters in the room who have covered him over the eight years of his presidency, Bush showed anger at times when presented with some of the main criticisms of his time in office.

He particularly became indignant when asked about America's bruised image overseas.

"I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light," he said.

Bush said he realizes that some issues such as the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have created controversy at home and around the world. But he defended his actions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including approving tough interrogation methods for suspected terrorists and information-gathering efforts at home in the name of protecting the country.

With the Iraq war in its sixth year, he most aggressively defended his decisions on that issue, which will define his presidency like no other. There have been over 4,000 U.S. deaths since the invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Key Moments in Bush's Presidency
Mark Wilson, Getty Images 8 photos
First Inauguration:
With his daughter Jenna and his wife, Laura, by his side, Republican George W. Bush is sworn in as the nation's 43rd president on Jan. 20, 2001. Bush defeated Vice President Al Gore, his Democratic rival, after the Supreme Court put an end to a long and contentious recount battle in Florida.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)

He said that "not finding weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment." The accusation that Saddam had and was pursuing weapons of mass destruction was Bush's main initial justification for going to war.

Bush admitted another miscalculation: Eager to report quick progress after U.S. troops ousted Saddam's government, he claimed less than two months after the war started that "in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," a claim made under a "Mission Accomplished" banner that turned out to be wildly optimistic. "Clearly, putting 'Mission Accomplished' on an aircraft carrier was a mistake," he said Monday.
He also defended his decision in 2007 to send an additional 30,000 American troops to Iraq to knock down violence levels and stabilize life there.
"The question is, in the long run, will this democracy survive, and that's going to be a question for future presidents," he said.

On another issue destined to figure prominently in his legacy, Bush said he disagrees with those who say the federal response to Hurricane Katrina was slow.

Bush Holds Final News ConferenceAt his final news conference Monday, President George W. Bush repeated his long-standing call for creation of a Palestinian state, discussed democracy in Iraq and commented on the struggling economy. (Jan. 12)

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"Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there were 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. ... Could things been done better? Absolutely. But when I hear people say the federal response was slow, what are they going to say to those chopper drivers or the 30,000 who got pulled off the roof?" he said.

He called President-elect Barack Obama "a smart, engaging person" and said he wishes his successor all the best. He hinted at the enormous responsibility Obama is about to assume, describing what it might feel like on Jan. 20 when, after taking the oath of office, he enters the Oval Office for the first time as president.

"There'll be a moment when the responsibility of the president lands squarely on his shoulders," Bush said.

He gave his view of the most urgent priority facing the incoming president: an attack on the United States. He chose that risk over the dire economic problems now facing the nation.

"I wish that I could report that's not the case, but there's still an enemy out there that would like to inflict damage on America — on Americans."
He said he would ask Congress to release the remaining $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money if Obama so desires. But, he said, Obama hasn't made that request of him yet.

If Bush should make the request of Congress, it would take the burden off Obama's shoulders involving a program that is extraordinarily unpopular with many lawmakers and much of the public.

Aging in Office

Getty Images (2)12 photos

The weight of the world ages a man. Presidents may enter the office bright-eyed, but they tend to leave with a few more wrinkles and a lot more gray hairs. Compare a younger President George W. Bush, left, before the economic crisis, before Iraq and before Sept. 11, 2001, to Bush in early November. Click through the gallery to compare presidential before and after photos.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)
But, said Bush, "He hasn't asked me to make the request yet and I don't intend to make the request unless he asks me."

The last time the president had taken questions from reporters in a public setting was Dec. 14 in Baghdad, a session that hurtled to the top of the news when Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi threw his shoes at Bush during a question-and-answer session with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Bush's last full-blown, formal news conference was July 15. He refused to hold another during the final months of last year's presidential campaign, concerned that the questions would be mostly related to political events and wanting to stay out of GOP nominee John McCain's spotlight. But even though aides had suggested that would change after the election, Bush still declined to participate in a wide-ranging question-and-answer session until now, just eight days before leaving office.

He has been granting a flurry of legacy-focused interviews as he seeks to shape the view of his presidency on his way out the door.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press
http://news.aol.com/article/bush-defends-record-in-exit-interview/301964?icid=200100397x1216541115x1201093475 It's being said on the nightly news that there weren't 30,000 rescued from roof tops and true to GW Bush's colors; he remains a smart ass to the end, telling the reporters What was he supposed to do, land Air Force One? Well he came in on Helicopter One, the government flying in mega Hollywood lights with generators to run them, at the cost of millions, we've been told just so he could have his photo op in front of New Orleans historic and beautiful church; shirt sleeves rolled up so as to appear as though he had been hard at work. Give us a break.

The people stranded in that area were so relieved to have some light, but it their's was a short lived joy, due to the fact that as soon as GW Bush lifted off and out of the misery that was the whole of the area, darkness was all about them. How about flying in relief supplies? He had more need to be seen and heard than those who were dying? Those who were dehydrated and dying of starvation, from lack of medical care and medicines. The roof rescues? Those flights were miniscule, and private citizens were told to not do rescues themselves, they weren't allowed in the water with their own boats, however, those orders were oftentimes ignored, or the death toll would have been even worse. The rescue and huminitarian flights as sparce as they were, were halted whenever Cheney or Bush were in the air or on the ground, too risky for huminitarian flights to be in their air, too risky for Cheney and Bush's lilly whites.

These men have no shame, they live their lives like no one ever taught them right from wrong, and they certainly aren't up to recognizing reality when it comes to how they've conducted themselves, not even when it smacks them in the face.

Man-O-Man. How did we allow these neer do wells such latitude? Why in the world didn't we give them the boot? There were more than enough opportunities. There is such a thing as people power, but too many of us just sat back and let them do nothing, and, in many cases, anything that crossed their minds, as there were their dirty deeds, deeds and actions which we will be paying for till the end of our days it seem. Such a colossal mess they've dumped on us. SRH <><><><><><><><>

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 12:49 AM

I hear that Dick Cheney has told those around him; aiming his comments at President Elect Barack Obama, him saying... Barack should step back, and take a deep breath.... this concerning what he is about to have to wade into, and I think Dick Cheney is dead on with this comment. President elect Barack Obama is about to wade into the deep doodoo Cheney and Bush will have left behind. Spooky thing is, they aren't through yet. And worse, we will be living with their convoluted legacy for decades it seems.

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 01:27 AM

FOX TV has canceled PRISON BREAK.

One of my favorite shows. Escapism in the extreme, but, I really do like this show, as far fetched as it might be.

Some of the acting is top drawer, the camera work is terrific and I think they would be better off dumping other programing before they make the mistake of doing this. I don't know anyone who doesn't like Prison Break, but then too, they canceled Most Wanted as well, even though it has a huge audience and has resulted in numerous dangerous people being apprehended. Public outrage and demand brought that show back, and we're glad about this, as it has performed a beneficial public service. Prison Break? It's just exciting, emotional, and often times fun.

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 11:49 AM

<><><><><><><>OpEdNews
Conyers Explains Why He Hasn't Impeached

By
David Swanson
January 14, 2009

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has released a lengthy new report that updates his previous report originally released in 2005 documenting Bush and Cheney's crimes and impeachable offenses. The new report recommends that the Attorney General appoint a Special Counsel, even while making other recommendations that could delay or prevent prosecutions (including creating a bipartisan commission to spend a year and a half looking at the crimes and potentially immunizing criminals). The report includes 47 recommendations, some better than others, and has a tendency to ask the next president to ignore bad laws while offering that Congress might pass better laws "if necessary." The report takes up some new topics not addressed in the old one, but largely covers familiar ground, with one glaring exception: it virtually ignores what had previously been a major focus, the war. The lies that launched the war receive a few pages toward the end.

Over the past three years, a great many people have lobbied Conyers to impeach Bush and Cheney. I've worked with him and his staff, been arrested protesting in his office, and everything in between. Conyers includes in his new report a foreword that amounts to a seven-page letter to disappointed impeachment advocates. After listing some of the most serious abuses of power imaginable, Conyers writes:

Many think these acts rise to the level of impeachable conduct. I agree. I have never wavered in my belief that this President and Vice-President are among the most impeachable officials in our Nation’s history, and the more we learn the truer that becomes.

This is new for Conyers to be saying this publicly in a formal report. Just as his new report maintains a pretended uncertainty as to whether crimes have been committed, his past reports and statements have maintained a pretended uncertainty as to whether impeachable offenses had been committed. Given that most of the offenses discussed are statutory crimes and that Conyers now admits to the impeachability of the guilty parties, the new pretense is shaky. But if, years from now, Conyers says that he has never wavered from his belief that Bush and Cheney were criminals, it will be appropriate to point out the novelty. Conyers continues:

Some ardent advocates of impeachment have labeled me a traitor – or worse – for declining to begin a formal impeachment inquiry in the House Judiciary Committee. While I reject that particular criticism, ...

I recall suggesting that Conyers might have "sold-out", after which most of his staff refused to speak to me. I'm sure someone did call him a traitor, and I can't imagine what's worse than that. Perhaps someone said that he was complicit in the death of 1.3 million Iraqis. That's pretty bad. But that charge would not be baseless. We had a situation in which a majority of Americans wanted impeachment, a majority of Conyers' constituents (including his wife) wanted impeachment, 100 cities passed resolutions demanding impeachment, impeachment resolutions were introduced and referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the chairman of that committee believed the offenses were "among the most impeachable in our nation's history," the charges included the launching of the war on Iraq, and the chairman refused to act. It's possible that his actions would have failed in the House or the Senate. It's possible that his actions, whether failing or succeeding, would have had some other negative consequence. But the fact was that he refused to try, and as many of us read the Constitution that was a failure of duty.

The frustration citizens felt with Chairman Conyers was amplified by the fact that he had a book in the bookstores (the print edition of his first report) that said on the top of the back cover "The Foundation for Possible Articles of Impeachment," and a little further down had this quote "Before reading the report, I wouldn't have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don't know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man." The foreword to the book, by Liz Holtzman, said "Impeaching President Bush for lying to get us into a war will not only protect us from him, but also send an unmistakable message to future presidents: never again." And yet, when we asked Conyers' staff about impeachment, they couldn't be bothered. They were too busy writing the second book (the new report), at taxpayer expense.

And it wasn't just the book. In 2005 Conyers introduced a bill to create a preliminary investigation into impeachment. Throughout the past three years, Conyers has spoken at rallies and events, leading crowds to believe he favored impeachment just as clearly as Bush led crowds to believe Saddam Hussein destroyed the World Trade Center. As the 110th Congress began in January 2007, Conyers addressed a huge crowd on the national mall and shouted "We can fire him!" about Bush, leading to a chant of "Impeach Bush!" Then Conyers told a reporter that what he'd meant was that if we waited until 2009, Bush would complete his term. This was not an isolated incident, but an example of what came to be a pattern in public events in Detroit and elsewhere at which Conyers suggested he was for impeachment and then assured reporters he was not. Perhaps that behavior doesn't justify shouts of "Traitor!" but it does explain them.

Conyers continues:
... I want to make clear how much I respect those who have given so much time and energy to the cause of fighting for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. While we may not agree on the best path forward, I know they are acting on the basis of our shared love of this country. These citizens are not fringe radicals, and they are obviously not motivated simply by personal feelings about President Bush, however strong those feelings may be at times. They are individuals who care deeply about our Constitution and our Nation, and who have stood up to fight for the democracy they love, often at great personal cost. Our country was founded, and our democracy has long been nurtured, by people willing to take such risks, and we should honor their vigilance and courage. However, as I have said, while President Bush and Vice President Cheney have earned the dishonorable eligibility to be impeached, I do not believe that would have been the appropriate step at this time in our history, and I would like again to briefly explain why that is the case.

Conyers has explained this before, many times. He's told us that Fox News would attack him if he moved on impeachment, especially if he failed. He's told us he was guaranteed to fail. He's told us it would be bad for the presidential election. But he hasn't put it into a book before, so this is worth considering:

Contrary to assertions by some advocates, the predecessor to this Report – the Judiciary Committee then-Minority staff's "Constitution in Crisis" – did not call for impeachment. Rather, it concluded that there was substantial evidence of impeachable misconduct and that there should be a full investigation by a select Committee armed with subpoena power.

That's true of the report, but not -- as I've mentioned -- of the book's cover and foreword. While Nancy Pelosi swore she would never impeach in May 2006 in response to a statement from the Republican National Committee, Conyers continued to hedge and fudge and prevaricate enough that a great many people worked hard to elect Democrats they disliked to Congress, in hopes that Conyers would become chair of the Judiciary Committee and impeach. Polls showed Americans believing that a Democratic majority would impeach. The RNC trumpeted this myth. And voters put in 30 new Democrats and not a single new Republican.

Conyers goes on:
Prior to the 2006 elections, when I saw that my views on impeachment were being misstated by friends and foes alike, I set the record straight in an essay published in The Washington Post titled "No Rush to Impeachment:" The administration's stonewalling, and the lack of oversight by Congress, have left us to guess whether we are dealing with isolated wrongdoing, or mistakes, or something worse. In my view, the American people deserve answers, not guesses. I have proposed that we obtain these answers in a responsible and bipartisan manner. It was House Republicans who took power in 1995 with immediate plans to undermine President Bill Clinton by any means necessary, and they did so in the most autocratic, partisan and destructive ways imaginable. If there is any lesson from those "revolutionaries," it is that partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate. So, rather than seeking impeachment, I have chosen to propose comprehensive oversight of these alleged abuses. The oversight I have suggested would be performed by a select committee made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chosen by the House speaker and the minority leader. The committee's job would be to obtain answers – finally. At the end of the process, if – and only if – the select committee, acting on a bipartisan basis, finds evidence of potentially impeachable offenses, it would forward that information to the Judiciary Committee. This threshold of bipartisanship is appropriate, I believe, when dealing with an issue of this magnitude.

Conyers was very clear. As I mentioned above, he did NOT communicate his "belief that this President and Vice-President are among the most impeachable officials in our Nation's history." He pretended not to know it. And yet, he had produced a report that laid out indisputable evidence of quintessentially impeachable offenses, and his staff was saying they wanted to get there one step at a time. We thought the "preliminary investigation" nonsense was a step on the way to impeachment, a step taken by a ranking member lacking the power of a chairmanship.

Conyers continues:
Nonetheless, I have been accused of "violating my oath of office" by "playing politics" with impeachment, and I have been criticized for saying that I have the Constitution in one hand and a calculator in the other. I would suggest that this argument ignores the text and history of the Constitution. There is nothing mandatory about using the power to impeach when wrongful conduct is shown, and the decision whether or not to impeach was always intended to be subject to the politics at the time. We live in a democracy, after all.

Conyers knows that we do not live in even an ideal democratic republic, but one corrupted by money, parties, and a highly damaging communications system. In a democracy, we would have simply voted for impeachment and had it, leaving out the middle man. This is not the place to talk about democracy.

Thus, in Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton described impeachable offenses as "those... which proceed from the misconduct of public men... which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL..." (Caps in original.) To address these "political" offenses, the Constitutional Convention rejected using either a judicial tribunal (that was the approach of the "Virginia Plan") or a hybrid committee of judicial and political officers (as proposed by Gouverneur Morris and Charles Pinckney), and instead vested the authority in the legislature. As the records of the Convention detail, the Founders made this choice fully aware of the political considerations that would factor into impeachment decisions. The simple fact is, despite the efforts of impeachment advocates, the support and votes have not been there, and could not reasonably be expected to materialize. It takes 218 votes in the House and 67 votes in the Senate to impeach and remove a president from office. The resolution I offered three years ago to simply investigate whether an impeachment inquiry was warranted garnered only 38 cosponsors in the House, and the Democratic Leader of the Senate labeled it "ridiculous." Impeachment resolutions against Vice President Cheney and President Bush offered by my friend and colleague Dennis Kucinich only garnered 27 and 11 House cosponsors, respectively.

But this passes the buck. Of course, other members were to blame. Of course, the party leadership was especially to blame. But a resolution to begin impeaching Alberto Gonzales garnered much more support than these other proposals, enough to force his resignation. Why? Because enough Congress members with enough influence over their colleagues took a stand and set an example and whipped for it. Conyers has tremendous influence with many of his colleagues, many of whom did not sign on for impeachment precisely because he was not on board. Several members of his committee, who would not sign onto impeachment articles because they thought an investigation should come first, publicly lobbied Conyers to start an investigation, and he declined. Had he shown leadership, Congress would have moved in the right direction, and the public would have rallied, which might have been enough to bring the party "leadership" around, which would have meant success.

Conyers has another justification:
Impeachment, if done right, also takes time. When I became Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in January of 2007, after twelve years of Republican rule, we had to start much of our oversight from scratch, and against an Administration more dedicated to secrecy and obfuscation than any in our history. Unlike the Nixon impeachment, we did not have the benefit of the bipartisan Ervin Committee or a fearless special prosecutor such as Archibald Cox or Leon Jaworski to help lay the groundwork needed to remove a president or vice president from office. During the failed impeachment of President Bill Clinton, many of us derided House Republicans for, in the words of Senator Bob Kerrey, “sloppily” conducting the inquiry. Without calling a single fact witness, the Republicans essentially rubber-stamped the work of Independent Counsel Ken Starr and forwarded his allegations on to defeat in the Senate. Many advocates would have had me do the same to this President based on newspaper and magazine articles. But that course would have cheapened the impeachment process itself – and would not have led to success.

What was Nixon (nearly) impeached for? Anything we know Bush did? Shall we try to recall? Three things. First, he "prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice." Check. Second, he "repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies." Check. Third, he "failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives." Check. In other words, Nixon was not impeached because he cooperated with lengthy investigations, but because he did not. I agree with Conyers that Bush was even less cooperative, by far. But I disagree that that is a reason not to impeach. I think that is a reason to impeach.

And why must impeachment, then, take years to do? It never has before. It's messy comparing one impeachment to another, as they are complicated and varying processes. But a few things are clear: most impeachment efforts achieve important results quickly, without actually achieving impeachment (think Elliot Spitzer or Alberto Gonzales); it is not uncommon for impeachment efforts to begin late in an administration (think Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman); while preliminary investigations of the sort that have long since been done on Bush and Cheney can be dragged out for months, impeachments tend not to last long; and while Senate trials can be delayed and dragged out for many months, impeachments in the House tend to be short-lived events.

An impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney for an indisputable offense (refusing subpoenas, refusing to enforce contempt citations, rewriting laws with signing statements, openly violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, openly authorizing torture, etc.) could take literally one day. Such a thing would not be unprecedented. President Andrew Johnson was impeached three days after the offense for which he was impeached. Senator William Blount was impeached four days after the offense for which he was impeached.

There is no reason impeachment hearings on Cheney or Bush should be limited to the simplest crimes or rushed through at top speed. Public education might benefit from a slower process. My point is only that it is possible to impeach rapidly. A senate trial can also serve as an educational forum. Below are some of the dates I've been able to find on how long past impeachments have taken. A better researcher might add to this collection. In several cases, I have dates for the duration of the Senate trial, but not for the House impeachment, the duration of which may in fact have been negligible (think Rod Blagojevich).

A Senate trial can also be completed quickly, and there is no requirement or precedent for including every obvious impeachable offense. (In fact, there is no precedent for elected officials being guilty of so many obvious impeachable offenses as Bush and Cheney or for the public being so aware of impeachable offenses prior to an impeachment.) The Senate expelled Blount the day after he was impeached. Judge Halsted Ritter's Senate trial took 11 days. Judge John Pickering's trial took nine days. Judge James Peck's trial took three days. Judge West Humphreys' trial took one day.

Two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.
Johnson was impeached three days after committing the offense for which he was impeached, and prior to drafting articles of impeachment. Within a week, a committee drew up charges, and 11 days after the offense, the House delivered the charges to the Senate. The trial process began the next day, and in under three months it was over.

The House began impeachment procedures for Bill Clinton on October 8, 1998, and impeached him on December 19th. The Senate trial lasted from January 14, 1999, to February 12, 1999.

Of the presidential impeachment movements that did not reach impeachment, the most well-known is that against Richard Nixon. The House began impeachment on May 9, 1974, and passed the first of three articles of impeachment on July 27, 1974. Nixon resigned on August 8th. Of course there were lots of preliminary investigations, but those have long since already been done for Bush and Cheney.

Most impeachments have not been against presidents, but rather judges, cabinet officers, senators. These impeachments seem to take about as long as presidential impeachment do, and offer no support to the myth of long impeachments. In addition, much other business has been accomplished at the same time as these impeachments.

On July 3, 1797, evidence of an offense by Senator William Blount became known. Four days later, the House impeached him and the next day the Senate expelled him.

Evidence of an offense by Judge John Pickering became known on February 4, 1803, and the House voted to impeach him on March 2, 1803. The Senate didn't try him for another year, but spent 9 days on it when it did so.

Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase was impeached in late 1804 (I don't know how long the impeachment took) and 30 days later he was tried in the Senate, which completed the trial on March 1, 1805.

Judge James Peck was impeached on April 24, 1830, a month after the Judiciary Committee recommended it. The Senate took up the trial the following January and spent three days on it.

Judge West H. Humphreys was impeached on May 19, 1862. The Senate tried and convicted him in one day on June 26, 1862.

Secretary of War William W. Belknap was impeached on March 2, 1876, and the Senate trial was completed on August 1, 1876.

Judge Charles Swayne was impeached on December 14, 1904, and his trial was over on February 27, 1905.

Judge Robert W. Archbald was impeached on July 13, 1912, and the Senate trial was over on January 13, 1913.

Judge Harold Louderback resigned before his impeachment went to trial.

Judge Halsted L. Ritter was impeached on March 2, 1936, and the 11-day Senate trial ended on April 17th of the same year.

Judge Harry E. Claiborne was impeached on July 22, 1986, and the trial ended on October 9, 1986.

Then Judge and now Congressman Alcee L. Hastings, was impeached on August 3, 1988, and the Senate trial was over on October 20, 1988.

Judge Walter L. Nixon was impeached on May 10, 1989, and the Senate trial was completed on November 3, 1989.

Conyers goes on:
The final plea was: "Why not try? What do you have to lose?" Impeachments, however, both successful and unsuccessful, have precedential consequences – they set standards for future presidential behavior. The House Judiciary Committee's rejection of an article of impeachment against President Nixon for failing to file tax returns, for example, was used as precedent in acquitting President Clinton for impeachment based on personal misdeeds.

Maybe there's a better example to make Conyers' point, because I agree with both of those outcomes. I think a good precedent was set, and that perhaps it was not so much a modern precedent as the original and obvious basis for impeachment. But where Conyers really loses me is in the assumption that failures to impeach do NOT have consequences. Conyers is looking at the small picture. He sees consequences for future impeachments in how impeachments are handled. I see consequences for future wars and abuses of power in whether impeachments are handled.

Conyers continues:
While some of the difficulty in garnering support for impeachment results from fatigue over the recent and unjustified impeachment of President Clinton, and concern about routinizing what should be an extraordinary constitutional event – whatever the reason, an impeachment vote in the House was certain to fail.

That's a horrible reason and an unjustified prediction. An abuse of the impeachment power is simply no justification for required use of the same power. The founders Conyers cited above did not expect impeachment to be extraordinary, and it should not be any more extraordinary than are impeachable offenses. Predicting failure in this case was not crazy, but by no means justified. Success was entirely possible (and still is, before or after Bush and Cheney leave office). Moreover, this refusal to promote something likely to fail is coming from a man who every Congress, including the one that has just begun, introduces a bill to study reparations for slavery. In fact, I think it is safe to say that most of the bills Conyers introduces or signs onto and actively promotes are deemed guaranteed failures by the Washington establishment. And yet we need reparations for slavery. We need single-payer health care. Conyers is doing his job by promoting such things, and indeed they may succeed.

Conyers adds this:
What, then, would be the precedent set by a House vote against the impeachment of President Bush or Vice President Cheney for deceiving our nation into war, allowing torture, engaging in warrantless domestic surveillance, and retaliating against those who attempted to reveal the truth about these acts? In my view, a failed impeachment – by an almost certainly lopsided vote – would have grossly lowered the bar for presidential behavior and caused great damage to our Constitution. More immediately, a failure to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney would have been trumpeted by their allies as a vindication for them and for their overreaching policies. To all of us who treasure our constitutional form of government and our standing in the world, and mourn the loss of life in a war built on deception, I know the failure to impeach is a deeply unsatisfying outcome. As one who has participated in more impeachments than any other Member of Congress, I came to the realization that this is the reality of this moment in history. Faced with that reality, I had a choice: do nothing; or redouble my efforts to peel away the secrecy of this Administration, expose its wrongdoing, and protect the liberties and freedoms of the American people. I chose the latter course.

This is based on the false claim that failure was guaranteed. We had polls showing majority support with nothing happening in Congress or on the news. We had one pollster finding majority support and another refusing to poll on it because it wasn't in the news. Imagine where the support would have gone with Conyers' leadership! But suppose for the sake of argument that failure was guaranteed. Would an attempted impeachment not have sent more of a warning to future presidents than doing nothing at all? Didn't the senate acquit Clinton and didn't we still see Al Gore try to run for president pretending he had never met his boss? Again, Conyers is taking a narrow view. He would have had to be the man who led a failed impeachment. Never mind that the world would have honored his attempt. His colleagues would have seen a failure. And he would have been at odds with his party and perhaps been stripped of his chairmanship. These probably look like big significant things to Conyers. To the rest of us, a failed impeachment in 2007 or 2008 would have provided us with an ideal list of whom to reelect and whom to toss out on their ears in order to make impeachment happen in 2009.

Conyers goes on in his Foreword to enumerate his many reports and announcements, investigations, hearings, lawsuits, etc. Conyers opened a hearing on impeachment (but not really on impeachment) this past July by bragging about all the hearings he'd held. To him, these hearings and reports are, to some degree, ends in themselves. Actual substantive steps that impact people's lives can get lost in the shuffle. One such step would be impeachment, which could happen right now if Conyers wanted it to. Another step would be Conyers' clear and active support for a special prosecutor.

While prosecution of Bush and Cheney would be hard-pressed to fail, and politicians who supported it would be hard-pressed not to rise in popularity, Cheney has given us a preview of his legal defense: "We were never impeached."

Authors Website: http://davidswanson.org

Authors Bio: David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press and of the introduction to "The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush" published by Feral House and available at Amazon.com. Swanson holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ConvictBushCheney.org and Washington Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace, a member of the legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice, and convener of the accountability and prosecution working group of United for Peace and Justice. Original Content at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Conyers-Explains-Why-He-Ha-by-David-Swanson-090114-862.html <><><>

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 12:00 PM

<><><><><> Whitehouse: If Obama doesn’t investigate Bush’s crimes, I will.»
President-elect Obama this week said his team was in the middle of “evaluating” Bush administration policies to see whether a criminal investigation would be worthwhile. NPR reports that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says that he understands Obama’s reluctance to pursue investigations but that he may take matters into his own hands:

“I think that there’s a lot that remains to look at, and I appreciate that President Obama doesn’t want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this, but I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility,” Whitehouse said.

In a 487-page report out today recapping Bush’s “imperial presidency,” House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) recommends that “the incoming Administration finally begin an independent criminal review of activities of the outgoing Administration.”

Go on-site to gain access to the links within this article and, to see the numerous thoughts by viewers. Just click on the following link:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/13/whitehouse-investigate-bush/ <><><>

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 12:16 PM

^^^^^^^From the Los Angeles Times
Bush appointee saw Justice lawyers as 'commies,' 'crazy libs,' report says
Bradley Schlozman, who supervised civil rights and voting rights lawyers, broke the law by considering political affiliations in deciding who can serve, an inspector general's report says.
By
David G. SavageJanuary 14, 2009Reporting from Washington —
To Bradley Schlozman, they were "mold spores," "commies" and "crazy libs."
He was referring to the career lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights and voting rights divisions. From 2003 to 2006, Schlozman was a Bush appointee who supervised them. Along with several others, he came to symbolize the midlevel political appointees who brought a hard-edged ideology to the day-to-day workings of the Justice Department.

"My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the section," he said in an e-mail in 2003. "I too get to work with mold spores, but here in Civil Rights, we call them Voting Section attorneys," he confided to another friend.

He hoped to get rid of the "Democrats" and "liberals" because they were "disloyal" and replace them with "real Americans" and "right-thinking Americans."

He appears to have succeeded by his standards, according to an inspector general's report released Tuesday. Among the newly hired lawyers whose political or ideological views could be discerned, 63 of 65 lawyers hired under Schlozman had Republican or conservative credentials, the report said.

Slapping down "a bunch of . . . attorneys really did get the blood pumping and was even enjoyable once in a while," Schlozman wrote three years later when he left to become the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo.

Schlozman surrounded himself with like-minded officials at the Department of Justice. When he was due to meet in 2004 with John Tanner, then chief of the voting section, he asked how Tanner liked his coffee.

"Mary Frances Berry style -- black and bitter," Tanner replied by e-mail, referring to the African American woman who chaired the U.S. Civil Rights Commission from 1993 to 2004. Schlozman circulated the e-mail. "Y'all will appreciate Tanner's response," he wrote.

The inspector general concluded Schlozman violated the civil services laws while at the Justice Department. While the president's appointees are entitled to run the department and set policy, they are prohibited from considering "political affiliations" in deciding on who serves in career positions in the federal government.

"We found that Schlozman inappropriately considered political and ideological affiliations in hiring career attorneys," said the report issued jointly by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, who heads the Office of Professional Responsibility. The report cited the abusive language as evidence of the harsh political tone.

Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman, said it "describes troubling conduct" from the recent past, but added, "We are confident that the institutional problems identified in today's report no longer exist and will not occur."

Separately, the U.S. attorney's office in Washington announced it will not seek to prosecute Schlozman for giving false testimony to Congress. Patricia Riley, a spokeswoman for that office, said acting U.S. Atty. Jeffrey A. Taylor stepped aside, and six career prosecutors looked into the case against Schlozman.

Joseph D. Rich, the former chief of the voting rights section, said the report "confirms the disdain and vitriol they had for career civil rights attorneys. He called us 'mold spores.' That kind of epitomizes his view. He was probably the most miserable person I ever worked for," said Rich, who retired in 2007 after a 37-year career at the Justice Department.

david.savage@latimes.com
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-justice14-2009jan14,0,3129787.story

http://www.buzzflash.com ^^^^^^^^^

RonF

January 14th, 2009, 12:41 PM

At Gallery, History Is Rewritten
Bush Portrait Caption Had Linked Iraq to 9/11

"The notion . . . that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, or that one 'led to' the other, has been widely and authoritatively debunked," Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote. (By Brendan Hoffman -- Associated Press)

The National Portrait Gallery has taken the unusual step of amending a caption for a portrait of President George W. Bush at the request of a U.S. senator.

The caption describes the Bush administration and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In a letter to the gallery, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) objected to the language that said "the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq . . ."

Sanders wrote: "When President Bush and Vice President Cheney misled our nation into the war in Iraq, they certainly cited the attacks on September 11, along with the equally specious claim that Iraq possessed vast arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The notion, however, that 9/11 and Iraq were linked, or that one 'led to' the other, has been widely and authoritatively debunked."

Soon after Sept. 11, the Bush administration did suggest there was a link between Iraq and the attacks. Later, the 9/11 commission reported that there was no evidence of a collaborative relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq. That view was supported by the FBI and Bush later concurred.

Martin E. Sullivan, the gallery's director, thought the request was reasonable and ordered that the caption be amended. The new text will be installed today.

The new wording eliminates the "led to" phrase and instead provides a list of events that mark the Bush terms. It now reads ". . . Bush found his two terms in office instead marked by a series of cataclysmic events: the attacks on September 11, 2001; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina; and a financial crisis during his last months in office."

The president's portrait and one of Laura Bush were unveiled last month.

Sanders, who was told about the caption by a staff member, said yesterday he was satisfied that the museum acted quickly.

"On one hand, one could say this is a small issue; on the other hand, it is not," Sanders said. "People can like George Bush or not. People can support the war in Iraq or not. But we have got to get our history right. George Bush has acknowledged 9/11 did not cause the war in Iraq. That is simply the case. I don't like the rewriting of history."

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 02:00 PM

. . . . . . . . . . .
SPIEGEL ONLINE 01/14/2009 01:15 PM
POKING FUN AT EUROPECzech Sculpture No Laughing Matter in Brussels
A new sculpture in Brussels, commissioned by the Czech Republic in honor of its stint as holder of the European Union presidency, has rankled some EU members. The artwork depicts countries using stereotypes, not all of them terribly flattering.
It's no secret that the Czech Republic is one of the more euro-skeptic members of the European Union. The country's president, Vaclav Klaus -- who, as it happens, is the current holder of the EU's rotating presidency -- called in 2005 for the bloc to be "scrapped" and was a vocal opponent of the Lisbon Treaty, which was rejected by Irish voters in 2008 before the Czech Republic had a chance could torpedo it.

Still, a new art project commissioned by Prague in honor of its six-month stint at the head of the 27-member bloc has caused the Czechs to blush with embarrassment. Called "Entropa," the piece is a €373,000 over-sized mosaic map of Europe that relies on stereotypes to depict each country. And a number of countries are furious about it.

"It is preposterous, a disgrace," Betina Joteva, press officer for Bulgaria's permanent representation in Brussels told the euobserver Web site. "It is a humiliation for the Bulgarian nation and an offence to national dignity."

Joteva has, perhaps, reason to be upset. Her country is depicted in the eight-ton sculpture as a Turkish toilet. Many speculated that the reference might be to the centuries Bulgaria spent under Turkish rule.

But in a conversation with SPIEGEL ONLINE, the artist responsible for the sculpture, David Cerny, said it was intended to point to one of the things that is most obviously different for people who travel to Bulgaria. "No other country in Europe has those kinds of toilets," he said, before adding that he had officially apologized to Bulgaria for offending them.

Bulgaria's depiction, though, wasn't the only part of the sculpture that created controversy. Germany is shown as being criss-crossed by autobahns -- and some thought they recognized a slightly deformed swastika in the resulting design.

Cerny was categorical in his denial. "It has nothing to do with the swastika," he said. It is about highways and Germany's obsession with cars. Nothing else." Cerny said that the autobahn belts on the sculpture will move once turned on, meaning that the pieces had to be straight, thus leading to the misunderstanding.

Still, other depictions make it clear that flattery was not one of Cerny's goals. Romania is shown as a Dracula theme park; Spain is merely a slab of concrete, in reference to its recently burst real-estate bubble; Holland is shown as being flooded over with only a few minarets poking out above the waves; Luxembourg is a gold nugget with a huge "For Sale" sign sticking out of it; and France is covered with a large sign reading "strike," an allusion to that country's frequent labor battles.

The Czech government commissioned the work in the belief that it would be completed by artists from the 27 EU member-states. That, at least, is what Czech artist David Cerny promised in his project application. Instead, Cerny made up the names of the European artists supposedly participating in the project and put it together with a couple of friends.

"We were hoping that it wouldn't be taken with the kind of seriousness that it has been and that it would be fun," Cerny said. "It wasn't about insulting anyone. I am shocked that certain states don't have a sense of humor."

The piece was unveiled on Tuesday after having been carted to Brussels in three trailer trucks. But it is unclear how much longer it will remain on display. Bulgaria has demanded that it be removed from the sculpture and Czech Republic Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra said his government would be deciding on Thursday how to proceed. "The full responsibility for violating this assignment … lies with David Cerny," he said.

Not all countries are angered by the piece. Sweden is depicted by an IKEA cardboard box and Belgium is a box of chocolates, both references to popular exports from those countries.

Responses from Great Britain, Cerny reports, have likewise been quite positive. The historically euro-skeptic country was left off the sculpture altogether.

cgh -- with wire reports
URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,601209,00.html
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:
Photo Gallery: A Sculpture of European Stereotypes. (Go on-site to view photo's and descriptions of each country's sculpture.)
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-38808.html
President No: Can Václav Klaus Put the Brakes on Europe? (12/18/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,597381,00.htmlRELATED

INTERNET LINKS:
EUOBSERVER: Czech Sculpture Tests EU Sense of Humor
http://euobserver.com/9/27397
SPIEGEL ONLINE is not liable for the content of external Web pages.

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2009
All Rights Reserved
.............

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 02:07 PM

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 05:48 PM

* * * * * * *
THE PROGRESS REPORT
January 14, 2009 by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers

ADMINISTRATION
Bush's Tortured Legacy
All last week on President-elect Obama's transition website, Change.gov, the top-rated publicly-submitted question asked the incoming president whether he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate "the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping." When ABC News's George Stephanopoulos pressed Obama about it on "This Week," Obama said he was "still evaluating" the situation but added, "My orientation is going to be moving forward." Obama's caution notwithstanding, there are serious questions about the Bush administration's torture policies that only a bipartisan, in-depth investigation can answer. Late last week, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill that would establish a blue-ribbon commission to investigate Bush's abuse of executive war powers and civil liberties. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said yesterday that if Obama refuses to investigate Bush's possible crimes, he'll do it himself. "I appreciate that President Obama doesn't want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this, but I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility," Whitehouse said.

BUSH, CHENEY CONTINUE TO DEFEND TORTURE: In a series of exit interviews, both President Bush and Vice President Cheney have stridently defended the use of torture. "I feel very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do," Cheney said last month, referring to the administration's interrogation and detention policies. He added that he would "do exactly the same thing again." Most audaciously, Cheney claimed "it would have been unethical or immoral for us not to" torture detainees. Last Sunday, Bush admitted that he personally authorized the waterboarding of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "I'm in the Oval Office and I am told that we have captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the professionals believe he has information necessary to secure the country. So I ask what tools are available for us to find information from him and they gave me a list of tools," Bush told Fox News' Brit Hume. He added that they "got legal opinions before any decision was made." Bush insisted that torturing Mohammed produced "good information" that "helped save lives on American soil." But a Pentagon intelligence analyst said Mohammed "produced no actionable intelligence." Last night, when CNN's Larry King asked Bush whether anything he had done "in the area of treatment of prisoners" had given him "any kind of pause," Bush replied, "No. No."

RIGHT WING'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH TORTURE: As Bush and Cheney dig in their heels, the right wing has helped cement Bush's legacy of torture by joining in stridently defending it. Last month, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) insisted that torture "saved American lives." MSNBC host Joe Scarborough waged a six-minute screed in defense of torture this week, mocking a critic who said torture doesn't yield reliable information as "the silliest thing [he has] ever heard." With this week's debut of a new season of the Fox TV drama "24," conservatives have new fodder with which to fan the flames of their love of torture. As The Progress Report documented, conservatives cited the show as proof that torture is effective and hailed the main character, torture extraordinaire Jack Bauer, as a national hero. "They're trying to put Jack Bauer in jail! I'm not going to stand for it!" shouted Bill O'Reilly. "You ask the average person, is it okay to do something, rough somebody up, to save lives. You ask the person on the street, they say, 'yeah, why not?'" insisted Fox's Steve Doocy. "Here's the guy who has done everything possible to keep his country safe...and these people want to throw him in jail forever for torture and so forth," moaned Rush Limbaugh.

REAL CRIMES TO INVESTIGATE: A major part of Bush's legacy will be his authorization of crimes (remember, the U.S. has prosecuted waterboarding as a war crime in the past) that have both damaged the United States' moral standing in the world as well as endangered Americans. Today, Susan Crawford, "the top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial," confirmed that the U.S. military tortured 9/11 planner Mohammed al-Qahtani. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture," Crawford said. "And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution. "And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward," Crawford said. Torture has therefore prevented the successful prosecution of terrorists. It has endangered American lives directly as well: A former FBI agent told the Senate last year that "a new generation of jihadist martyrs, motivated in part by the images from Abu Ghraib, is, as we speak, planning to kill Americans," while former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora said last year that "the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo." A former CIA interrogator agreed: "The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001." Not all Obama officials are willing to sweep Bush's torture legacy under the rug. Dawn Johnsen, Obama's pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel, has repeatedly expressed her "outrage" at Bush's use of torture. "We must avoid any temptation simply to move on," Johnsen wrote. "We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation's past transgressions and reject Bush's corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation's honor be restored without full disclosure."

UNDER THE RADAR
CIVIL LIBERTIES -- CHENEY: IT 'ALWAYS AGGRAVATED ME' THAT THE N.Y. TIMES WON A PULITZER FOR EXPOSING WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING: On Dec. 16, 2005, the New York Times published an article by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau,revealing that President Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to "eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States...without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying." The blockbuster article, which exposed one of the Bush administration's biggest secrets, won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006. Discussing the wiretapping program on Bill Bennett’s radio show yesterday, Vice President Cheney defended the program as "important" and said that it "always aggravated" him that the Times was rewarded for its reporting: "The New York Times broke the story I think in December of '05, won the Pulitzer for it, which always aggravated me." Cheney joins the list of conservatives who have attacked the decision to reward those who revealed the secret program. "They win Pulitzer Prizes -- I don't think what they did was worthy of an award - I think what they did was worthy of jail," said Bennett in 2006. In December, former Justice Department official Thomas Tamm explained to Newsweek why he blew the whistle on the program, saying that it "was something the other branches of the government --and the public -- ought to know about."

JUSTICE -- HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE RIPS BUSH'S 'IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY': Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee released a scathing report recapping the lawlessness of the Bush administration. The 487-page report, titled "Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the presidency of George W. Bush," extensively discusses the "allegations of torture and inhumane treatment, extraordinary rendition, warrantless domestic surveillance, the Valerie Plame Wilson-leak, and the U.S. attorney scandal" and offers lessons for future administrations to prevent such abuses. Touching on a controversial subject, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) recommended that "the incoming Administration finally begin an independent criminal review of activities of the outgoing Administration." Also yesterday, the Justice Department released a report that found that former DOJ official Brad Schlozman lied under oath before a Senate panel. Schlozman also notably refused to hire lawyers whom he labeled as "commies" and transferred another attorney for allegedly writing in "ebonics" and benefiting from "an affirmative action thing." "The report confirms some of our worst fears about the Bush administration's politicization of the Justice Department," Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) remarked Tuesday.

CIVIL RIGHTS -- MAINE LAWMAKER INTRODUCES BILL TO LEGALIZE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: Maine state Sen. Dennis Damonck (D) introduced a bill yesterday that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state. The legislation seeks to define marriage as the legal union of two people, rather than between a man and a woman. If the bill passes, Maine would become the third state in the union to allow same-sex marriages, after Massachusetts and Connecticut. At a news conference, Damnock said the bill would "end discrimination in civil marriage and affirm religious freedom." Predictably, the bill will be fiercely opposed by conservatives. Republican state Rep. John Tardy is already at work on legislation that would confine the definition of marriage in the state constitution to one man and one woman. The impending fight in Maine "underlines a concerted push for same-sex marriage recognition in New England's six states by gay and lesbian advocates -- a bid that would effectively create a regional niche for gay marriage." State Rep. Jim Splaine (D) recently introduced similar legislation in his home state of New Hampshire, while a group of lawyers called Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, which led the successful efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and Connecticut, said they are gearing up for fights in Rhode Island and Vermont.

THINK FAST
Sixty-two percent of voters

"say their confidence in Washington has decreased over the past 12 months," according to a new Public Strategies/Politico poll. A plurality of voters, however, want the government to take action on the economy with 45 percent naming an economic stimulus package as an issue the government should make a top priority.

President Bush will leave office with a 34 percent job approval rating, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll. The improved rating, which is "a shade better than what Bush has received for most of the past year," is mainly due to Republicans, whose "approval of him rose from 67% in mid-December to 75% in the current poll."

Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner "didn’t pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for several years while he worked for the International Monetary Fund, and he employed an immigrant housekeeper who briefly lacked proper work papers." The revelations could delay consideration of Geithner's nomination as Sens. Jim Bunning (R-KY) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) "blocked a request to proceed with his confirmation hearing Friday."

A new Marine Corps report has found that "[m]ore active-duty Marines committed suicide last year than any year since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003." The suicide rate, however, "remained virtually unchanged because the Marine Corps is increasing in size." Nearly all of the 41 suicides were under 24 and two-thirds had deployed overseas.

"Glitches" at Veterans Affairs (VA) health centers have resulted in patients who were given "incorrect doses of drugs, had needed treatments delayed and may have been exposed to other medical errors due to software glitches that showed faulty displays of their electronic health records." The problems began in August and lasted until last month, but the VA didn't immediately disclose the problem to patients.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) told the Washington Times that the Pentagon is "looking at several military bases in the U.S. as possible sites to hold terrorist suspects now at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including Camp Pendleton in San Diego and Fort Leavenworth in Kansas."

A new report from the Center for Democracy in the Americas argues that President-elect Obama should engage Cuba. "The policy experts also said small U.S. steps now toward lifting restrictions could ease open Cuban society and polish America’s tarnished image in Latin America." Read the full report here.

President-elect Obama's nominee to lead the Dept. of Transportation, Rep. Ray LaHood (R-IL) "sponsored $60 million in earmarks last year, steering at least $9 million in federal money to campaign donors." LaHood, who opposes earmark reform, ranks roughly among the top 10 percent in the House for earmark sponsorship in 2008.

And finally: Get a behind-the-scenes look at the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)...with a twist. The Hill also has a piece explaining the video here.
* * *

GOOD NEWS
"The House is expected on Wednesday to pass a reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program that would enroll 4 million more children and adults at a cost of $35 billion over four-and-a-half years."

STATE WATCH
NEW YORK: "UnitedHealth Group has agreed to end a practice that allegedly caused patients to overpay for care outside the insurer's network."

CALIFORNIA: "Hospitals across California and the country are reeling from the effects of the economic downturn and the troubled financial markets."

BLOG WATCH
ECONOMY: "Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed executive orders directing their state agencies and cabinets to explore ways for the two states to share services."

THINK PROGRESS: Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) disputes President Bush's comment that not landing Air Force One was his biggest mistake during Katrina.

WONK ROOM: As President Bush leaves office, freedom is on the wane.

YGLESIAS: In Washington D.C., rich lawyers are boosting traffic jams and calling it charity.

DEMOCRACY ARSENAL: Starting points for a progressive conversation on future U.S. policy towards Afghanistan.

DAILY GRILL

"[W]e don't torture."
-- President Bush, 1/13/09

VERSUS

"The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."
-- Washington Post, 1/14/09
http://thinkprogress.org/
* * * * * * * * *

RonF

January 14th, 2009, 05:53 PM

It's been reported that both Cheney and Bush have hired "historical" writers to rewrite their history. That they believe it is the only way to salvage any of their damaged reputations.

I have to believe there are more historians out there who are into gathering up truths, than there are those, who like scientists involved in reporting on global warming, will say anything for money. Here's hoping.

I believe that, too, Sandra. I don't think this country will let them get away with it - even though they seem to never stop trying.

Saundra Hummer

January 14th, 2009, 06:41 PM

I believe that, too, Sandra. I don't think this country will let them get away with it - even though they seem to never stop trying.
Another thing I do believe, and it's this, neither Dick Cheney or GW Bush get it. Clueless to the end.

It's like the sun and the moon. These two guys still believe, as did those back in the dark ages, before enlightenment, that all humanity and power revolves around them, with both of them being blinded by their own percepted light.

Bizare, if not downright delusional.

Saundra Hummer

January 15th, 2009, 03:30 PM

:: :: :: :: ::
MAYAN PROPHESIES
#25 Mayan 2012 - Shadow Snake Descends
Date Posted: Jan 13, 2009 at 11:31 am - Comments (2)
January 13th 2009

Humanity can sense the very nature of 'change' upon our near-future horizon.

If you are unable to perceive this, then you might be dead, or at least in a state of unconsciouness!

This web-tour has been designed to point a finger in an explicit direction, but it is up to others to carry this line of thought further.

This alarm-clock has been going off for some time now!

NASA (10.27.06): Galactic Snake Image:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sp...-20061027.html

Equinox at Chichen Itza - Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0kOyGZxKh4

Mayan Pyramid Snake Image:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/chich...htm#Statistics

Something scary appears to be slithering across the plane of our Milky Way galaxy on 10.27.06, as it was being captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Maybe this same type of image was witnessed by the Mayan civilization, and explains why their 'Shadow Snake' slithers down the Kukulkan pyramid of Chichen Itza, at the equinox!

Perhaps the Mayan 'Telescopes' disappeared along with them, because I cannot believe they viewed 'everything' with their naked-eye!?

Most scientists and archaeologists skirt around these fine-pointed issues!

Kukulkan Pyramid Info.:
http://www.world-mysteries.com/chichen_kukulcan.htm

December 21, 2012 - Transitions:
http://www.december212012.com/articl...ening_Gyre.htm

Mayan Prophecy of Transition to 2012:
http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/mayanpr.html

Ophiuchus - 13th Sign of the Zodiac:
http://www.geocities.com/astrologyco.../ophiuchus.htm

December 21, 2012: Is The Code - Youtube Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M_H8F0gKew
Signature: THE FIFTH KNIGHT'S NEWS:
http://www.care2.com/news/member/510...sort=submitted #24 Extinction Level Event Coming? Date Posted: Jan 11, 2009 at 03:21 pm - Comments (0)
January 11th 2009
We are beginning to travel through the densest section of our Milky Way's galactic-plane, as Earth moves downward through the spiral arm!

This cyclic course can destabilize thousands of comets in the Oort Cloud, and send them hurling into our inner Solar System.

The Sun will pull them inward towards itself, causing an acceleration upon the cometary intruders.

Random Variable: Will Earth be in the collision zone?

Answer: It is too early to tell!
=============ARCHIVE ARTICLES:
"Solar System 'Bounce' May Send Comets Our Way!" - newscientist.com:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826524.800

Cataclysmic Orbit #1:
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/articl...dinosaurs.html

Cataclysmic Orbit #2:
http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=...t&F=1&id=13979

Cataclysmic Orbit #3:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...ysmic-orb.html

Cataclysmic Orbit #4:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-dts050208.php

Cataclysmic Orbit PDF (May Print To Read):
http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/imp...ng_07may08.pdf

Youtube Video: Understanding The Galactic Alignment 2012:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGPcjMe6Qlw&NR=1

Care2 News Network Article: "2012: Understanding The Galactic Alignment Concept"
http://www.care2.com/news/member/510010530/1010699
Signature: THE FIFTH KNIGHT'S NEWS:
http://www.care2.com/news/member/510010530?sort=submitted
#23 Galactic Alignment: 2012 Date Posted: Jan 9, 2009 at 06:32 pm - Comments (1)
January 9th 2009
Rather than attempting to explain this topic through a keyboard, I have assembled the following web-tour.

Thank you for participating within the pursuit of knowledge!
"Understanding The Galactic Alignment":
[Note: Read Article Site & Comment Line!]
http://www.care2.com/news/member/510010530/1010699

Galactic Alignment - John Major Jenkins:
http://edj.net/mc2012/whatisGA.htm

Precessional Cycle of the Holy Cross:
['Click-On': "Construction of the Cross"]
http://www.lunarplanner.com/HCmovies...e300Frame.html

Astrolabe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrolabe

NASA: Solar Storms Could Shut-Down U.S. For Months - Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,478024,00.html

Solar Storm - Information:
http://www.solarstorms.org/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **Here are a selection of Youtube videos for your viewing pleasure, but if not satisfied with 'one', please move on to the next.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT2B8dGerxc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ahoPGzL50Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r75pX...next=1&index=3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbMXAdhASH4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nNZO...eature=related

==========================
Signature: THE FIFTH KNIGHT'S NEWS:
http://www.care2.com/news/member/510...sort=submitted
#22 Nostradamus 2012: Part II Date Posted: Jan 7, 2009 at 01:53 pm - Comments (1)
Nostradamus 2012: Lost Book ‘Not’ Entirely Public!
January 6th 2009
I have researched the Internet archives, and much to my surprise, there is ‘no’ archive with the entire “Lost Book Of Nostradamus” on display — anywhere!!!

If anyone can locate the un-edited, full-text manuscript copy, then please let me know.
The best group that I was able to find is listed below; however, these just consist of 40 images or just 21 images — out of an 80 page manuscript.

I have read and heard it said, that there are supposed to be 72 images within the 80 page text, but where are the approximately estimated 32 additional drawings or writings, that would accompany this 80 page manuscript???

Something is amiss, and to the general public, a portion of the ‘Lost Book’ is still lost — more likely being kept from public view!?

The one aspect that made me question this, was when I realized I could not find ‘all’ the drawings together — Plus on the History Channel’s original Nostradamus #1 (2008) telecast, one of the images was shown several times over and over, but never examined more closely; nor reviewed by shows’ end! (???) A definite oddity!

This particular image was of a ‘human skull on top of a sword, on top of a small stone pillar’, and the narrator announced generally the ‘end of mankind’ symbol, but no further detail was ever given (mysterious enigma!). *Note: This said drawing cannot be found on the Internet either!===================*Previous Blog Entry Copy:On January 4, 2009, the ‘History Channel’ aired the first showing of “Nostradamus 2012″. It will be shown again on Thursday - January 8th at 8:00pm EST.

I have always speculated that an ancient civilization existed before ‘our’ recorded history, and possessed amazing knowledge and great technological advances, which has been almost totally erased by this cyclic catastrophe.

There must have been survivors because we are here, and now we possess their cryptic-encoded messages, hidden within the megalithic city remains and ancient texts.

Giant stone temples and monuments, masonic texts, obscure symbolism everywhere!

The symbols being utilized are: Astrological, Alchemical, and Masonic/Hieroglyphic.

*Their message is quite simple and quite clear:

“December 21, 2012 shall become a temporal historic climax upon the Earth, and it’s cyclic in nature!”

Why hide it from multiple generations over thousands of years, and yet go to ‘extreme lengths’ to preserve this symbolic information???

It is being time-released, as if there were a secret society of devout followers, that have passed this sealed information down through the many generations, and are now bringing it out at this time, with purpose.

The ancient pre-civilization wanted us to know now, during this time-period, right before the next cyclic cataclysm reoccured.

If we knew for an absolute fact, that all life on Earth could become extinct, or at the very least seriously disrupted indefinitely, would we really ‘want’ to go to work, pay bills and carry on forward?

We would not have this information, unless there was the possibility to prepare and reduce the expected devastation!

The Egyptians, Mayans, Hopi Indians and every culture on the face of the Earth, has this date inexorably etched somehow within their subconcious mind!
*December 21, 2012 - (12.21.12)
This is ‘not’ a coincidence, and the clock is ticking!!!
"Lost Book Of Nostradamus: 40 Images"
http://with-heart-and-hands.blogspot...stradamus.html

History Channel: 21 Drawings Presented:
http://www.history.com/content/nostr...-book-drawings

"Crystalinks: The Lost Book Of Nostradamus":
http://www.crystalinks.com/lostbookofnostradamus.html
Care2 Source Article:
http://www.care2.com/news/member/510010530/1008504
=========================Signature: THE FIFTH KNIGHT'S NEWS:http://www.care2.com/news/member/510...sort=submitted
#21Nostradamus 2012: Lost Book Images!
Date Posted: Jan 6, 2009 at 09:41 pm - Comments (1)
January 6th 2009

On January 4, 2009, the 'History Channel' aired the first showing of "Nostradamus 2012". It will be shown again on Thursday - January 8th at 8:00pm EST.

I have always speculated that an ancient civilization existed before 'our' recorded history, and possessed amazing knowledge, which has been almost totally erased by a cyclic catastrophe.

There must have been survivors, because we are here, and now we possess their cryptic messages encoded in the megalithic city remains.

Giant stone temples and monuments, masonic texts, obscure symbolism everywhere!

Their message is quite simple and quite clear:

"December 21, 2012 shall become a temporal historic climax upon the Earth, and it's cyclic in nature!"

Why hide it from multiple generations over thousands of years???

If we knew for an absolute fact, that all life could become extinct, or at the very least seriously disrupted indefinitely, would we really 'want' to go to work, pay bills and carry on forward?

The Egyptians, Mayans, Hopi Indians and every culture on the face of the Earth has this date, inexorably etched (somehow) within their subconcious mind!*December 21, 2012 - (12.21.2012)
This is 'not' a coincidence!!!
"History Channel: Nostradamus Lost Book Drawings":
http://www.history.com/content/nostr...-book-drawings

"Lost Book Of Nostradamus: Crystalinks":
http://www.crystalinks.com/lostbookofnostradamus.html

"Scroll-Down Blog: Google Image Search":
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DX
Page 1 of 5 1 2 3 4 5 > :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

January 15th, 2009, 04:08 PM

^ ^ ^ ^ ^
OpEdNews
What's Hayden Hidin'?
By
Ray McGovern
January 15, 2009

www.opednews.com

Outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden is going around town telling folks he has warned President-elect Barack Obama "personally and forcefully" that if Obama authorizes an investigation into controversial activities like water boarding, "no one in Langley will ever take a risk again."

Upon learning this from what we former intelligence officers used to call an "A-1 source" (completely reliable with excellent access to the information), the thought that came to me in the face of such chutzpah was from Cicero's livid oration against the Roman usurper Cataline: "Quousque, tandem, abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra!" — or "How long, at last, O Cataline, will you abuse our patience!"

Cicero had had enough. And so, apparently, has Obama, who has been confirmed once again of the wisdom of his vote against Hayden's becoming CIA director. It was striking that Obama did not even mention Hayden on Jan. 9, when the president-elect formally named Leon Panetta as his choice to run the CIA and Dennis Blair to be director of national intelligence.

Obama did announce that Mike McConnell, whom Blair will replace after he is confirmed, has been given a sinecure/consolation prize—a seat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Hayden, a former Air Force general, should be given a seat in the military prison in Leavenworth (see below).

It is not only a bit cheeky, but more than a little disingenuous that Hayden should think to advise Obama "personally and forcefully" against investigating illegal activities authorized by president George W. Bush, since Hayden himself can already be described as an unindicted co-conspirator based on publicly available information. He has bragged loudly about the crimes in which he was directly involved, and has defended others, like what he has called "high-end" interrogation techniques—water boarding, for example.

Could it be clearer? "Water boarding is torture," said President-elect Obama last Sunday to George Stephanopoulos. Torture is a crime. Obama added, twice, that no one is "above the law," although also citing his "belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward."

Despite the President-elect's equivocations, it seems that President Bush and the current CIA director have a problem. And apparently Hayden's palms are sweaty enough to warrant, in his view, a thinly veiled threat.

In the outrage category, that threat/warning goes well beyond chutzpah. What an insult to my former colleagues at the CIA to suggest that they lack the integrity to fulfill their important duties in consonance with the law; to suggest that they would treat the incoming president like a substitute teacher!

"Should Have Been Court-martialed"
So spoke the late Gen. Bill Odom on Jan. 4, 2006 referring to Hayden. Odom's comment came before being interviewed by George Kenney, a former Foreign Service officer and now producer of "Electronic Politics." And President Bush "should be impeached," added Odom with equal fury.

Odom ruled out discussing during the actual interview the warrantless eavesdropping that had been revealed by the New York Times just a few weeks earlier. In a memorandum of conversation Kenney opined that Odom was so angry that he realized that if he started discussing the issue, he would not be able to control himself.

Why was Gen. Odom so angry? Because he, like all uniformed officers, took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; because he took that oath seriously; and because, as head of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988, he did his best to ensure that all employees strictly observed NSA's "First Commandment"—Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.

Also disappointed was former NSA Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who led NSA from 1977 to 1981, was one of the country's most highly respected senior managers of intelligence, and actually authored parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. At a public discussion at the New York Public Library on May 8, 2006, Inman took strong issue with Hayden's flouting of FISA:

"There clearly was a line in the FISA statutes which says you couldn't do this," said Inman. He went on to call specific attention to an "extra sentence put in the bill that said, 'You can't do anything that is not authorized by this bill.'" Inman spoke proudly of the earlier ethos at NSA, where "it was deeply ingrained that you operate within the law and you get the law changed if you need to."

Hayden the Martinet
In contrast, Michael Hayden, who was NSA director from 1999 to 2005, chose to salute when ordered by Vice President Dick Cheney to create and implement an aggressive NSA program skirting the strict legal restrictions of FISA. Hayden then proceeded to do the White House's bidding in conning the invertebrates posing as leaders of the Senate and House intelligence "oversight" (more accurately—"overlook") committees.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller is a sorry example of the fox co-opted by the hens. There is precious little the administration and intelligence community did not get away with under his feckless tutelage of the Senate intelligence overlook committee. For a discussion of how politicians like Rockefeller and other intelligence "overseers" work hand-in-hand with the folks they are supposed to be overseeing, see:
"Jay Rockefeller Awarded Intelligence Public Service Medal: For Telecom and Torture Immunity?"

The timid Rockefeller famously sent a hand-written note to Cheney expressing some misgivings about warrantless eavesdropping, but then misplaced the copy he had squirreled away in his safe. Cheney ridiculed him recently on TV, revealing that Rockefeller recently asked him if he could please make him another copy and send it to him.

In Dec. 2005, when the NSA program of warrantless eavesdropping hit the press, Hayden agreed to play point man with the smoke and mirrors. Small wonder that the White House later deemed him the perfect man to head the CIA.

Examination of Conscience
(Short Form)

A whiff of conscience showed through during Hayden's nomination hearing, though, when he flubbed the answer to what was supposed to be a soft, fat pitch from administration loyalist, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, now vice-chair of the Senate intelligence overlook committee:

"Did you believe that your primary responsibility as director of NSA was to execute a program that your NSA lawyers, the Justice Department lawyers, and White House officials all told you was legal, and that you were ordered to carry it out by the president of the United States?"

Instead of the simple "Yes" that had been scripted, Hayden paused and spoke rather poignantly—and revealingly:

"I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001, and it was a personal decision...I could not not do this."

Why should it have been such an enormous personal decision whether or not to obey a White House order? No one asked Hayden, but it requires no particular acuity to figure it out.

This was a military officer who, like the rest of us, swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; a military man well aware that one must never obey an unlawful order; and an NSA director totally familiar with the FISA restrictions.

That, it seems clear, is why Hayden found it a difficult personal decision. Did the new, post-9/11 "paradigm" – created by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Cheney's lawyer David Addington – trump the Constitution? Was not illegal electronic surveillance a key part of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, approved by a 28 to 10 bipartisan House Judiciary Committee vote less than two weeks before Nixon resigned?

No American, save perhaps Admiral Inman and Gen. Odom, knew the FISA law better than Hayden. Nonetheless, in his testimony the general conceded that he did not even require a written legal opinion from NSA lawyers as to whether the new, post-9/11 comprehensive surveillance program, to be implemented without court warrants and without adequate consultation in Congress, could pass the smell test.

Hayden said he sought an oral opinion from then-NSA general counsel Robert L. Deitz, whom Hayden has now brought over to CIA as a "trusted aide." In the fall of 2007, Hayden launched Deitz on an investigation of the CIA's own statutory Inspector General, who had made the mistake of being too diligent in investigating abuses like torture. Enough said.

Hayden Comfortable With Torture
As the Senate Armed Services Committee has now confirmed, President Bush, by executive order of Feb. 7, 2002, gave carte blanche to torture. That was four years before Hayden was confirmed as CIA director. But when asked to be chief apologist for abusive interrogation techniques, Hayden again saluted. And after nearly two years as chief of CIA, Hayden confirmed (on Feb. 5, 2008) that, in 2002-03, "9/11 mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other "high-value" detainees had been water boarded.

Water boarding, an extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, has been condemned as torture by just about everyone—except the legal experts of the Bush administration, including Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who is still having trouble making up his mind on this issue—for reasons that should be abundantly clear.

Oddly, Mukasey is on record as saying that water boarding would be torture if applied to him. And National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker magazine, "Whether it is torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture."

McConnell then let the cat out of Mukasey's bag, saying, "If it is ever determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it." It is a safe bet that this would be an extreme embarrassment, at least, for anyone in charge of an agency engaged in torture. Small wonder that Hayden has now summoned the chutzpah to warn the incoming president against launching an investigation into such matters.

Former CIA head George "we-do-not-torture" Tenet who—with the president's Feb. 7, 2002 executive order in hand—was responsible for implementing torture policies, has also evidenced some unease regarding the possibility that he might be held to account for taking liberties with national and international law. Tenet included these telling sentences in his memoir:

"We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA ever had. Things could blow up. People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act." (At the Center of the Storm, p. 177-178)

Protesting Too Much
As the revelations piled up, Hayden again went front and center defending water boarding and offering pitiable excuses for the destruction of tapes of the interrogation of high-value detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

On Fox News last June, for example, Hayden insisted that after 9/11, "it was the collective judgment of the American government that these techniques would be appropriate and lawful," including water boarding, which he referred to as a "high-end interrogation technique." Hayden protested, "Now, if you ask me was it lawful, the answer is absolutely."

He went on to explain, "Literally thousands of Americans" have been water boarded in training, and suggested that this experience provided "a body of knowledge as to what the transient and permanent effects would be." Hayden made it clear that he was prepared to instruct his torturers to water board again, if the president ordered it.

Never mind that all those folks water boarded in training knew it would stop as soon as they cried Uncle; never mind that the "technique" is among the most iconic and notorious forms of torture, for which American officers as well as Japanese and Germans have been prosecuted and convicted; never mind Hayden's dubious claims that valuable intelligence has been gotten through water boarding.

And never mind the crystal-clear observation made on Sept. 6, 2006 by Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, head of U.S. Army intelligence: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that."

Chalk it up to my bias—and my experience as an Army intelligence officer—but I'll take Kimmons' word over any blue-suited desk jockey—no matter how many stars on the shoulder of the latter.

Sanctimonious Sam
What brings up Cicero's outrage again is the aura of sanctity with which Michael Hayden has attempted to envelop himself. His blind fealty in implementing and then defending the administration's defiance of the law on eavesdropping made him well qualified, in the administration's eyes, for the job of CIA director. And he gave every evidence of eagerness to be in charge of water boarding and other "high-end" interrogation techniques.

Hayden likes to brag about his moral training and Catholic credentials. At his nomination hearing, for example, he noted that he was the beneficiary of 18 years of Catholic education. That set me to counting my own years of Catholic education—only 17. Seems I missed the course on "Ethical High-End Interrogation Techniques."

The sooner Hayden is gone the better. I fully expect him to join the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) channels as "expert commentator," and to warm some seats on defense-industry corporate boards. As the President-elect was quick to see, Hayden's credentials appear much better suited for that kind of work.

Quousque, tandem, abutere, Hayden, patientia nostra!

This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com
Authors Bio: Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. As a CIA analyst for 27 years, he worked under nine directors, several of them at close remove. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Original Content at:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-s-Hayden-Hidin--by-RayMcGovern-090115-499.html ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Saundra Hummer

January 16th, 2009, 12:54 PM

* * * * * * * . . . . . . . .THE PROGRESS REPORT January 16, 2009 by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, Pat Garofalo, Igor Volsky, Matt Duss, Brad Johnson, and Matt Yglesias

ADMINISTRATION
The 43 Who Helped Make Bush The Worst Ever
Next week, "change is coming to America," as President George W. Bush wraps up his tenure as one of the worst American presidents ever. He wasn't able to accomplish such an ignominious feat all by himself, however; he had a great deal of help along the way. The Progress Report heralds the conclusion of the Bush 43 presidency by bringing you our list of the top 43 worst Bush appointees. Did we miss anyone? Who should have been ranked higher? Let us know what you think.

1. Dick Cheney -- The worst Dick since Nixon. The man who shot his friend while in office. The "most powerful and controversial vice president." Until he got the job, people used to actually think it was a bad thing that the vice presidency has historically been a do-nothing position. Asked by PBS's Jim Lehrer about why people hate him, Cheney rejected the premise, saying, "I don't buy that." His top placement in our survey says otherwise.

2. Karl Rove -- There wasn't a scandal in the Bush administration that Rove didn't have his fingerprints all over -- see Plame, Iraq war deception, Gov. Don Siegelman, U.S. Attorney firings, missing e-mails, and more. As senior political adviser and later as deputy chief of staff, "The Architect" was responsible for politicizing nearly every agency of the federal government.

3. Alberto Gonzales -- Fundamentally dishonest and woefully incompetent, Gonzales was involved in a series of scandals, first as White House counsel and then as Attorney General. Some of the most notable: pressuring a "feeble" and "barely articulate" Attorney General Ashcroft at his hospital bedside to sign off on Bush's illegal wiretapping program; approving waterboarding and other torture techniques to be used against detainees; and leading the firing of U.S. Attorneys deemed not sufficiently loyal to Bush.

4. Donald Rumsfeld -- After winning praise for leading the U.S. effort in ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001, the former Defense Secretary strongly advocated for the invasion of Iraq and then grossly misjudged and mishandled its aftermath. Rumsfeld is also responsible for authorizing the use of torture against terror detainees in U.S. custody; according to a bipartisan Senate report, Rumsfeld "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees."

5. Michael Brown -- This former commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association was appointed by Bush to head FEMA in 2003. After Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, Brownie promptly did a "heck of a job" bungling the government's relief efforts, and was sent back to Washington a few days later. He was forced to resign shortly thereafter.

6. Paul Wolfowitz -- As Deputy Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2005, Wolfowitz was one of the primary architects of the Iraq war, arguing for the invasion as early as Sept. 15, 2001. Testifying before Congress in February 2003, Wolfowitz said that it was "hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself." Wolfowitz eventually admitted that "for bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction," as a justification for war, "because it was the one reason everyone could agree on."

7. David Addington -- "Cheney's Cheney" was the "most powerful man you've never heard of." As the leader of Bush's legal team and Cheney's chief of staff, Addington was the biggest proponent of some of Bush's most notorious legal abuses, such as torture and warrantless surveillance, and is a loyal follower of the so-called unitary executive theory.

8. Stephen Johnson -- The "Alberto Gonzales of the environment," EPA Administrator Johnson subverted the agency's mission at the behest of the White House and corporate interests, suppressing staff recommendations on pesticides, mercury, lead paint, smog, and global warming.

9. Douglas Feith -- Undersecretary of Defense for Policy from 2001-2005, Feith headed up the notorious Office of Special Plans, an in-house Pentagon intelligence shop devised by Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to produce intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. A subsequent investigation by the Pentagon's Inspector General found the OSP's work produced "conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence."

10. John Bolton -- As Undersecretary of State, Bolton offered a strong voice in favor of invading Iraq and pushed for the U.S. to disengage from the International Criminal Court and key international arms control agreements. A recess appointment landed Bolton the job of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, despite his stringent animosity toward the world body. Today, he spends his time calling for war with Iran.

11. John Yoo -- As a lawyer for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Yoo authored a series of legal memos giving military interrogators authority to use torture and coercive techniques when interviewing terrorist suspects. Yoo said that only those techniques that inflict pain equivalent to "death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions" constitute torture. Last year, he refused to answer whether or not the president could order a detainee to be buried alive.

12. Ari Fleischer -- Bush's first press secretary helped redefine the role as that of liar-in-chief rather than informer of the public, earning a reputation as "the world's most dishonest flack." Whereas his successors sometimes looked uncomfortable lying, Fleischer was having fun, spinning a cowed and gullible press corps through two massive tax cuts and the initiation of a war undertaken on false pretenses.

13. John Ashcroft -- In 2003, as Bush's first Attorney General, Ashcroft approved waterboarding and other torture techniques on detainees. Ashcroft's nomination was controversial, as he had a history of opposing school desegregation. The chief architect of the invasive Patriot Act, Ashcroft maintains to this day that Bush is "among the most respectful of all leaders ever" of civil liberties.

14. Henry Paulson -- Even as the financial system was crashing down around him, Treasury Secretary Paulson insisted for months that the banking system was "safe and sound." Once he decided that the economy needed saving, Paulson requested nearly unfettered authority to send billions of taxpayer dollars to banks with no oversight.

15. L. Paul Bremer -- This Presidential Medal of Freedom winner took over the Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2003. Under his mismanagement, the insurgency exploded in Iraq. Bremer claimed he had all the troops he needed to secure the country, overestimated the strength of the new U.S.-trained Iraqi army, disbanded the Iraqi army leaving thousands of Iraqi soldiers with no income and no occupation, and enacted a de-Baathification law that barred many experienced Iraqis from government positions.

16. Bradley Schlozman -- As a recent DOJ Inspector General report demonstrates, Schlozman was a central figure in Bush's politicization of the Justice Department. Violating civil service laws, Schlozman used political and ideological considerations to ensure that only "right-thinking Americans" received jobs. He eventually lied to Congress about his efforts.

17. J. Steven Griles -- A former energy lobbyist and no. 2 official in the Interior Department, Griles went to jail for lying to Congress about illegal favors he did for corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Griles also abused his position "to unlock nearly every legal barrier to exploitation" of our nation's oil and mineral reserves. Before his conviction, Griles left the White House to become a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips.

18. Condoleezza Rice -- As Bush's national security adviser, Rice was another strong advocate for invading Iraq, once famously warning that the U.S. should attack Iraq and not wait for solid proof of its WMD because "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Rice also ignored an urgent warning from the CIA before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that a strike inside the U.S. was imminent.

19. Scooter Libby -- Cheney's former chief of staff was a key player in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as part of the Bush administration's quest to punish Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for publishing an op-ed debunking one of the White House's main justifications for invading Iraq. Libby was ultimately convicted of perjury and obstructing justice in a federal investigation into Plame's outing but later had his 30-month prison sentence commuted by Bush.

20. Monica Goodling -- Goodling was the most notorious graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University during her tenure in the Justice Department. As the White House liaison at the DOJ, she based the department's hiring of candidates on their sexual preference, GOP loyalty, and adherence to conservative ideology.

21. Alphonso Jackson -- As Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Jackson let the U.S. housing market crumble while he was busy giving lucrative contracts to his golfing buddies, retaliating against Bush critics, and erecting giant photo homages to himself.

22. Michael Hayden -- As director of the National Security Agency, Hayden ran Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and misled Congress about the program's legality. After moving to the CIA, he dismissed the destruction of evidence implicating the CIA in torture as "in line with the law."

23. Lurita Doan -- The former head of the General Services Administration (GSA)who doled out a no-bid contract to a friend, Doan famously hosted a meeting of White House political operatives where she asked how GSA employees could "help 'our candidates' in the next election." After the Office of Special Counsel called for her firing, she was forced to resign at the request of the White House.

24. Gale Norton -- A former industry lobbyist and Bush's first Secretary of the Interior, Norton pushed a radical ideological agenda "through regulatory rollbacks, suppression of science, preferential treatment, and collusion with industry" -- including doctoring scientific findings on the impacts of oil drilling on caribou. After resigning under the cloud of ties to Jack Abramoff, she joined Shell Oil.

25. Lester Crawford -- After promising to act on the morning-after contraceptive pill during his confirmation hearings, the former FDA Commissioner "indefinitely postponed nonprescription sales of emergency contraception over the objections of staff scientists who had declared the pill safe." Crawford resigned after just two months on the job and later pleaded guilty "to charges that he hid his ownership of stock in food and drug companies that his agency regulated."

26. Harriet Miers -- Well-known for being Bush's failed Supreme Court nominee, Miers also thought it was "important" to her as White House Counsel that Rove protege Tim Griffin was installed as a U.S. Attorney, making her a central figure in the U.S. Attorney scandal. She is said to have called Bush "the most brilliant man she had ever met."

27. Hans Von Spakovsky -- Originally a political appointee in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, Spakovsky "injected partisan political factors into decision-making" and used every opportunity "to make it difficult for voters -- poor, minority and Democratic -- to go to the polls." In 2008, Spakovsky withdrew his name from consideration for the FEC, following months of opposition from lawmakers and civil rights groups.

28. Tommy Franks -- As head of U.S. Central Command from 2000 to 2003, Franks oversaw Osama bin Laden's great escape from Afghanistan, gave orders for the stabilization of Iraq via PowerPoint, assumed that the U.S. would draw down to 25,000 troops by the end of 2004, and had American soldiers stand idly by as chaos and lawlessness took hold after the invasion.

29. Thomas Scully -- As chief administrator for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Scully was the White House's head negotiator on the Medicare prescription drug bill. Scully threatened to fire chief actuary Richard Foster if he revealed that Bush's Medicare Part D legislation "would cost 25% to 50% more than the Bush administration's public estimates."

30. Julie MacDonald -- A top Interior Department appointee, MacDonald "interjected herself personally and profoundly" and "tainted nearly every decision made on the protection of endangered species" over a five-year period, intimidating the staff with "abrupt and abrasive, if not abusive" tactics. MacDonald also leaked government documents to a young acquaintance whom she met while playing "internet role-playing games."

31. William Haynes -- As the former general counsel at the Defense Department, he was part of a five-person team of high-level administration lawyers, dubbed the "War Council," that tossed the Geneva Conventions aside and hatched out the legal framework for torture in secret meetings.

32. David Safavian -- Safavian was (twice) tried and convicted for his role in the jack Abramoff scandal. Safavian was found guilty of "lying and obstructing justice" in an attempt to cover-up "his many efforts to assist Abramoff in acquiring two properties controlled by the GSA."

33. James Connaughton -- As chairman of the White House Council of Environmental Quality, Connaughton wrote EPA press releases downplaying the danger of the air quality in lower Manhattan following 9/11. "A former lobbyist for utilities, mining, chemical, and other industrial polluters," Connaughton insisted "there's a lot of disagreement" about humans' impact on global warming, and he touted a bogus study purporting to show that the 20th century was not unusually warm.

34. William Luti -- A former Navy officer and Cheney aide, Luti was dispatched to the Pentagon in 2001 to work underneath Feith to find "evidence" to support his boss's belief in conspiracy theories linking Saddam to al Qaeda. Luti was an integral component of Cheney's campaign to pressure intelligence professionals to conform their judgments to administration policy rather than reality.

35. Susan Orr -- As Assistant Deputy Secretary for Population Affairs, this former Family Research Council official oversaw funding for the only federal program that provided contraceptive services to low-income Americans. Orr cheered Bush's anti-contraception record, saying, "Fertility is not a disease. It's not a medical necessity that you have [contraception]."

36. Christopher Cox -- Under Chairman Cox, the Securities and Exchange Commission censored internal reports showing that it ignored critical signs pointing to Wall Street's meltdown. Cox's SEC also failed to detect Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme, despite a decade of warnings.

37. Elliott Abrams -- An Iran-Contra convict pardoned by Bush 41, Abrams was named by Bush 43 as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations. As a founding Project for a New American Century signatory and a staunchly pro-Israel neoconservative, Abrams supported expanding Israel's 2006 bombing of Lebanon into Syria and advocated a Fatah coup after Hamas won the February 2006 Palestinian elections.

38. Philip Cooney -- A former oil lobbyist who served as chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Cooney doctored climate reports to "soften" words and phrases linking greenhouse gas emissions to global warming. After his political interference was revealed, Cooney left the White House to become a lobbyist for Exxon.

39. Colin Powell -- Though Bush called him "an American hero" when he appointed him to be the first African-American Secretary of State, Powell placed an ugly "blot" on his record when he pushed the Bush administration's faulty case for the Iraq war in a speech to the U.N. on Feb.5, 2003, using inaccurate information. Liberal hawks and the media rallied around Powell's false case, calling it the "winning hand" for war.

40. Elaine Chao -- The Labor Secretary made it through all eight years of the Bush administration, driving morale at the Labor Department so low that staffers threw a "good-riddance party" to cheer her departure. She leaves behind a "deeply troubled department" that "spent eight years attacking workers' rights, strong workplace health and safety rules, and unions while they carried the water for Big Business."

41. Julie Myers -- After being hired as head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement based on little more than her personal connections, Myers made herself famous by awarding "Most Original Costume" to an employee who dressed up in blackface and a prison costume for Halloween. She was also heavily criticized for conducting politically-motivated immigration raids.

42. Wade Horn -- As Assistant Secretary for Community Initiatives at the Department of Health and Human Services, Horn funneled millions of tax-payer dollars into right-wing abstinence-only programs. Shortly before he resigned, it was revealed that he had given nearly $1 million "to the National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI), where he was the president for at least three years until joining the Bush administration in 2001."

43. George Deutsch -- As a young, inexperienced press officer for NASA, Deutsch "told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word 'theory' at every mention of the Big Bang." He resigned in 2006 after it was discovered he had lied on his resume, falsely claiming that he had a journalism degree from Texas A&M.

Dishonorable Mentions: Bush appointees who didn't quite make the list included a child pornography aficionado, a patron of hookers, a shoplifter, a mail fraudster, an operator of an illegal horse gambling ring, and a CIA official who took bribes in the form of prostitutes.

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Go on-site to gain access to the numerous links within this newsletter and to gain access to their archives. There are more than a few hard hitting articles. Amazing tidbit's of [I]truths as well as bigotry. It boggles one's mind. SRH* http://www.thinkprogress.org * * * * * * *

Saundra Hummer

January 16th, 2009, 04:16 PM

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ FACTCHECK .ORG
January 16, 2009
Q: Are states going to require serial numbers on bullets and require disposal of existing ammunition?
I received this in an e-mail and was curious if it is true.

Ammunition Accountability Act
Remember how Obama said that he wasn't going to take your guns? Well, it seems that his minions and allies in the anti-gun world have no problem with taking your ammo!

The bill that is being pushed in 18 states (including Illinois and Indiana ) requires all ammunition to be encoded by the manufacture, a data base of all ammunition sales.

So they will know how much you buy and what calibers.

Nobody can sell any ammunition after June 30, 2009 unless the ammunition is coded.

Any privately held un-coded ammunition must be destroyed by July 1, 2011 . (Including hand-loaded ammo.) They will also charge a .05 cent tax on every round so every box of ammo you buy will go up at least $2.50 or more! If they can deprive you of ammo they do not need to take your gun!

Please give this the widest distribution possible and contact your Reps!

It's the ammo, not the guns . . .

I've said for a long time that they wouldn't go for your guns, they'd go for your ammo . . . guns have a Constitutional protection. Ammo does not. A list of states where this legislation is pending is in the final paragraph. Not in CO yet, they'll go where the pansies are first.

Heads up to all of you who swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND domestic.

Let your state Legislatures know that we do not want this bill passed, and petition them to vote no on this bill . We should keep after them until the bill is closed by bombarding them with e-mails, phone calls, and letters.

Get to all your politicians to get to work and NOT LET THIS HAPPEN!!!

The 2008 Legislative session has begun, and the Ammunition Accountability Act is being introduced across the country. Below is a list of the
PANSY states where legislation has already been introduced:

Alabama , Arizona , California , Connecticut , Hawaii , Illinois , Indiana , Kentucky , Maryland , Mississippi , Missouri , New Jersey , New York , Pennsylvania , Rhode Island , South Carolina , Tennessee , and Washington .

Status of pending bills in these States is at: http://ammunitionaccountability.org/Legislation.htm
A: Such a proposal is being pushed by a company that holds a patent on bullet-coding technology. But none of the 31 bills introduced last year ever made it out of committee.
Despite the urgent tone of this widely forwarded message, which we have been asked about dozens of times, the "Ammunition Accountability Act" so far has shown few signs of life. The National Research Council last year, in a report requested by the Department of Justice, called the technology "promising" but stopped short of recommending any requirement, and instead called for more research and competition.

The idea is being pushed mainly by a single company that holds a patent on bullet-coding technology, so far without much success. Last year lawmakers in 18 states proposed legislation that would require handgun ammunition to be coded, but not one of those bills came to a vote or even made it out of committee. In 2005 the California state Senate approved a so-called "Ammunition Accountability" measure by a vote of 21 to 18, but the proposal then died in the Assembly without coming to a vote there.
.
Under the proposed legislation, manufacturers would be required to imprint the bullet and casing with a serial number, which would be recorded in a database maintained by a state agency. Firearms vendors would submit records of their ammunition sales, allowing the agency to identify the purchaser of any particular bullet.

The idea is backed by an organization called "Ammunition Accountability," which says that if the requirement is enacted, "law enforcement personnel will be able to easily trace the ammunition involved in a crime and have an avenue to pursue and solve even the most difficult cases." Ammunition Accountability was founded by the owners of a Seattle company called Ammunition Coding System, which holds a patent on the necessary technology. When asked about this by the Seattle Weekly, ACS co-founder Russ Ford said that he saw no conflict in pushing legislation that would require manufacturers to use his product: "Some protection is afforded inventors everywhere that have come up with ideas." More recently, however, co-founder Steve Mace told FactCheck that ACS was trying to disengage from Ammunition Accountability.

Gun rights organizations oppose ammunition coding, saying that the costs would be prohibitive, and would amount to a de facto gun ban. The e-mail above cites a ".05 cent tax" on each bullet (we assume the author actually means a 5 cent tax), leading to a claimed "$2.50 or more" increase on every box of ammunition. A fact sheet from the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action also discusses "outrageously expensive ammunition costs," as well as the difficulty and potential privacy infractions of record-keeping.

The actual cost isn't certain. The "sample legislation" being pushed by ACS does include a state tax to offset the cost of database maintenance, but it's only half a cent per bullet, which would be 25 cents per box of 50 – one-tenth of what the chain e-mail claims. There would also be some increase in manufacturer costs, which would presumably be passed on to consumers. But estimates vary widely.

In a 2006 presentation to the National Research Council of the National Academies, Patrick Grace of TRUMPF Inc., a laser manufacturer that did a study at the request of ACS, said that the actual cost per bullet would be .14 cents per bullet, including new equipment and materials costs. But the NRA and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute have put the cost much higher. When responding to the 2005 bullet-coding bill in California, SAAMI calculated that complying with a bullet-coding law would cost "several dollars per cartridge."

As for privacy issues, the sample legislation calls for a record of name, driver's license or ID number, and birth date. This is less information than vendors are currently required to keep for firearm transactions, but most states don't have a centralized database of that information. Some proposed legislation addressed privacy concerns, stating that the database information would only be available to law enforcement when necessary. The NRA points out that a 1986 amendment to federal gun regulations removed record-keeping requirements for non-armor-piercing bullets.

The e-mail claims that under the proposed legislation, "un-coded ammunition must be destroyed by July 1, 2011." That was roughly true of the sample legislation proposed by Ammunition Accountability, which gave ammunition owners and retailers two years from the date the proposed law would have gone into effect (January 1, 2009) to use or get rid of their unstamped bullets. But the versions that were actually introduced differed – some had earlier dates, some later, and any bills reintroduced this year could have later dates still. The Washington bill didn't mandate disposal at all, and one Illinois bill specified that uncoded ammunition could be passed on to an heir or sold out of state. Only Missouri and Kentucky specified penalties for continuing to possess uncoded ammunition.

The message also claims that the proposal is being pushed by "minions" of President-elect Barack Obama. But Obama himself has not publicly expressed any position on this idea, for or against.

However, the National Research Council found ammunition coding to be a promising technology. Its report, Ballistic Imaging, recommended stamped bullets over alternatives like an expanded ballistics imaging database, but it also warned that more research was needed:

Ballistic Imaging, 2008: In microstamping – as in the early days of computer-based ballistics imaging – there has arguably been a push to legislate on the basis of the claims and competences of one or two vendors. We do not challenge the work done by the vendors who have suggested microstamping to date; they have made solid and worthwhile contributions. Microstamping may indeed be a viable future for firearms identification, and we strongly encourage continuing research in this area. However, we do conclude that state and local law enforcement would be better served by new technologies and systems developed through richer and more open competitions, by multiple vendors and research teams and with fuller appreciation for the integration of new systems with existing manufacturing practices.
-Jess Henig

Sources
Ammunition Accountability. "Ammunition Accountability Act Sample Legislation." Accessed 15 Jan. 2008.

Patrick Grace. "Bullet Coding Laser Marking Issues." 2006.

National Rifle Association. "'Encoded Ammunition'/Bullet Serialization." 25 Jan. 2008.

National Rifle Association. "Lockyer, Dunn and Perata Misrepresent Their Bullet Registration Scheme." 6 May 2005.

National Research Council. Ballistic Imaging. 2008.

Business Wire. "Gain Insight Into the Small Arms Ammunition Manufacturing Industry in the U.S." 11 Apr. 2007.

Onstot, Laura. "Three Seattle Guys Want to Bar-Code Bullets." Seattle Weekly. 4 Mar. 2008.
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/are_states_going_to_require_serial_numbers.html ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Saundra Hummer

January 16th, 2009, 04:33 PM

^ ^ ^
Bush Displays His Fatal Flaw:
'I Dunnow'Submitted by christine on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 12:33pm. Analysis
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Christine Bowman

Trying to burnish his image upon leaving office, Bush once again dodges responsibility and insight.
Larry King on January 14 unexpectedly got George W. Bush to encapsulate his biggest problem as President by asking him if we ever came close to catching bin Laden.

"I don't know. I can't answer that. ... I really don't know. I'm not trying to hide anything." (Go on-site to view video by clicking on link at end of article.)

Yes, the 43rd President kind of said it all right there:

1. He doesn't know key things about his own administration that he damned well should.

2. There's always that nagging question as to whether he is trying to hide something.

3. He is clueless or in denial about his own shortcomings and mistakes.

Larry King was asking the President about bin Laden, the international icon of jihad and terrorism. Bush himself cites the "war on terror" as his constant concern as president and his key achievement ("keeping America safe," "no post 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil") -- yet he doesn't know if he ever came close to capturing the Number 1 "evil-doer"?

The "I dunnow" president is the same man who famously said, "I want justice ... There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" (G.W. Bush, 9/17/01, UPI).

Clearly, George W. Bush ran an eight-year presidency of disengagement. He functioned as a figurehead letting the misguided Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and other neoconservative ideologues do the heavy lifting on issues of war and peace, life and death, and American leadership. He let "Heckuvajob" Horseshow-Judge Brownie handle the worst national disaster in U.S. history. He put his Department of Justice in the hands of political manipulators. He named his top political hack, Karl Rove, to a top policy job.

George W. Bush delegated his greatest responsibilities. He relied on others to steer the ship of state while he alternately took long vacations or wrung his hands anxiously. Perhaps George W. Bush had occasional "decider" moments, but over time it has become clear that he simply didn't have the wherewithal to make well-reasoned decisions. As Chris Matthews at MSNBC observed following the farewell speech Thursday night, the younger Bush had never done the hard preparation needed to prepare for the presidency. Young George punted and hung out with the jocks at his string of high-priced schools, riding his father's coattails through life and straight into the Oval Office.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
Bush Channels Reagan
Submitted by neoconned on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 3:55pm.
Bush isn't as clueless as we are being led to believe. To those too many who decided they would like to have a beer with the guy, you got stuck with the huge bar tab for his celebration. So, How'd You Like Your Beer?

When Bill Clinton let the Reagan-Bush I war criminals off the hook by not investigating their October Surprise and Iran-Contra wrongdoing, the defensive precedent was established. All any perpetrator now has to say is "I don't recall" or "I don't know". The burden of proof then falls upon the prosecution to prove in some verifiable and unimpeachable manner that the allegation is true.

So it goes with the Bush II war criminals. One of the reasons W is all over the media is to spread the official excuse script to those who might (if Obama and the Democrats weren't so complicit) have come under investigation and potential indictment. Should they have been brought to trial, all they would have to say is what is now being said by their leader-in-crime, and all will be well for the fascist elites who stole from everyone for their own enrichment.

Chris Matthews,
Submitted by rdn on Fri, 01/16/2009 - 1:45pm.
Chris Matthews, who generally is merely, barely acceptable (but much, much better than most in the MSM pundit swamp), really came strong 1/16 when Olberman asked for his take on Bush's 8 year path of destruction, er, "Legacy" vis-a-vis his last (REALLY??!!) orchestrated rambling. For a non-Lefty, Chris did good....
» login or register to post comments
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/581 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Saundra Hummer

January 16th, 2009, 04:44 PM

* * * dynasaw (191 posts) Fri Jan-16-09 10:22 AM
Original message
119 Rooms But Not One Key for the Obamas [?]
Letting go is hard to do!
"But Blair House is huge. It's not one house but four houses put together. The federal government bought the house from the Blair estate in 1942 and connected the adjoining Lee house in 1943. The two closest houses to those were bought in 1969-70 and connected as well. So Blair House now has 119 rooms and is 70,000 square feet. It's larger than the White House. And yet there was no room at the inn for the Obama family. . .The unavailability of Blair House means that the Obamas will have to move three times in three weeks, adding an additional disruption for two young girls already in an incredibly pressured situation. Not only that, but the expense of staying at the Hay-Adams Hotel was considerable, as was the added expense and trouble of having to secure the hotel and its environs by the Secret Service. All of this so that Howard and his wife could have 119 rooms to themselves (including living rooms, sitting rooms, dining rooms and kitchens) for one night?"

"Why couldn't the Howards have stayed at their country's embassy, as Tony Blair did at his? Why couldn't the reception have been held at the State Department? The White House could easily have made these things happen."

"In the end, though, the Bushes are about to relinquish the most powerful position in the country, maybe the world. And over the years, as that transition approaches -- no matter which party is in power -- there is always a last grasp, a moment when the outgoing first family tightens up on the reins of power as if to say: Not so fast. Until Jan. 20, we still call the shots.

Different people have different ways of expressing that reluctance to let go. For the Bushes it has been Blair House."

The incredible ugliness of the Bushes just doesn't end.

Replies to this thread
Yawn. Let if go. cali Jan-16-09 10:23 AM #1
My guess is that the Obama's will show more grace in 2013 than Bush did. WI_DEM Jan-16-09 10:25 AM #2
My guess is that they won't need to show that grace to the next rateyes Jan-16-09 10:29 AM #3
Bush is a dick, and Howard is a dick. Webster Green Jan-16-09 10:31 AM #4
Actually, I think this last act of childish pettiness is a good thing TechBear_Seattle Jan-16-09 10:33 AM #5
"the Obamas will have to move three times in three weeks" QuestionAll Jan-16-09 10:38 AM #6
It's the Washington DC president-elect residence equivalent of "back of the bus" bobd0 Jan-16-09 10:45 AM #7
cali (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-16-09 10:23 AM
Response to Original message
1. Yawn. Let if go.
The Obamas are now esconced in Blair House and this was only posted about 100 times.
WI_DEM (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-16-09 10:25 AM
Response to Original message
2. My guess is that the Obama's will show more grace in 2013 than Bush did.
rateyes (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-16-09 10:29 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. My guess is that they won't need to show that grace to the next
president-elect until 2017.
Webster Green (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-16-09 10:31 AM
Response to Original message
4. Bush is a dick, and Howard is a dick.
Case solved.
TechBear_Seattle (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-16-09 10:33 AM
Response to Original message
5. Actually, I think this last act of childish pettiness is a good thing
It demonstrates very clearly just how childish and petty the Bush administration really is; we could not have come up with a better illustration if we tried.
QuestionAll (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-16-09 10:38 AM
Response to Original message
6. "the Obamas will have to move three times in three weeks"

melo-dramatic much?

yes- i'm sure that they pack and unpack all of their belongings three separate times...

get over it already- yes it was a petty thing to do on the part of bush/howard- but that's what they are.
and except for where the limo drops them off and picks them up, and the colors of the furniture are the biggest differences/disruptions they'll experience from the hay-adams to blair house to the white house.
bobd0 (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-16-09 10:45 AM
Response to Original message
7. It's the Washington DC president-elect residence equivalent of "back of the bus"
As usual, Bush's actions speak louder than his words. =
DU AdBot (1000+ posts) http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4841440 . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

January 16th, 2009, 06:32 PM

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ What Bush Left Out of His Flat FarewellBy
David Corn | January 16, 2009 12:15 AM
Comments (14)

George W. Bush gave his final speech to the nation on Thursday night. I skipped it to see my daughter, who has known no other president, perform with her school chorus. But when I later sat before my television to see how the speech was being punditized on the cable news shows, I was surprised. The water-landing of a US Airways flight in New York City dominated the coverage. There was little chatter--almost nothing--about Bush's farewell.

After watching the speech on the White House website, I understood why. It was flat and short. Bush said little of interest. He dwelled mostly on 9/11 and the so-called war on terror, once again (and for the last official time) characterizing the invasion of Iraq as part of his effort to take "the fight to the terrorists." He suggested that although the Iraq war was the subject of "legitimate debate," there "can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil."

Was the nation's safety ensured because Bush invaded Iraq and did not finish the fight in Afghanistan? No doubt, he and his ever-dwindling band of defenders will continue to insist that it is so--just as a rooster might insist there is a connection between his crowing and the rising of the sun. And Bush defended himself for having been "willing to make the tough decisions"--as if making hard choices is the same as making wise ones.

For most of the 13 minutes he spoke, Bush offered surface-level observations. He provided one quote, noting that President Thomas Jefferson once remarked, "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." It's no wonder Bush fancies this line. Given that he is passing to Barack Obama a country burdened with two unresolved wars and an economy in severe decline, Bush certainly would rather look forward (and hope his now unpopular presidency comes to be seen in better terms down the road) than face the present-day consequences of his actions and inaction.

Ernest Hemingway, I believe, once observed that what one doesn't put on the page is as important as what one does. And what Bush did not discuss in his farewell address also defines his presidency. Here is a partial list:

* Climate change
* China
* Russia
* North Korea
* Iran
* Pakistan
* Osama bin Laden
* Nuclear weapons
* Poverty
* Health insurance
* Foreclosures
* Housing
* Guantanamo
* National debt
* Budget deficit
* Trade deficit
* Wall Street
* Financial regulation
* Dow Jones
* Retirement security
* Social Security
* Medicaid
* Energy
* Immigration
* Automobile industry
* Housing
* Subprime credit
* Wages
* Jobs
* FEMA

What else is there to say? In the end, after eight long and traumatic years, Bush did not have much to tell us. Who wouldn't rather watch a miracle airplane landing than a failure saying goodbye?

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/davidcorn/2009/01/what-bush-left-out-of-his-flat.html
Go on-site to gain access to David Corn's Twitter siteby clicking on the link above ^
You can follow my postings and appearances via Twitter by clicking here.

Comments
You (and Bush) left out:

Civil liberties
Torture
Extraordinary (illegal) rendtion

Hubris, arrogance, incompetence, corruption...
Posted by: LyndallC | January 16, 2009 2:14 AM
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Go on-site to gain access to the several other comments, pro and con as is to be expected. Still drinking the Kool Aid it seems. SRH
^^^^^^^^^^^^

Saundra Hummer

January 18th, 2009, 02:59 PM

* * *
Los Angeles socialite's map quest with a Gobi Desert twistBy
Bob Pool
Los Angeles Times
Posted: 01/17/2009
10:37:27 PM PST
LOS ANGELES — She's navigated the world of Los Angeles' elite for eight decades — weekending at Hearst Castle at San Simeon with William Randolph Hearst, riding horses with friends at her family ranch above the boulevard that bears her father's name, partying at gatherings from Newport Beach to Beverly Hills.

She also is a former war correspondent who filed reports from foxholes at Korea's infamous Pork Chop Hill and is co-author of investigative books about the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and legendary Russian "mad monk" Grigori Rasputin.

Now, Patte Barham says she's ready for her biggest challenge: uncovering the lost crown jewels of the czar of Russia.

It's a quest some believe is as fanciful as the legend surrounding the artifacts — but Barham is having none of that.

The diamonds, Faberge eggs, imperial Russian crowns and tiaras, jewel-encrusted gold picture frames and opera-length strands of pearls, rubies, sapphires and diamonds are hidden in seven coffins in a hole 7 feet square and 10 feet deep in the middle of Mongolia's Gobi Desert, she contends.

That's where Barham says her stepfather buried them Oct. 3, 1917.

Onetime Russian prince George Meskhi-Gleboff spoke often of the treasure after he came to the United States and married Barham's mother, socialite and silver heiress Jessica Gorman Barham.

Shortly before his death in 1960, Barham says, her stepfather handed her an envelope containing a map that showed where the treasure was hidden. Embittered to the end by the Russian royal family's execution, he asked that she not do anything until the Russian government admitted to the slayings of the Romanovs and recognized them with a state funeral. That occurred in 1998.

But soon after, the hand-drawn map mysteriously disappeared. Although Barham has searched her 10,000-square-foot mansion for it without success, she insists she has memorized the jewels' hiding spot. Now, the energetic dowager is determined to see the trove recovered.

"They should be returned to the Russian people," Barham says of the czar's treasure.

There are those who doubt that these priceless jewels still exist and whether Barham has any shot of finding them if they do. Some experts on Russian history, while praising Barham's passion for the project, question whether she has her facts right. A few years ago, she tried to get the Discovery Channel interested in partnering with her to search. But the deal fell through when she could not produce the map.

Pointing to a copy of a circa-1916 map of Mongolia, she is certain she can find the treasure.

"It's there," she says.

Barham, a petite woman who carefully guards her age, readily talks of growing up amid wealth as the daughter of the late Frank Barham, onetime publisher of the Los Angeles Herald-Express and business partner of newspaper mogul Hearst.

Her family's close relationship with Hearst meant they were frequent guests at San Simeon and at a second Julia Morgan-designed Hearst retreat, Wyntoon, near Mount Shasta.

In the late 1940s, Barham worked as a reporter for the Herald-Express. Hearst sent her to Korea in 1951 to report on the war there. Later, she wrote for Hearst's successor paper, the Herald-Examiner.

After Gleboff married her mother, Barham says, she often heard him recount how had he had been an aide to Russian Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Czarina Alexandra, at the time of the Russian Revolution.

Gleboff served as assistant to the treasurer of the "czar's purse." In that role, he was summoned Feb. 28, 1917, to the czar's palace south of St. Petersburg and instructed by Alexandra to transport the Romanovs' personal treasures to the Bank of China to what is now known as Beijing.

The valuables were hidden in seven coffins, two of which held the bodies of children being taken to China for burial as a ruse to explain the trip to authorities, Gleboff recorded in his journal. He and his traveling party set out first by train and then by camel caravan for China.

The group was making its way across the Gobi Desert when bandits attacked. After driving off the attackers in a shootout, Gleboff decided to hide the crown jewels by burying them along with the bodies before making his way out of the desert. The next year, he relocated to the United States.

In the 1930s, during the difficult days of the Great Depression, the topic of the treasure often came up, Barham says.

"Papa George said, 'I know where it's buried. I just need to get there.' We didn't talk about it with other people because nobody would believe it."

Barham's mother was a believer, though. "She said, 'OK, we'll make one attempt.' She put up the money and he went through about $300,000. They got as far as Turkey and the authorities wouldn't let him go on," Barham says.

"My mother was so upset that she'd lost all the money."

Hearst was preparing to bankroll a second attempt to find the czar's jewels in 1951. But the eccentric publisher died before the expedition could be mounted.

For her part, Barham was motivated to pursue the treasure after she co-wrote a cookbook and a book about Rasputin with his daughter, Maria Grigorevna Rasputin. Maria Rasputin revealed that as a child she had been in the room when Alexandra asked Gleboff to pack up the treasure and take it to the Peking bank.

"I got to know Maria very well," Barham says. "She said Papa George had been very close to the czarina and she trusted him. Crazy as it sounds, the story was all true."

Barham waited a year "out of respect for the state funeral of the czar and his family" before attempting to mount a 1999 expedition to recover the jewels, said Chris Harris, a Beverly Hills public relations consultant she hired to help organize the search.

Hopes for the recovery expedition to the Gobi Desert evaporated when the cable network backed out and Barham balked at a Texas university's request for a $500,000 "donation" to help train Mongolian judges in exchange for smoothing the way with Mongolian officials for her to enter the Gobi.

Harris remains confident that the crown jewels are still buried beneath the sands.

"There's no doubt whatsoever it's there. I've talked to people who know what happened back then. This is not a Hollywood story. This is real history," he says.

Others, however, aren't so sure. Russian history expert J. Arch Getty, a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, wonders why the czarina would have sent the crown jewels to China by way of the Gobi Desert instead of to Europe. "I can't imagine anything less secure than the Bank of Peking in 1917," he says.

But "what a great story, complete with buried treasure and disappearing maps. I've never heard anything like this. You can't exclude it. A lot of valuable coins and jewels were changing hands under dubious circumstances."

Rumors about the map's whereabouts have swirled in recent years. A manuscript by a now-deceased author on the life of Barham's stepfather suggested that it is hidden in Gleboff's coffin at the Hollywood Forever cemetery.

"If it was buried with him, we'd dig the old boy up," Barham laughs as she sits in her drawing room, which brims with other Hearst-era treasures in addition to the chandelier.

Although the map might have been stolen, it is also possible that it was caught up with other papers in the Barham family archives that have been donated over the years to colleges and universities, she says.

Barham says her stepfather's map corresponded precisely with a 1912 cartographic survey of Mongolia. Because of that, she says, she remembers the location of the treasure and is confident she would recognize the spot from the air.

"We want to do a flyover so we can record the exact GPS coordinates," she says. Then, she plans to go in with authorities and retrieve the treasure.

And after 90-plus years, Barham pledges, the czar's crown jewels can return to Russia.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11482884?source=rss
*

Saundra Hummer

January 19th, 2009, 04:34 PM

*
Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Katie Laverne Grannis
(1919-2008)

LeRoy's wife Katie recently passed on. Here's her obituary, along with a link to the online guestbook where you can leave messages to LeRoy and the family: Go on-site for photo. She was a beauty you know. SRH

:angel
Katie Laverne Grannis
-
GRANNIS, KATIE LAVERNE

Katie LaVerne Grannis passed away December 3, 2008, in Carlsbad, California, with her husband of sixty-nine years, Leroy (Granny) Grannis, and her family by her side.

Katie was born on September 23, 1919, in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Iva Perkins and Edward A. Tracy. She had a sister Bette Tracy Finlayson, as well as a half-brother Ted Sizemore and a half-sister Ruth Sizemore Goodcell. The family moved to Southern California in 1923, and Katie grew up in Huntington Park, graduating from Huntington Park High School in 1938. In 1939, she married Leroy Frank Grannis. They had four children, Katie (Kit) Padilla, Frank Grannis, Nancy Grannis-Wiig, and John Grannis. They lived in Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, and Hermosa Beach, until retiring to Carlsbad in 1978.

From the early 1960's to the early 2000's, Katie and Granny travelled extensively nationally and internationally to photograph surfing and hang-gliding events, as well as to visit friends and family. Katie loved animals and children, and was very loyal to all of her old-time friends. She was a loving, devoted wife, mother, sister, and friend, loved and respected by everyone who knew her.

She is survived by her husband, four children, six grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and one great-great-granddaughter, as well as her sister Bette and numerous relatives and friends. A private Burial was held on December 9th, in Redondo Beach. A Celebration of her life will be held on Sunday, December 28th, from 1 - 3 p.m., at the Harding Community Center auditorium, 3096 Harding Street, Carlsbad, CA.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Obituaries
posted by Malcolm at Wednesday, December 17, 2008
http://legendarysurfers.com/blog/2008/12/katie-laverne-grannis-1919-2008.html

I knew Katie and Leroy Grannis when they lived in Redondo Beach, as I knew their oldest daughter Katie (whom her mother called Kit), and then to make us, Katie (Kit & me), even happer, they bought the house next door to us and we were able to spend even more time together doing the things we were both into, the beach, boys and music. We had the best of times, crazy kids that we were.

Katie (the mother), was so good to my daughter that she endeared herself to me even more than before. A beautiful lady inside and out. I spent a lot of time around and with her, even after Katie had married, with her inviting and taking her grandchildren, my daughter and me to Farell's Ice Cream Parlor for their outrageous deserts and delicious cheeseburgers. She was a kind and loving lady whom I enjoyed so much. God Speed Katie, and my sympathies to you Leroy and Katie (Kit), along with all of your other family members and friends.

Katie Laverne Grannis, you are missed.

Sandi

.

Saundra Hummer

January 19th, 2009, 06:09 PM

Text of Barack Obama's speech at Lincoln Memorialby
The Associated Press
Monday January 19, 2009, 1:57 PM
Text of President-elect Barack Obama's speech Sunday at the pre-inauguration celebration at the base of the Lincoln Memorial:

I want to thank all the speakers and performers for reminding us, through song and through words, just what it is that we love about America. And I want to thank all of you for braving the cold and the crowds and traveling in some cases thousands of miles to join us here today. Welcome to Washington, and welcome to this celebration of American renewal.

In the course of our history, only a handful of generations have been asked to confront challenges as serious as the ones we face right now. Our nation is at war. Our economy is in crisis. Millions of Americans are losing their jobs and their homes; they're worried about how they'll afford college for their kids or pay the stack of bills on their kitchen table. And most of all, they are anxious and uncertain about the future -- about whether this generation of Americans will be able to pass on what's best about this country to our children and their children.

I won't pretend that meeting any one of these challenges will be easy. It will take more than a month or a year, and it will likely take many. Along the way there will be setbacks and false starts and days that test our resolve as a nation.

But despite all of this -- despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead -- I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure -- that it will prevail, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time.

What gives me that hope is what I see when I look out across this mall. For in these monuments are chiseled those unlikely stories that affirm our unyielding faith -- a faith that anything is possible in America. Rising before us stands a memorial to a man who led a small band of farmers and shopkeepers in revolution against the army of an Empire, all for the sake of an idea. On the ground below is a tribute to a generation that withstood war and depression -- men and women like my grandparents who toiled on bomber assembly lines and marched across Europe to free the world from tyranny's grasp. Directly in front of us is a pool that still reflects the dream of a King, and the glory of a people who marched and bled so that their children might be judged by their character's content. And behind me, watching over the union he saved, sits the man who in so many ways made this day possible.

And yet, as I stand here today, what gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us today, but what fills the spaces in between. It is you -- Americans of every race and region and station who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there.

It is the same thing that gave me hope from the day we began this campaign for the presidency nearly two years ago; a belief that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everybody together -- Democrats, Republicans and Independents; Latino, Asian and Native American; black and white, gay and straight, disabled and not -- then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process.

This is what I believed, but you made this belief real. You proved once more that people who love this country can change it. And as I prepare to assume the presidency, yours are the voices I will take with me every day I walk into that Oval Office -- the voices of men and women who have different stories but hold common hopes; who ask only for what was promised us as Americans -- that we might make of our lives what we will and see our children climb higher than we did.

It is this thread that binds us together in common effort; that runs through every memorial on this mall; that connects us to all those who struggled and sacrificed and stood here before.

It is how this nation has overcome the greatest differences and the longest odds -- because there is no obstacle that can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.

That is the belief with which we began this campaign, and that is how we will overcome what ails us now. There is no doubt that our road will be long. That our climb will be steep. But never forget that the true character of our nation is revealed not during times of comfort and ease, but by the right we do when the moment is hard. I ask you to help reveal that character once more, and together, we can carry forward as one nation, and one people, the legacy of our forefathers that we celebrate today.

Thank you, America. God bless you.

. . .

Saundra Hummer

January 20th, 2009, 12:52 AM

:: :: :: :: ::
Washington waits for more pardons
By
Sam Youngman and Kevin Bogardus
Posted: 01/19/09 04:46 PM [ET]
A White House official insisted no further pardon announcements are expected in the final hours of George W. Bush’s presidency after Bush commuted the sentences of two jailed border guards.

Bush has until 11:59 a.m. Tuesday to issue more pardons before President-elect Obama is sworn into office as his successor.

Bush could pardon a number of former administration officials, such as ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff.

While not charged, Gonzales is facing a Justice Department probe for his testimony before Congress regarding the U.S. attorneys scandal. Libby has already seen his sentence commuted for lying to federal investigators about his involvement in leaking the name of a CIA agent.

Other famous names in- and outside the Beltway have applied for pardons or to have their sentences commuted with the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney. Jailed former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.), junk bond trade Michael Milken and media mogul Conrad Black have all filed petitions with the office.

Members of Congress have also asked Bush to grant clemency to a number of disgraced lawmakers. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has asked the president to pardon former Illinois Gov. George Ryan (R), while Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has petitioned Bush for clemency for ex-Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

The Office of the Pardon Attorney, however, is facing a severe backlog of applications. The office has received a record number of petitions, more than 10,800. Despite a recent batch of pardons, Bush is the least generous of the presidents since World War II in granting clemency, giving only 171 pardons and commuting 11 sentences.

Lawyers for the Pardon Attorney consider applications for individuals five years after they have been convicted or have been released from confinement. They review cases, checking for prosecutorial misconduct or good behavior, and pass them on to the White House for the final decision.

To expedite the process, lawyers and lobbyists for those seeking pardons instead go straight to the White House, avoiding the Justice Department. Many of the representatives also are former associate White House counsels who maintain ties to past colleagues.

In commuting the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, Bush has responded to pleas from conservatives who favor tight border security. The Border Patrol agents are in prison for shooting an unarmed Mexican drug smuggler. Attorneys for the men had applied for clemency through the Pardon Attorney.

The case of Ramos and Compean was initially a cause célèbre for anti-immigration activists. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, however, have picked up their cause and applied pressure on the Bush administration to pardon them or at least commute the 11- and 12-year prison sentences.

“In reaching his decision, the president closely considered the views of people around the country who believe that the sentences these two men received were too harsh,” another White House official said. “A number of senators and congressmen from both parties and all parts of the country have expressed their strong view that Ramos’s and Compean’s sentences should be commuted. This includes almost the entire bipartisan delegation from Texas, the state in which the crimes occurred.”

Ramos and Compean shot Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, a Mexican marijuana smuggler who was trying to escape, in the buttocks. The two men argued they thought Davila was armed.

Among those who argued for Ramos and Compean to be pardoned or have their sentences commuted were several lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) and Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.). Incoming White House Chief of Staff and former Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) also expressed support for reducing the sentences.

J. Taylor Rushing contributed to this report.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/washington-waits-for-more-pardons-2009-01-19.html :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

January 20th, 2009, 01:57 PM

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Text
of
President Barack Obama's
inaugural address

By
The Associated Press
59 mins ago

Text
of
President Barack Obama's
inaugural address on Tuesday, as delivered.

OBAMA: My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land — a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers ... our found fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort — even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence — the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it)."

America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Saundra Hummer

January 21st, 2009, 02:37 PM

* * *
Obama team announces new rules on lobbyists Aide says federal lobbyists may not contribute financially to the transitionNBC News and news services
updated 3:27 p.m. PT, Tues., Nov. 11, 2008
WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama, who said lobbyists would not run his White House, signaled Tuesday that lobbyists could serve in his transition so long as their activities do not involve areas of policy they have tried to influence in the past year.

John Podesta, a top transition aide to Obama, said federal lobbyists will be prohibited from any lobbying while they are at work on the transition.

The transition office said in a statement, "if someone has lobbied in the last 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied."

Curb influence
"President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to change the way Washington works and curb the influence of lobbyists," said Podesta in the transition team statement.

"During the campaign, federal lobbyists could not contribute to or raise money for the campaign...the president-elect is taking those commitments even further by announcing the strictest, and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history."

The new rules also call for "a gift ban that is aggressive in reducing the influence of special interests" and an end to transition contributions from federal lobbyists.

In an off-camera briefing Tuesday, Podesta was asked whether potential staff expertise may be lost as the team adheres to these new rules.

He replied, "So be it," reiterating Obama's commitment have the "toughest" rules to "stop the revolving door" in Washington politics.

More leeway than suggested?
While Podesta is calling the guidelines the toughest ever imposed by a presidential transition, they seem to give lobbyists somewhat more leeway than Obama suggested during his presidential campaign.

In a speech last November in Spartanburg, S.C., Obama said: "I have done more to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race...I don't take a dime of their money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House."

At other times, he said lobbyists would not "run" his White House.

Obama's campaign Web site said: "No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration."

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27665871/

© 2009 MSNBC.com

Go on-site for photo, etc. * * * * *

Saundra Hummer

January 21st, 2009, 03:11 PM

Obama Moves Toward Shuttering Gitmo
Military Commissions Suspended, Order to Close Detention Facility Expected
By
ARIANE de VOGUE,
JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG and DENNIS POWELL
Jan. 21, 2009—

Fulfilling a campaign pledge, President Barack Obama is expected to issue an executive order this week directing the eventual closure of the detention center at theGuantanamo Bay military facility in Cuba, which holds approximately 250 inmates the U.S. government defines as enemy combatants.

Last night, just hours after he took the oath of office, Obama ordered Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to direct the chief prosecutor of the Office of Military Commissions to seek a continuance of 120 days for any case that has been referred to the office of military commissions and to cease referring any new cases for prosecution.

This morning, military judges hearing the cases of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, and his co-conspirators, as well as a different judge hearing the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, granted the prosecution's motion.

According to the motion filed by the prosecutors, the continuance was requested "in order to provide the administration sufficient time to conduct a review of detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to evaluate the cases of detainees not approved for release or transfer to determine whether prosecution may be warranted for any offenses those detainees may have committed, and to determine which forum best suits any future prosecution."

Obama's action was praised by American Civil Liberties Executive Director Anthony Romero, who issued a statement saying, "President Obama's 'time out' comes at the perfect time in these shameful military commissions and shows he means business on Day One. President Obama has to restore an America we can be proud of again by once and for all shutting down Guantanamo and its shameful military commissions."

But the top Republican in the House of Representatives wasn't immediately convinced after seeing a draft of the executive order to close the facility and stop the military trials taking place there.

"The key question is where do you put these terrorists? Do you bring them inside our borders? Do you release them back into the battlefield? Is it really necessary to suspend the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the avowed mastermind of the September 11 plot, even though he has objected to the delay? " Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, asked in a statement.

"If there is a better solution, we're open to hearing it," he continued. "But most communities around America don't want dangerous terrorists imported into their neighborhoods, and I can't blame them. As long as it is necessary to protect our national security interests, the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay should remain open."

The new administration has also taken steps to delay some scheduled hearings in cases filed by detainees seeking to challenge their detentions in federal court. On Tuesday, the administration asked and was granted a two-week delay for a case that had a hearing scheduled for today. In its motion the government wrote that it is currently "assessing how it will proceed" in that case, noting that "[t]ime is needed to make that assessment and determination."

One source familiar with discussions among transition officials said the executive order directing the detention center's closure could specify a time period of "within a year." An administration source suggested that there could be at least two other executive orders dealing with policies going forward and the implementation of interrogation techniques.

Obama: 'We Are Going to Close Guantanamo'
Earlier this month on "This Week," Obama outlined for George Stephanopoulos how difficult the closure would be: "I think it's going to take some time and our legal teams are working in consultation with our national security apparatus as we speak to help design exactly what we need to do. But I don't want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution."

More than likely, the order will show that Obama is trying to turn a page from the Bush administration, but that he is going to leave himself some flexibility regarding how he plans to deal with the detainees.

"Look for the Obama administration to distance itself from the Bush administration but not as fully as some would like," says Matt Waxman, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs in the Bush administration. "Obama will want to make a break, but no president wants to give away presidential war powers."

In the motion filed last night, prosecutors laid out the administration's options: "Implicit in this review is the possibility that the administration may forgo prosecution in certain cases altogether, move prosecution of some or all cases to federal district courts, and/or make changes to the rules and procedures applicable to military commissions."

The administration is expected to take some time to tackle the thorny issue regarding the closure of the military base. The most pressing and difficult questions are what to do with those detainees too dangerous to be released who are, or might be, tried for war crimes and cannot be tried in federal court.

There are a variety of reasons why some of the detainees cannot be tried in federal court:

Some evidence could be tainted by improper interrogations.

There is strong intelligence linking individuals to al Qaeda, but it is not strong enough to stand up to a court standard of reasonable doubt.

The information might be good but can't be used in an open court setting without exposing national secrets.

There are practical problems associated with a court trial regarding issues such as witness availability.

The Obama administration is expected to lay out broad language regarding the preferred course for dealing with dangerous cases, as well as specifying that detainees who are no longer considered dangerous could be transferred to home countries or third party countries willing to accept them.

New Take on Interrogation Techniques
It is unlikely, but possible, that the new administration would in the first week expressly prohibit some interrogation techniques or refer to new legal parameters for the CIA program.

In his administration, Obama has tapped some fierce critics of the Bush administration's handling of the legal war on terror.

Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen, who is slated to take over the Office of Legal Counsel, which is charged with giving legal advice to the president, has publicly eviscerated the efforts of John Yoo, who worked for the OLC in the Bush administration and wrote the infamous2002 memo that laid out the administration's legal position on torture.

"The shockingly flawed content of this memo, the deficient processes that led to its issuance, the horrific acts it encouraged, the fact that it was kept secret for years and that the Bush administration continues to withhold other memos like it -- all demand our outrage," Johnsen wrote in Slate magazine.

Georgetown University Law Center professor Neal Katyal is set to become the principal deputy solicitor general. It was Katyal who served as chief counsel to Salim Hamdan in the landmark Supreme Court case that overturned the Bush administration's early attempts at military commissions.

Marty Lederman, also a Georgetown Law School professor, is reportedly joining Johnsen at the OLC. Lederman has spent years criticizing the Bush administration's legal war on terror and titled one of his posts, "Yes, It's a No-Brainer: Waterboarding Is Torture."

ABC News' Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Terrorism/story?id=6693079&page=1 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Saundra Hummer

January 21st, 2009, 07:42 PM

I need to find some downloads for a few of the days events, one is the great closing prayer by one of the most likeable of men, the Rev. Joseph Lowery. His humor and humanity is something we could all benefit from.

Then there's the sea of like minded people filling the Mall and the whole of Washington D.C., as there were thousands upon thousands who couldn't even use their tickets to get in due to the crush of people. Over two million people it's being said. Can you imagine? Well sure we can as it was all on TV, and in living color.

To cap it off for me, was the first dance by Michelle and our new president, Barack Obama; with Beyonce singing the great Etta James song, "At Last". That song just melted my heart, and to see the looks on each of their faces Michelle's, Barack's and Beyonce's was really quite heart rending. Such a happy time, even though it filled our hearts and thoughts with so much from the back of our minds.

I need to look about and see if I can find a download of these moments in our history. It was all really something to see and hear.

Saundra Hummer

January 21st, 2009, 11:56 PM

:: :: :: :: :: Peruvian region outlaws biopiracy
Zoraida Portillo
21 January 2009
PHOTO
Women from the Potato Park, an initiative for six of Cusco's native communities, now benefit from the regional law.
Zoraida Portillo
LIMA - A region of Peru is claiming to be the first in the world to enact a law outlawing biopiracy and protecting indigenous knowledge at a regional level.

Cusco — in the Peruvian Andes, once the capital of the Inca Empire — has outlawed the plundering of native species for commercial gain,including patenting resources or the genes they contain.

Corporations or scientists must now seek permission from, and potentially share benefits with, the local people whose traditions have protected the species for centuries.

Indigenous communities can now implement ways to protect local resources, including creating registers of biodiversity and protocols for granting access to it.

"I know of no other local or regional laws similar to this one that brings a legal framework for access to the genetic resources and traditional knowledge and practices — I think this is a significant precedent," said Michel Pimbert of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

Local scientists and activists believe the law's value lies in the fact that for the first time a regional government will be empowered to challenge its national government on biopiracy.

"The new law is a good example of how local governments can create the appropriate legal and institutional framework, as well as the mechanisms to implement it, to ensure that biopiracy does not prey on the creativity of indigenous peoples and local communities," Alejandro Argumedo, director of Asociacion ANDES, a Cusco-based indigenous organisation, told SciDev.Net.

But while the law is an important precedent, it could come into conflict with national laws regarding the recording of indigenous knowledge, said María Scurrah, a Peruvian scientist specializing in farmer's rights.

The National Institute for the Protection of the Consumer and Intellectual Property has created a National Register of Indigenous Knowledge. But the Cusco law says that native communities of the region will make their own records and share them only according to certain rules.

"I believe that ancient knowledge should be kept by the community and be brought to a national registry to ensure payment to each community for each variety and species registered," said Scurrah. "That is the only way to pay for each community to be the guardian of biodiversity."

Pimbert said that the most significant aspect of the law is that it shows progress can be made at a regional level, rather than working through "central governments that have become increasingly distant and unaccountable to citizens in many countries throughout the world".
Go on-site to gain access to this article and it's photo. Just click on the followoing link.
http://www.scidev.net/en/news/peruvian-region-outlaws-biopiracy.html :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

January 22nd, 2009, 12:36 AM

:: :: :: :: ::
THE PROGRESS REPORT
January 21, 2009 by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, Ryan Powers, and Brad Johnson

ADMINISTRATION
Now Comes The Hard Part
Yesterday, under bright skies and before an estimated crowd of more than a million people gathered on the National Mall, Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States. President Obama marked the historic occasion with a somber but stirring inaugural address, telling America that the "challenges we face" -- real, many, and serious -- "will be met."After eight years of conservative misrule in a complex and changing world, the United States faces war, recession, the climate crisis, and systems of health care and education that continue to fail too many Americans. Obama declared these ills not just a "consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some" but also "our collective failure to make hard choices." He repeated a common theme of his candidacy -- that good government alone is not sufficient to restore America's promise. Instead, "the faith and determination of the American people" set the course of the nation. "Starting today," Obama said, "we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."

'THE WORK OF REMAKING AMERICA': The Bush administration was marked by a near-ideological adherence to irresponsibility. The dismissal of facts, the failure to plan, and the elevation of politics over competence, led to a host of problems that now consume this nation. Repeatedly, Obama obliquely rebuked the legacy of the previous office-holder. Obama pledged to change the course of government, saying that "our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed." He pledged to "restore science to its rightful place" -- after eight years of "concerted assault" on the environment and inaction on global warming. Obama rejected "as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" -- in contrast to Bush, who personally authorized torture. And he signaled a new course in foreign policy, telling the Muslim world that "we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

'THE PRICE AND THE PROMISE OF CITIZENSHIP': In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush rallied the nation to continue shopping. In 2006, with recession looming, Bush asked the American people to "go shopping more." In a stark contrast, Obama defined his ideal of the "price and the promise of citizenship." He called for "a new era of responsibility," in which every American recognizes "that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and our world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task." In a service event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, "when a grateful nation emulates Dr. King's sacrifice and service to others," Obama explained his vision of shared responsibility. "If we're just waiting around for somebody else to do it for us, if we're waiting around for somebody else to clean up the vacant lot or waiting for somebody else to get involved in tutoring a child, if we're waiting for somebody else to do something, it never gets done," he said. "We're going to have to take responsibility -- all of us."

'THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE': Obama honored the men and women of the armed services "not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves," he said. Obama then argued that this spirit "must inhabit us all." this call to service is not new. In the early days of his presidential campaign, Obama "advocated a major expansion of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps and other national service programs," and established a goal of "50 hours of community service per year for middle and high school students." For MLK Day, Obama asked "all Americans to make an ongoing commitment to better the lives of others." The Obama team established USAService.org, a website meant to be a clearinghouse for service opportunities. Over 11,000 service projects across the country -- "from working in homeless shelters and mentoring young people to assembling more than 80,000 care packages for our troops at a service event here in Washington, D.C." -- were organized on the site. As one volunteer in Albuquerque, NM, told reporters, "More people need to be aware that this isn't just six people building a fence, but instead a community coming together to say, 'All right we're getting involved, we're going to make a difference.'"

UNDER THE RADAR
ADMINISTRATION -- OBAMA ORDERS HALT TO LAST-MINUTE BUSH REGULATIONS: Hours after being sworn in as America's 44th president, Barack Obama ordered "a freeze on new or proposed regulations at all government agencies and departments" made in the final months and weeks of Bush administration. A memo from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said that every regulation would have to be reviewed by the department or agency head appointed by Obama. In some cases, however, Obama is too late. For example, "just six weeks ago, the Bush administration issued revised endangered species regulations to reduce the input of federal scientists and to block the law from being used to fight global warming." The rule went into effect before Obama took office, therefore requiring him "to restart the lengthy rulemaking process." For rules that have already taken effect, "the Democratic-controlled Congress might be able to help the Obama administration by using the Congressional Review Act, a legislative tool to bring new federal regulations under scrutiny," notes the AP. Obama will also act to overturn older Bush regulations; one of his first moves in office will be to reverse the "global gag rule" that "prevents federal money from going to international family planning groups that" provide abortion counseling or services.

IRAQ-- IRAQ IS WILLING TO HAVE U.S. WITHDRAW AT A FASTER PACE: In November, the Bush administration and the Iraqi government signed an agreement that would remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. With the inauguration of President Obama, who has pledged to withdraw on a 16-month time frame, Iraqi government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh said yesterday that government officials support the U.S. leaving "even before the end of 2011." "The government-owned newspaper Al-Sabah reported Wednesday that Iraqi authorities have drafted contingency plans in case Obama orders a 'sudden' withdrawal of all forces and not just combat troops," the AP notes. "We are capable of controlling the situation in the country and we believe we have passed the worst," remarked the chairman of the Iraqi parliament's defense committee, Abbas al-Bayati. Today, Obama will meet with senior commanders to discuss the withdrawal from Iraq. Obama reaffirmed in his inaugural address Tuesday that he would "begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people."

JUSTICE -- FEDERAL JUDGE RULES CHENEY DID NOT INTEND TO ILLEGALLY DISCARD RECORDS: U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has lifted an injunction mandating the preservation of outgoing Vice President Cheney's records. A group of historians and nonprofit organizations -- including the American Historical Association, the Society of American Archivists, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington -- filed a joint lawsuit in September asking that Cheney's papers be made public. In her decision, which came on the eve of President Obama's inauguration, Kollar-Kotelly rejected the plaintiffs' claim that Cheney "intended to illegally discard some of his official records." While the Justice Department offered what Kollar-Kotelly called "constantly shifting arguments," that was not enough to undermine the testimony of Claire M. O'Donnell, a Cheney aide, who pledged that "key Cheney documents and other materials will be transferred as required to the National Archives." Stanley I. Kutler of the University of Wisconsin Law School and one of the plaintiffs in the case does not expect Cheney to comply with the law. "When the Archives goes to open Cheney's papers, they are going to find empty boxes," he said. "Why did he fight this order so much if he did not have the intent to leave with these papers?" The DOJ had previously argued, unsuccessfully, that the lawsuit was unconstitutional.

THINK FASTThe Dow Jones industrial average lost 4 percent of its value yesterday, falling below 8,000, while Nasdaq and the S&P 500-stock index both plunged more than 5 percent." The drop came "as fresh evidence mounted that the industry's problems are larger than previously understood, larger than the response so far mustered by the government and perhaps larger than the resources remaining in its rescue program."

The housing crisis "is likely to deepen further this year, with no broad recovery until at least 2010, according to a consensus of building-industry economists." Single-family-housing starts have dropped nearly 75 percent from their peak in 2005.

Yesterday, just hours after Obama was sworn in, the Senate approved seven of his nominees, including Steven Chu as Energy Secretary and Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security Secretary. The nomination of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State -- which is being held up by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) -- will be voted on today.

As one of his first acts in office, President Obama ordered a freeze on new or proposed regulations by the Bush administration at all government agencies and departments. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel issued a memo declaring that "no proposed or final regulation should be sent to the Office of Federal Register for publication unless and until" it is approved by the new administration.

Israeli troops completed their withdrawal from Gaza early this morning, redeploying to "the perimeter of the war-battered enclave, where more than 1,300 Palestinians died in the Israeli campaign against Hamas." Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, also died during the 22-day offensive.

Doctors reported that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was "feeling well" after suffering a seizure yesterday and being taken to the hospital. "Medical experts said a seizure in a brain cancer patient was not unusual and ordinarily had no serious consequences," and a hospital spokeswoman said Kennedy was "awake and answering questions." He is set to be released this morning.

President Obama is "strongly considering” appointing former Sen. George Mitchell (D-ME) as U.S. envoy to the Middle East. In a 2001 report on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Mitchell called for "Israelis to freeze construction of new settlements and stop shooting at unarmed demonstrators, and Palestinians to prevent attacks and punish those who perpetrated them."

Professor Neal Katyal of Georgetown University, who successfully argued the landmark detainee rights case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld before the Supreme Court, will serve as Obama's deputy solicitor general.

And finally: Yesterday while their parents were out dancing at the inaugural balls, daughters Malia and Sasha had some of their friends over to watch Disney movies and participate in a scavenger hunt, in which they "ran around their new home, learning about this history of the White House." ABC News reports that at the end of the game, "they opened a door to discover their favorite musical performers: Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas -- the pop boy band sensation who first exploded on the Disney Channel and also appeared earlier this week at the Kids’ Inaugural Concert."

GOOD NEWS
President Obama "instructed military prosecutors late Tuesday to seek a 120-day suspension of legal proceedings involving detainees" at Guantanamo Bay.
STATE WATCH
TEXAS: State Board of Education convenes public hearing on how evolution should be covered in science classes.

NORTH DAKOTA: Legislation would "require abortion facilities to offer a woman who wants to have an abortion the opportunity to see the fetus beforehand."

UTAH: A new statewide poll shows 63 percent support additional legal protections for gay and transgender people.

BLOG WATCH
THINK PROGRESS: Rush Limbaugh: "I hope Obama fails."

WONK ROOM: A close look at Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs head Cass Sunstein's take on cost-benefit regulation.

YGLESIAS: There are no good alternatives from serious carbon emission curbs in the effort to forestall climate catastrophe.

TALKING POINTS MEMO: Fox News' Chris Wallace wonders if Chief Justice John Robert's bungling of the oath of office means Barack Obama isn't really president.

DAILY GRILL

"Roberts Corrects Obama After Oath Stumble."
-- Fox News, 1/20/09, on Chief Justice John Roberts asking President Obama to recite the first line of the oath in the incorrect order

VERSUS

"Roberts stumbled slightly over the 35-word constitutionally prescribed oath of office as he swore in Barack Obama as the 44th president on Tuesday, sending the new chief executive into a verbal detour of his own."
-- AP, 1/20/09
This is only a summary. Go on-site to view the articles in their entirety. Just click the following link/URL:

http://www.thinkprogress.org :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

January 22nd, 2009, 12:31 PM

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Schwarzenegger Asks Obama to Reverse Bush Rules

Thursday, January 22, 2009 6:30 AM

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't waiting to press the Obama administration on one of California's top priorities - regulating greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.

The Republican governor sent a letter to the new Democratic president on Wednesday, asking him to give California and other states permission to implement tough tailpipe-emission standards.

"Your administration has a unique opportunity to both support the pioneering leadership of these states and move America toward global leadership on addressing climate change," Schwarzenegger wrote.

He wants the Environmental Protection Agency to reverse a 2007 conclusion by the Bush administration that states do not have authority to impose greenhouse gas standards for new cars, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles. The Bush administration argued that such goals can be met only by regulating fuel-efficiency standards, which falls under the authority of the federal government.

Obama has vowed to revisit the decision, a promise echoed last week by his nominee for EPA administrator. Lisa Jackson awaits Senate confirmation.

The EPA referred a call Wednesday to Obama's transition team, which declined comment.

It's unclear how long it might take the new administration to review the matter. In a separate letter to Jackson, California's top air pollution official said the agency could fast-track a public rule-making process that often can take up to a year.

Air Resources Board chairwoman Mary Nichols wrote that the EPA already has an "ample record" to help it reconsider the Bush administration decision.

California is seeking a waiver from the federal Clean Air Act that would allow it to impose stiffer air pollution standards than the federal government. It first asked for a waiver in 2005 to implement a 2002 state law intended to cut vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions.

The law, which was supposed to take effect this year, requires automakers to cut emissions by nearly a third by 2016. Thirteen other states have passed similar laws, while three more are considering California's standards, according to the California air board. Federal law allows states to choose between federal and California clean-air rules.

The Bush administration's ruling marked the first time the EPA fully denied California a waiver under the Clean Air Act since Congress gave the state the right to obtain such waivers in 1967.

Democrats in Congress accused the administration of political meddling after reports indicated staff scientists at the EPA supported giving California a waiver.

The auto regulations are a key part of California's strategy to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions. The state is the world's 12th largest producer of the emissions, which are blamed for contributing to global climate change.

© 2009 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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Saundra Hummer

January 22nd, 2009, 12:55 PM

IIIIIIIIIIIII
The Trouble With Triclosan in Your Soap
posted by
Mel, selected from Food & Water Watch Dec 16, 2008 3:00 pm
filed under: Food & Recipes, Green Kitchen Tips, Hands & Feet, Non-Toxic Cleaning, antibacterial, bacteria, chemical, cosmetics, household products, soap, toxic, triclosan
By
Food & Water Watch and Beyond Pesticides
Who knew that washing your hands could harm your health and the environment? Thanks to the chemical industry, a hazardous antibacterial compound called triclosan is now an ingredient in many household and personal care products such as soaps, cleaners, cosmetics, clothing, and even children’s toys. While consumers might think triclosan can protect them from harmful bacteria, it turns out that the use of this dangerous chemical in household products is no more effective than soap and water; and may be doing more harm than good.

To make matters worse, triclosan persists in the environment, mixes with other chemicals to form more toxic substances, contributes to the growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics and causes a range of human and ecological health problems.

What is Triclosan?
Chemical company Ciba invented triclosan in the 1960s. In 1972, the company introduced triclosan to the consumer market where it was confined for the most part to health care settings. But in the last decade, it has been sold to household product manufacturers as an antibacterial agent. These manufacturers then create antibacterial products that contain triclosan, which are marketed to consumers as healthier than other products.

Depending on the company that sells the chemical, it also appears in products as Microban, Irgasan (DP 300 or PG 60), Biofresh, Lexol-300, Ster-Zac or Cloxifenolum. Some antibacterial soaps use triclocarban in place of triclosan.

No Benefits
Claiming that products containing this antibacterial substance promote good health is misleading. While these products do inhibit bacterial growth, experts question whether this is really necessary for everyday household use. In fact, soaps that contain triclosan have not been proven to be more effective in preventing normal household illnesses than ordinary soap and water. In 2005, an FDA advisory panel of experts voted 11 to one that antibacterial soaps were no more effective than regular soap and water in fighting infections.

Many Risks
Triclosan can create more potent strains of bacteria, increasing antibacterial and antibiotic resistance. So its use in household products may actually contribute to more illnesses. That’s because triclosan kills most–but not all–of the bacteria it encounters. The germs that survive a triclosan onslaught emerge stronger and harder to kill in the future. With the increasing prevalence of triclosan, common bacteria can become more resistant. And if they infect people, treatment with antibiotics could be more difficult.

Because antibacterial resistance is a growing health concern, the American Medical Association in 2000 said that “there is little evidence to support the use of antimicrobials in consumer products” and that given the risk of antimicrobial resistance, “it may be prudent to avoid the use of antimicrobial agents in consumer products.”

Antibacterial resistance is not the only health concern associated with triclosan. The increased use of antibacterials in general has been linked to increased allergies in children. Further studies specific to triclosan have shown that it affects reproduction in lab animals, produces toxic chemicals such as dioxin and chloroform when it reacts with other chemicals like the chlorine in water, irritates skin in humans and might even cause cancer. New laboratory studies on rats and frogs show that triclosan can disrupt thyroid hormone, alter development and impair important functions at the cellular level. And a study by British researchers found that triclosan has estrogenic and androgenic hormone properties and exposure could potentially contribute to the development of breast cancer.

Triclosan also poses a threat to the environment. It is toxic to algae, phytoplankton and other aquatic life. This is a major problem, as many products that contain triclosan are now washing down our drains and into our water systems, making triclosan a common contaminant of streams and rivers. Because it is a contaminant in sewage sludge that is often spread on land, the chemical is now showing up in earthworms. Triclosan bioaccumulates in these organisms and researchers are concerned that it will accumulate and spread through aquatic and terrestrial food webs.

Today, triclosan has become so common that it has shown up in blood, urine and breast milk of people across the globe. While people who use triclosan products daily have higher levels of the chemical in their bodies, even consumers who do not use triclosan on their skin are exposed to the chemical through food, water and even household dust.

Lack of Regulation
The FDA regulates personal care products containing triclosan when they carry a health claim. FDA requires tests to prove safety and effectiveness of the product. If the product makes a purely cosmetic claim such as “improves skin,” it is considered a cosmetic. FDA does not review or approve the safety and effectiveness of cosmetics.

Both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have some responsibility for regulating the marketing claims companies make about products containing triclosan. But unfortunately, neither agency restricts use of the chemical in consumer products.

When a product containing triclosan is used on inanimate objects, it is regulated by the EPA, which has registered the chemical as a pesticide. If a company markets a product containing triclosan with a health claim such as “kills bacteria,” then EPA must verify the product’s effectiveness. If a product contains triclosan, but does not make such a claim, then EPA does not review it.

Triclocarban
Triclocarban is an antibacterial substance with a structure and function similar to triclosan that also has toxic properties. While triclosan is widespread in a wide array of consumer products, triclocarban has been mostly used in soaps. Triclosan has been more widely studied than triclocarban because it is more easily detected, but both commonly contaminate waterways, are associated with negative health and environmental impacts, have no added consumer health value and thus should be avoided in household products.

Is it just the U.S.?
Triclosan is a concern to governments all around the world. Although the United States does not currently restrict triclosan use in cosmetics, both Japan and Canada do. The European Union classifies triclosan as an irritant, dangerous for the environment and very toxic to aquatic organisms, while public authorities in Denmark, Finland and Germany have issued statements advising consumers not to use antibacterial products.

What You Can Do About Triclosan?
Be on the lookout for triclosan on the ingredient lists of soaps, facial cleansers, exfoliants, acne medicines, toothpaste, cosmetics, deodorant and other personal care products. When looking for triclosan in plastics or fabrics, watch out for products that are marketed as containing Microban or Biofresh.

Examples of Products That Contain Triclosan:
Neutrogena Deep Clean Body Scrub Bar
Lever 2000 Special Moisture Response Bar Soap, Antibacterial
CVS Antibacterial Hand Soap
Dial Liquid Soap, Antibacterial Bar Soap
Softsoap Antibacterial Liquid Hand Soap
Cetaphil Gentle Antibacterial Cleansing Bar
Clearasil Daily Face Wash
Clean & Clear Oil Free Foaming Facial Cleanser
Dawn Complete Antibacterial Dish Liquid
Ajax Antibacterial Dish Liquid
Colgate Total Toothpaste
Right Guard Sport Deodorant
Old Spice Red Zone, High Endurance and Classic Deodorants
Vaseline Intensive Care Antibacterial Hand Lotion

Support Companies That Do Not Use Triclosan
CleanWell
LUSH
Nature’s Gate
Vermont Country
Naked Soap Works
MiEssence
Purell Instant Hand Sanitizer
Ivory
Paul’s Organic
Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps
Tom’s of Maine
The Natural Dentist
Listerine Essential Care
Peelu
Weleda
Toxic Free Basics

Look for Retailers Who Do Not Sell Products That Contain Triclosan
Ikea and The Body Shop both sell only triclosan-free products. Whole Foods has a large selection of products that do not contain triclosan, but make sure you read the label because Whole Foods does not have a specific store policy banning triclosan. Trader Joe’s has a similar practice. Aveda searched its product ingredient database and found no evidence of triclosan, but the company told Food & Water Watch that it has no specific policy regarding triclosan.

Download the fact sheet about triclosan.
Food & Water Watch is an organization dedicated to the belief that the public should be able to count on our government to oversee and protect the quality and safety of food and water. For more information, go to www.foodandwaterwatch.org.

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Saundra Hummer

January 22nd, 2009, 03:15 PM

VVVVVVV
Obama recovery plan advancing through House panelsBy
ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer Andrew Taylor,
Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 55 mins ago
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's economic recovery plan, including proposals to award a $500 tax credit to most workers and to help the laid-off hang onto their health insurance, met Republican resistance Thursday as it began moving through the House.

At the same time, the House cast a strong bipartisan vote, though symbolic, to reject Obama's request for the unspent $350 billion in a bailout fund for the financial sector. The 270-155 vote was a moot point because the Senate refused to block the release of the money last week. That effectively made it available to the new administration.

But the vote illustrated the difficulties facing Obama as he moves ahead to spend the bailout money without irritating public opinion. House members in both parties have been under pressure to oppose more bailout spending.

On the economic stimulus package, two House committees prepared Obama's $825 billion-plus package for a floor vote next week amid clear signs that the measure was not picking up the level of GOP support that Obama was hoping for.

And some Democrats expressed frustration at a separate hearing Thursday that the bill doesn't do enough to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure. Just $30 billion is reserved for highway repair and construction.

"This bill ... is not even near what we need for short-term needs and it does not in any meaningful way address the long-term needs for our country," griped Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., at a Transportation panel hearing. "But it is better than nothing."

Obama's plans to extend and boost unemployment benefits, give states $87 billion to deal with Medicaid shortfalls and help unemployed people retain health care, were advancing through two other panels. But Republicans are turning against Obama's economic stimulus program, despite promises by both the president and GOP lawmakers to work together.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor said on CBS's "The Early Show" that Republicans want to cooperate with the new administration to help restore the faltering economy, but that many facets of the program being pushed by majority Democrats would fail to create new jobs.

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said provisions temporarily subsidizing health insurance coverage for the unemployed or giving them coverage through Medicaid were critically needed.

"If we don't act now, the recession will accelerate," Waxman said. "Over 6 million people will lose their health insurance, states will cut Medicaid and sick, chronically ill and disabled Americans will be hurt."

At the same time, Timothy Geithner, Obama's nominee to become treasury secretary, won approval by the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday despite acknowledging "careless mistakes" in failing to pay $34,000 in payroll taxes. His confirmation by the full Senate is expected soon.

The House version of Obama's "Making Work Pay" tax credit would give workers making $75,000 per year or less the full $500 tax credit; couples with incomes up to $150,000 a year would receive a $1,000 credit.

The plan being considered Thursday by the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee also would provide a temporary $2,500 tax credit to help pay for college. It would boost the earned income tax credit for low-income workers and permit them to receive the entire $1,000 per child tax credit as a refund in 2009-10 if they make as little as $8,500 a year and wouldn't otherwise qualify.

The panel would also provide $29 billion in tax cuts for businesses to invest in new plants and equipment and permit money-losing businesses to claim refunds on taxes paid up to five years ago, during profitable times. A raft of tax cuts to encourage the production of renewable energy are also in the measure.

On Wednesday night, a key piece of Obama's recovery program advanced through the House Appropriations Committee on a 35-22 party-line vote. The sweeping $358 billion spending measure blends traditional public works programs such as road and bridge construction and water and sewer projects with new ideas such as upgrading the nation's electricity grid and investments in health care information technology systems.

Asked about early partisan votes in shaping the stimulus package, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Obama is making an effort at bipartisanship by meeting with the congressional leaders from both parties on Friday and with House Republicans next week.

Whether the bill is bipartisan, she said, "just depends on how Republicans vote."

Thursday's House vote to block the release of the remaining financial bailout funds was less a rejection of Obama economic strategy than a reflection of deep public antipathy for the bailout program, which Congress set up last fall at the request of the Bush administration.

The public opposition was especially felt in the House, where members must seek re-election every two years.

The vote came a day after the House voted 260-166 to set greater reporting requirements on banks that receive bailout funds. House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., who supported releasing the funds, conceded Thursday's vote was moot.

"Why are we still voting on it?" he asked. "Because there is a degree of anger in the American public at what they think is a very unfair system that gives benefits unduly and disproportionately to some of those who caused the problem, while denying health care and unemployment compensation and a decent higher education for working-class people."

Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090122/ap_on_go_co/obama_economy_26 VVVVVVVVV

Saundra Hummer

January 22nd, 2009, 04:55 PM

:: :: :: :: ::
Obama detractors are alway opining as to what Obama is, as they question who he is. Their questions are more of an opinion than a querie, as I believe when they ask their questions as to just who he is, as they always do, they are constantaly letting us know their thoughts on him, so these queries are somewhat, if not a whole lot disingenuous. The questioners, his detractors, know full well what they're thinking of him, and, of what he represents. So here's a post telling of what he isn't, here are a few answers. The obvious of what he isn't, is that he has little if anything at all in common with the Neo Con Cabal, he is nothing like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Whew, what a relief. We do know full well ourselves, we President Obama supporters, just who he is, and what he means to us; what hope he holds out for us, and, just look at his first days in office, he is acting in good faith just as he promised.

Here is more on our man in the Oval Office:
The Note, 1/22/09: Clean Breaks -- Obama Starts With What He’s Not
By
RICK KLEIN
January 22, 2009
8:17 AMPHOTO: Go on-site to view it as well as a video. There are numerous links within this article as well. Gain access to them on-site .
What we’ve learned about the Obama era in less than 48 hours:

Sometimes symbols matter -- other times, not so much.

President Obama may have some unlikely allies -- but will be missing at least one who was once thought likely.

TurboTax will not be the software of choice in the new White House.

Second times can be charmed -- or just annoying ways to silence bloggers and lawyers.

Madam Secretary has a certain ring to it, too.

Washington is stirring to life at Obama’s direction -- Cabinet secretaries being confirmed, Capitol Hill hearings on major policy priorities, big changes handed down at the White House, in both style and in substance.

It’s momentum time for the new president. Executive orders that fulfill campaign pledges, or introduce himself to the public as just plain different than the guy that preceded him -- that’s the easy part.

So far, almost every move Obama has taken has been to undercut, gut, or reverse something former President Bush did -- welcome moves, surely, to a country that was ready to see that helicopter leave.

New movement Thursday, per ABC’s Jake Tapper: “Later this morning President Obama will sign new executive orders that will, among other tasks shut down the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay by January 22, 2010; shut down the CIA detention centers around the world; establish a process with Defense Secretary Gates and the Attorney General through which the Obama administration will decide what to do with the detainees going forward; and require all US interrogators to adhere to rules in the Army Field Manual.”

Obama looks abroad in his second full day in office: Meetings with his national-security and foreign-policy teams, capped by an appearance at the State Department at 2:40 pm ET, alongside Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Look for the Gitmo order as part of the president’s 10:30 am ET meeting with retired military officers. And the first Robert Gibbs briefing (really this time) around 12:30 pm ET.

The first full day in office made the point that someone else is now in the most famous of homes.

The break, part one: “In a grinding first full day as president, Barack Obama moved decisively to distance himself from the previous administration, pushing top military leaders for a plan to withdraw combat troops from Iraq and issuing a string of orders to make government more open,” Peter Nicholas and Christi Parsons report in the Los Angeles Times.

The break, part two: “President Obama moved swiftly on Wednesday to impose new rules on government transparency and ethics, using his first full day in office to freeze the salaries of his senior aides, mandate new limits on lobbyists and demand that the government disclose more information,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in The New York Times. “In the end, Mr. Obama used his first day to send two messages that echoed themes from his campaign: first, that he is intent on keeping his promises to run a clean and open government; and, second, that he understands the pain Americans are feeling as a result of the economic crisis.”

The break, part three: “Mr. Obama signed an executive order prohibiting executive-branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists and setting new rules on their practices, both before and after their service in his administration. Under the new policy, no official may work on matters for which they served as lobbyists during the previous two years. And after leaving government, they may not lobby a slew of top officials in the administration -- as long as Mr. Obama is president,” Laura Meckler and Jay Solomon report in The Wall Street Journal. “Under President Bush, there were no restrictions on members of his administration lobbying after leaving the government.”

(Or maybe not entirely. “Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs tells the AP’s Jennifer Loven, when asked about two former lobbyists tapped for high-ranking posts. “Our waiver provisions are designed to allow uniquely qualified individuals like Bill Corr and Bill Lynn to serve the public interest in these critical times.”)

(“When you set very tough rules, you need to have a mechanism for the occasional exception,” a senior White House official tells The New York Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg. “We wanted to be really tough, but at the same time we didn’t want to hamstring the new administration or turn the town upside down.”)

The break, part four: “Today, Obama and Vice President Biden will meet at the State Department with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was confirmed 94 to 2 by the Senate yesterday. Obama plans to announce the selection of former Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) as Middle East envoy, and former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke as envoy for Afghanistan, Pakistan ‘and related matters,’ sources close to the administration said,” Michael D. Shear writes in The Washington Post.

The break, part five: “The first published photo of Obama in the Oval Office, by Time magazine, showed him in a white shirt and blue tie, without suit jacket, a less formal look that presented the image of a president hard at work amid major challenges at home and abroad,” Mike Dorning and John McCormick write in the Chicago Tribune.

“It was a rule during the Bush administration that no one ever enter the Oval Office without a jacket,” Taegan Goddard notices, at Political Wire.

Message delivered: “The burst of activity gave Obama a running start on his foreign and domestic policy agendas and fulfilled several campaign pledges that were crucial to the support he received from core Democratic constituencies. But his first actions also seemed explicitly designed to sweep away lingering policies of former President Bush, who left office Tuesday as one of the most unpopular chief executives in US history,” The Boston Globe’s Joseph Williams and Bryan Bender write.

“He seemed intent on riding his soaring poll numbers and public hunger for change to get his presidency off to a fast start, knowing that the first few months of a new administration are historically its most productive,” Carolyn Lochhead writes in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“While each of the actions has import -- and impact -- on its own, the collective goal of these first moves is far broader: to send a prominent signal to the American public that there is a new sheriff in town,” Washingtonpost.com’s Chris Cillizza writes at “The Fix” blog. “The early days of the Obama presidency are best understood then as a symbolic distancing from the final days of the Bush presidency and an attempt to begin redefining government in the eyes of voters.”

From Politifact.com (retooled for the Obama administration): “So he's already earned four Promise Kept ratings on our Obameter in a single day.”

“Now Comes the Hard Part,” blares the New York Post.

“Behind the usual mayhem, however, was the understanding that amid a major recession, two wars and the threat of terrorism, things are bound to get busier for the Obama administration,” per USA Today's David Jackson, Mimi Hall, Fredreka Schouten and Richard Wolf.

Is he at a high point right now? “This will fade. Obama will make mistakes. He could get swamped by unexpected events. But his performance over the last two years suggests that he is the man for this moment,” Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter writes.

“The honeymoon begins in unadulterated swoon. It will end; they always do,” Thomas M. DeFrank writes in the New York Daily News. “A year from now, his numbers won't be so lofty. But Obama's honeymoon is apt to last longer than most. Being the non-Bush is no small benefit. It's always easier when two-thirds of the country doesn't much care for your predecessor and his vice president.”

More to come: “The Obama administration is preparing a comprehensive strategy to address the escalating financial crisis, stem home foreclosures and jump-start the overall economy, signaling that the president hopes to deal with the problems systematically instead of case by case,” the Los Angeles Times’ Maura Reynolds and Janet Hook report.

Gitmo’s legacy: “The draft order foresees the possibility that some of the detainees might be resettled in the United States -- though only after coordination with Congress for appropriate legislation that would allow their resettlement ‘in a manner consistent with law and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States,’ ” Carol Rosenberg reports in The Miami Herald.

Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., has some ideas: “Sure, I'd take 'em,” Murtha told Fox News. “They're no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo.”

More than a symbol: “Republicans tried and failed to divert billions of dollars from President Obama’s economic stimulus package to tax cuts Wednesday, as the House began its formal consideration of the bill in committee,” The Hill's Mike Soraghan and Molly K. Hooper report. “Even as they lost that battle at the Appropriations panel, however, House Republicans went over the heads of their Democratic colleagues to get a meeting with Obama. They want more tax cuts in the $825 billion plan, and said they’re taking the new president at his word that he’s open to considering their ideas.”

Building up to a first big victory: “Racing against time and a growing banking crisis, President Obama’s economic recovery plan cleared its first hurdle in the House Wednesday night even as Democrats struggled to forge a fragile bipartisan majority in the all important Senate Finance Committee,” Politico’s David Rogers reports. “On a 35-22 vote, the House Appropriations Committee approved its portion of the massive $825 billion two year package, and both the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means Committees are slated to act Thursday.”

No second Senator Kennedy -- not this time.

“Caroline Kennedy has dropped out of consideration for Hillary Clinton's vacated U.S. Senate seat from New York, citing ‘personal reasons,’ ” per ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Eloise Harper. “After rumors and conflicting reports swirled for hours Wednesday evening, Kennedy issued a statement saying: ‘I informed Governor Paterson today that for personal reasons I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the United States Senate.’ ”

Karl and Harper continue: “Caroline Kennedy's sudden decision to drop out of consideration for the Senate seat came as a shock to family members and political advisors who expected Paterson to offer her the seat and her to accept. Several Kennedy family members tried to convince her to change her mind even after she told Paterson on Wednesday she was no longer interested in the seat. ‘He was offering her the seat,’ said one confidant. ‘There's no doubt about that.’ ”

“Her decision appeared to catch the governor off guard, throwing the Paterson administration into confusion and setting off conflicting news media reports. After frantic talks between the governor’s operation and Ms. Kennedy’s camp Wednesday evening, Ms. Kennedy appeared to waver on whether to withdraw, and was preparing a statement reasserting her interest in the job. But just after midnight, she decided to make clear she was taking her name out of consideration and released the statement saying so,” Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim write in The New York Times.

“Kennedy's move reshuffled the deck of contenders for Gov. Paterson, who will chose her replacement. The seat officially became vacant after Clinton was confirmed nearly unanimously by the Senate as secretary of state yesterday,” Fredric U. Dicker and Maggie Haberman report in the New York Post. “State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has polled higher than Kennedy in public-opinion surveys, was seen as rising on the list of possible replacements.”

Was the job really hers if she wanted it? “Paterson seemed to be moving away from selecting Kennedy and had recently requested additional information on three other possible candidates -- Upstate Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, Manhattan Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, a person familiar with the inner workings of the governor's office said,” Politico’s Glenn Thrush and Ben Smith report.

“Others . . . speculated that Kennedy was informed Paterson would not select her for the seat once held by her uncle, Robert Kennedy,” Kenneth Lovett writes in the New York Daily News. “ ‘This has face-saving written all over it,’ said one congressional Democrat.”

Still no resolution in Minnesota -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s photo-op notwithstanding.

“Reports of my defeat are greatly exaggerated and very much premature,” Norm Coleman tells Roll Call’s Shira Toeplitz. “We believe that when the ballots that have been double-counted are taken out and the absentee ballots are counted in a uniform manner, that the lead that Franken has is artificial and we’ll be back on top.”

Karl Rove gives the Bush legacy another shot -- in an op-ed piece that uses the word “right” 15 times (including in reference to Iraq) and “wrong” only once (in describing critics of the surge strategy.

Writes Rove: “Despite facing challenges and crises few others have, the job did not break George W. Bush. Though older and grayer, his brows more furrowed, he is the same man he was, a person of integrity who did what he believed was right. And he exits knowing he summoned all of his energy and talents to defend America and advance its ideals at home and abroad. He didn't get everything right -- no president does -- but he got the most important things right. And that is enough.”

The St. Petersburg Times’ Wes Allison goes behind the scenes, with a day in the life of a print pooler on the White House beat.

The true challenges ahead, per The Washington Post’s Anne E. Kornblut: “If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past. Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.”

The Kicker:

“It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari.” -- Obama spokesman Bill Burton, on the technological limitations of his new workplace.

“We decided it was so much fun . . .” -- President Obama, getting those words in the Constitution right this time.

Bookmark the link below to get The Note’s daily morning analysis:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/the_note/index.html
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http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/01/the-note-12209.html :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

January 22nd, 2009, 06:47 PM

* * * * * * * *BREAKING NEWS...
In one his first acts as president, Barack Obama has halted a last-minute Bush attempt to strip federal protections from northern gray wolves next week.
Press Release
Obama Stops Bush's Last-Minute Regulations
Rules must be reviewed by new agency heads
January 21, 2009

Seattle, WA -- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel Tuesday sent a memo to the heads of all executive departments and agencies, ordering a stop to all pending regulations until a legal and policy review can be conducted by the Obama administration.

A rule that would eliminate Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains except for those in Wyoming was scheduled to be published on January 27. Now it will fall under review with the new administration.

Among others, the Bush administration recently finalized rules that significantly weaken the Endangered Species Act, allow for mining deposits to be dumped within 100 feet of flowing streams and exempts large-scale factory farms from notifying government officials when they release unsafe levels of toxic emissions into the community. Earthjustice, a public interest law firm, filed suit against all of these rules.

The following statement is from Patti Goldman, Vice President of Program for Earthjustice:

"While we are pleased that the new administration has put a stop to these hasty actions, there are some rules we continue to monitor.

"Under the Emanuel memo, the wolf delisting rule will be withdrawn. This rule was extremely controversial and was rushed through even though a federal district court had declared the wolf delisting illegal in July. It defied the law which prohibits a state by state listing when the wolves do not respect state boundaries.

"For the vast majority of the midnight regulations, the Bush administration got them published in time to evade the Emanuel memo's freeze. Earthjustice has brought dozens of legal challenges to Bush rollbacks, which provides the ultimate pathway to reining in the excesses of the Bush administration."

Contact:

John McManus, Earthjustice, (510) 550-6707

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/2009/obama-stops-bush-s-last-minute-regulations.html
RELATED INFO
Take Action:
President Obama: Take Five Steps to Help the Environment in Your First 100 Days
Donate Now:
Help Us Save the Wolves

Case:
Gray Wolf Delisting
Issue:
Wildlife
Water
Public Lands
Health & Communities
Air
Region:
National
Office:
Washington, DC
Editorial:
Long Live the Gray Wolf The New York Times

A Stay of Execution for the Wolves The New York Times
BREAKING NEWS...
In one his first acts as president, Barack Obama has halted a last-minute Bush attempt to strip federal protections from northern gray wolves next week.

Those First 100 Days
Protecting wolves is one of five actions Earthjustice urges the new president to immediately take on behalf of the environment.

The Hard Work of Hope
The inauguration of Barack Obama brings a sense of fulfillment and hope, but now we must roll up our sleeves and help the new president make good on the environmental agenda he's proposed, says Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen.

Judge Halts Drilling in Utah
In a major victory for the environmental community, a federal judge agreed to temporarily halt issuance of leases that would allow oil and gas drilling on some 100,000 acres of pristine Utah wildlands. The leases were hastily pushed through by the Bush administration without consideration of their irreparable environmental harm.

Tom's Turn: So Here We Go
At his 11th inauguration, Tom Turner finally hears a president care about the earth.

The Zuke: Now We Can All Retire—Right?
Bush has gone but the need for environmental lawyers remains greater than ever.

David Guest: Florida's Sweet Energy Mandate
New energy mandate in Florida.

Kathleen Sutcliffe: Coal Ash Spills onto Nation's Radar
Read more.

Opposing Western Energy Stampede
Earthjustice is spearheading opposition to a wasteful, unproven energy-extraction plan that threatens more than two million acres of public land in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. Two lawsuits filed last week charge the Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management with illegally rushing through a commercial oil shale and oil tar leasing program.

EPA to Limit Mercury from Cement Kilns
After a decade of delay, the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to adopt mercury air pollution limits for cement kilns. The settlement—representing a hard-fought victory for Earthjustice, its environmental allies and states—will regulate emissions from more than 150 cement kilns in nine eastern states. We'll continue to follow this issue, making sure EPA doesn't change its mind at the last minute.

Idaho Roadless Rule Challenged
The Idaho roadless rule—a state rule set up under the Bush "roadless" rule—is being challenged in an Earthjustice lawsuit. Unlike the 2001 roadless rule, which actually protects our public lands and which Earthjustice has been defending since it went into affect, the Idaho rule removes protection for 400,000 acres of Idaho roadless lands and weakens protection for an additional 5 million acres of public national forest. The Idaho rule will more than triple road construction—up to 50 miles of new roads in 15 years—and almost double logging up to 15,000 acres. Much of the land in question is the last remaining habitat for rare wildlife including bull trout, lynx, wolverine, wolves and grizzly bears.

Suit Confronts Bush Timber Giveaway
Earthjustice, filing on behalf of 13 conservation and fisheries protection organizations, is suing to overturn the Bush administration's eleventh-hour decision to nearly quadruple logging on public lands in western Oregon. The Western Oregon Plan Revision, known by the acronym WOPR, rezones 2.6 million acres of federal public forests in Oregon managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The timber giveaway flies in the face of numerous scientific studies concluding that these dramatic increases in logging will harm clean water and healthy streams, push wildlife toward extinction, contribute to global warming, and destroy much of Oregon's remaining old-growth forests.

Public Threatened by Weak Drilling Standard
From coast to coast, weak federal clean air standards are leading to smoggier skies and more toxic air, an Earthjustice suit claims. The suit, filed last week, goes after the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to protect communities and the climate from air pollution emitted nationwide by oil and gas drilling.

Groups take on Industrial Air Pollution
By petition and lawsuit, conservation groups led by Earthjustice are seeking to strengthen air pollution controls affecting 48 industries—from chemical plants and refineries to paper mills and metal smelters. The actions follow a steady stream of court findings that Bush-era environmental rules and policies have blatantly violated federal law because of weak, delayed rules.

EPA Bows to Pressure over Smog Rules
In a major victory for environmental and public health advocates, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing stronger anti-pollution measures in more than a dozen communities with unhealthy levels of smog. Earthjustice represented groups in the successful lawsuit, prompting the court order that led to EPA's proposal.

Sweet Settlement for Bitter Lake Refuge
Four tiny, endangered creatures have been given a break through a settlement driven by an Earthjustice lawsuit. Last week, Judge Herrera of the U.S. District Court of New Mexico signed an agreement in which the Fish and Wildlife Service will reevaluate its decision not to designate Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge as critical habitat for four endangered invertebrates. Three of the four invertebrates—three snails and a freshwater shrimp—live nowhere else in the world. Despite pollution from oil and gas drilling operations, the FWS had declined to designate the refuge as critical habitat. In the face of the lawsuit, filed on behalf of WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity, FWS agreed to revisit that decision. The new proposed rule is due out in March.

Foundation Honors Earthjustice Chairman
Ed Lewis, chairman of the Earthjustice Board of Trustees, has been given the prestigious Wilburforce Foundation Leadership Award for his many contributions to conservation. "We all know how well-deserved this award is, recognizing Ed's conservation leadership as Earthjustice's board chair, as board chair of TREC, as a key player in land conservation in the Northern Rockies, and as a consultant and advisor to many organizations," said Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen.

Fact Sheet:
Wolf Delisting Fact Sheet
Feature:
Tracking Hoppy the Wolf
Hoppy: The Story of Wolf 253
Press Release:
Bush Administration Giving Up on Wolf Delisting, For Now (09/22/08)
Federal Court Reinstates Federal Wolf Protections (07/21/08)
Twelve Conservation Groups Challenge Federal Wolf Delisting
(04/28/08) * * *

Saundra Hummer

January 23rd, 2009, 12:04 AM

. . . . . . . THE PROGRESS REPORT

January 22, 2009
by
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers

ADMINISTRATION
Let The Sun Shine In
During his campaign, Barack Obama spoke often of the need for open and accountable government. "Too often the American people don't know who Washington is working for, and when they find out, they don't like what they hear," he said in Sept. 2007. Obama has echoed what advocates of open government had long called for: "[S]hining a bright light on how Washington works." Yesterday, President Obama took the first step towards fulfilling those campaign promises by issuing a series of executive orders and memorandums that "aimed at greater government openness and accountability." Principally, the directives restore the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and reverse rules enacted by President Bush that gave the White House unprecedented authority to withhold presidential records. Further, the President implemented strict rules governing the employment of lobbyists in his administration. By extending his transition's spirit of openness, Obama is building the infrastructure for an open and accountable administration. Still, as New York Times columnist Frank Rich noted last night on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, Obama has "a lot of turning back to do" with regard to Bush's era of secrecy and that progressives must "trust, but verify" that Obama's stated transparency goals are met.

AN ERA OF SECRECY: When Bush left office on Tuesday, he completed what is widely viewed as the mostsecretive administration in history. Evidence of this secrecy is made blatantly obvious by the fact that, under Bush, the number of new documents per year deemed to be state secrets increased by 75 percent. Less obvious, but perhaps more damaging was the administration's restriction of unclassified information. As he entered office in 2001, Bush directed his Attorney General, John Ashcroft, to issue new guidelines governing FOIA disclosures. Ashcroft's guidelines "encouraged federal agencies to reject requests for documents if there was any legal basis to do so." As a result of that directive, the government's FOIA compliance rate deteriorated. By 2006, two in five FOIA requests were left unprocessed, the number of exceptions cited to justify withholding information increased 83 percent, and the Justice Department's grant rate fell 70 percent. As the Project on Government Secrecy's Steven Aftergood wrote for Slate in 2005, "Information is the oxygen of democracy. Day by day, the Bush administration is cutting off the supply." Under the new standard, Obama is urging executive agencies to err on the side of openness. Additionally, Obama's directives give "ex-presidents less leeway to withhold records" under the Presidential Records Act.

TRANSITIONING WITH TRANSPARENCY: Immediately following his election, Obama rejected the secrecy of the Bush era and attempted to make his transition a model of open governance. The transition team opened the "Citizen's Briefing Book," which aimed to create a "virtual white paper, authored by engaged citizens, to pitch ideas to the incoming administration." Similarly, when the transition solicited input from outside interest groups, materials from the meetings were posted to the transition team's website. In a memo to staffers, transition co-chair John Podesta wrote, "Every day we meet with organizations who present ideas for the transition and the administration, both orally and in writing. We want to ensure we give the American people a 'seat at the table' and that we receive the benefit of their feedback." Once the materials were published, the public could provide feedback through the website. The transition website also featured an "Open for Questions" section that allowed the public to submit questions directly to the new administration. The questions were made public and readers were able to "vote up" the questions that they believed needed to be answered first. At the end of the voting round, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs posted a YouTube video in response to a handful of the most popular questions. By bringing the presidential transition into the 21st century, the Obama team demonstrated that open and accountable governance is both possible and practical.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF OPEN GOVERNMENT: At noon on Jan. 20, a new White House website launched. The site includes space for a White House blog, Obama's weekly video address, the White House pool reports, and a link to the White House Twitter feed. With this site and yesterday's directives from Obama, the White House is building the infrastructure it needs to deliver on its promises of transparent and accountable governance. But the Obama administration is not yet making the best use of the existing infrastructure. For example, the White House blog does not allow for public comments. Instead, the Office of Public Liaison offers only a web form where the public an submit comments to the administration. And as the Sunlight Foundation noted, the executive orders issued by Obama yesterday -- despite being released to news organizations almost immediately -- were not posted to the website until late last night, and the blog contains no mention of issuing them. TechPresident recently noted that the laws governing presidential record-keeping might hobble promises of open governance by slowing, or halting entirely, the adoption of new technologies. While such concerns do highlight the need to update the Presidential Records Act, the Obama team demonstrated during the transition that open government is attainable, and they can do so again in the White House.

UNDER THE RADAR
TORTURE -- LEVIN: HOLDER SHOULD APPOINT AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR ON TORTURE: Responding to a question earlier this month about whether he would appoint a special prosecutor to "independently investigate" the "greatest crimes" committed by the Bush administration, President Obama didn't rule out a prosecutor, but said that his "orientation" was "to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) have said that Congress should continue to investigate Bush's torture policies regardless of Obama's plans. At the Progressive Media Summit on Capitol Hill yesterday, blogger Marcy Wheeler asked Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) about congressional plans to investigate torture. "There needs to be, I believe, an accounting of torture in this country," replied Levin. He then said that he had suggested to Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder that he appoint "an outside person who's got real credibility, perhaps a retired federal judge," to continue to investigate. In December 2008, Levin's committee released the executive summary of an investigation into the Bush administration's detainee policy, which concluded that top Bush administration officials "bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations." Levin said yesterday that the full report would be released "in the next couple of weeks."

CONGRESS -- CORNYN DELAYS CONFIRMATION VOTE ON HOLDER TO PROTECT BUSH OFFICIALS: Republican lawmakers yesterday forced a one-week delay in the confirmation vote of Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder amid concerns that Holder might prosecute officials involved in the Bush Administration's enhanced interrogation techniques. Holder previously stated that he believes that "waterboarding is torture" and has signaled that he is open to investigations on the use of torture. Torture advocate Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is holding up the nomination because he wants to know exactly whether Holder will pursue criminal prosecutions of "intelligence personnel" involved in torture. "Part of my concern relates to his statements at the hearing with regard to torture and what his intentions are toward our intelligence personnel who were operating in good faith based on their understanding of what the law was," Cornyn said. The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on Holder on Jan. 28.

ECONOMY -- GEITHNER FACES TOUGH CONFIRMATION DESPITE EARLY WARNINGS ON BAD ECONOMY: Yesterday, President Obama's Treasury Secretary nominee, Timothy Geithner, faced "a grilling" on Capitol Hill during his confirmation hearing after reports surfaced that he failed to pay self-employment taxes on his 2001-2004 returns while working at the International Monetary Fund. Geithner apologized and told Congress that his failure to pay the taxes was a careless mistake and avoidable but "completely unintentional." But because of the tax mishap, some on the right -- such as Michelle Malkin and Newt Gingrich -- are trying to stall Geithner's confirmation. But when it came to predicting the economic crisis, Geithner was much more prescient than the man he has been tapped to succeed, Henry Paulson. For example, in February 2006, Geithner warned that financial innovation was "increasing systemic risk," but later that year, then-Treasury Secretary Paulson proclaimed, "I say with confidence that over the last couple of years, the world economy has been stronger than I have ever seen it." Read the entire report, "The Coming Of The Crisis: Henry Paulson vs. Tim Geithner," at the Wonk Room.

THINK FAST
This morning, Caroline Kennedy released a statement reading, "I informed Governor Paterson today that for personal reasons I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the United States Senate." Paterson had planned to announce his Senate choice on Friday or Saturday, but it's not clear if the timeline has now changed.

After running "the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history," President Obama's staffers encountered "a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts" on their first day at their new jobs. "It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

It appears that President Obama will get to keep his Blackberry. More specifically, he'll get a "spy-proof" alternative that is "reportedly capable of encrypting top secret voice conversations and handling classified documents."

Yesterday, President Obama began "fulfilling his campaign promise to pull combat forces out of Iraq in 16 months" and ordered a new mission to end the war. He "held off ordering a troop withdrawal right away to hear concerns and options from his military commanders." Also, Gen. Ray Odierno said that if the country held peaceful elections this year, the relative calm that had settled on Iraq would be "irreversible."

Amnesty International said it found "indisputable evidence" of Israel’s widespread use of white phosphorus “in densely populated residential areas in Gaza City and in the north," a violation of international law. The Israeli military said yesterday that it is investigating the matter.

"Medicaid rolls are surging, by unprecedented rates in some states, as the recession tightens its grip on the economy and Americans lose their employer-sponsored health coverage along with their jobs." In many states, Medicaid rolls grew by 5 to 10 percent in the last year, often double the growth the previous year. Congress is likely to extend Medicaid aid to states in the upcoming stimulus package.

In a move signaling his "intent to keep one of the most ambitious and politically crucial campaign promises at the top of his agenda," President Obama will convene a White House working session on health care reform in the late winter or the early spring. The meeting, which could come as early as March, is expected to bring together members of Congress and other stakeholders in health care reform.

President Obama's ethics rules may slow the nomination of William Lynn, a former Raytheon lobbyist, as deputy defense secretary. "t's a problem," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who may place a hold on the nomination. "You can't just recuse yourself from huge programs at the Pentagon if you're going to do that job."

And finally: Bill O’Reilly is "kind of an a-hole," says actress Jessica Alba. "I don't know how he does it. Maybe he's born that way." When pressed for an example of O’Reilly's a-holeness, Alba said she didn't have one, "because that means I'm admitting I actually watch Fox."

GOOD NEWS
Today, President Obama is expected to sign executive orders "directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said."

STATE WATCH
ILLINOIS: "Members of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee moved to prevent Gov. Rod Blagojevich from having any role in the distribution of federal economic stimulus funds."

CALIFORNIA: Even conservative lawmakers are considering a tax hike to close the state's budget gap.

TEXAS: Former Bush White House counselor Dan Bartlett joins the University of Texas.

BLOG WATCH
THINK PROGRESS: California ABC affiliate refuses to air an ad promoting acceptance of same-sex marriage.

WONK ROOM: President Obama should seek congressional approval of the status of forces agreement with Iraq.

YGLESIAS: The Washington Post's article on the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the House stimulus plan confuses what the report actually said.

HUFFINGTON POST: The Washington Post promotes editor who dismissed concerns over pre-Iraq war coverage.

DAILY GRILL
"And a third group will be held indefinitely because the sensitive nature of the evidence may not subject them to the normal criminal process."
-- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 1/21/09, on Guantanamo detainees

VERSUS

"A serious process must be established in the very near term either to formally treat and process the detainees as war criminals or to return them to their countries for appropriate judicial action."
-- Graham, 12/12/03
This is only a summary. Go on line to see complete articles, as well as their [I]numerous links. Just click on the following URL:
http://www.thinkprogress.org . . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

January 23rd, 2009, 01:52 PM

++++++++++
She's at it again.
It seems the word "ECOLOGY" never entered Sarah Palin's vocabulary, except when she takes it upon herself to overturn and fight against ecological programs and advances. Her stance looks so hard hearted and foolish. What has she to gain by her actions? A better world for her brood? I hardly think so. SRH
January 23, 2009
Palin: Don't Save the Whales
As a fierce high school basketball player, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was dubbed "Sarah Barracuda," a nickname that was revived on the campaign trail last year, when she served as John McCain's enforcer. Now the "Barracuda" is picking a fight with one of the biggest mammals in the sea.

Last week, the state of Alaska announced it plans to mount a legal challenge to the listing of the Cook Inlet beluga whale under the Endangered Species Act. (Placing the belugas on the endangered list requires a review of federally funded or permitted activities that could affect the health of the whales, the establishment of a recovery plan, and the designation of "critical habitat.") This marks the second time in a year that Palin's administration has squared off with the federal government over an ESA listing. Over the summer, her administration sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne after his agency conferred threatened status on the polar bear.

In 1994, there were some 650 Cook Inlet belugas living off the coast of Anchorage, but their numbers were nearly halved by 1997. This sharp decline was largely attributed to overharvesting by Native hunters, and by 2005 this already small whale population reached an all-time low of 278, by one government estimate. Presently, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimate the number of Cook Inlet belugas at 375.

In 2000, the whales were protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but government scientists eventually concluded that this wasn't enough. "In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering,” James Balsiger, the acting assistant administrator for the NOAA’s Fisheries Service, said in October, announcing that the whales had received endangered species protection.

Palin begs to differ. Her administration argues that that the belugas are faring just fine under the protections in place, and the population is even beginning to show signs of recovering. For this reason, the state of Alaska contends that additional regulation is unnecessary. “The State of Alaska has worked cooperatively with the federal government to protect and conserve beluga whales in Cook Inlet,” Palin said last week. “This listing decision didn’t take those efforts into account as required by law.”

At the heart of Palin's objections are concerns that additional safeguards will interfere with oil and gas development, among other lucrative projects. “I am especially concerned that an unnecessary federal listing and designation of critical habitat would do serious long-term damage to the vibrant economy of the Cook Inlet area,” Palin said in 2007. Similar fears led Palin's administration to launch a legal challenge in August to the listing of polar bears as a threatened species. (And it was no surprise when a host of business groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, followed her lead. The cases have have been consolidated, and the litigation is ongoing.)

Objecting to ESA protections on economic grounds is one thing, but Palin's team has in the past sought to cast doubt on the science underlying the listings. Fighting back against efforts to list the polar bear, for instance, her administration cited the work of global warming skeptics, one of whom acknowledged receiving funding from the American Petroleum Institute and ExxonMobil for his work.

In this latest legal challenge, Palin's administration has attacked the accuracy of beluga population estimates, citing the "questionable use of computer population modeling." And it has challenged "the contention that the belugas in Cook Inlet are a separate and distinct population from other belugas." Meanwhile, the state's claim that Cook Inlet beluga's are recovering is at odds with the judgments of federal scientists, whose "systematic surveys," according to the whale's ESA listing [PDF], "indicate this population is not recovering."

In September, the Center for Biological Diversity, which waged a decade long fight to win protection for the Cook Inlet beluga and petitioned to secure ESA safeguards for the polar bear, awarded Palin with its "2008 Rubber Dodo Award"—given annually to those the organization deems a threat to imperiled plants and animals. “Governor Palin has waged a deceptive, dangerous, and costly battle against the polar bear,” said the organization's executive director, Kieran Suckling, at the time. “Her position on global warming is so extreme, she makes Dick Cheney look like an Al Gore devotee.” He added: “Palin’s insistence that Arctic melting is ‘uncertain’ is like someone debating the theory of gravity as they plunge off a cliff. It’s hopeless, reckless, and extremely cynical.”

Her latest ESA attack has drawn more sharp words from the group, and other conservation organizations, which are watching Palin's next moves closely. Brendan Cummings, the Center for Biological Diversity's oceans program director, tells me that he expects Palin to go forward with her suit in March, once the clock runs out on the 60-day Notice of Intent to Sue [PDF] filed by her administration. "We will move to intervene in the court case to defend the listing rule," he says. "As a purely legal matter, and as a question of sound science, Palin’s challenges (both beluga and polar bear) have no merit. But we have to treat any lawsuit as a serious threat." Cummings accuses Palin of being "willing to sacrifice endangered whales on the alter of oil company profits.” The Barracuda, he contends, "must be suffering from an Ahab complex."

Photo courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.http://www.motherjones.com/blue_marble_blog/archives/2009/01/11860_sarah_palin_cook_inlet_beluga_whale_endanger ed.html +++++