Conservative Columnist David Brooks Calls Sarah Palin a ‘Cancer’

Posted on October 9, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

David Brooks. Getty Images.

Comparing her anti-intellectualism to that of President Bush, Brooks called Sarah Palin a ‘fatal cancer to the Republican party.’
By Danny Shea / October 8, 2008

See Video of interview with David Brooks, Below.

David Brooks spoke frankly about the presidential and vice presidential candidates Monday afternoon, calling Sarah Palin a “fatal cancer to the Republican party” but describing John McCain and Barack Obama as “the two best candidates we’ve had in a long time.”

In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg at New York’s Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine’s redesign, Brooks decried Palin’s anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he’d rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn’t think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I’m afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.

Brooks praised Palin’s natural political talent, but said she is “absolutely not” ready to be president or vice president. He explained, “The more I follow politicians, the more I think experience matters, the ability to have a template of things in your mind that you can refer to on the spot, because believe me, once in office there’s no time to think or make decisions.”

The New York Times columnist also said that the “great virtue” of Palin’s counterpart, Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden, is that he is anything but a “yes man.”

“[Biden] can’t not say what he thinks,” Brooks remarked. “There’s no internal monitor, and for Barack Obama, that’s tremendously important to have a vice president who will be that way. Our current president doesn’t have anybody like that.”

Brooks also spent time praising Obama’s intellect and skills in social perception, telling two stories of his interactions with Obama that left him “dazzled”:

Obama has the great intellect. I was interviewing Obama a couple years ago, and I’m getting nowhere with the interview, it’s late in the night, he’s on the phone, walking off the Senate floor, he’s cranky. Out of the blue I say, ‘Ever read a guy named Reinhold Niebuhr?’ And he says, ‘Yeah.’ So i say, ‘What did Niebuhr mean to you?’ For the next 20 minutes, he gave me a perfect description of Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought, which is a very subtle thought process based on the idea that you have to use power while it corrupts you. And I was dazzled, I felt the tingle up my knee as Chris Matthews would say.

And the other thing that does separate Obama from just a pure intellectual: he has tremendous powers of social perception. And this is why he’s a politician, not an academic. A couple of years ago, I was writing columns attacking the Republican congress for spending too much money. And I throw in a few sentences attacking the Democrats to make myself feel better. And one morning I get an email from Obama saying, ‘David, if you wanna attack us, fine, but you’re only throwing in those sentences to make yourself feel better.’ And it was a perfect description of what was going through my mind. And everybody who knows Obama all have these stories to tell about his capacity for social perception.

Brooks predicted an Obama victory by nine points, and said that although he found Obama to be “a very mediocre senator,” he was is surrounded by what Brooks called “by far the most impressive people in the Democratic party.”

“He’s phenomenally good at surrounding himself with a team,” Brooks said. “I disagree with them on most issues, but I am given a lot of comfort by the fact that the people he’s chosen are exactly the people I think most of us would want to choose if we were in his shoes. So again, I have doubts about him just because he was such a mediocre senator, but his capacity to pick staff is impressive.”

Source / The Huffington Post

Video of Interview with David Brooks shot by Rachel Sklar

Thanks to Fontaine Maverick / The Rag Blog

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Afghanistan: Not a ‘Good Fight’ Against Terrorism

Posted on October 9, 2008 by RagBlog


Time To Face The Facts On Afghanistan
By Eric S. Margolis / October 6, 2008

TORONTO — For those who savor historical irony, the Soviet Empire collapsed in the years 1989-1991 because of an implosion of its economy brought on by a ruinous arms race with the United States and the heavy costs of occupying Afghanistan.

Seventeen years later came the turn of the world’s other great imperial power, the United States. Lethally bloated by runaway debt, and burdened by 50% of the world’s military spending, the house of cards known as the US economy finally collapsed.

The doomsday news from New York and Washington has obscured most other world affairs. This is unfortunate because for the first time there is a flicker – and I mean only a flicker – of light at the end of the Afghanistan tunnel. It may only be an oncoming truck bomb.

The US-installed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, revealed last week he had asked Saudi Arabia to broker peace talks with the alliance of tribal and political groups resisting Western occupation collectively known as Taliban. Saudi Arabia had been one of the few nations to recognize the Taliban government and retains considerable influence in Afghanistan and remains a loyal friend of Pakistan.

Taliban leader Mullah Omar quickly rejected Karzai’s offer, and claimed the US was heading toward the same kind of catastrophic defeat in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union had met. The ongoing financial panic in North America lent substance to his words.

The US economy is in grave peril and its big three automakers may soon face bankruptcy. In a crazy sidebar, as Wall Street and the Us banking system faced meltdown, the insouciant Pentagon just announced it would spend $300 million with American `contractors’ to spread pro-US propaganda in Iraq. This remarkable idiocy notwithstanding, Washington could soon run out of money necessary to keep paying for operations in Iraq, and bribing Pakistan with $250-300 million a month to wage war against its own rebellious Pashtun tribes people along the Afghanistan border.

The able and forthright US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, urgently called for at least 10,000 more troops. US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are increasingly on the defensive, hard pressed to defend vulnerable supply lines in spite of massive fire power and total control of the air.

Attacks on US and NATO convoys are even beginning at the port of Karachi. The prospect of the US spreading a war it can’t win in Afghanistan into Pakistan is military and political madness.

Startlingly, Gen. McKiernan appeared to break with Bush administration policy by proposing political talks with Taliban and admitting the war had to be ended by diplomacy. The military men know this war cannot be won on the battlefield. McKiernan’s predecessor told Congress that 400,000 US troops would be needed to pacify Afghanistan. There are currently 80,000 western troops in Afghanistan, many of them unwilling to enter combat.

By sharp contrast, I recently asked Karl Rove, President Bush’s former senior advisor, how the US could ever hope to win the war in Afghanistan. His eyes dancing with imperial hubris, Rove brightly replied, `More Predators(missile armed drones) and helicopters! Then we’ll go into Pakistan.’

Which reminded me of poet Hilaire Beloc’s wonderful line about 19th century British imperialism that I use in my new book, `American Raj:’ `Whatever happens/we have got/the Maxim gun* /and they have not.’

*Maxim gun – early machine gun

Though Karzai’s olive branch was rejected, the fact he made it public is very important. By doing so, both he and Gen. McKiernan broke the simple-minded Western taboo against negotiations with Taliban and its allies.

Let us remember that Taliban is not a `terrorist movement,’ as claimed by western war propaganda, but was founded as an Islamic religious movement dedicated to fighting Communism and the drug trade.

Taliban received US funding until May, 2001. In fact, CIA keep close contacts with Taliban, many of whose members were US-backed mujahidin from the anti-Soviet war of the 1980’s, for possible future use against the Communist regimes of Central Asia and against China. The 9/11 attacks made CIA immediately cut its links to Taliban and burn the associated files.

In recent years, Western war propaganda has so demonized Taliban that few politicians have the courage to propose the obvious and inevitable: a negotiated settlement to this pointless seven-year war. A noteworthy exception came last April when NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who admitted the war could only be ended by negotiations, not military means.

The Karzai government cannot extend its authority beyond Kabul because that would mean overthrowing the very same Uzbek and Tajik drug-dealing warlords and Communists chiefs that are its base of power. There is no real Afghan national army, just a bunch of unenthusiastic mercenaries who pretend to fight.

The current war in Afghanistan is not really about al-Qaida and `terrorism,’ but about opening a secure corridor through Pashtun tribal territory to export the oil and gas riches of the Caspian Basin of Central Asia to the West. The US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are essentially pipeline protection troops fighting off the hostile natives..

Both Barack Obama and John McCain are wrong about Afghanistan. It is not a `good’ fight against `terrorism,’ but a classic, 19th century colonial war to advance western geopolitical power into resource-rich Central Asia. The Pashtun Afghans who live there are ready to fight for another 100 years. The western powers certainly are not.

As that great American founding father Benjamin Franklin said, `there is no good war, and no bad peace.’ Time for the West to face reality in Afghanistan.

[Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles appear in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times and Dawn. Visit his blog – http://www.ericmargolis.com/. ]

Source / Information Clearing House

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He’s Not Heavy…

Posted on October 9, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Cartoon by Joshua Brown.

Thanks to S. R. Keister / The Rag Blog

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The Truth About War Between Georgia and Russia

Posted on October 8, 2008 by RagBlog


I survived the Georgian war. Here’s what I saw.
By Lira Tskhovrebova / October 8, 2008

I blame Georgia’s leaders.

Tskhinvali, South Ossetia – In a speech before the United Nations last month, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili implored world leaders to set up an international investigation to find out the truth about the war in South Ossetia.

I couldn’t agree more. But I think the results of an honest investigation would reveal a very different “truth” than what President Saakashvili claims.

I know this because I was in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, on Aug. 7 when Georgian troops marched into the city and killed my friends and neighbors. I huddled with my family in terror for three nights while Saakashvili’s tanks and rockets destroyed hundreds of our homes, desecrated cemeteries, gutted schools and hospitals.

I also have good reason not to trust what Saakashvili says. For three days before the attack I had been getting calls from many Georgian friends warning me to get out. They said Saakashvili was planning an attack. Most of the Georgians living in South Ossetia left because they knew what was coming.

On the night of Aug. 7, Saakashvili went on television and assured the frightened civilian population of South Ossetia that he would not attack us. This was long after the time Saakashvili now claims Russians had begun “invading” Georgia.

Ossetians went to bed relieved and thankful for a peaceful night.

Less than two hours later, according to credible international accounts, his artillery, bombers, and three brigades of ground troops unleashed what I can only describe as a fierce hell on our city. In the moment, we knew only our fear as we hid. Afterward I spoke with hundreds of Ossetians to find out what was done to us.

My friend’s elderly father tried to douse the flames set by Georgian fire on the home he had built with his hands. His leg was severed by shrapnel from Georgian weapons. He bled to death while his disabled wife crawled from their burning home.

Ossetians saw Georgian tanks firing into basements where women and children hid for safety They saw fleeing families shot down by Georgian snipers. We learned that the Georgian military had used Grad rocket systems and cluster bombs against Tskhinvali.

Yes, I would very much like to see an international commission investigate the truth of what happened.

When I came out from hiding, thanking God that the Russians had saved our lives, I was dismayed by the reaction of the international media to what had happened. There was nothing about Ossetian deaths and the unprovoked horrors inflicted by Saakashvili’s military. It made my heart sick.

The truth has been crushed by Georgia’s powerful public relations machine as mercilessly as Georgian tanks rolled over the defenseless civilians of Tskhinvali.

I know that Americans are a generous and fair people. But Americans haven’t been told the truth about what happened to us. Americans don’t understand that Ossetians are an independent, Christian Orthodox people with a deep history in our land. The world talks only about Georgian freedom. What of freedom for my people? Does our suffering, do our voices, mean nothing?

I don’t blame the Georgian people for what happened to us. The vast number of Ossetians and Georgians want to live in peace. I blame Georgia’s leaders.

Saakashvili has persuaded the world that he is a “beacon” of democracy and openness. But he won’t even tell his own people the truth. My Georgian friends weren’t allowed to see any Russian news sites during the conflict because all of those sites were blocked by Saakashvili’s government.

I know we are a small people, and I make no claim to understanding the experts in geopolitics with their theories and pronouncements about the great powers. But I have fought for women’s rights in Ossetia for 12 years and I believe in the truth.

In a recent article, Saakashvili cynically dismissed Ossetian suffering and deaths because, he said, Russia had “lied” about how many of my people were killed by the Georgian military.

It breaks my heart to even engage in this discussion. No one – including Saakashvili – knows how many Ossetians were killed by his Army. I have friends who buried loved ones in their backyards because there were no alternatives. Many people are still missing.

Does Saakashvili believe his vicious attack on a civilian city was justified if he only killed a few hundred rather than a few thousand? Do Americans realize that a military trained and equipped by the US government attacked a civilian population as they slept in their beds? Can they justify sending another billion dollars to Georgia and nothing for those Georgia attacked?

I have made an urgent appeal to the world for humanitarian relief for our people at the website helpossetianow.org. I beg the United States and the world to find out the truth. Please hear our voices.

• Lira Tskhovrebova is the founder of the Association of South Ossetian Women for Democracy and Human Rights and has worked for more than a decade to improve relations between people of Georgian and Ossetian descent in the Caucasus.

Source / Christian Science Monitor

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Seeing the Crime in Guantanamo Slowly Stopped

Posted on October 8, 2008 by RagBlog


Judge orders 17 Chinese Muslims released from Guantanamo Bay
By David G. Savage / October 8, 2008

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina is to decide where in the U.S. the men can be released. The Pentagon cleared most of them of wrongdoing four years ago.

WASHINGTON — For the first time, a federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release prisoners held at the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling Tuesday that 17 Chinese Muslims must be brought to his courtroom by the end of the week so that they can be set free.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said that the government’s authority to hold the men had “ceased” and that they were entitled to be released.

He said he would hold a hearing to decide on the conditions for releasing the men. Several religious and social groups, including 20 church leaders from Tallahassee, Fla., said they would help the men resettle in their community.

The 17 are Uighurs who fled persecution in the far western reaches of China. U.S. authorities, fearing what Chinese officials would do, have refused to send them back to China, and no other country has been willing to take them.

The judge’s order came more than six years after the men were sent to Guantanamo and more than four years after the Pentagon cleared most of them to be released. The Supreme Court ruled four months ago that judges can order the release of prisoners wrongly held at Guantanamo.

Soon thereafter, a federal appeals court reviewed the case of one of the Uighurs, Huzaifa Parhat, and ruled that the government had no basis for believing he was an “enemy combatant.” That decision set the stage for Urbina’s ruling Tuesday.

Civil liberties advocates hailed the order.

“This is a historic day for the United States,” said Emi MacLean, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Finally, we are beginning the process of taking responsibility for our mistakes and fixing them.”

But Bush administration lawyers have insisted that judges have no authority to interfere with the handling of foreign military prisoners. On Tuesday, they also argued that immigration laws prohibit the release into the United States of individuals alleged to have terrorist ties and asked for an emergency order to block the release.

Administration officials “are deeply concerned by and strongly disagreed with” the decision to release the men, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

Human rights lawyers have described the 17 Uighurs as among the most egregious examples of wrongful imprisonment at Guantanamo. Natives of an area they call East Turkistan, the Uighurs fled from oppression by the Chinese government, including its policy of forced abortions, and settled in Afghanistan in 2001.

But after U.S. bombing raids hit their camps, they fled to Pakistan, where they were taken into custody by locals, who turned them over to U.S. troops offering $5,000 bounties for suspected foreign fighters. The U.S. military alleged that the Uighurs had received military training, and they were suspected of ties to the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which the State Department had designated a terrorist group.

But the Uighurs strongly denied any ties to the Taliban, Al Qaeda or other enemies of the United States; their only enemy, they said, was the government of China. They said they had initially welcomed being in U.S. custody, hoping they would be safe and treated humanely.

Instead, 22 Uighurs were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in 2002. Five were released and sent to Albania two years ago, but the rest remained in custody because no country was willing to accept them. Lawyers spent years in court arguing for their release.

“The U.S. government has long recognized these men did not pose, and really never posed, a threat to the United States,” said Jennifer Daskal, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch. Tuesday’s ruling was significant, she said, because a judge “rejected the Bush administration’s theory that its own determination can trump judicial review and constitutional rights.”

Neil McGaraghan, a Boston lawyer who worked on the Uighurs’ case, said the men would be released from military custody Friday, barring a last-minute order from the appellate court.

Since 2002, the Pentagon has approved the release of more than 500 prisoners from Guantanamo, including the five Uighurs sent to Albania. More than 250 are still being held, including about 60 who would be freed if the U.S. government could find countries willing to take them.

Source / Los Angeles Times

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White House Refuses to Read Unsavory E-Mails

Posted on October 8, 2008 by RagBlog

Although this article is more than three months old, we somehow missed it, and its significance is astounding. That the Bush White House would simply refuse to read documents received with which they took issue is virtually unbelievable, even to someone as jaded as I am. As Elvis Dingeldein of Clusterdouche terms it:


I would presume that there have been many other such e-mails and documents that the White House has effectively dumped into file 13. Astounding !!

Remind me again why impeachment is “off the table”?

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

A refinery in Torrance, Calif. The state has sought federal permission to impose stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Photo: Jamie Rector/Bloomberg News

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail
By Felicity Barringer / June 25, 2008

The White House in December [2007] refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said [in June 2008].

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Both documents, as prepared by the E.P.A., “showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases,” one of the senior E.P.A. officials said. “That’s not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can’t work.”

The Bush administration’s climate-change policies have been evolving over the past two years. It now accepts the work of government scientists studying global warming, such as last week’s review forecasting more drenching rains, parching droughts and intense hurricanes as global temperatures warm (www.climatescience.gov).

But no administration decisions have supported the regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act or other environmental laws.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, refused to comment on discussions between the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency. Asked about changes in the original report, Mr. Fratto said, “It’s the E.P.A. that determines what analysis it wants to make available” in its documents.

The new document, a road map laying out the issues involved in regulation, is to be signed by Stephen L. Johnson, the agency’s administrator, and published as early as Wednesday.

The derailment of the original E.P.A. report was first made known in March by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The refusal to open the e-mail has not been made public.

In early December, the E.P.A.’s draft finding that greenhouse gases endanger the environment used Energy Department data from 2007 to conclude that it would be cost effective to require the nation’s motor vehicle fleet to average 37.7 miles per gallon in 2018, according to government officials familiar with the document.

About 10 days after the finding was left unopened by officials at the Office of Management and Budget, Congress passed and President Bush signed a new energy bill mandating an increase in average fuel-economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The day the law was signed, the E.P.A. administrator rejected the unanimous recommendation of his staff and denied California a waiver needed to regulate vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases in the state, saying the new law’s approach was preferable and climate change required global, not regional, solutions.

California’s regulations would have imposed tougher standards.

The Transportation Department made its own fuel-economy proposals public almost two months ago; they were based on the assumption that gasoline would range from $2.26 per gallon in 2016 to $2.51 per gallon in 2030, and set a maximum average standard of 35 miles per gallon in 2020.

The White House, which did not oppose the Transportation Department proposals, has become more outspoken on the need for a comprehensive approach to greenhouse gases, specifically rejecting possible controls deriving from older environmental laws.

In a speech in April, Mr. Bush called for an end to the growth of greenhouse gases by 2025 — a timetable slower than many scientists say is required. His chairman of the Council of Environmental Quality, James Connaughton, said a “train wreck” would result if regulations to control greenhouse gases were authorized piecemeal under laws like the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act.

White House pressure to ignore or edit the E.P.A.’s climate-change findings led to the resignation of one agency official earlier this month: Jason Burnett, the associate deputy administrator. Mr. Burnett, a political appointee with broad authority over climate-change regulations, said in an interview that he had resigned because “no more constructive work could be done” on the agency’s response to the Supreme Court.

He added, “The next administration will have to face what this one did not.”

The House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, led by Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, has been seeking the discarded E.P.A. finding on the dangers of climate change.

After reading it last week, Mr. Markey’s office sent a letter to Mr. Bush saying, “E.P.A. Administrator Stephen Johnson determined that man-made global warming is unequivocal, the evidence is compelling and robust, and the administration must act to prevent harm rather than wait for harm to occur.”

Simultaneously, Mr. Waxman’s committee is weighing its response to the White House’s refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents relating to the E.P.A.’s handling of recent climate-change and air-pollution decisions. The White House, which has turned over other material to the committee, last week asserted a claim of executive privilege over the remaining documents.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Fratto, the White House spokesman, said the committee chairmen did not understand the legal precedent underlying executive privilege. “There is a long legal history supporting the principle that the president should have the candid advice of his advisers,” Mr. Fratto said.

Source / The New York Times

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Sarah Palin and Dominionism : Kingdom Now

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Honest Questions About Sarah Palin’s Religious Background
by Sherman De Brosse / The Rag Blog / October 8, 2008

The nation spent weeks scrutinizing the pronouncements of Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright and asking if Barack Obama agreed with them. Now we learn that Sarah Palin has been exposed to some religious ideas that some might consider bothersome. Mrs. Palin is clearly a sincere, Christian woman, and that is all to the good. But it is important to know how religious ideas would guide her, if she were to succeed John Mc Cain as president of the United States.

End Times

Her family rejected Roman Catholicism when she was twelve years old, and she has spent most of her life in a Pentecostal environment. The Wasilla Assembly of God, which she attended until 2002, has a strong commitment to supporting Israel and believes the fate of Israel is tied to the coming of the end times and the Rapture, when good Christians are removed from the scene to protect them from the awesome battles to come.

Reverend Tim McGraw, her pastor when she was elected mayor, said that believers are always searching for signs of end times and added that:

The idea that Sarah would take this huge influence of the worldview that really only the Bible and the relationship with Jesus opens up … and suddenly marginalize it and put it over on the shelf somewhere and live apart from it — that would be entirely inconsistent.

McGraw said that Palin’s premillenialism would lead her to look at what happens to Israel for signs of when the end times will occur. The founding pastor, Reverend Ed Kalnins said the current Iraq war is part of an overall divine design in which Christ serves as a demanding general. Reverend John Hagee, an ally, has the same view.

We are in a time and a season of war, and we need to think like that. We need to develop that instinct. We need to develop as believers the instinct that we are at war, and that war is contending for your faith. … Jesus called us to die. You’re worried about getting hurt? He’s called us to die.

Kalnins claims God has revealed to him events that happened in people’s , and he states that “Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to the state to seek refuge and the church has to be ready to minister to them.” He believes in intergenerational family “curses,” and that certain geographical territories are possessed by demons.

Against this background, we should consider Palin’s recent comment:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. . . That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.

Governor Palin’s defenders say she just was expressing the hope that God approved the war. In context, it appears that this was a God-ordained war and part of a messianic mission.

Which was it? And the bigger question is, would Palin use her power to influence events in the Middle East to hasten the coming of the Rapture and end times?

Since 2002, she has attended the Wasilla Bible Church, whose worship is a little less extreme than her old church. It has a program to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer and works to convert Jews. Recently David Brickner, founder of Jews for Jesus, visited the congregation and discussed terrorist attacks on Israel, saying they were God’s judgment on Jews who had not embraced Christ.

The Dominionism of the New Apostolic Reformation

Dominionism means that the saved must battle to take over the world in God’s name and rule it according to Biblical principles and injunctions. Three of Palin’s four churches have ties to a dominionist movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. Reverend Dr. C. Peter Wagner of Global Harvest Ministries in Colorado Springs, is the “convening Apostle” or leading light in the movement, and he says the reformation or New Apostolic Age began in 2001. They aim for a post-denominational Christianity shaped by them. Their leaders are God’s new apostles and prophets who have greater power than the original apostles and prophets. Spiritual warriors must convert adherents of other churches and seek political power. They think the end times will see the perfection of Christianity and they will have a perfected religion to turn over to Christ, when he returns. They will be given great power and crush evil with a “rod of iron.”

The New Apostolics are busy in worldly affairs because they believe they are destined to rule. In addition they want to expel demons, physically heal others, and raise people from the dead. They believe they have the world’s only valid religious belief system. They want a post-denominational church, but it will not be warm and fuzzy as some think. People can be forced to join the new non-denominational Christianity for their own good, and other churches can be forced to stop teaching false doctrines. One official of Morningstar Ministries admits that life under their theocratic rule “may seem totalitarian at first.”

They target youth to be a Joel’s Army (a distortion of an illusion in the Book of Joel) to seize political power and force non-believers to accept their version of Christianity. These churches engage in “spiritual warfare” as was depicted in the movie “Jesus Camp.” In the film, young people were trained to “take dominion” over the world. They will also purge the Christian church of elements that strongly disagree with them.

Since 2006, Governor Palin worships the Juneau Christian Center when in Juneau. It has close ties to John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. Hagee and CUIF want to see the Dome of the Rock destroyed so the Third Temple can be built there. Juneau Christian Center’s Senior Pastor Mike Rose has said that he is convinced “We are living in the last days.”

Palin says her “home church” is the Church of the Rock in Wasilla, which also believes in Armageddonism. It is a Pentecostal church but she says she is no longer a Pentecostal. David Pepper, its pastor, said last year, “The purpose for the United States is… to glorify God. This nation is a Christian nation.” Young people from this church attended “The Call/Nashville,” where they viewed the movie “Jesus Camp” and learned about corruption in the world.

Three of Sarah Palin’s churches are quite different from most Assembly of God congregations and their attackment to the New Apostolic Reformation or Third Wave is considered a heresy. They seem to be waiting for the Rapture in a different way, and some redefine it. Others think the doctrine of the Rapture is a trick of the devil to create a retreatist mentality. One NAR leader said:

. . .the church isn’t going to sit and take it any more. The church isn’t going to wait to be helicoptered out of the world in some rapture rescue plan. The church will stay right here and by its spiritual authority even defeat the principalities and powers in the heavenlies, dragging them to earth and putting them under their heel

Governor Palin and Witchcraft

Much has been said about a video of two ministers and Kenyan Bishop Thomas Muthee praying over Palin to protect her from the spirit of witchcrafdt. Muthee is famous for driving a witch out of Kiambu, Kenya, thus lowering the crime rate there. This occurred while she ran for governor. The bishop gave about ten sermons there. Before praying over her, he gave a sermon urging followers to “infiltrate” government, education, press, and the media.

One of her Catholic defenders noted that she said nothing while being prayed over. But the point is that these sincere Christians believe that the world is inhabited by all sorts of demons and that the powers of demons even get passed down in families, just as curses are passed down. Some demons run territories; others are in some of their enemies, and still other very powerful demons run churches they dislike.

The reverse side of believing in evil demons is the teaching that the New Apostolics have the power to heal, raise the dead, and successfully combat the forces of darkness. The New Apostolics believe people can be given special powers to fight demons, and that is what was happening there. Of the event, Governor Palin said:

As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he’s so bold. And he was praying “Lord make a way, Lord make a way. And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are. And he’s praying not “oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor,” no, he just prayed for it. He said “Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly what happened.

They see some Protestant denominations as being run by demons. They especially hate Roman Catholicism, which they see as driven by a very powerful demonic force. They hate the Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary, believing it is powered by a demonic foces associated in scripture with the pagan goddess Diana in Ephesians. Saying it was necessary to cast down the “Queen of Heaven, ” Reverend Dr. Wagner wrote: “While we were in Turkey, Doris [his wife] and I…knew that the power of the Queen of Heaven had to be broken in order for the gospel to spread in Turkey.” NGR generals and “prophets of intercession” views climbed Mt. Everest in 1997, where they planted a flag honoring Jesus. God assured them he would dethrone “Mystery Babylon the Great [in Revelation], Mother of Harlots.” Here the “harlot” is Mary, but more conventional dominionists and dispensationalists usually mean the word to refer to the Catholic Church. They attribute the death of Mother Theresa and the earthquake that damaged Assisi to God’s wrath. John Hagee was not lying when he said his use of the term “Whore of Babylon” did not apply to the Catholic Church. He was referring to Mary, who is also called “The Scarlet Woman” or just “Babylon.” Of course the New Apostolics have worse things to say about non-Christian religions.

Separation of Church and State and Tolerance

Dominionists simply do not believe in the separation of church and state. They want to take over and create a theocracy. No wonder they see nothing wrong in playing politics from the pulpit. Reverend Ed Kalnins, the founding pastor, has consigned critics of George W. Bush to hell. He even denounced those who criticized Bush’s handling of Katrina. He doubted that people who voted for John Kerry in 2004 will be welcomed to heaven/He said:

“I’m not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I’m sorry.” Kalnins added: “If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time.”

Palin has said she will not force her religious convictions upon anyone else. We know that as candidate for governor, she wanted repeal of legislation that prohibited ministers from endorsing candidates. Of course this involves the United States Tax Code, not state action. She has also signed legislation proclaiming Christian Heritage Week. The literature attending it made it clear the founding fathers were good Christians and intended this to be a Christian nation.

Governor Palin once discussed a pipeline with a church group saying, “God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built. So pray for that.” If God is for a particular pipeline venture; that closes the subject. Does God really have an opinion on a pipeline? As governor, she said that her work might go badly “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with God.” This seems to suggest that citizens should be Bible-believing Christians.

When running for mayor, there was a stealth campaign to put a “Christian” in office and she commented on the incumbent’s church attendance. A cable station hailed her as Wasilla’s “first Christian mayor.”

While she was mayor, people were busy tearing pages out of “dirty” books in the local library and she privately raised the matter of censorship with librarian Mary Ellen Emmons. She advocated censorship again at a meeting attended by others, and it was reported in the local paper. Palin fired Emmons because she opposed censorship, but public pressure brought Emmons back. But, Emmons no longer felt comfortable there and resigned and left town.

Many have noted self-righteousness, ruthlessness, and vindictiveness in Palin’s manner of governing. Did this come from certainty that God was behind all her actions. Did God join her firing an experienced police chief who did not want weapons in bars and the municipal building and wanted bars closed at 2:30 a.m. rather than 5 a.m.

What Goes with the Territory

As a right-wing Christian Republican, we expect her to oppose abortion, stem cell research, explicit sex education, gay marriage, and advocate creationism. But does her religious extremism carry this orientation farther. Is this why she made victims of rape pay for rape kits and testing? Does the belief that the world is about to end lead her to fierce anti-environmentalism and opposition to protecting endangered species. After all the world will not be here this much longer.

Sarah claims she is not a Pentecostal and seems to be distancing herself from her religious past. We don’t want to be intolerant, but her background raises many valid questions that should come into the open. Maybe she disagrees with her ministers a great deal or never quite understood what they were saying. There is such a thing as “cultural Catholics,” and maybe there is such a thing as “cultural New Apostolics.”

Sherman De Brosse is the peudonym for a retired history professor who was once chased off the Ohio University campus for protesting the John Birch Society. He also blogs at Sherm Says and on DailyKos.

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Todd Gitlin : Sean Hannity Taps Anti-Semite Andy Martin in Obama Smear

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Sean Hannity (above)and Andy Martin: Birds of a feather. Photo by Douglas C. Pizac / AP.

Far right-wing writer and perennial political candidate is Hannity’s ‘source.”
By Todd Gitlin / October 5, 2008

Calling the Anti-Defamation League, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, and other defenders of Jewish people against slime artists of all political persuasions:

Sean Hannity’s Fox News Sunday night kitchen-sink sewer job on Barack Obama, complete with a sound-track cribbed from C- porn flicks, features prominently, as witness of Obama’s iniquity, one Andy Martin, “author and journalist,” and, though not identified as such on Fox News, perennial political candidate in four states.

Among Martin’s contributions to fairness and balance, this nifty aphorism: “I think a community organizer is someone who was in training to overthrow the government of the United States of America.”

Martin previously crawled out from under a rock, according to Matthew Mosk in the WP, to “take credit for posting the first article to assert that the Illinois senator was a Muslim.” More recently, he claimed, contrary to fact, that Obama, whom he called a “media witch doctor,” has “locked his granny away and refused to allow her to be seen” in order to “pretend he has no white relatives.”

Martin has been crawling beneath the rocks for quite some time.

According to no less a source than the Unification Church’s impeccably right-wing Washington Times of December 22, 1999:

In 1986, when Mr. Martin ran as a Democrat for Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional District seat under the name “Anthony R. Martin-Trigona,” his campaign committee filed papers saying its purpose was to “exterminate Jew power in America and impeach U.S. District Court of Appeals judges in New York City.”

The Washington Times’ reporter, Ralph Z. Hallow, went on to say: “a Connecticut federal judge finally barred him from filing any more federal lawsuits without permission. The judge said Mr. Martin has pursued legal actions with ‘persistence, viciousness, and general disregard for decency and logic.'”

Hallow went on:

In a New York bankruptcy case, he referred to a judge as a “crooked, slimy Jew.” During the bankruptcy dispute, he filed a civil-rights lawsuit claiming Jewish bankruptcy judges and lawyers were conspiring to steal his property. He asked a court to bar “any Jew from having anything to do with plaintiff’s property.”
In another motion in the case, he wrote: “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did, when Jew survivors are operating as a wolf pack to steal my property.”

In another motion in the case, he wrote: “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did, when Jew survivors are operating as a wolf pack to steal my property.”

According to Hallow, he “ran for the Republican nomination for governor of Florida against the incumbent, Bob Martinez, in 1990. The Florida Republican Party disavowed him because he previously ran for office as a Democrat and because of his anti-Semitic statements.”

This is Sean Hannity’s idea of a source.

Does Bill Kristol care? David Brooks? Abe Foxman?

John McCain? Sarah Palin?

Source / Talking Points Memo

‘Unsubstantiated: A Failure of Nerve at the Times
By Todd Gitlin / October 7, 2008

Jim Rutenberg has a piece in the morning NYT on the Hannity loonfest that graced Fox News Sunday night.

It’s good that the Times found Hannity’s garbage pail newsworthy. But the piece bends over backwards to give Andy Martin, of whom I wrote Sunday night, the benefit of the doubt. He tells Rutenberg that the anti-Semitic sentiments were forged. By whom? With what motive? Why were these remarks reported in the Washington Times, and never retracted?

Rutenberg writes that Martin’s “accusation that Mr. Obama’s work as a community organizer in Chicago was ‘training for a radical overthrow of the government'” “unsubstantiated” rather than false? Is the claim that the moon is made of green cheese “unsubstantiated”?

“Mr. Martin said he was careful not to present his theories about Mr. Obama as proven fact,” Rutenberg says, going on to quote Marin as follows: “That is my opinion — expert opinion — if you will. I don’t pretend to be an exclusively fact-based reporter, though I try as hard as I can to get the facts.” Oh, it’s OK then. Is Martin qualified to offer “expert opinion”? At what is he “expert”?

Here we are back at a self-parody of “objective journalism”: Some say there was a Holocaust, some deny it. Oh, but it’s only my opinion.

Source / Talking Points Memo

Also see Sean Hannity, Robert Gibbs and anti-Semitism: How to go on Fox News by Glenn Greenwald / salon.com / Oct. 8, 2008

And The Man Behind the Obama Smears The Nation / Oct. 7, 2008

And Anti-Semite Andy Martin in NewsMax: “Free Obama’s White Grandmother” Media Matters / March 29, 2007

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Ron Ridenour: Sounds of Venezuela, Part IX

Posted on October 8, 2008 by RagBlog

Click here to view the entire series.

Sounds of Venezuela
Part IX: FARC, Bush-Uribe, Correa, Chavez
By Ron Ridenour / The Rag Blog / October 8, 2008

Sunday, March 2nd, I turned on the President’s television monologue-dialogue show, Aló Presidente. The nation’s leader is a charming entertainer and communicator. He sometimes gives orders to his staff on this weekly show, though rarely so dramatically as occurred today.

Chavez recounted phone conversations he had during the night of March 1st with Ecuador President Rafael Correa, whose land had just been invaded by Colombian troops, pilots and police. Their objective was not Ecuador itself but an encampment of FARC guerrillas located two kilometers inside northern Ecuador.

Raul Reyes, FARC’s second in command, and twenty-four other guerrillas were murdered, many in cold blood. Among those murdered was Olga Marin, Reyes companion and the daughter of Manuel Marulanda, FARC’s founder and leader for 40 years. The guerrillas had not been able to resist, because they were asleep, later found in their underwear, when attacked by planes from the US base Manta in Ecuador, which dropped five “smart bombs”, followed by helicopters flying in from the south of Colombia. Several of them were shot in cold blood directly in the back of the head or face as was the case with Reyes and Julián Conrado, the only cadavers taken to Colombia in a police helicopter. The other persons were found by Ecuadoran troops in the coming hours. Three wounded persons, who were able to hide, were found and gave eye-witness testimony to their rescuers and to an OAS (Organization of American States) investigation team, which later came to the area. Among the dead and wounded were five Mexican students, who were not guerrillas.

President Chavez told the nation that Uribe had lied about the operation to Correa, whom he telephoned after its “success”, as Uribe viewed the blood bath.

“Uribe is a lying lackey of the US Empire, a mafiosa, a criminal supporting para-militarist assassins and a narco-trafficker. He doesn’t want peace.”

[Uribe did nothing to aid the process of returning four captured Colombian congresspersons, which FARC had unilaterally released just two days before this horrible massacre.]

”Uribe operates in the style of Israel, converting Colombia into the key arm of US interests in Latin America just as Israel is in the Middle East.

“We won’t tolerate this and we must protect our borders against this satellite. Correa has broken diplomatic relations and moved troops to the border. Correa can count on us. Generals, send ten battalions with tanks and aircraft to our border with Colombia!”

In the upcoming investigations by Ecuador, Venezuela and OAS we learned that Operation Phoenix, as the Uribe-US plan was named, used technology not possessed by any Latin America country and which had disclosed where Reyes group was hiding. Army and police units from Colombia cooperated with Ranger army units of the United States operating out of its Manta base. Manta had been used during eight years against Colombian peasants and their armed forces, FARC, as part of the billion dollar-a-year Plan Colombia extermination operation. At least 50,000 Colombians—mostly civilians—had been killed in Plan Colombia’s eight-year operation. And 300,000 had been forced to flee their homes into the welcoming arms of Venezuela. They live there with the same rights and benefits as citizens, just as do all three million Colombian immigrants.

President Correa declared that he will not renew the Manta contract at the end of 2008.

In these days, I witnessed intense concern in La Victoria about a possible war, a subject that embraced everyone across the nation. Just after Chavez’ announcement of cutting diplomatic relations with Colombia and sending troops to the border, I heard my next door neighbors yelling, “Who wants war? Chavez that’s who. It was Ecuador that Uribe violated not Venezuela. Then why mess in it?”

My neighbor across the Plaza Ricaurte park told me, “I support Chavez 100%. I’m ready to die for the fatherland. But I’m tired, tired of the oligarchy, the corruption within the Chavez government, tired of all the waiting. I want it all to end. It’d be better to declare war and get it over with.”

This park contained many opinions. There were those who applauded Chavez’ action and hoped it would prevent Bush-Uribe from testing Venezuela’s will to defend its revolution by sending provocative bullets across the long border, not possible to close off entirely. Then there were the young men with fancy cars and motor cycles who could care less about anything else. As one neighbor described them, “They play with life and wait for capitalism to return in full.”

Both Chavez and Correa had been patient, too patient many militant revolutionaries maintained, with Bush-Uribe provocations. Chavez reminded us of occasions when Colombian soldiers and para-militarists had been captured on Venezuelan soil. They were preparing sabotage and murder, hoping to start a war. Para-militarists sold drugs and pistols to young inane gangsters, hoping to destabilize the government. After some arrests and a short time in prison, Chavez had agreed with Uribe to return them to Colombia. Correa told the world that he had been patient with Uribe too. His troops has found several small FARC camps and turned them away. Colombian soldiers had crossed into Ecuador five times between February 2007 and January 2008. And now this massacre.

During this tense week, Uribe’s generals claimed they had found three computers among Reyes possessions. Miraculously, they were the only material left untouched by the “smart bombs”, and they allegedly showed that Chavez had financed FARC with $30 millions. They also claimed that Correa’s people were cooperating and trading with FARC. Correa answered that his emissaries, and Chavez’, were on the verge of accomplishing final negotiations for the number one held prisoner, Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt. Chavez had served as the principle international negotiator in two prisoner releases by FARC. These seven released prisoners, and Betancourt’s mother, all praised Chavez for his humanitarian efforts on television.

Meanwhile in Bogota, the cadaver of Reyes was placed on public display. A newspaper photograph showed a boy hitting his hanging body with a bat while his father stood proudly behind him.

VEA newspaper ran a photograph of a Coca-Cola worker in Venezuela wearing a t-shirt with the words: Don’t Drink Coca-Cola. Although there is no grass roots boycott of Coca-Cola in Venezuela, as there is in Colombia, India, USA, UK and other lands, there is general knowledge that Coca-Cola companies inside Colombia pay death squads to murder workers who try to organize a union, struggling for decent conditions. In fact, Coca-Cola is on trial in Miami for doing just that: murder. Chiquita banana had to pay a $25 million fine for hiring death squads to murder its workers in Colombia. No one went to prison, of course. And Bush-Uribe talk of democracy, accusing Chavez and Correa of financing and cooperating FARC, which the Coca-Cola/Chiquita bosses and their politicians contend are “terrorists”. The devil claims God is the devil.

It is an Alice in Wonderland world we live in!

Just as the Venezuelan troops had settled in at the border, Chavez ordered them home. A week had gone by since the massacre in Ecuador. OAS had met about the conflict and so had the 20-nation member Rio Group. Even before OAS’ investigation was completed, these bodies expressed unanimous agreement that what Uribe did was wrong. They simply needed to read aloud what is written in all the agreements of these bodies, the United Nations and all other international agreements. It is unlawful for any nation to invade another without the agreement of international bodies, namely the UN or OAS, or if not acting in defense of an armed attack by forces of another government.

Uribe said he was sorry and wouldn’t do it again.

Chavez called this a great victory for all of Latin America and a great defeat for the US Empire. Fidel did the same in his reflection writings. Correa was a bit less optimistic and somewhat taken aback when he saw Chavez embrace the “lying, murderous, criminal…” and then call Uribe to be his “brother” and “friend” a week later.

As the media was proclaiming that calm had returned, another leader of FARC was murdered, this time by a compatriot hired by the Colombian army. Pablo Montova turned on his leader, Iván Rios, killing him and his female companion and then cutting off one of Rios’ hands, which he turned over to the army as proof of his ugly deed. He was to receive $2.6 million for these murders, and the security, according to him, that the army would not murder him and his female companion. Although the death penalty is legally prohibited in Colombia, the government fulfilled its promise of paying the hired killer.

This occurred at the same time that unionists in Colombia and progressives conducted a peaceful march in Bogotá. They sought an end to the internal war and the corrupt Uribe government. Dozens of Uribe’s staff and ministers, connected to narco cartels and para-militarists, had been condemned and even sentenced to prison by a sometimes independent attorney general and Supreme Court. Within three days of this march, three unionist leaders of the protest were murdered, and one had been tortured prior to death.

In the middle of March, Marulanda died of a heart attack. FARC did not announce this, however, for two months. Half of FARC’s seven-man leadership was now dead. It had lost several thousands of its 17-20,000 forces in the past year; some had deserted; hundreds were held in torture chambers called prisons—none of whom Uribe was willing to trade for FARC’s well treated prisoners. This was not the moment to back away from FARC but that is what Chavez, and then Fidel, did. In a speech, April 12, Chavez called upon Marulanda (not then known to be dead) to unconditionally release all of their 50 prisoners. In July, Chavez went further and told FARC to put down their weapons and rejoin legal political life. He had always pointed out before that this would not be possible because the government would murder them, just as it did in the 1980s when 4000 of FARC’s people were murdered after they gave up their weapons and entered the political process. Just after this discouraging speech, Chavez met with Uribe in Caracas to discuss cooperation against drug-trafficking. Fidel added his most respected voice: turn over all your prisoners without conditions, but don’t turn over your weapons. Take France’s offer for refuge.

It is an Alice in Wonderland world we live in!

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Keeping the Panic Pressure On

Posted on October 8, 2008 by RagBlog


Thousands of Troops Are Deployed on U.S. Streets Ready to Carry Out “Crowd Control”
By Naomi Wolf / October 8, 2008.

Members of Congress were told they could face martial law if they didn’t pass the bailout bill. This will not be the last time.

Background: the First Brigade of the Third Infantry Division, three to four thousand soldiers, has been deployed in the United States as of October 1. Their stated mission is the form of crowd control they practiced in Iraq, subduing “unruly individuals,” and the management of a national emergency. I am in Seattle and heard from the brother of one of the soldiers that they are engaged in exercises now. Amy Goodman reported that an Army spokesperson confirmed that they will have access to lethal and non lethal crowd control technologies and tanks.

George Bush struck down Posse Comitatus, thus making it legal for military to patrol the U.S. He has also legally established that in the “War on Terror,” the U.S. is at war around the globe and thus the whole world is a battlefield. Thus the U.S. is also a battlefield.

He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far broader powers in the event of a loosely defined “insurrection” or many other “conditions” he has the power to identify. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus — habeas corpus prevents us from being seized by the state and held without trial — in the event of an “insurrection.” With his own army force now, his power to call a group of protesters or angry voters “insurgents” staging an “insurrection” is strengthened.

U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California said to Congress, captured on C-Span and viewable on YouTube, that individual members of the House were threatened with martial law within a week if they did not pass the bailout bill:

“The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. … Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.”

If this is true and Rep. Sherman is not delusional, I ask you to consider that if they are willing to threaten martial law now, it is foolish to assume they will never use that threat again. It is also foolish to trust in an orderly election process to resolve this threat. And why deploy the First Brigade? One thing the deployment accomplishes is to put teeth into such a threat.

I interviewed Vietnam veteran, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and patriot David Antoon for clarification:

“If the President directed the First Brigade to arrest Congress, what could stop him?”

“Nothing. Their only recourse is to cut off funding. The Congress would be at the mercy of military leaders to go to them and ask them not to obey illegal orders.”

“But these orders are now legal?'”

“Correct.”

“If the President directs the First Brigade to arrest a bunch of voters, what would stop him?”

“Nothing. It would end up in courts but the action would have been taken.”

“If the President directs the First Brigade to kill civilians, what would stop him?”

“Nothing.”

“What would prevent him from sending the First Brigade to arrest the editor of the Washington Post?”

“Nothing. He could do what he did in Iraq — send a tank down a street in Washington and fire a shell into the Washington Post as they did into Al Jazeera, and claim they were firing at something else.”

“What happens to members of the First Brigade who refuse to take up arms against U.S. citizens?”

“They’d probably be treated as deserters as in Iraq: arrested, detained and facing five years in prison. In Iraq a study by Ann Wright shows that deserters — reservists who refused to go back to Iraq — got longer sentences than war criminals.”

“Does Congress have any military of their own?”

“No. Congress has no direct control of any military units. The Governors have the National Guard but they report to the President in an emergency that he declares.”

“Who can arrest the President?”

“The Attorney General can arrest the President after he leaves or after impeachment.”

[Note: Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has asserted it is possible for District Attorneys around the country to charge President Bush with murder if they represent districts where one or more military members who have been killed in Iraq formerly resided.]

“Given the danger do you advocate impeachment?”

“Yes. President Bush struck down Posse Comitatus — which has prevented, with a penalty of two years in prison, U.S. leaders since after the Civil War from sending military forces into our streets — with a ‘signing statement.’ He should be impeached immediately in a bipartisan process to prevent the use of military forces and mercenary forces against U.S. citizens”

“Should Americans call on senior leaders in the Military to break publicly with this action and call on their own men and women to disobey these orders?”

“Every senior military officer’s loyalty should ultimately be to the Constitution. Every officer should publicly break with any illegal order, even from the President.”

“But if these are now legal. If they say, ‘Don’t obey the Commander in Chief,’ what happens to the military?”

“Perhaps they would be arrested and prosecuted as those who refuse to participate in the current illegal war. That’s what would be considered a coup.”

“But it’s a coup already.”

“Yes.”

Source / AlterNet

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Sarahcuda : Full Frontal Attack

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘For me, the heels are on, the gloves are off.’
By Dana Milbank / October 7, 2008

FORT MYERS, Fla. — John McCain is collapsing in the polls in Florida and other swing states, but Sarah Palin, God bless her, has a solution.

“For me, the heels are on, the gloves are off,” she announced at high noon Monday to a group of Republican donors at the Naples Beach Club.

You betcha.

As the donors sipped their bloody marys and mimosas, she added, in a conspiratorial stage whisper, “I’m sending the message back to John McCain also: Tomorrow night in his debate, might as well take the gloves off.”

Darn right.

Of course, it’s not only gloves and heels; headgear has a role, too. “Okay, so, Florida, you know that you’re going to have to hang on to your hats,” she said at a morning rally in Clearwater, “because from now until Election Day, it may get kind of rough.”

Say it ain’t so, Sarah!

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain confidant, told The Post’s David Broder that the campaign would “go down in history as stupid if they don’t unleash” Palin. Well, the self-identified pit bull has been unleashed — if not unhinged.

Barack Obama, she told 8,000 fans at a rally here Monday afternoon, “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist!” This followed her earlier accusation that the Democrat pals around with terrorists. “This is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America,” she told the Clearwater crowd. “I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.” The crowd replied with boos.

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more.”

Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

McCain’s swoon is largely out of his control, the result of an economic collapse that ignited new fears Monday when the Dow Jones industrial average closed below 10,000 for the first time in four years. That’s why his lead in Florida polls, which once reached as high as 15 points, has turned into a three-point deficit.

But the campaign has reacted with recriminations (the St. Petersburg Times reported that the Florida Republican Party chairman, after questioning Palin’s aptitude, was told that he couldn’t fly on her plane) and now Palin’s rage.

The angry GOP vice presidential nominee even found a way to blame the market decline on the yet-to-be-enacted tax policies of the yet-to-be-elected Obama.

“If you turn on the news tonight when you get home, you’re gonna see that, yah, this is another woeful day in the market, and the other side just doesn’t understand — no!” she said at an afternoon fundraiser at the home of mutual fund giant Jack Donahue. “Especially in a time like this, you don’t propose to increase taxes. The phoniest claim in a campaign that’s full of them is that Barack Obama is going to cut your taxes.”

Of course, Obama never promised to cut taxes for people at $10,000-a-plate lunches in air-conditioned tents on waterfront compounds. And the crowd — among them New York Jets owner Woody Johnson — reacted without applause to Palin’s Joe Six-Pack lines. After they didn’t strike up the usual “Drill, baby, drill” or “USA” chants, Palin, rattled, read hurriedly through the rest of her speech.

The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of “Palin Power” and “Sarahcuda” T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. “One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” she said. (“Boooo!” said the crowd.) “And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’ ” she continued. (“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.)

“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.

Palin also told those gathered that Obama doesn’t like American soldiers. “He said that our troops in Afghanistan are just, quote, ‘air-raiding villages and killing civilians,’ ” she said, drawing boos from a crowd that had not been told Obama was actually appealing for more troops in Afghanistan.

“See, John McCain is a different kind of man: He believes in our troops,” she said.

At times, Palin hinted at the GOP campaign’s troubles. “It’s going to be a hard-fought contest, especially in these swing states, some maybe we would not have expected,” she admitted to donors. She allowed that “John McCain and I need to do a better job” of talking about the economy.

At other times, she had troubles of her own, as when she spoke over the weekend of “our neighboring country of Afghanistan” or when she got choked up at the Clearwater rally, saying, “Some of your signs just make me wanna cry,” without explaining which ones or why.

But then the gloves came off, the heels came out, and Palin was once again talking about her opponent hanging out in a terrorist’s living room.

Source / Washington Post

Thanks to CommonDreams / The Rag Blog

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Visualize Industrial Collapse Dept.

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Propping up Capitalism…

‘A hundred billion in federal guarantees here, a trillion there, it all adds up.’
By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / October 7, 2008

Don’t focus on the Dow too much. More important is probably how Bernanke is reacting, how panicky, whom he is bailing out, etc.

Here are two snips that tell the tale. There is a global financial crash going on as the first snip shows, and the US credit and money market has locked up. In response, the Paulson Bernanke team pledges to buy up any and all bad paper in certain categories like the collateral backing interbank loans, now US taxpayer guaranteed. A hundred billion in federal guarantees here, a trillion there, it all adds up. And all that fresh new money generated from bad paper will land somewhere sooner or later, and start looking for stuff to buy like fuel and food that may not be there. And you know where that leads. But it has to be done.

Using taxpayer money to prop up capitalism is no easy task. When it has to be done by means of the guaranteed tax obligations of a citizen population already deep in debt, the task is doubly challenging. It obviously is going to take some highly creative bookkeeping, for which job only a very few who occupy top positions in the Bush Administration are properly qualified.

When the White House brought out its $700 billion rescue plan two weeks ago, its sheer size was meant to soothe the global financial system, restoring trust and confidence. Three days after the plan was approved, it looks like a pebble tossed into a churning sea…

Source / New York Times / Oct. 7, 2008

And:

The Federal Reserve will create a special fund to purchase U.S. commercial paper after the credit crunch threatened
to cut off a key source of funding for corporations.

The Treasury will make a deposit with the Fed’s New York district bank to help set up the special purpose vehicle. The central bank will also lend to the program at policy makers’ target rate for overnight loans between banks. The Fed Board invoked emergency powers to set up the unit, the central bank said in a statement released in Washington.

Today’s action follows a slide in the commercial-paper market to a three-year low of $1.6 trillion last week as investors fled even companies with few links to the subprime mortgage crisis. Companies from newspaper firm Gannett Co. to electricity producer Southern Co. have been forced to tap credit lines or forego raising debt because of the market’s disruption.

The Fed didn’t say how much commercial paper, which hundreds of companies use to finance payrolls and meet other cash needs, it plans to purchase…

Source / Bloomberg / Oct. 7, 2008

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