Barack Obama

Bob Fertik — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:29:18 -0500

Display this full page for our collections of important facts about Barack Obama.

For ongoing stories in the news, check our blog:
http://democrats.com/barack-obama

You’re Scaring Me, Obama: Let the Bush Years Die

Heather Wokusch — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:39:34 -0500

To be honest, Obama, you lost me when you voted for the PATRIOT Act reauthorization in 2006. You lost me again when you voted for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) amendment in 2008. And you lost me every single time you voted for yet more war funding.

Don't even get me started on your vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

I cast a ballot for you in November, but I just can't share in this moment of collective euphoria over your election.

So, if your transition team really wants feedback on "where President-Elect Obama should lead this country," here's a Top Five list:

1. Dump the Bush Doctrine and don’t start more wars

You've made it clear that the US has to "take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights" and you’ve argued for "more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11."

What exactly does that mean?

Take troops out of Iraq and shove them into Afghanistan? Further destabilize Pakistan?

The whole idea of preemptive war (a.k.a. the Bush Doctrine) has no place in a civilized society and must be laid to rest, along with those sacrificed in Bush's military adventurism these past eight years.

Yet your approach to preemptive war, Mr. Obama, is nuanced at best.

During the January 2008 Democratic presidential debate, you said that if the US had "actionable intelligence" and Pakistan didn’t "take on Al Qaida in their territory," then "I would strike." You added, " And that's the flaw of the Bush doctrine. It wasn't that he went after those who attacked America. It was that he went after those who didn't."

No, the flaw of the Bush Doctrine is that it's just plain wrong. We've learned that the hard way.

2. Ditch the warmongers

What's with all of the hawks in your new administration?

You presented yourself as a peace candidate and then chose Joe Biden as your VP. Yes, he brought in the white male vote, but he also backed the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just last month Biden warned that if you were elected, there would be "an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." He said that you would make some "incredibly tough decisions" that could alienate the Democratic base, because if decisions are "popular, they're probably not sound."

In other words, a popular decision, one that the majority of the people wants, is probably not a good decision. Democracy to Biden…

And then there's Robert Gates, widely rumored to be staying on as your Defense Secretary. Questions about Gates’ role in Iran-Contra, not to mention his skewing of intelligence about Russia, still linger.

But especially disturbing is his recent push for beefing up the US nuclear arsenal: "As long as other nations have or seek nuclear weapons – and can potentially threaten us, our allies and friends – then we must have a deterrent capacity that makes it clear that challenging the United States in the nuclear arena, or with weapons of mass destruction, could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response."

Let's get this straight: if other nations are even imagined to "seek" nuclear weapons, that "could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response" from the US.

Obama, you've often insisted on taking "no options off the table" in dealing with Iran. How does Gates' proposal for the preemptive use of nuclear weapons factor in there?

While we're on the topic of warmongers in your midst… Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff? Yet another hawk, hell-bent on Iran and enamored with nuclear weapons.

And now we've got Clinton as Secretary of State.

Why is it that none of the 23 senators and 133 House Reps who voted against the war in Iraq are even on a short-list for these critical posts?

3. Close Guantanamo – and the whole system of secret prisons

Shutting down Gitmo is said to be a priority for your new administration. Terrific.

But what about Bagram? What about the other CIA "black site" secret prisons set up in Afghanistan, Thailand, Eastern Europe and elsewhere? What about the CIA torture flights? Will those end too?

Closing Gitmo also raises questions over how "high value" defendants will be handled. Your administration is reportedly considering setting up an alternative court system to deal with sensitive cases. But what safeguards will be in place to be sure that this new system won't degenerate into kangaroo courts, like Bush's military commissions?

It's a disturbing signal that you’ve appointed John Brennan, who has supported extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretapping, to help review intelligence agencies for your administration. As former CIA and State Department analyst Mel Goodman noted, Brennan "sat there at [former CIA Director George] Tenet's knee when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, on black sites, on secret prisons. He was part of all of that decision making."

And this is who will help lead us out of this mess?

You've criticized the use of torture, yet reportedly will not bring criminal charges against those who authorized or conducted torture during the Bush years. Your administration doesn't see it as politically expedient, and Bush might give "preemptive" pardons anyway.

But can we really end this dark chapter in our nation's history without even an investigation? A Truth Commission, perhaps? Providing blanket immunity to all low-level and senior government officials won’t prevent possible war crimes from happening again. Quite the opposite.

4. Expose Bush & Co., and ditch the national surveillance state

Speaking of war crimes, how about Bush, Cheney and the rest? You'll soon be given access to Bush-era secret orders and opinions authorizing everything from surveillance to detention. You'll no doubt rescind many, to great fanfare, but what about sharing this evidence of Bush-year excesses with the public?

Yes, Bush could file a lawsuit and invoke executive privilege, but it's worth the fight. The only other option is shielding Bush & Co., similar to how you will reportedly shield those government officials involved in torture. But the public deserves to know. And if Bush administration officials violated the law, they should be prosecuted.

Now, back to your vote for both the PATRIOT Act reauthorization in 2006 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendment in 2008. These and other rollbacks in domestic civil liberties under Bush are inexcusable and must be addressed. We'll be waiting for you to do that.

5. Choose Main Street (not Wall Street)

Just this month you promised Americans that they can "turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street."

Yet, as Bloomberg notes, "almost half the people" on your Transition Economic Advisory Board "have held fiduciary positions at companies that, to one degree or another, either fried their financial statements, helped send the world into an economic tailspin, or both."

This includes, for example, Anne Mulcahy and Richard Parsons, both of whom were Fannie Mae directors when the company fudged accounting rules. Ditto for another of your team members, William Daley.

Mulcahy and Parsons additionally held executive posts when their companies (Xerox Corp. and Time Warner Inc., respectively) got busted for accounting fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Also on your team is Richard Rubin, who as Bloomberg notes, was "chairman of Citigroup Inc.'s executive committee when the bank pushed bogus analyst research, helped Enron Corp. cook its books, and got caught baking its own. He was a director from 2000 to 2006 at Ford Motor Co., which also committed accounting fouls and now is begging Uncle Sam for Citigroup-style bailout cash."

The list of questionable appointees to your Transitional Economic Advisory Board goes on and on, begging the question: Is this really the best you could come up with? How about Joseph Stiglitz, Sheila Bair, Nouriel Roubini or James K. Galbraith, for starters? Someone who represents labor?

Meanwhile, we're stuck with this nasty bailout bill – which you voted for.

Others, such as Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), realized the bill's problems and voted against it. Feingold said that the Wall Street bailout legislation, "fails to reform the flawed regulatory structure that permitted this crisis to arise in the first place. And it doesn’t do enough to address the root cause of the credit market collapse, namely the housing crisis. Taxpayers deserve a plan that puts their concerns ahead of those who got us into this mess."

Feingold was right.

In short, Mr. President-elect, you promised "Change we can believe in," but across the board it's looking a lot more like "Business as usual."

Oh yeah...Remembering the War and Other National and Global Crises

dlindorff — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:25:56 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

The ongoing and deepening global economic crisis, to which Barack
Obama owes his presidential election victory, is no small thing, to be
sure. It also presents us on the left with a lot of openings to press
for progressive change.

We saw how the Republican attempt to derail Obama by labeling him a
“socialist” actually backfired—especially when people were reminded
that a fundamental premise of socialism is “income redistribution,” in
which some of the wealth of the rich is taken away through taxation,
and transferred through federal programs to those who are less wealthy.
Joe the Plumber was outraged, but when most Americans who were having
trouble paying for gas or making their next mortgage payment, or who
were worried that their jobs might be about to vanish, thought about
that for longer than a sound-bite, it turns out that, not surprisingly,
they decided socialism and redistribution didn’t sound like a bad or
scary idea at all.

The same can be said of labor unions. In good times, many Americans
have bought the argument that unions are just out to grab dues payments
from their paychecks. But as job security vanishes and wages languish,
people are waking up to the idea that they are simply expendable
“inputs” to employers, and that a union can help them stand up to
abusive, uncaring management. Republican propaganda about the sanctity
of “secret ballot” union elections—ironic given the GOP’s simultaneous
assault all over the country on the right to vote—fell on deaf ears.

Government itself, long a dirty word thanks to years of
conservative propaganda, aped and spread through the corporate media,
is coming back into favor, now that people see that they cannot count
on either themselves or their employers to pull them through hard
times. The idea that government can step in with things like extended
unemployment insurance benefits, food stamps, and even renegotiated
mortgages, makes people who once mocked “big government” view things a
little differently.

But this unprecedented economic crisis also poses dangers.

Because we are so obsessed with the ongoing collapse of the economy
and the gathering storm of debt, unemployment and loss of retirement
savings that it entails, it’s easy for all of us to lose sight of other
crises that demand our urgent attention and action.

Chief among these are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing threat of climate change.

The wars are not going away on their own. The Iraq puppet
government of Nouri al Maliki is close to approving a deadline for the
removal of US troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. That is more than
three years from now—nearly as long as the US was involved in World War
II! It’s longer, even, than the absurd 16 months that Obama said it
would take for him to end the US war and occupation of Iraq during his
campaign, which was bad enough. (In the case of Afghanistan, it
represents a decade of war—as long as the Vietnam War!) The danger is
that Obama will allow that status of troops agreement with Iraq to
become his timetable for withdrawal. We have to say “No!” The Iraq War
must be ended immediately.

Afghanistan, meanwhile, is in a meltdown, and every day that US
forces operate there, the opposition to US occupation grows, simply
strengthening the Taliban. Similarly, the more the US tries to attack
Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in neighboring Pakistan, the more
opposition grows to the US in Pakistan. If we opponents of the war
allow Obama to go ahead with his plans for a larger US military force
in Afghanistan, we will end up with an even bigger and wider war in the
Middle East and Asia, with more terrorist recruits, and with whatever
remains of US funds for important domestic initiatives swallowed up by
the Pentagon and the secret intelligence budget.

Let me put this simply: Nothing progressive that has been proposed
by the Obama campaign can be achieved while the US is engaged in these
two criminal wars. No health care reform, no increase in education
loans, no early childhood education, no public works jobs programs,
Nothing.

And then there is climate change. The Obama campaign promised to
finally end eight years of a new Dark Ages, when government simply
denied science or actively attacked science, and to start taking
serious action to reduce America’s role in spewing out carbon into the
atmosphere. But you don’t hear much about that anymore. That’s because
reducing America’s carbon footprint costs serious money—money for
research into non-carbon energy sources, money for a power transmission
system to serve wind generation farms, money to develop a new
generation of non-polluting vehicles and to rebuild light rail and
inter-city rail systems. And once again, with the economy in a crisis,
and with the two wars sucking up all available tax revenues that aren’t
being given away to banks and Wall Street financial firms and insurance
companies, none of that is going to happen either, unless we demand it.

Meanwhile, while the progressive folks who put their all into the
Obama campaign are reveling in his and their Election Night success,
and are now taking a breather, the forces of darkness that control the
Democratic Party (think Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Rahm
Emanuel and the whole Democratic Leadership Council), are grabbing
control of the new administration, filling the incoming Obama cabinet
with carryover hacks from the Clinton administration, even including
the Clintons themselves, and, in some cases, the outgoing Bush
administration).

This is, in other words, no time to sit back and relax, reveling in
the admittedly hard-to-believe prospect of an African-American moving
into the White House. It is a time for action and then more action.

When Barack Obama makes that dramatic walk from his Inauguration
Day speech at the Capitol building to the White House, the streets need
to be lined with protestors holding up signs calling for an immediate
end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When the new Congress tries to vote for a $50 –billion or
$150-billion bail-out of the US auto industry, we need to be packing
the halls shouting it down. That money should be going only into
development of zero-emission automobiles, and it should be in the form
of voting-share equity in those companies.

Here, for what it’s worth, are my top 10 demands for action by the new Democratic government iin Washington:

1. US forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Immediately! Shift the
funds saved to reconstruction aid for those two countries and to
veterans benefits, with any extra savings going to help fund education
in poor school districts in the US.

2. Slash military spending by closing most or all overseas military
bases, by dramatically reducing nuclear forces to near zero, by
reducing the number of men and women in uniform, and by closing bases
in the US. Savings should go to shoring up the Social Security and
Medicare Trust Fund.

3. Open up the secret intelligence budget, currently running at over
$40 billion a year, and cut it, for starters, by half. Savings should
also go to the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund. (Along the way,
ban all spying on Americans, and revive the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act in full as originally written.)

4. Break up the banking and automobile industry, as well as any
other industry in which any player is so large it is able to extort
money out of the government by threatening that its failure would cause
a national economic crisis. “Too big to fail” needs to mean “too big to
be permitted to exist.”

5. Join the Kyoto Treaty, and pledge to immediately begin a campaign
to reduce US carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 or better, 2030.
Establish a crash national research program to develop carbon-free
energy sources, and provide funding for households to convert to
passive geo-thermal heating and cooling systems. Funds can come from
the unused $350-billion portion of the Paulson/Bernacke Wall Street
bailout fund. (Talk about a job-creation program, not to mention a big
whack at imported oil!)

6. Pass the Employer Free Choice Act, requiring employers to
recognize a labor union wherever a majority of the workers have signed
cards saying they want a union, and requiring those employers to
negotiate and reach an initial contract agreement within 90 days, or
under mandatory mediation.

7. Reassert the Constitutionally mandated authority of Congress by
rescinding all Bush/Cheney-era signing statements and executive orders
and declaring them, by Presidental declaration and by Joint Resolution
of the Congress, to have been invalid and unconstitutional.

8. Order the US Justice Department to investigate the actions of the
prior administration and, where crimes are discovered, to prosecute
offenders, up to and including the former president, to the full extent
of the law. This would include obstruction of justice, abuse of power,
commission of war crimes, conspiracy, fraud, bribery, war profiteering
and criminal negligence.

9. Appoint Ralph Nader as new chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission, with a powerful mandate take the necessary steps to restore
competition and fairness to the nation’s media. (My pet proposal:
Establish a government loan fund to allow workers at failing newspapers
to buy their publications from the owners and to operate them as
employee-owned enterprises, on a tax-free basis.)

10. Enact a national health care program that provides health
insurance for every person in America. My choice here would be a
single-payer system—essentially an expansion of Medicare to cover
everyone, funded by progressive taxation. Failing that, a system in
which the government has an insurance program operating in competition
with the private sector, should eventually lead to a single-payer plan.
One idea: dispatch a public-citizen commission to Canada to study the
Canadian health system and report back to Congress and the White House
in 90 days.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006).
His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Bush Firing Disloyal Federal Employees

davidswanson — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:15:16 -0500

By David Swanson

Half the story has been told. On Tuesday the Washington Post reported that Bush is creating civil service positions for loyal appointees, in order to make it hard for Obama to get rid of them.

Bush has also, for some time now, been terminating large numbers of employees in the federal government, people known as whistleblowers, people suspected of disloyalty. Some of the higher profile cases are well known.

But there is more to the story. And it follows the strategy described in Thomas Frank's recent book, "The Wrecking Crew." I've been given what is believed to be a very incomplete list of 33 names of people terminated or forced to resign. These people are being forced into the ranks of the unemployed. They include, by salary ranking, 13 people classified as GS-15 or GS-14, and another 20 GS-13s and GS-12s. Some of these people do not want their names made public. Others are perfectly happy to talk. They include:

At the EPA:
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
Coriolana Simon

At the Department of Commerce:
Janet Howard

At the Department of Labor:
Charolette Yee

At the Department of Education:
Nicole Harrison

At the Department of Transportation:
Taft Kelly

At the Department of Commerce – Trademark and Patent:
Renee Berry
Willie Berry
Norman Wright
Mary Dixon
Fetfum Abramham
Binta Robinson
Dusta Yevassa

I've spoken with Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and Renee Berry. Coleman-Adebayo called what's happening a "silent coup d'etat." The Bush administration, she said, is "embedding their foot soldiers inside the government in order to sabotage any Obama initiatives while at the same time terminating federal employees who they assume would be supportive of the new administration." She compared this process to a soviet purge.

Berry said that people being forced out of work are looking at a future in poverty. "The government refuses, in many cases, to provide good recommendations for these employees, and that leaves them with a 20- to 30-year gap in their employee history."

Coleman-Adebayo has long been known as a whistleblower at the EPA. She worked with me to set up a website advocating the removal of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, and her story is summarized at
http://johnsonmustgo.org/marsha

In fact, Coleman-Adebayo's advocacy on behalf of employees dates back to before the Bush Administration, to the days when Bill Clinton ran the White House and Carol Browner ran the EPA. Browner is now being considered for a new position of Environmental Czar in the Obama Administration.

Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, authors of "The Spy Who Tried to Stop A War: Katherine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion," and "The Spy Who Seduced America: Lies and Betrayal in the Heart of the Cold War" (2002), have written the following about Coleman-Adebayo's firing:

Coleman-Adebayo v. Browner

The senior EPA analyst whose historic anti-discrimination case led to legislation protecting whistleblowers is being fired from her job at the Environmental Protection Agency. She sees this as the ultimate act of retaliation against her; a payback for continuing her fight to protect federal employees who speak out against wrongdoing in government agencies.

The election of Barack Obama has given Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo both hope and concern. “I see triumph, but I also see vulnerability in what lies ahead,” she says.

Writing in the New York Times six years ago, Coleman-Adebayo optimistically envisioned the possibilities of passage of what would become the first civil rights law of the 21st century: the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR). At the time, her optimism was justified. No Fear passed by a unanimous act of Congress –- the first time a major piece of civil rights legislation was so honored. Coleman-Adebayo stood directly behind the President when the act was signed into law.

Change was in the air, but not for long and not for everyone. "I have been the continued target of reprisal and harassment, a common fate of whistleblowers," she says.

Every two years, or 90 days after acceptance into federal service, all employees must take No FEAR training based on her successful legal case, Coleman-Adebayo v. Browner. However, the Agency has not allowed Dr. Coleman-Adebayo to take the No FEAR training course -- a "cruel irony" in her book. Carol Browner, defendant and former EPA administrator, is now serving on the president-elect's transition team and was reported by the Washington Post to be the "obvious choice" if the new administration names an "environmental czar."

This possibility worries Coleman-Adebayo and, she says, "many of us who lived through the Browner administration are worried about the message this sends."

She adds that, "Despite the jury’s verdict, despite the legislation that flowed directly from that verdict, and despite the fact that the Agency decided not to appeal and to accept the jury's findings, Ms. Browner never reprimanded any of the managers under her authority who were found guilty of discrimination and retaliatory tactics."

Coleman-Adebayo says Browner made no attempt to comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. "She delivered a chilling message to her subordinates within the agency, saying that it would require more than a civil rights law to change business as usual at the EPA.”

There is no question that Coleman-Adebayo's unexpected departure from the agency where she has worked for nearly 20 years will have ramifications for the new administration. The senior analyst is highly respected and has a substantial following; in fact, Washington insiders have speculated that the new administration might well select her as the next EPA administrator. She certainly is well qualified.

Regardless, Dr. Coleman-Adebayo, whose personal struggle from a working class background to a prestigious MIT doctorate parallels that of the president-elect, will be out of a job by the end of the year. It is rumored that her dismissal -- and that of a handful of others -- is a move to "clean out" the agency, to get rid of "troublemakers" before the present administrator, Steve Johnson, leaves office.

The plaintiff's problems at EPA began in 2001, when she blew the whistle on a U.S. multinational corporation whose operation in South Africa was causing vanadium poisoning throughout an entire community. Her insistence that the problem be corrected led to a pattern of discrimination and harassment against her, and no quick fix for the people suffering and dying from vanadium exposure. She reports having been called a “whiner” and other, more profane names for taking a stand unpopular at the agency.

Ultimately, Coleman-Adebayo and the EPA met in a courtroom, where the jury found in the plaintiff's favor and against the federal agency. What happened that day led directly to NoFear.

It was only the critical first step in an incomplete journey, according to Coleman-Adebayo.

"I urge the Obama Administration, within the first 100 days, to endorse the NoFear II and Congressional Disclosures Acts -- two bills currently before Congress that continue the spirit of the original legislation." They do so she says, while providing the means to enforce compliance by managers who flout the rules.

When Coleman-Adebayo shared optimism for passage of new protective legislation at a recent American University symposium based on the newly released, "The Spy Who Tried to Stop A War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion," she had no idea her days as a federal employee were numbered. Present at the symposium and offering support, along with fired British secret service officer Gun, was whistleblower icon Daniel Ellsberg. It was an impressive gathering made more so by the dedication and determination of those present.

There is no question that hope for the future was in the air. And hope is what it's all about at the moment.

SEE: HTTP://AFTERDOWNINGSTREET.ORG/STOPTHEPURGE

Bushies to Remain in Government

davidswanson — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:23:36 -0500

By David Swanson

Not only is President Elect Obama talking about keeping on key Bushies like Robert Gates.

Not only is Bush transforming appointees into career civil servants, in order to prevent Obama from bringing in new people. (Read the WaPo story.)

But -- and this has not, as far as I know, yet been reported -- Bush is firing dozens of employees in various departments who have been whistleblowers or are known to lean left politically, and replacing them with loyal Bushies. Or so I'm told by a very good source. More info coming soon.

President-Elect Obama's 60 Minutes Interview: The Transition, The Presidency, and a Father's Promise

Chip — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:58:41 -0500

Watch CBS Videos Online

One-Sided Propaganda `Journalism' About a Destabilizing Boondoggle

dlindorff — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:51:44 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

A CBS/Associated Press story
yesterday reported that the man who runs the Pentagon’s anti-missile
program, Lt. Gen. Henry Obering III, had warned incoming
President-elect Barack Obama that any reversal of Bush/Cheney
administration plans to install anti-ballistic missile missiles in
Poland would “severely hurt” American interests.

It was a classic “stupid” story of the type that we now expect to
get from our corporate media—basically a regurgitation of the statement
of one self-interested official, backed up by a few supporting quotes
from other government officials, and the usual “anonymous” official
sources, and lacking any context or opposing viewpoints.

Let’s analyze this a little more. The Bush/Administration, since
coming into office eight years ago, has been putting intense pressure
on Russia by pressing to have NATO expanded right up to Russia’s
borders—also to have NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan, to Russia’s
south in central Asia. As one ratchet up in that pressure, the
administration pushed to get anti-missile sites placed in some
countries on Russia’s western border. One such proposed location was
the Czech Republic, but that was rejected because of local opposition.
Poland, however, agreed, after being pressed hard by the administration.

For US consumption, the move was presented as being aimed at Iran,
which Bush and Cheney keep insisting is constructing nuclear bombs. No
one could explain why anti-missile missiles placed in Poland, which
sits in northern Europe, would have any utility in knocking down would
be Iranian missiles aimed at Europe, or, for that matter, why Iran
would want to fire nuclear missiles at Europe, which, in Britain and
France, has a large and sophisticated nuclear stockpile capable of
incinerating Iran. The real target of those missiles became clear when
Georgia provoked Russia into sending its army into the breakaway state
of Ossetia. Before that little military conflict, Poland had been
resisting US pressure to agree to the missile sites, because of strong
local opposition. After Russia moved its troops and tanks into Ossetia,
and trounced Georgia’s military, Poland went ahead and approved the
anti-missile site.

If the anti-missile missiles were intended to protect against Iran,
such a decision by Poland would have made no sense whatever. Clearly
the US was pointing those things at a different enemy: Russia. And that
of course is how the Russians view things. Earlier this month, within
days of the US election, Russia’s president warned that if the
anti-missile battery were placed in Poland, Russia would move
short-range nuclear-capable missiles up to its border with Poland, thus
not only rendering the US missile “shield”, such as it is, useless
because there would be no notice of any attack from that close, but
also escalating the wholly unnecessary conflict between the US and NATO
on the one hand, and Russia on the other.

Of course, this is exactly what the Bush/Cheney plan has been all
along: to increase tensions with Russia, and thus justify continuation
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which should have been
dismantled along with the demise of the Soviet Union. The Bush/Cheney
strategy has been to use NATO as a kind of global cover for its
military adventures, such as Afghanistan, which is, it should be noted,
about as far from the “North Atlantic” as one can get.

None of this history made it into the CBS/AP story yesterday. Nor
was there any mention of the fact that the anti-missile missile program
itself is little more than a $160-billion boondoggle.

The only thing that would be “severely hurt” if the Polish basing
plan were killed by the incoming Obama administration would be Lt. Gen.
Obering’s career, the more so if Obama did the right and proper thing
and killed the whole “Star Wars” project altogether.

There are plenty of critics of this Reagan-era boondoggle. After
the spending of $160 billion on the program, not one missile has ever
actually been shot down if flight in a real test, where the trajectory
of the target wasn’t strictly plotted out in advance to guide the
interceptor. Moreover, as many scientific critics have repeatedly
pointed out, even low-tech Third World nations like North Korea could
include countermeasures such as decoy warheads, which would render any
effort at interception of a real warhead impossible. The entire idea of
an anti-missile shield against nuclear weapons is an incredibly
expensive fraud, yet one which promises to revive the threat of nuclear
war, because the simplest way to overcome an anti-missile system is to
increase the number of incoming missiles, and to put them as close to
the target countries as possible to reduce warning time.

Yet none of this kind of criticism of the Polish missile-basing plan was mentioned in the CBS/AP story.

It’s funny. If CBS or AP ran a story about a warning by the
chairman of General Motors saying that failure to give the company a
$25 billion bailout would “severely hurt” the US economy, without any
comment by critics of such a taxpayer gift, everyone would recognizing
the article as junk. But with national security stories, no one raises
an eyebrow when this kind of thing is done.

President Elect Barack Obama has a chance to do what President
Clinton should have done, which is to kill the whole “Star Wars”
program. He can start by killing the absurd and dangerous plan to put
anti-missile platforms in Poland.

If the media will report fairly and honestly about this issue,
instead of simply passing off the arguments of self-interested
proponents like anti-missile program director Lt. Gen. Obering, maybe
the American people will demand that it be ended, and that the billions
of dollars that have annually been wasted in pursuing this Pentagon
fantasy be put to better use, perhaps building schools or developing
electric cars to replace the gas guzzlers nobody wants to buy anymore.
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Palin: Honored to Help Obama Despite His Affiliation with Unrepentent Terrorist

Chip — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:58:00 -0500

Palin says she'd be honored to help Obama | CNN.com

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told CNN today that she would be honored to help President-elect Barack Obama in his new administration if asked, even if he did once hang around with an "unrepentant domestic terrorist."

Gov. Sarah Palin says she will support President-elect Barack Obama and his new administration.

The Alaska governor said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer that she would be willing to help if Obama asked her for assistance on some of the issues she highlighted during this year's campaign, such as energy or services for special-needs children.

"It would be my honor to assist and support our new president and the new administration," said Palin, whom Sen. John McCain chose as his running mate in August.

"I speak for other Republicans and Republican governors, also," she said.

"They would be willing also to seize this opportunity that we have to progress this nation together, in a united front."

But asked moments later about some of the tough rhetoric she hurled from the stump, she said she was "still concerned" about Obama's ties to former Weather Underground member-turned-Chicago college professor William Ayers. Watch Palin discuss how she could help Obama

"If anybody still wants to talk about it, I will," she said. "Because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol.

"That's an association that still bothers me, and I think it's fair to still talk about it," she continued.

"However, the campaign is over. That chapter is closed. Now is the time to move on and make sure all of us are doing all that we can to progress this nation." Watch Palin talk about Ayers

Palin was attending the annual Republican Governors Association convention in Miami, Florida. She was interviewed for CNN's "The Situation Room" -- the latest of several high-profile appearances for the ex-VP candidate. She will also appear Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live."

There's speculation that Palin, as well as other incumbent governors at the conference -- such as Charlie Crist of Florida, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota -- could all have designs on the Republican presidential nomination in the next race for the White House. All three governors were on McCain's list of possible running mates before he selected Palin.

As the 2012 buzz takes off, a new poll suggests that just less than half of all Americans have a favorable view of Palin.

Forty-nine percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday have a favorable opinion of Palin, with 43 percent viewing her unfavorably.

That is lower than a previous poll, suggesting that favorable opinions of Palin are dropping among Americans.

"In early September, just after the GOP convention, her favorable rating among registered voters was 57 percent, and only a quarter of all registered voters had an unfavorable view of her," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

"Palin is less popular than Vice President-elect Joe Biden, with a 64 percent favorable rating, or her boss on the GOP ticket during the just-completed campaign, John McCain, who is seen favorably by 61 percent of the public."

The poll also suggests that men have a slightly more positive view of Palin than women, with 51 percent of males viewing her favorably, 3 percentage points higher than female respondents. Forty-one percent of males have an unfavorable opinion of Palin, compared with 45 percent of female survey respondents. Video Watch what McCain says about Palin »

"With fairly high negatives and lower support among women, who should be a natural constituency for Palin, she's not starting off from a position of strength," Holland said. "The question is no longer whether Palin was a drag on the McCain ticket but whether her unfavorables could be a drag on a future Palin ticket." See how Americans view Palin.

Among Republicans, though, Palin's rating remains high, with 86 percent of Republicans questioned in the poll holding a favorable opinion of her. That number drops to 48 percent among independents and 27 percent among Democrats.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted November 6 to 9, with 1,246 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Obama's First Big Mistake on the Job: Rescuing Sen. Joe Lieberman

dlindorff — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:08:44 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

The word is that Barack Obama, in keeping with his promise of a new
post-Bush/Cheney era of “civility in government,” is telling Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid not to eject the treacherous Sen. Joe
Lieberman (I-CT) from the Democratic caucus.

This is a terrible mistake. Joe Lieberman is a wretched example of
a man without principle—a back-stabbing slimeball of a politician whose
only allegience, apparently, besides to himself, is to Israel.

Now I don’t want anyone to think I’m some rabid anti-semite. My
wife and kids are Jewish, we have good friends who are Israeli, and no,
I don’t think the Jews run the media or the country. I do, however,
think that Joe Lieberman thinks more about what, in his warped and
shriveled worldview, is good for Israel, than about what is good for
America.

This senator from my childhood state of Connecticut, who back in
2000 ran as a standard-bearer of the Democratic Party as Al Gore’s
running mate, since 9-11 has been a warmonger of the first order, even
joining the right-wing Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) in trying to pass a
resolution in the senate last year which, had it made it through as he
originally worded it, would have effectively enabled—even
invited--George Bush to attack Iran at will as a part of Bush’s
megalomaniacal global “War” on Terror.

It is Lieberman’s obsession with having the US obliterate first
Iraq and now Iran, with nukes if need be, that led him to abandon his
party and become a leading supporter and apoligist for George W. Bush
and Dick Cheney, and later to become a key endorser of Sen. John
“Bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran” McCain.

Lieberman also signed on enthusiastically to the worst excesses of
Bush’s and Cheney’s eight-year-long assault on the Constitution, the
Bill of Rights and International Law. As head of the Senate Homeland
Security Committee, Lieberman became the leading advocate of fascist
policies in the Senate, rivaled only by such ranting Republican
proto-fascists as Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) and Rep. Michelle
Bachmann (R-MN). It was Lieberman who at least initially
enthusiastically backed Attorney General John Ashcroft’s mad proposal
(thankfully never implemented) to establish an Operation TIPS (for
Terrorist Information and Prevention Service) program that would have
recruited millions of Americans to spy on their neighbors and
co-workers, replicating the dreaded Stasi of Communist East Germany.
Only after libertarian-minded Republicans like former House Majority
Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) came out strongly against the scheme did
Lieberman have second thoughts, Initially, in fact, Lieberman had
personally, in his role as chair, blocked efforts by Sen. Patrick Leahy
(D-VT) to delete funding for Operation TIPS from a Homeland Security
Department funding bill before his committee.

The Democrats, who already are assured of 56 solid seats in their
caucus in the next Senate, with a chance at a couple more when all the
2004 Election races are settled and runoffs completed, don’t need a
weasel like Lieberman mucking up their ranks. If they need four more
votes to kill some Republican filibusters, they have Republicans they
can turn to, or cajole. If Barack Obama is smart (and he certainly is
that), he can also add a few—perhaps even four—Democrats to Senate
ranks by naming as many Republican senators as he needs to replace to
cabinet posts. As long as he names people like Sens. Susan Collins or
Olympia Snowe of Maine, or Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who represent
states with Democratic governors, those governors will be able to
appoint, as replacements, Democratic senators.

The other reason to shun Lieberman, and to cast him into the
legislative purgatory he so richly deserves, is that it would be an
object lesson to other potential Iagos in the party’s legislative ranks
that such treachery will not be tolerated. What, after all, is the
point of having a party at all, if its members can be as back-stabbing
as Lieberman and get away with it?

It would be a good lesson to the Democrats of the state of
Connecticut, too, who voted in a Democratic primary two years ago to
oust Lieberman as their candidate for re-election, but who then turned
around and joined Republicans in re-electing him when he ran as an
independent against a Republican challenger and against Ned Lamont, the
Democrat who had bested him in the primary. This was treachery by a
class of Democrats in the state of Connecticut that should also not go
unpunished. Connecticut voters should no longer have the benefit of a
powerful senator with seniority when that senator has so betrayed his
party.

Let Lieberman go over to the Republicans hat in hand. Let him
squirm as the Christian fundamentalists among them talk in tongues and
as others of them mutter their anti-semitic obscenities behind his
back. Let this one-time self-described advocate of civil rights blush
in shame as his new colleagues crack their racist jokes about the new
president in the lilly-white Republican caucus room.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in redemption as much as the next
atheist. I’d be perfectly happy to see Joey Lieberman back in the
Democratic caucus, but first he should be made to make a full public
apology both to Obama and to the millions of Democrats who elected the
nation’s first black president, as well as to the Democrats of his home
state of Connecticut, whose resounding 61-38% vote for Obama was the
biggest repudiation of Lieberman of all. That 38 percent tally is the
one he should have gotten when he ran for re-election last time. It’s
probably higher than he’d get if he ran today in Connecticut against
Lamont or any other Democrat.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF, a Connecticut native, is now a Philadelphia-based
journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment”
(St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His
work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Dead at DOJ / Obama at White House

davidswanson — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:51:04 -0500

Dozens of protesters have gathered outside the Department of Justice to urge indictment and trial of the US President and Vice President.... Report and video from PressTV.