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Wednesday, May 14, 2008 |
Andy Borowitz: Hillary Vows to Fight on for Edwards' Endorsement.
Just moments after former presidential candidate John Edwards endorsed Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) for president, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) vowed to "continue the fight" for Edwards' endorsement.
"My friends, I will fight for the endorsement of John Edwards, even if it takes all summer," she told supporters in Louisville, Kentucky. "I have not begun to fight for this endorsement!"
The New York senator appeared to brush off Mr. Edwards' endorsement of Sen. Obama, saying, "I don't know what that has to do with anything."
While Sen. Clinton acknowledged that Sen. Edwards had made a joint appearance with Sen. Obama in which he endorsed the Illinois senator, she said, "If you think that's going to make me give up trying to get John Edwards' endorsement, you've got another thing coming."
She said that she was also "unconcerned" that Sen. Edwards had recently gotten a new phone number and not shared it with her.
"Anyone who believes that I'm going to be deterred by an obstacle like that doesn't know what I'm made of," she said. "Mark my words, I am going to get that endorsement."
Sen. Clinton's aides refused to comment on her quest for Edwards' endorsement, saying that they were too busy hiding copies of this week's Time magazine from her.
Elsewhere, Andy appears Thursday morning on MSNBC!
Andy reports "Next Week's News" Thursday morning on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" at 8:45 Eastern time.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
6:28:46 PM 
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008 |
John Kerry: More GOP Lies About Barack Obama.
Look, I've been around politics long enough to know that it's a contact sport. Words will be abused. Phrases will be taken out of context.
But the latest distortion from the GOP, frankly, shouldn't give us all pause - it should spring us into action.
Here's the story, if you haven't heard - yesterday, Jeffrey Goldberg published a very interesting and engaging interview with Barack Obama, where they spoke at length about Barack's ties to the Jewish community in Chicago and his views on the Middle East peace process. When speaking about the decades old violence that has threatened our ally Israel, Barack said:
But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.
Does anyone seriously dispute that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a constant, open wound in the Middle East - exploited by those who would like to see Israel and the United States driven out of the region? Of course not.
It's simply undeniable that the conflict affects all of our Middle Eastern foreign policy. For decades, these have been bi-partisan views:
There remain enemies of this peace, extremists on both sides who feel threatened by the peace and will be tempted once again to kill it with violence. We can defeat that kind of threat by building a genuine Israeli-Palestinian partnership that will stand the test of time--Bill Clinton
Only through the process of negotiation can all the nations of the Middle East achieve a secure peace. - Ronald Reagan
Even George W. Bush has said:
For the sake of all humanity, things must change in the Middle East.
It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. [...]
Permanent occupation threatens Israel's identity and democracy. A stable, peaceful Palestinian state is necessary to achieve the security that Israel longs for.
But of course, today, rather than seriously disputing that, or, even better, offering a vision of their own on how to find peace in the Middle East and security for Israel, Rep. John Boehner and Rep. Eric Cantor - senior leadership in the House GOP -- decided to ignore the actual meaning of English words and simply invent something Barack Obama didn't say. Here is what they said
Israel is a critical American ally and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, not a 'constant sore' as Barack Obama claims. --John Boehner
It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel a 'constant wound,' 'constant sore,' and that it 'infect[s] all of our foreign policy.' These sorts of words and characterizations are the words of a politician with a deep misunderstanding of the Middle East and an innate distrust of Israel--Eric Cantor
This is so mendacious that the objective journalist Jeffrey Goldberg himself felt compelled to reply. He writes:
I have no doubt that Mr. Boehner will issue a correction to his press release in which he states the obvious, which is that Obama expressed -- in twelve different ways -- his support for Israel to me.
If he doesn't, however, I would, sadly, have to agree with my colleague, the less-forgiving Andrew Sullivan, who called Boehner's statement a "flat-out lie." In fact, I would add to Andrew's post, by calling Boehner's statement mendacious, duplicitous, gross, and comically refutable. So Mr. Boehner, do the right thing, and correct the record. I'll be happy to post the correction right here.
These statements by Representatives Boehner and Cantor are so bad they rise to the level of a danger to our foreign policy. America's allegiance to Israel has always been bi-partisan and unshakeable. It still is, with either Sen. McCain, Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton as President. But how can we actually have a debate on foreign policy, if the other side simply makes up statements on which to base phony, contrived outrage?
No, people need to hear the truth - -now.
Here's what Barack said about his personal feelings about Israel in the very same interview:
I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what's been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they're asking themselves moral questions.
In other words, he said exactly the opposite of what Boehner and Cantor scurrilously allege. The Washington Post gave both Boehner and Cantor multiple Pinocchios for their performance.
Barack Obama has spoken time and time again on the importance of our alliance with Israel, and on how important Israel is to him personally. He has spoken movingly about the inspiration he draws from Israel's historic struggle for independence and its current struggle for security, as well as his deep resolve to continue working to strengthen security for all of Israel's people. He has called America's commitment to Israel's security "unshakeable," a commitment built on the bedrock of the deep friendship between the two nations.
But the Republican Party insists on twisting his words so far they resort to actually lying about their meaning.
We have a foreign policy mess in the Middle East. The Bush Administration's Iraq debacle has weakened our diplomatic standing in the region and limited our options in working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No wonder all Representatives Boehner and Cantor can do is to create imaginary strawmen to knock down in self-righteous indignation.
I'm not alone in condemning this remark. Here's the statement from Rep. Robert Wexler:
In his dishonest and ridiculous distortion, John Boehner has shown us the new depths that a truly desperate Republican leadership will sink to in its attempt to smear Barack Obama's strong and unshakeable record of support for Israel. This absurd parsing would be laughable if it wasn't so sad to see the U.S.-Israel relationship used as a political wedge instead of a cause to unite all Americans around a common purpose.
And here's Rep. Rahm Emanuel:
On the eve of Israel's 60th anniversary, Congressman Boehner should remember that Israel enjoys bipartisan support and commitment to its security. Nothing could be worse for Israel at this time than for it to become a proxy for Congressman Boehner's political games. Senator Obama's record is clear when it comes to Israel's security and friendship with the United States.
The politics of character assassination from Republicans on the important issues needs to stop. Playing games to drive political wedges as part of some political strategy does great disservice to our country. We need to talk about how to chart a new course, not spread these kinds of distortions.
We deserve better in this country, but we won't get it from the GOP in this election. Already we've seen John McCain trying to describe Barack Obama as Hamas' candidate. That's beneath the John McCain I used to know. But - sadly - that is the only way these Republicans have to try and win an election
We deserve better. We need to have an honest and important conversation about how to reorient our foreign policy to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
What we don't need are lies, distortions, and rhetoric designed only to whip up fear. That's part of what got us into this mess, and it won't get us out.
Call Sen. McCain's office at 202-224-2235 and ask him to condemn these statements from his supporters.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
3:26:14 PM
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Tom Hayden: Not The Time To Celebrate Clinton As Brawler.
There are few writers I respect more, and have learned more from, than Susan Faludi. But she dangerously ignores dismisses racism as a factor in drawing white male voters to Hillary Clinton's campaign in her New York Times op-ed essay this week Instead she endorses Clinton's archetype as a "brawler" who gets "down with the boys". as a model for women candidates in the future.
Sorting out sharply-different perceptions is essential to winning in November, and my comments are intended in that spirit.
Clinton has repeatedly criticized Obama for a "pattern" of failing to win the votes of "hard-working Americans, white Americans." Her campaign consultants fanned the flames of the Rev. Wright controversy with reporters behind the scenes. For months. In Indiana, she courted - or did not denounce - accepted the support of the Rush Limbaugh crossover wreckers, and won 65-70 percent of voters who described themselves as "conservative" or "very conservative." In Pennsylvania, she won the support of the voters Gov. Ed Rendell once described as uncomfortable voting for a black presidential candidate. Many if not most of these Clinton voters plan to vote for John McCain in the fall.
Yet Faludi writes dismissively that "pundits" [read: vapid commentators] "attribute the erosion in Barack Obama's white male support to a newfound racism." What, I wonder, does this most elegant of writers mean by "newfound racism"? Whether it is "new" or "new-found" is irrelevant. Ten percent of white voters openly say they would vote against Obama on the basis of race. That's the "old" racism. Many other white voters correctly resent the label "racist", because they have rejected notions of racial superiority. But their discomfort with Obama cannot be completely separated from subterranean racial dynamics. They are naturally quicker to merge Barack Obama with Pastor Wright than John McCain with the anti-Catholic Minister Hagee. Part of the squeezed middle-class, they resent any notions of affirmative action based on race. They hate feeling blamed for the sins of their forefathers. The notion of structural or institutional racism leaves them indifferent. Among some, the term "elitist" has become a populist codeword that updates the old definition of "uppity."
Faludi ignores these realities as thoughtless inventions of pundits. But her current argument comes close to courting - and rechanelling - the very backlash voters she has written eloquently about in the past. Away from the white woman and towards the black man.
In Faludi's apparent new archetype of the successful woman, if this takes a little pandering and brawling, the message is: bring it on. Clinton "has been converting white males, assuring them that she's come into their tavern not to smash the bottles but to join the brawl." Throw back shots at the bar. Finger those guns. Threaten to obliterate Iran. Throw our nuclear protection around those havens of masculinity, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Hillary is a path breaker for future generations of women because she has broken the glass ceiling with her newfound politics of "pugilism".
The evidence is that white male working class voters deserted Al Gore and John Kerry by margins of 20-25 percent, long before Barack Obama entered politics. The reasons for this mass desertion are more complicated than race. Clinton should know, because she and her husband embraced the Wall Street policies of NAFTA, WTO trade rules, and the sweeping deregulations and privatizations that kept middle class people working longer hours for less pay, and drove whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians, men and women, into ferocious competition over college admissions and secure jobs. There always was a viable option known as anti-corporate economic populism for the Democrats, but that progressive Democratic tradition was "off the table" during the Clinton presidency. Clinton's new populism on the campaign trail suffered from its appeals to "hard-working whites" and the belligerent threat to nuke and obliterate the enemy in Tehran.
Since when did winning acceptance among traditional white males become such a high priority for a foremost exponent of feminism? Wasn't it to be the other way around, that all men would gradually shed their patriarchal macho codes and join a common struggle for equality and fairness?
Is this the tone the Clinton campaign - and its most ardent supporters - want to leave behind? It's one thing to recognize that the idealism of social movements has to be complemented by a tough realism in contests for political power. But it's another to celebrate brawling, and condemn the press for "primly thumbing the pages of Queensberry" and "scolding" Clinton for - here Faludi uses quotations - being "ruthless" and "dirty." Faludi seems to come full circle, accusing the press of becoming too traditionally female. Anyone watching FOX or CNN, will wonder where exactly Faludi finds these cowering wimps. How about George Stephanopoulos serving as a messenger boy for FOX and Hillary in their accusations about Obama's alleged ties to the Weather Underground?
Let's be absolutely clear. Obama can win the presidency if he loses the white working class by the same wide margin as Al Gore if he adds 4-5 million new young Obama voters, keeps 90 percent of the African-American vote, and wins a majority of Latinos. He should win moderates and pro-choice voters by exposing McCain's zero support for Planned Parenthood positions. He can expect to do very well among all voters with his alternatives to Iraq, economic recession, and right-wing court appointments wrapped into his theme of change.
Obama's support among white males has declined under the hammering of the Clintons, but he still has won white male majorities in ten of 23 states since January. He took 52 percent of the white male vote in Virginia before the negative attacks began, and still held 42 percent of those white males in North Carolina and Indiana [where Republicans could enter the Democratic primary. There still is plenty of opportunity to increase those white male numbers with a message about Iraq and the recession.
An interesting question is whether Hillary Clinton and her most ardent supporters can shift from brawling against Barack to embracing him wholeheartedly as the nominee. To celebrate Clinton's brawling at just the moment she appears to have lost means it will take weeks, or longer, to repair the internal damage, learn from the experience, and move forward. The numbers suggest that the Clinton forces can be decisive in Obama's winning or losing in November. And that would perpetuate a schism for a long time to come.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
1:44:25 PM
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Saturday, May 10, 2008 |
Reid promises Senate hearings on Pentagon propaganda program.. During today’s Firedoglake Book Salon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) promised that the Senate would be holding hearings on the Pentagon’s propaganda program, which was first disclosed by the New York Times on April 20. Reid’s announcement is the first time the Senate leadership has indicated that it intends to hold hearings:
LISH: Senator, are you planning to hold hearings on the illegality of the Pentagon[base ']Äôs propaganda training program of retired military officers that was recently exposed by the New York Times and Glenn Greenwald?
REID: The answer is yes. I have personally spoken to Chairman Levin and he is tremendously concerned as I. And we are proceeding accordingly.
[Think Progress]
7:43:28 PM
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Published on Friday, May 9, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
by Vincent Bugliosi
There is direct evidence that President George W. Bush did not honorably lead this nation, but deliberately misled it into a war he wanted. Bush and his administration knowingly lied to Congress and to the American public [~] lies that have cost the lives of more than 4,000 young American soldiers and close to $1 trillion.
A Monumental Lie
In his first nationally televised address on the Iraqi crisis on October 7, 2002, six days after receiving the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a classified CIA report, President Bush told millions of Americans the exact opposite of what the CIA was telling him -a monumental lie to the nation and the world.
On the evening of October 7, 2002, the very latest CIA intelligence was that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the U.S. This same information was delivered to the Bush administration as early as October 1, 2002, in the NIE, including input from the CIA and 15 other U.S. intelligence agencies. In addition, CIA director George Tenet briefed Bush in the Oval Office on the morning of October 7th.
According to the October 1, 2002 NIE, [base "]Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological warfare] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war.[per thou] The report concluded that Hussein was not planning to use any weapons of mass destruction; further, Hussein would only use weapons of mass destruction he was believed to have if he were first attacked, that is, he would only use them in self-defense.
Preparing its declassified version of the NIE for Congress, which became known as the White Paper, the Bush administration edited the classified NIE document in ways that significantly changed its inference and meaning, making the threat seem imminent and ominous.
In the original NIE report, members of the U.S. intelligence community vigorously disagreed with the CIA[base ']s bloated and inaccurate conclusions. All such opposing commentary was eliminated from the declassified White Paper prepared for Congress and the American people.
The Manning Memo
On January 31, 2003, Bush met in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a memo summarizing the meeting discussion, Blair[base ']s chief foreign policy advisor David Manning wrote that Bush and Blair expressed their doubts that any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons would ever be found in Iraq, and that there was tension between Bush and Blair over finding some justification for the war that would be acceptable to other nations. Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find hard evidence against Hussein that he talked about three possible ways, Manning wrote, to [base "]provoke a confrontation[per thou] with Hussein. One way, Bush said, was to fly [base "]U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, [falsely] painted in UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach[per thou] of UN resolutions and that would justify war. Bush was calculating to create a war, not prevent one.
Denying Blix[base ']s Findings
Hans Blix, the United Nation[base ']s chief weapons inspector in Iraq, in his March 7, 2003, address to the UN Security Council, said that as of that date, less than 3 weeks before Bush invaded Iraq, that Iraq had capitulated to all demands for professional, no-notice weapons inspections all over Iraq and agreed to increased aerial surveillance by the U.S. over the [base "]no-fly[per thou] zones. Iraq had directed the UN inspectors to sites where illicit weapons had been destroyed and had begun to demolish its Al Samoud 2 missiles, as requested by the UN. Blix added that [base "]no evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found[per thou] by his inspectors and [base "]no underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far.[per thou] He said that for his inspectors to absolutely confirm that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) [base "]will not take years, nor weeks, but months.[per thou]
Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief UN nuclear inspector in Iraq and director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that, [base "]we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.[per thou]
The UN inspectors were making substantial progress and Hussein was giving them unlimited access. Why was Bush in such an incredible rush to go to war?
Hussein Disarms, so Bush [sigma] Goes to War
When it became clear that the whole purpose of Bush[base ']s prewar campaign [~] to get Hussein to disarm [~] was being (or already had been) met, Bush and his people came up with a demand they had never once made before [~] that Hussein resign and leave Iraq. On March 17, 2003, Bush said in a speech to the nation that, [base "]Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict.[per thou] Military conflict [~] the lives of thousands of young Americans on the line [~] because Bush trumped up a new line in the sand?
The Niger Allegation
One of the most notorious instances of the Bush administration using thoroughly discredited information to frighten the American public was the 16 words in Bush[base ']s January 28, 2003 State of the Union speech: [base "]The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.[per thou] The Niger allegation was false, and the Bush administration knew it was false.
Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former ambassador to Iraq, was sent to Niger by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate a supposed memo that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake (a form of lightly processed ore) to Iraq by Niger in the late 1990s. Wilson reported back to the CIA that it was [base "]highly doubtful[per thou] such a transaction had ever taken place.
On March 7, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei told the UN Security Council that [base "]based on thorough analysis[per thou] his agency concluded that the [base "]documents which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.[per thou] Indeed, author Craig Unger uncovered at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union address in which analysts at the CIA, the State Department, or other government agencies that had examined the Niger documents [base "]raised serious doubts about their legitimacy [~] only to be rebuffed by Bush administration officials who wanted to use them.[per thou]
On October 5 and 6, 2002, the CIA sent memos to the National Security Council, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and to the White House Situation Room stating that the Niger information was no good.
On January 24, 2003, four days before the president[base ']s State of the Union address, the CIA[base ']s National Intelligence Council, which oversees all federal agencies that deal with intelligence, sent a memo to the White House stating that [base "]the Niger story is baseless and should be laid to rest.[per thou]
The 9/11 Lie
The Bush administration put undue pressure on U.S. intelligence agencies to provide it with conclusions that would help them in their quest for war. Bush[base ']s former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, said that on September 12, 2001, one day after 9/11, [base "]The President in a very intimidating way left us [~] me and my staff [~] with the clear indication that he wanted us to come back with the word that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9/11.[per thou]
Bush said on October 7, 2002, [base "]We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy [~] the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade,[per thou] and that [base "]Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses.[per thou] Of Hussein, he said on November 1, 2002, [base "]We know he[base ']s got ties with Al Qaeda.[per thou]
Even after Bush admitted on September 17, 2003, that he had [base "]no evidence[per thou] that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, he audaciously continued, in the months and years that followed, to clearly suggest, without stating it outright, that Hussein was involved in 9/11.
On March 20, 2006, Bush said, [base "]I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack on America.[per thou]
Vincent Bugliosi received his law degree in 1964. In his career at the L.A. County District Attorney[base ']s office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss. His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history. The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder is available May 27.
For more information visit www.prosecutionofbush.com
3:49:02 PM
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Friday, May 9, 2008 |
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle: Unearthed: News of the Week the Mainstream Media Forgot to Report.
EPA Official Ousted For Offending Dow Chemical
At the request of Dow Chemical, the Bush administration forced out one of its own hand-picked EPA regulators on May 1st because she naively attempted to do her job by enforcing the law against Dow. EPA officials told Mary Gade, the federal agency's top Midwest regulator to step down from her post or be fired by June 1. Bush appointed Gade in 2006, but Gade ran afoul of the White House when she pressured Dow Chemical to clean up dioxin pollution extending 50 miles downstream from the company's Michigan headquarters. Dow asked EPA headquarters to intervene. In response EPA chief Stephen Johnson's top deputies repeatedly grilled Gade about the case. When she refused to lay off Dow, they stripped her of her authority and told her to quit or be fired. "There is no question this is about Dow," Gade said. "I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I'm proud of what we did."
Gade was formerly a loyal George W. Bush supporter and adviser. In 2000, she praised then-governor and candidate Bush for his "fresh approach" and "strong leadership." But her loyalty couldn't shield her from an administration bent on insulating its chemical industry cronies from public health laws.
Bush's Misleading Claims About the Arctic Refuge Denied by Federal Officials
President Bush last week repeated his claim that if only Congress had approved his 2002 plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge it "would likely mean lower gas prices" today. However, oil industry experts and Bush's own Energy Department officials say that Bush is greatly exaggerating the theoretical impact that opening the refuge would've had on current gas prices. They explained that it takes over a decade to find and develop a new oil field. Furthermore, the oil available in ANWR--even under the most optimistic projections--could supply less than 2% of U.S. demand, an amount that would have a negligible impact on prices at the pump.
Green Construction Could Drastically Slash North American Energy Dependence
Employing existing and emerging green construction practices could cut North America's deadly fossil fuel dependence faster and more cost-effectively than any other measure, according to a new study by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, a panel erected by the United States, Canada and Mexico. Green construction has immediate paybacks, including "reduced energy costs and water costs as well the indoor health environment and increased productivity of the inhabitants of those buildings," according to John Westeinde, an advisor on the report. The report found that North America's buildings release more than 2,200 megatons of CO2, or about 35 percent of the continent's total. If the construction industry rapidly adopted current and emerging green technologies, that number could be cut by 1,700 megatons by 2030, the report found.
Hundreds of Ducks Die at Canadian Oil Sands Mine
Hundreds of ducks made a fatal landing recently in a tailings pond filled with a witch's brew of oil and toxic sludge at a northern Alberta tar sands mine. Regulators are investigating why Syncrude Canada - the country's largest tar sands producer - failed to deploy a system designed to scare off waterfowl. Alberta's tar sands development has been heavily criticized for huge carbon dioxide emissions, destruction of the boreal forest, and the potential for tailing ponds to contaminate local rivers and waterways.
Feds Acknowledge Error On Attempts to Muzzle Siegelman
Former Alabama Governor Don Siegleman, who was falsely imprisoned by Alabama cronies of Karl Rove, and is now released on appeal, was recently placed on a "special offender" list to restrict his right to travel. Siegelman was notified by federal probation officers of the new restriction shortly after he traveled to Washington to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, and appeared on 60 Minutes, the Tavis Smiley Show, and Dan Abrams' "Verdict."
The federal "special offender" designation applies to "Individuals identified or associated with traditional or non-traditional organized crime such as the Mafia, outlaw motorcycle gangs, Asian gangs, prison gangs, etc., persons identified as potential terrorists, kidnappers, members of a supremacy group, major bookmakers, major drug or weapon traffickers, pornographers, sex offenders, armed bank robbers, offenders of high notoriety, or cases similar nature."
"This basically means I can't travel out of Birmingham or Montgomery without a lot of red tape, and long delays. For example to travel in some places requires at least 30 days advance approval," Siegelman said.
But on May 2, federal court officials acknowledged that they erred in classifying Siegelman as a special offender.
"They made an honest mistake," Redmond said, acknowledging that the restrictions were illegal. "They were giving him conditions for a special offender under probation. He's not. He's pretrial."
Cheney refuses to cooperate with Congressional Torture Investigation, claiming Congress has no authority over vice-president
The lawyer for U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney said Cheney would refuse to allow David Addington, the vice president's chief of staff, to testify about his involvement in the approval of interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay. The privilege asserted by Cheney's office recalls his attempt last year to evade rules for disclosing classified documents by claiming that the vice president's office is a hybrid branch of government that is neither executive nor legislative.
Ashcroft and Yoo Refuse to Testify About Torture
In another imaginative legal claim with dubious constitutionality, two other witnesses sought by Congressman John Conyers, former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft and former U.S. justice department lawyer John Yoo, claim that their involvement in civil lawsuits related to harsh torture allows them to avoid appearing before Congress. "I am aware of no basis for the remarkable claim that pending civil litigation somehow immunizes an individual from testifying before Congress," Conyers wrote.
Karl Rove Resists Congressional Request to Testify on His Siegelman Mischief
"The House Judiciary Committee threatened last Thursday to subpoena former White House adviser Karl Rove if he does not agree by May 12 to testify about former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman's corruption case.
"In a letter to Rove's attorney, committee Democrats called it 'completely unacceptable' that the Republican political strategist has rejected the panel's request for sworn testimony even as he discusses the matter publicly through the media and op-eds and magazine interviews with tame reporters at GQ, and appearances with the administration's media poodles on Fox News.
On April 7, MSNBC anchor Dan Abrams reported that Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said Rove would agree to testify if Congress issues a subpoena to him as part of an investigation into the Siegelman case.
Ten days later, committee members invited Rove to appear, citing among other things Rove's interview with GQ magazine. In that interview, Rove hurled insults at CBS News for airing a 60 Minutes segment on the Siegelman case, called his chief accuser a "lunatic" -- but didn't specifically deny any of the accusations.
In an April 29 letter back to the committee, Luskin changed his position[PDF], arguing that Rove would only appear under the following conditions: "Mr. Rove is prepared to make himself available for an interview on this specific issue with Committee staff. Mr. Rove would speak candidly and truthfully about this matter, but the interview would not be transcribed nor would Mr. Rove be under oath."
Hate-filled Right Wing Radio
Racial slurs abound these days on right wing radio, particularly among the right's leading shock jocks Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Neal Boortz, Michael Savage and Lou Dobbs. During his May 5 appearance on FOX News, Rush Limbaugh referred to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D), who is Hispanic, as a "shoe shine guy."
A 2007 study of talk radio conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that in the second quarter of 2007, when right wing radio resorted to spreading fear and hatred in order to defeat immigration reform. Immigration was the #1 topic - representing 16% of all airtime on right wing radio - led by Limbaugh, Hannity, and Savage. Neal Boortz chipped in too, urging listeners to help defeat "this illegal alien amnesty bill" and "yank out the welcome mat." Speaking of undocumented immigrants he said, "Give 'em all a little nuclear waste and let 'em take it on down there to Mexico. Tell 'em...it'll heat tortillas." Michael Savage encouraged his listeners to "burn a Mexican flag" and to "tell them to go back to where they came from."
Bigotry and Hatred is Good Business
Propped up by the conservative bias among corporate media barons who control the airwaves, right-wing radio now claims 91 percent of U.S. radio airspace. Salon.com reported that "Talk like Savage's, or Limbaugh's or O'Reilly's, has become routine, even systematic, and certainly a big business. According to the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, the top five radio station owners that control the 45 most powerful, 50,000-watt or more radio stations broadcast 310 hours of nationally syndicated right-wing talk. But they broadcast only a total of five hours of countervailing talk." Meanwhile the public popularity of progressive talk is growing.
Thanks to Right-Wing Corporate Owners Right-Wing Hate Talk Dominates Airwaves
While progressive talk is making inroads on commercial stations, right-wing talk reigns supreme on America's airwaves. Some key findings:
-- In the spring of 2007, of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners, 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and only 9 percent was progressive.
-- Each weekday, 2,570 hours and 15 minutes of conservative talk are broadcast on these stations compared to 254 hours of progressive talk--10 times as much conservative talk as progressive talk.
-- 76 percent of the news/talk programming in the top 10 radio markets is conservative, while 24 percent is progressive.
Bush Is the Least Popular President in History
A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of President Bush's job performance, making him the most unpopular president in modern American history, even less popular than Richard Nixon just prior to his resignation.
"Bush's approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 percent and 24 percent, respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s," Keating Holland, CNN's polling director said. "The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 67 percent disapproval in January 1952."
A January poll - conducted on the five-year anniversary of Bush's "Mission Accomplished" moment on board the USS Abraham Lincoln - found the percentage of Americans who think the U.S. is making progress in Iraq stood at 50 percent. That number has since dropped to 39 percent.
Radioactive waste being shipped from Kuwait for Disposal in Idaho
6,700 tons of sand contaminated with depleted uranium and lead is currently being shipped by rail from Longview, Washington to a hazardous waste disposal site in Idaho. The radioactive sand - which was shipped from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army Base in Kuwait - was contaminated with uranium after military vehicles and munitions caught fire during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. The contaminated sand is destined for burial at American Ecology's dumping grounds in the Owyhee Desert 70 miles southeast of Boise. The Kuwaiti government wanted no part of the waste which it considered a danger to the Kuwaiti people. Kuwait's Ministry of Defense contracted Texas-based MKM Engineers Inc. to package and transport the waste back to the United States. MKM then subcontracted with American Ecology to dispose the military waste at its Idaho facility.
Whistleblowers Say Private U.S. Contractors Looted, Stole and Ran a Prostitution Ring
In an investigative report largely ignored by the mainstream media, Mother Jones reports the shocking testimony of three whistleblowers who recently appeared before the Senate's Democratic Policy Committee (DPC). The whistleblowers told the committee that U.S. private contractors routinely looted Iraqi palaces and ministries, stole military equipment, fenced supplies destined for U.S. troops, and even operated a prostitution ring that may have contributed to the death of fellow contractor.
Barry Halley, a former project manager for Worldwide Network Services, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that was working on subcontract for DynCorp, testified that his site manager in Iraq, who he said was employed by a "major defense contractor," moonlighted as the leader of a prostitution ring serving American contractors in Iraq. The sex business sideline indirectly caused the death of a colleague. "A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was traveling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission," he told the committee. "I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by a manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad."
Frank Cassaday, a former contract employee of disgraced Cheney-connected firm KBR told the committee about an ice-stealing operation the company ran "cheating the troops out of ice at the same time that [the foreman in charge was] trading the ice for DVDs, CDs, food, and other items at the Iraqi shops across the street."
Cassaday also detailed how he was jailed in his tent for two days by KBR security and later transferred to a laundry job because he had reported to KBR superiors that his colleagues were stealing equipment from the U.S. military, including refrigerators, artillery round detonators, two rocket launchers, and about 800 rounds of small arms ammunition.
Another KBR whistleblower, Linda Warren, testifying about her time in Baghdad in 2004, said she was shocked by the number of contractors involved in criminal activity. "KBR employees who were contracted to perform construction duties inside palaces and municipal buildings were looting," she said. "Not only were they looting, but they had a system in place to get contraband out of the country so it could be sold on eBay. They stole artwork, rugs, crystal, and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots." Like Cassaday, KBR superiors punished Warren for speaking up, taking her vehicle away, monitoring her movements, cutting off her access to phones and the Internet, and ultimately transferring her out of Baghdad.
Iraqi Interpreters Who Helped U.S. Are Being Tossed Under the Bus By Bush Administration
The Bush administration is ignoring the plight of Iraqi interpreters who have risked their lives to provide essential help to U.S. soldiers. Interpreters have been kidnapped, tortured and assassinated by insurgents punishing them for working with the U.S. The Bush administration promised them refugee status to bring them here to safety, but has not delivered, leaving them at lethal risk.
Rockefellers Call on Exxon Mobil to Spend More on Oil Alternatives
Descendants of company founder John D. Rockefeller want Exxon Mobil to spend more money on alternative fuels and bar the CEO from also serving as chairman. Sixteen Rockefeller family members are urging fellow shareholders to support four resolutions on the environment and corporate governance at the company's May 28 annual meeting.
More Record Profits for Oil Barons
Astounding profits in the oil industry are becoming as routine as the anguished looks of motorists filling up their gas tanks, the AP reports.
ExxonMobil, Shell and BP netted almost $13 million an hour combined in the first quarter amid the steepest increase in oil prices since 2000.
Exxon's revenue climbed 34 percent to $116.9 billion, but Exxon's 17 percent profit increase lagged behind the gains of 25 percent and 63 percent by Shell and BP. Chevron put yet another exclamation point on the oil patch's long run of prosperity Friday with a first-quarter profit of $5.17 billion. That was up 10 percent from net income of $4.72 billion last year.
It was the second-highest quarterly profit in the company's 129-year history and marked the most money that it has ever made during the January-March period. That puts the No. 2 U.S. oil company on track for its fifth straight year of record earnings.
BP posted a 63 percent surge in first-quarter net profit to $7.6 billion, while Shell reported a 25 percent rise, to a record $9.08 billion. ConocoPhillips reported a 16 percent rise in net income to $4.14 billion. Like BP and Shell, the third biggest U.S. producer far outpaced industry expectations.
Republicans Block Federal Aid to Wind and Solar
Tom Friedman of the New York Times reports:
Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.
These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again -- which often happens -- investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That's how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.
The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush -- showing not one iota of leadership -- refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.
"It's a disaster," says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. "Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take 'Congressional risk.' They say if you don't get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects."
If the wind and solar credits expire, said Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won't be made.
While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America's premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany -- 540 high-paying engineering jobs -- because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.
Send tips about other stories the mainstream media forgot to report: unearthednews@gmail.com
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
12:56:27 PM
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Crude Jolt for US as Iran Scraps Oil Trade in Dollar. The Economic Times reports: "With Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, shifting its crude trading to the euro and the yen, instead of the US dollar, treasury managers feel that this could well be the first challenge to the US dollar's dominance as currency of global trade." [t r u t h o u t]
12:11:32 PM
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Published on Thursday, May 8, 2008 by Common Wonders
Apology Denied
by Robert C. Koehler
[base "]I want you to feel that Iraqi life is precious,[per thou] he told them.
Well, that[base ']s not going to happen. Here, at the level of basic humanity, the occupation of Iraq [~] indeed, the entire Bush administration [~] begins to unravel. We can see this with excruciating clarity as requests for an apology waylay the smooth, legal cover-up (one in a series) of the latest spasm of panic and target practice by Blackwater thugs, which left 17 Iraqis dead in Baghdad[base ']s Nisoor Square in September.
Even the embedded media, so valiant in their attempts to cast the American presence as well-intentioned and, you know, doing the best it can (under the circumstances), couldn[base ']t help but convey, as they reported on the investigation of the Blackwater killings, the humanity of the grieving Iraqis. In so doing, the coverage hinted, unavoidably, at the truth about the occupation: that we are, to put it mildly, the bad guys, that what we[base ']re doing there is barbaric, racist, insane.
Nothing drives this truth home quite as blatantly as America[base ']s mercenary army in Iraq, which is immune from prosecution under either Iraqi or U.S. law. And the baddest of the American privateers are the Blackwater guys, about whom a rival security contractor told Fortune magazine: [base "]They always shoot first and ask questions later. When we[base ']re out in country, we often fear Blackwater more than the Iraqis.[per thou]
Back on Sept. 16, Blackwater personnel [~] not for the first time [~] convulsed the people to whom we are bringing democracy with an unprovoked shooting rampage. While providing security for a U.S. embassy mission, they opened fire in the crowded square. By the time they stopped, 17 Iraqis lay dead and another several dozen were wounded. These were just ordinary people going about their lives. No one had fired at the security team first, witnesses insisted. But apparently something spooked them, and when you[base ']re not accountable under any law, why take chances?
The incident, or massacre, as the Iraqis call it, was outrageous enough to require some sort of investigation by the occupying authorities [~] albeit a meaningless one, if you measure the seriousness of an investigation by the potential consequences that would flow from it. In the middle of it, the State Department renewed Blackwater[base ']s contract in Iraq, indicating that, whatever the result, nothing was at stake.
The U.S. also tried to buy its way out of this sticky wicket by offering money to the injured and the relatives of the dead. For some reason, the Iraqis refused their envelopes full of cash; they wanted apologies.
It[base ']s hard for me to read anything about Iraq in the mainstream media without being tormented by the way it[base ']s written: especially by what I would call the requisite spin and omission. Thus every travesty of our occupation, every hellish mishap, every stealth brutality that somehow finds its way into the spotlight, is presented to us context-free. This is the media[base ']s ongoing gift to George Bush (and John McCain).
The Los Angeles Times, for instance, in its May 4 story about the investigation of the Nisoor Square massacre, doesn[base ']t trouble us with references to other Blackwater shooting sprees; much less the larger context of invasion, mission accomplished, and five years of occupation in which more than a million Iraqis have died; much less the ample testimony of returning vets that [base "]the hadjis[per thou] of occupied Iraq are routinely belittled, mistreated and dehumanized. If it had done so, the massacre in question would suddenly be a piece in a far larger picture that would make almost all Americans recoil in shame.
The story does, however, report the awkwardness of Iraqis[base '] turning down cash settlements as a reflection of [base "]the deep disconnect between the American legal process and the traditional culture of Iraq, between the courtroom and the tribal diwan.[per thou]
Ah, so that[base ']s it. Here in America, when someone is killed by a burly goon wearing wraparound sunglasses as he walks through a public square, our cut-and-dried system of justice spits out a cash payment to the parents and they go away happy. In primitive Iraq, however, [base "]The perpetrator admits responsibility, commiserates with the victim, pays medical expenses and other compensation, all over glasses of tea in a tribal tent.[per thou]
In other words, as a U.S. diplomat is quoted as saying, [base "]Our system is so different from theirs.[per thou]
But the story in spite of itself refutes this explanation and cuts through to the human core that knows neither national nor cultural bourdaries by quoting the Iraqis themselves, who are the only ones speaking in plain language: [base "]Let them apologize by saying those were innocent people,[per thou] said the father of one of the dead. [base "]Then we will be ready for understanding.[per thou]
At some point the wall of denial and lies that is the U.S. occupation of Iraq will give way and world [~] including American [~] outrage will demand its cessation. I believe the collapse will begin with an apology, which is why that[base ']s the one thing Iraq[base ']s grieving survivors cannot have.
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.
8:04:23 AM
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008 |
Paul Rieckhoff: A Historic Vote.
Last week I told you about a press conference in which leading Republicans and Democrats got together to call for a new GI Bill. And I said we'd have to wait to see if action was going to follow up those words. Tomorrow, we find out.
Congress has a historic choice to make. The House of Representatives is set to vote on a World War II-style GI Bill for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as an amendment to emergency supplemental war funding bill. And lawmakers will have to go on record as to whether they truly support our nation's newest generation of veterans.
The 21st Century GI Bill (S.22/H.R.5740) was originally introduced in Congress by some of the Senate's own combat veterans, including Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel. This bill has the extraordinary bipartisan support of 57 Senators and 278 Representatives and the endorsement of every major Veterans Service Organization from the American Legion to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). About ten pieces of legislation in Congress today have that kind of bipartisan support - and half of those bills authorize new stamps and coins. That a bill of this magnitude has such overwhelming support is almost unheard of.
This legislation would substantially increase the educational benefits available to service members who have served since September 11, 2001. It would cover the cost of tuition of up to the most expensive in-state public school and provide a living and book stipend, so new veterans can focus on their educations and readjusting to civilian life. The new GI Bill would also provide more equitable benefits to National Guardsman and Reservists, who have made up about a quarter of our fighting force in Iraq. And educational benefits would be linked to the cost of college, so they would keep their value over time. It is, in short, the right thing to do for the men and women who have made such a tremendous commitment to our country.
The momentum for a 21st Century GI Bill has been incredible. But it's time to finish the job. Tomorrow, we urge every member of Congress to vote "yes" on GI Bill funding and show unanimous support for our troops.
Help us get the word out. IAVA is encouraging its national membership to call their lawmakers and tell them to vote "yes" on the GI Bill. For more information on this critical issue, please visit www.GIBill2008.org.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
4:23:09 PM
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008 |
"Then No One Would Be a Democrat Anymore"
In 1970, Richard Nixon, inspired by a spontaneous construction workers' riot, settled on the political strategy that would win him the 1972 election by a landslide and dominate American politics to this day.
RICK PERLSTEIN | April 30, 2008
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt of Rick Perstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, out May 15 from Scribner.
That flag: during the Vietnam Moratorium, New York's Mayor Lindsay ordered it flown at half-staff as a memorial to the war dead. An enraged city council member from Queens tramped up to the City Hall roof and pulled the banner back up himself. "Meanwhile," the Washington Post reported on October 16, 1969, "officials of the Patrolmen's Benevolent and Uniformed Firefighters Association claimed almost total success in their campaign to keep firehouse and precinct station flags at full staff."
After Kent State, Lindsay ordered city flags lowered again. At noon on Friday, May 8, in a cold Manhattan drizzle, students from across the city gathered at George Washington's statue in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street, where representatives of the thirteen colonies first met to petition King George. "You brought down one president," a fifty-six-year-old lawyer told them with delight, "and you'll bring down another!" The mood was joyous.
Suddenly, from all directions, two hundred construction workers marched in to the cadences of "All the way! USA!" and "We're number one!" and "Love it or leave it!" In their identical brown overalls, carrying American flags of the sort that topped off construction sites, they looked like some sort of storm trooper battalion.
They started arguing with the police: Why weren't flags flying in front of Federal Hall like at all the Wall Street banks? Had the hippies stolen them? (The flags, actually, per federal regulations, were not flying due to inclement weather.)
The police report: They argued that this was a government owned building, that it was owned by all the people, and that they had a right to an equal portion of the steps to express their view in support of the American flag and the foreign policy of the United States; that everyone had an equal right to freely express their views.
Some students tried to shout the workers down. Others, nervous, tried to melt into the lunchtime crowd.
The construction workers, reinforced by the rear by some thousand vocal supporters from the Wall Street area, suddenly burst through the easterly terminus of the police line. Demonstrators observed that the police were not particularly enthusiastic about stopping them.
Once atop the steps, the construction workers implanted a number of American flags on the pillars and on the statue of George Washington.
An insurance underwriter, in admiration: "Wow, it was just like John Wayne taking Iwo Jima."
The unusual lunch hour crowd which had, by now, inundated the area completely from building line to building line, loudly applauded the construction workers and their singing of the National Anthem; many onlookers joined in, openly displaying much fervor.
At this juncture a neatly groomed conservatively dressed middle aged man suddenly took a position in the pedestal in front of the statue of George Washington where he thumbed his nose at the construction worker group, shouted obscenities, and ultimately committed an act of desecration upon one of the American flags implanted there by them.
He was variously reported as blowing his nose in the flag, tearing the flag with his teeth, and eating the flag.
The riot began. Workers singled out for beating boys with the longest hair. The weapons of choice were their orange and yellow hard hats.
A construction worker recalled, "The whole group started singing [OE]God Bless America' and it damn near put a lump in your throat. . . . I could never say I was sorry I was there. You just had a very proud feeling. If I live to be one hundred, I don't think I'll ever live to see anything quite like that again."
A student recalled, "When I was on the ground, I rolled myself into a ball just as four or five pairs of construction boots started kicking me."
The proletarians marched on City Hall, now joined by hundreds more workers from the city's biggest construction site, the twin-towered "World Trade Center." They were joined, in solidarity, by the capitalists; the New York Stock Exchange ended up having its lowest-volume day in months.
"Lindsay's a Red! Lindsay's a Red!"
"Lindsay must go!"
"Raise our flag! Raise our flag!"
A mail carrier scrambled onto the roof to hoist Old Glory. A mayoral aide followed and relowered it. Construction workers furiously rushed City Hall, crying, "Get Lindsay!" -- almost breaching the building. A deputy mayor raised the flag back up to appease the mob. Workers launched another chorus of "The Star-Spangled Banner"; good patriots, the cops removed their hats and stood at attention instead of attending to the gleeful ongoing beatings.
A municipal secretary: "I saw one construction worker arm himself with a pair of iron clippers and head toward a student already being pummeled by three workers. ... He yelled at me, [OE]Let go of my jacket, bitch'; and then he said, [OE]If you want to be treated like an equal, we'll treat you like one.' Three of them began to punch me in the body. My glasses were broken. I had trouble breathing, and I thought my ribs were cracked.'"
The Wall Street Journal: "[OE]These hippies are getting what they deserve,' said John Halloran, one of the construction workers, while the mêlée was still going on. As he talked a coworker standing with him yelled, [OE]Damn straight,' and punched a young man in a business suit who said he disagreed."
The mob moved on to nearby Pace University, setting fire to a banner reading VIETNAM, LAOS, CAMBODIA, KENT. The glass doors to the building were chained shut from the inside against attack. Hard hats crashed through them and chased down unkempt students, joined by conservative students angry at strikers interfering with their education. Some longhairs were beaten with lead pipes wrapped in American flags. Trinity Church became a makeshift field hospital (the mob ripped down the Red Cross banner). The New York Times ran a picture the next day of a construction worker and a man in a tie charging down a cobblestone street to beat someone with an American flag. Pete Hamill, who had only the previous year offered his solidarity to "The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class," now withdrew his endorsement in horror: "The police collaborated with the construction workers in the same way that Southern sheriffs used to collaborate with the rednecks when the rednecks were beating up freedom riders."
Police made only six arrests. Perhaps they agreed with the construction worker who told The Wall Street Journal, "I'm doing this because my brother got wounded in Vietnam, and I think this will help our boys over there by pulling this country together."
***
Nixon had tried to talk to the student demonstrators. He concluded he preferred the hard hats. "Thinks now the college demonstrators have overplayed their hands," Haldeman wrote in his diary, "evidence is the blue collar group rising against them, and [president] can mobilize them."
New York construction workers now took every lunch hour for boisterous patriotic demonstrations. So did hard hats in San Diego, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. Some of the rallies were not entirely spontaneous: "Obviously more of these will be occurring throughout the nation," White House staffer Stephen Bull wrote in a memo to Chuck Colson, "perhaps partially as a result of your clandestine activity." Peter Brennan, the combative head of the Building Trades Council of Greater New York, accused of organizing the "hard hat riot," defiantly denied it -- then showed what he could do as an organizer: one hundred thousand marchers on May 20, complete with a cement mixer draped with a LINDSAY FOR MAYOR OF HANOI banner. Signs read GOD BLESS THE ESTABLISHMENT and WE SUPPORT NIXON AND AGNEW. Time called it "a kind of workers' Woodstock."
"Thank God for the hard hats!" Nixon cried. He had been so delighted by the liberal Pete Hamill's exposé of the political alienation of the white working class in New York magazine in 1969 that he ordered a Labor Department study on the question. Assistant Secretary Jerome S. Rosow had just delivered his report "The Problem of the Blue Collar Worker." It described a population "on a treadmill, chasing the illusion of higher living standards," fighting via the only apparent weapon at their disposal: "continued pressure for high wages." Their only champions "seem to be the union leaders spearheading the demand." But to reduce the problem to economics, Rosow suggested, was to miss more than half the story. The more profound distress was cultural -- a problem of recognition. Negroes at least had a clamoring lobby -- Daniel Moynihan's "hysterics, paranoids and boodlers" -- making noise on their behalf. Blue-collar whites "feel like [OE]forgotten people' -- those for whom the government and society have limited, if any direct concern and little visible action."
Here was the germ of a revolution in the Republican's message. Unless they took workers' votes from the Democrats -- as Ronald Reagan had in California in 1966 -- Nixon would never be able to achieve the New Majority he dreamed of. But to do so with ongoing economic concessions -- previously the only way politicians imagined working-class voters might be wooed -- offended a more foundational Republican constituency: business. And contributed to the inflation that was driving the stock market into the low 600s.
But to extend to blue-collar workers the hand of cultural recognition -- that was a different ball game altogether. It's not that right-leaning politicians hadn't tried it before -- Nixon had done something like it in the Checkers Speech, when he styled the people accusing him of corruption as hopeless snobs, and himself as an ordinary striver just trying to make an honest living. But the hard-hat ascendency set into motion a qualitative shift: the first concerted effort to turn the white working class, via its aesthetic disgusts, against a Democratic Party now joining itself objectively, with their Cooper-Church and McGovern-Hatfield amendments, to the agenda of the smelly longhairs who burned down buildings.
The Democratic Party: enemy of the working man. It was the political version of that New York Times photograph of the stockbroker and the pie fitter joined in solidarity in the act of clobbering a hippie -- their common weapon the American flag. That white men in ties and white men in hard hats were radically opposed to one another was a foundational left-wing idea. But as a Republican state senator from Orange County observed, "Every time they burn another building, Republican registration goes up." Nixon told his team to get to work putting the Rosow Report's insights, "even if only symbolic," into action. Peter Brennan, and Thomas Gleason of the International Longshoremen's Association, vice president of the AFL-CIO executive committee, were summoned to the White House on May 26 -- the day the Dow reached a new yearly low, nine days after the Cooper-Church amendment passed a Senate committee. Brennan presented the president with an honorary hard hat reading commander in chief and left a four-star hard hat to present to General Creighton Abrams, the American commander in Vietnam, and promised continued patriotic marches: "The hard hat will stand as a symbol along with our great flag, for freedom and patriotism and our beloved country." Nixon eventually made Brennan secretary of labor. One member of the delegation said, "If someone would have had the courage to go into Cambodia, they might have captured the bullet that took my son's life." The president choked up. Sweet triumph: who could be more Democratic than union leaders?
The Republican business class, small-town America, backyard-pool suburbanites, Dixiecrats, calloused union members: now it was as if the White House had discovered the magic incantation to join them as one. Nixonites imagined no limit to the power of this New Majority: "Patriotic themes to counter economic depression will get response from unemployed," Haldeman wrote in a note to himself. Then no one would be a Democrat anymore.
Excerpted from Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein. Copyright © 2008 by Rick Perlstein.
11:21:17 AM
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Monday, May 5, 2008 |
Baghdad amusement park contractor: Violence in Baghdad is like ‘drive-bys’ in LA.. On April 24, Fox News interviewed <a href="ttp://www.rideshow.com/aboutus_index.html">John March, executive vice president of Ride and Show Engineering, to discuss the contractor’s plans to develop the “Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience.” Host Bill Hemmer asked March whether there are safety concerns associated with the park’s development. March answered:
Well, you live here in Southern California and there’s drive-bys and everything else. So there’s danger everywhere, and I think the key thing is this will be tremendous for Baghdad.
March added that the Disneyland-style project is being “fast-tracked” by the Pentagon. Watch it:
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[Think Progress]
9:55:46 AM
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Bolton: Striking Iran ‘Is Really The Most Prudent Thing To Do’. Yesterday morning, Fox News interviewed former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton to discuss whether America is close to striking Iranian targets, as new reports indicate the Bush administration is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike.” Bolton said that while there are “obviously risks associated” with a strike on Iran, the risks of not doing something are “far higher” at this point.
Fox anchor Jaime Colby asserted, “The Brits think we overestimate the threat of Iran in this particular case. Are they right or wrong?” Bolton — who has previously claimed that the “mullahs in Iran” want a Democratic president in 2008 — responded:
I think they’re dead wrong on this. I think this is a case where the use of military force against a training camp to show the Iranians we’re not going to tolerate this is really the most prudent thing to do. Then the ball would be in Iran’s court to draw the appropriate lesson to stop harming our troops.
Fox anchor Colby reacted to Bolton’s war cries by concluding, “That’s a good message to end on. Thank you.” Watch it:
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Bolton has asserted that preventive war against Iraq “did work” and “achieved our strategic objective.” Moreover, he has openly stated that the U.S. should have no interest in the well-being of Iraqis.
Bolton[base ']Äôs unquenchable appetite for a military conflict with Iran is easy to understand, given that he cares so little about the disastrous consequences that follow from war.
[Think Progress]
9:52:21 AM
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© Copyright 2008 Patricia Thurston.
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