She’s Ba-ack! Obama Girl Strikes Again…

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

I’ll probably get flak for posting this, but CHILL! It’s funny!
— .td / The Rag Blog

Hillary! Stop the attacks! Love, Obama Girl

Obama Girl nails the Zeitgeist.

As political junkies with at least an aspiration to erudition, we’ve all turned up our nose at the frivolous heap of cleavage known as Obama Girl. But give us the benefit of the doubt here and check out her latest video production, a series of clever inside jokes that are billed as a heartfelt plea: “Stop the attacks, Hillary! Love, Obama Girl”

A few moments to look for: OG playing the little girl sleeping in Hillary’s “3 a.m.” video; Bill’s appearance during the instrumental dance break; OG reminding us that she was hot for Obama way before the Black Eyed Peas made it “cool”; and the random inclusion of George Bush’s bizarre tap dance of a few weeks back.
Elana Shor / Guardian, U.K. / March 25, 2008 / The Rag Blog

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Supreme Court Inc.

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

How the nation’s highest court became increasingly receptive to the arguments of American business.

By Jeffrey Rosen

[This article first appeared in the March 16, 2008 issue of The New York Times Magazine. It’s a scary read if you’re not, say, a Republican. — The Rag Blog.]

The headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, located across from Lafayette Park in Washington, is a limestone structure that looks almost as majestic as the Supreme Court. The similarity is no coincidence: both buildings were designed by the same architect, Cass Gilbert. Lately, however, the affinities between the court and the chamber, a lavishly financed business-advocacy organization, seem to be more than just architectural.

The Supreme Court term that ended last June was, by all measures, exceptionally good for American business. The chamber’s litigation center filed briefs in 15 cases and its side won in 13 of them — the highest percentage of victories in the center’s 30-year history. The current term, which ends this summer, has also been shaping up nicely for business interests.

I visited the chamber recently to talk with Robin Conrad, who heads the litigation effort, about her recent triumphs. Conrad, an appealing, soft-spoken woman, lives with her family on a horse farm in Maryland, where she rides with a fox-chasing club called the Howard County-Iron Bridge Hounds.

Her office, playfully adorned by action figures of women like Xena the Warrior Princess and Hillary Rodham Clinton, has one of the most impressive views in Washington. “You can see the White House through the trees,” she said as we peered through a window overlooking the park. “In the old days, you could actually see people bathing in the fountain. Homeless people.”

Conrad was in an understandably cheerful mood. Though the current Supreme Court has a well-earned reputation for divisiveness, it has been surprisingly united in cases affecting business interests. Of the 30 business cases last term, 22 were decided unanimously, or with only one or two dissenting votes. Conrad said she was especially pleased that several of the most important decisions were written by liberal justices, speaking for liberal and conservative colleagues alike.

In opinions last term, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter each went out of his or her way to question the use of lawsuits to challenge corporate wrongdoing — a strategy championed by progressive groups like Public Citizen but routinely denounced by conservatives as “regulation by litigation.”

Conrad reeled off some of her favorite moments: “Justice Ginsburg talked about how ‘private-securities fraud actions, if not adequately contained, can be employed abusively.’ Justice Breyer had a wonderful quote about how Congress was trying to ‘weed out unmeritorious securities lawsuits.’ Justice Souter talked about how the threat of litigation ‘will push cost-conscious defendants to settle.’ ”

Examples like these point to an ideological sea change on the Supreme Court. A generation ago, progressive and consumer groups petitioning the court could count on favorable majority opinions written by justices who viewed big business with skepticism — or even outright prejudice. An economic populist like William O. Douglas, the former New Deal crusader who served on the court from 1939 to 1975, once unapologetically announced that he was “ready to bend the law in favor of the environment and against the corporations.”

Today, however, there are no economic populists on the court, even on the liberal wing. And ever since John Roberts was appointed chief justice in 2005, the court has seemed only more receptive to business concerns. Forty percent of the cases the court heard last term involved business interests, up from around 30 percent in recent years. While the Rehnquist Court heard less than one antitrust decision a year, on average, between 1988 and 2003, the Roberts Court has heard seven in its first two terms — and all of them were decided in favor of the corporate defendants.

Business cases at the Supreme Court typically receive less attention than cases concerning issues like affirmative action, abortion or the death penalty. The disputes tend to be harder to follow: the legal arguments are more technical, the underlying stories less emotional. But these cases — which include shareholder suits, antitrust challenges to corporate mergers, patent disputes and efforts to reduce punitive-damage awards and prevent product-liability suits — are no less important. They involve billions of dollars, have huge consequences for the economy and can have a greater effect on people’s daily lives than the often symbolic battles of the culture wars.

In the current Supreme Court term, the justices have already blocked a liability suit against Medtronic, the manufacturer of a heart catheter, and rejected a type of shareholder suit that includes a claim against Enron. In the coming months, the court will decide whether to reduce the largest punitive-damage award in American history, which resulted from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

What should we make of the Supreme Court’s transformation? Throughout its history, the court has tended to issue opinions, in areas from free speech to gender equality, that reflect or consolidate a social consensus. With their pro-business jurisprudence, the justices may be capturing an emerging spirit of agreement among liberal and conservative elites about the value of free markets.

Among the professional classes, many Democrats and Republicans, whatever their other disagreements, have come to share a relatively laissez-faire, technocratic vision of the economy and are suspicious of excessive regulation and reflexive efforts to vilify big business. Judges, lawyers and law professors (such as myself) drilled in cost-benefit analysis over the past three decades, are no exception. It should come as little surprise that John Roberts and Stephen Breyer, both of whom studied the economic analysis of law at Harvard, have similar instincts in business cases.

Read all of it here

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You’ve Just Lost Your Life’s Savings

Posted on March 25, 2008 by RagBlog

And made some very rich people that much richer. Congratulations, America, for taking it on the chin for the fat cats once again. When will you learn?

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

A Picnic for Wall Street Insiders: The Money Launderers
By ALAN FARAGO

A week ago, on the day President Bush disavowed government intervention in financial markets, the Federal Reserve announced the fruit of its weekend labor: essentially guaranteeing hundreds of billions in toxic financial derivatives owned by banks. Money laundering has become the de facto standard of Federal Reserve policy.

The financial press has been filled with praise for the US government rescue of Bear Stearns, one of the worst offenders of reason and logic in the issuance of securitized mortgage debt. You have to turn to blogs to get a sense of the malfeasance.

Excerpt from the Hussman Funds’ Weekly Market Comment (3/24/08) regarding the Fed’s involvement on JPMorgan’s (JPM) deal to buy out Bear Stearns (BSC):

In effect, the Federal Reserve decided last week to overstep its legal boundaries ­ going beyond providing liquidity to the banking system and attempting to ensure the solvency of a non-bank entity. Specifically, the Fed agreed to provide a $30 billion “non-recourse loan” to J.P. Morgan, secured only by the worst tranche of Bear Stearns’ mortgage debt. But the bank ­ J.P. Morgan ­ was in no financial trouble. Instead, it was effectively offered a subsidy by the Fed at public expense. Rick Santelli of CNBC is exactly right. If this is how the U.S. government is going to operate in a democratic, free-market society, “we might as well put a hammer and sickle on the flag.”

What is a “non-recourse loan”? Put simply, if the homeowners underlying that weak tranche of debt go into foreclosure, they will lose their homes, and the public will lose as well. But J.P. Morgan will not lose, nor will Bear Stearns’ bondholders. This will be an outrageous outcome if it is allowed to stand.

… ­ it’s a picnic for insiders, bought and paid for through the abuse of public funds by government officials too unprincipled even to recognize the abuse. The only good thing about this deal is that it buys time while principled ways of busting and restructuring it can be settled.

At a moment in history when the US treasury is hemorraging ($5000 per second in Iraq), the Bush White House is setting up to do something that can be understood only through a corrective lens that takes every sighting and reverses it: the party of laissez faire, free markets and minimal regulation supports the costliest nationalization of industry in US economic history.

Last week, in addition to rescuing Bear Stearns, the shadow financial system intervened in metals and commodity markets– beating down anxiety indexes more sharply than at any time in the past half century. At the same time, the coordinated release of quarterly reports whose numbers ever so slightly “exceeded expectations” was enough justification–along with massive buying by US government operations that can only be faintly glimpsed–to send world stock markets back upwards.

Various metaphors have been used to describe US government intervention in the markets, like band-aid solutions to cure a gaping wound. In fact, the US government’s attempts to calm investor anxiety at the observable financial disarray is like using chemical foam at the surface to kill a deep-burning coal fire.

There was more micromanaging of the news cycle by the money launderers this morning:

March 24 (Bloomberg) — Forget lower interest rates. For the Federal Reserve to keep the financial markets from imploding it needs to buy troubled mortgage bonds from banks and securities firms, say the world’s biggest Treasury investors.

Even after cutting rates by 3 percentage points since September, expanding the range of securities it accepts as collateral for loans and giving dealers access to its discount window, the Fed has been unable to promote confidence. The difference between what the government and banks pay for three- month loans doubled in the past month to 1.92 percentage points.

The only tool left may be for the Fed to help facilitate a Resolution Trust Corp.-type agency that would buy bonds backed by home loans, said Bill Gross, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. While purchasing some of the $6 trillion mortgage securities outstanding would take problem debt off the balance sheets of banks and alleviate the cause of the credit crunch, it would put taxpayers at risk.

The US taxpayer is about to be force fed bad mortgage debt, that honest people didn’t ask for– created by Wall Street where incomes average $387,000 (NY Times, March 24, 2008 “With Economy Tied to Wall St. New York Braces for Job Cuts”) and fostered by a culture of corruption rippling all the way down through mortgage brokers, appraisers, and local zoning officials for whom the hard currency of fraud is as likely Bahamian poker chips as dollars.

Poor America.

Alan Farago of Coral Gables, who writes about the environment and the politics of South Florida, can be reached at alanfarago@yahoo.com.

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Pissing Off As Much Brass As Possible

Posted on March 25, 2008 by RagBlog

Listen to what this remarkably articulate young man tells us. He tells us that our government is in the business of torture, that the euphemistic semantics (of those who want to conceal their bad behaviour) does count, and that we should do something now to stop this unconscionable, disgusting criminality in our government.

I say, Kick the Bastards Out! Impeach Them and Jail Them!

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

[Note: Unfortunately, the video cuts off at just under 2 minutes. To view the complete video, please use the Source link.]

How to Become a Concentration Camp Guard Without Even Trying
By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted March 18, 2008.

A reluctant Guantanamo Bay jailer, who found himself working in that “legal black hole” at age 19, tells his shocking story.

The video […] is a brief but telling testimony given by Chris Arendt at the Winter Soldier Hearings in Washington, D.C., on March 15. Arendt, out of options, joined the military at age 17 and soon found himself guarding detainees at the U.S. prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Historian Andy Worthington, author of the Guantanamo Files, estimates that a maximum of around 50 of the 774 people who have spent time in “Gitmo” were hardened terrorists. U.S. forces in Afghanistan — where many, but by no means all of the detainees were captured — essentially had no routine in place to distinguish between hard-core anti-American terrorists and the legion of people unfortunate to be caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. That would be problematic in any conflict, but Afghanistan was a conflict in which the Bush administration was unilaterally rewriting the laws of war. It was also a country that had been mired in a longstanding civil war, one that had nothing to do with the United States. That intra-Muslim conflict had drawn people from around the Islamic world — not only fighters, but religious students, aid workers and other adventurous types who found themselves on the wrong end of a fight with the most powerful country in the world.

There were Afghani nationals who could distinguish between hardened terrorists and those caught in the United States’ dragnet, but they were ignored by intelligence officials. The policy, never written, was that any non-Afghan captured by — or sold to — the United States ended up in Guantanamo, isolated, without access to legal aid (in the early period) and with little or no ability to contest the basis of their detentions.

Arendt’s testimony gives us the other side of the story of Gitmo — the story of a reluctant jailer who found himself, at the age of 19, involved in the “legal black hole” that Guantanamo Bay has become.

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4,000 and No End in Sight

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Coffins mark the U.S. and Iraqi dead at Austin vigil. Photo by Alice Embree.

Austin vigil marks 4,000 dead.
by Alice Embree / March 25, 2008 / The Rag Blog

For over a month, CodePink Austin had the 4,000 U.S. dead in Iraq on its mind. A standing call was out for a vigil to mark the number and to remind the public of the human cost of this war – both the U.S. and Iraqi dead.

On a day in which Bush was greeting the Easter bunny on the White House lawn, Monday, April 24 at 5 p.m., CodePink was joined by many others in a somber vigil at a busy street corner in Austin.

Two coffins were flag draped – the one with the U.S. flag had combat boots on top of it, the other with an Iraqi flag bore the civilian shoes of a man, woman and child. Two tombstones were held behind the coffins with the toll of dead – 4,000 soldiers and 1,000,000 Iraqis. The larger estimate includes Iraqis dead from violence and disruption, including non-potable water and hospitals without electricity. Most of those in attendance wore black.

Members of Movement for a Democratic Society (MDS/Austin) and the musicians group, Instruments for Peace joined the stalwart CodePink contingent on Lamar and Sixth Street, near Austin landmarks Whole Foods and the Waterloo Ice House. As the crowd grew to 75, it spread to all four street corners. The familiar MDS signs read: “For Peace, Bring the Troops Home NOW.” Other signs read simply: “4,000 Too Many.”

The event drew attention from the media and from the drivers and passengers at the downtown intersection.It was a brief moment away from the Democratic primary scuffle that the media loves to peddle, away from the Easter bunny, away from the scandals of mayors and governors. It was a time to solemnly mark the death toll and to remember that it keeps steadily rising.

On my door I have a tape that I was given at Camp Casey on Easter weekend in 2006. It has the number of U.S. soldiers who have died. The number that weekend was 2,360. Now it is 4,000 with no end in sight.

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Thank You Mr. Vice President

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Project for the Old American Century.

Halliburton Watch.

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A McCain Moment

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Do you want four more years of this?
By Arianna Huffington / March 24, 2008

If our polarized country can agree on one thing, it’s that the greatest danger facing America over the next decade will not be Islamic extremism and instability in the Middle East, but rather Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. That’s just “common knowledge,” right?

So it only makes sense that the media have focused non-stop on this looming threat while paying scant attention to the fact that the presumptive Republican nominee for president apparently doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on in the Middle East.

And with the U.S. death toll hitting 4,000 (with 25 American soldiers killed over the last two weeks, the deadliest fortnight for our troops since September 2007), and with another 57 people killed in Iraq yesterday, John McCain’s tenuous grasp on what is happening in the region becomes all the more worthy of attention.

For those who were too busy watching Rev. Jeremiah Wright damn America for the 10,000th time to hear about McCain, let’s review: at a stop in Jordan last week, McCain made the ludicrous claim that Al Qaeda insurgents were being trained in Syria. Asked again about it, he dug in deeper, claiming it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known.”

A few moments later, McCain’s chief lady in waiting, Joe Lieberman, leaned forward and whispered in his ear. McCain promptly offered a quick rewrite: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

Now, it’s been widely reported that, heading into the Iraq war, George Bush had no clue about the differences between Sunni and Shia. But that was 2003, and it was George Bush. This is five years later and we’re talking about John McCain. But it turns out this acclaimed foreign policy expert doesn’t know the difference between Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Sunni insurgents, Iran and Syria. Or, perhaps more charitably, he’s doesn’t care to know.

Yes, John McCain is a war hero, and yes, we’re all grateful for his service during the Vietnam war. But as McCain’s embarrassing foreign fact-finding fiascos make clear: having acted heroically in a foreign war does not magically translate into foreign policy expertise and judgment.

Yet every time McCain packs a suitcase, the press automatically anoints him as “presidential.” They dutifully did it on this latest trip, even though it came just under a year after McCain’s clownish stroll through a Baghdad market, which he declared proof that one could “walk freely” around Baghdad — while being guarded by three Blackhawk helicopters, two Apache gunships, and 100 armed soldiers.

The fact that the presumptive Republican nominee doesn’t grasp the general outlines in Iraq would seem to be a big story. But not to the mainstream media. As soon as they heard that the Straight Talk Express had run off the road, they sprang into action to get the wreckage out of view. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

To the Washington Post, it was just a “gaffe.” CNN let stand the McCain campaign’s assertion that he had just “misspoke.” Brit Hume, senior member of the McCain Support Team, brushed it off as “blip,” and a “senior moment.” (Of course, Hume had a very different take on “senior moments” when it came to Jack Murtha.)

Not content with excuses, one of McCain’s foreign policy advisors, Max Boot, decided to tout the “misstatement”: “What gaffe?” Boot asked, going on to claim, “there is copious evidence of Iran supplying and otherwise assisting Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni terrorist groups (including Al Qaeda central). The 9/11 Commission itself noted a number of links between Iran and Al Qaeda.” And McCain senior foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann claimed there is “ample documentation” for this.

This would be news to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno. In July, Odierno, then the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said, “We don’t see any evidence, significant evidence, that shows that [Iranian-controlled] groups that are funding and providing arms to Shia extremists are directly related to al Qaeda.”

No matter, because as Brit Hume says, “we all agree that McCain has understanding and knowledge of world affairs.”

Sorry, Brit, but we don’t all agree. In fact, we don’t all agree at all.

Yes, McCain loves to talk about war. He loves to talk about “service,” and “character,” and “sacrifice” — which are all great things. But McCain’s version of foreign policy is simply rah-rah melodrama. It’s like watching a John Wayne movie.

This was no gaffe. A gaffe would be something that was out of the ordinary. This is the opposite of a gaffe. This is evidence. And it’s evidence we should not ignore. We already know what it’s like to have a president who just assumes that whichever way he wants things to be is “common knowledge.” It turns out that it’s not just George Bush’s war that McCain wants to continue; it’s George Bush’s approach.

Does the country want another George Bush in the White House? Voters should at least be given all the facts so they can make that decision for themselves. The problem is that the media have got an image in their creaky narrative machines about John McCain and they’re sticking to it.

It’s much easier to just present the tried-and-true version of McCain that that has prevailed since 2000 instead of presenting the new McCain as he’s become: cavalier, dismissive, and lazy about the facts.

John McCain doesn’t need surrogates. He’s got the media. Which is why his “gaffe” wasn’t bigger news. Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief of the L.A. Times explained it this way on Face the Nation yesterday (as Harry Shearer noted on HuffPost): “Iraq wasn’t what was on voters’ minds.” Unlike the sermons of Jeremiah Wright.

Sometimes, the reason why McCain’s dangerously tenuous grasp on the facts doesn’t strike the media as odd is because they believe the same thing. Here’s a video of CNN’s Kyra Phillips pushing the same Iran/al Qaeda nonsense in an interview with Gen. Petraeus. To his credit, the General sets her straight.

I know one thing that might have made the media play McCain’s “misstatement” bigger: if it had been uttered by a Democrat. As NBC’s Chuck Todd pointed out, if Clinton or Obama had said such a thing “this would have been played on a loop, over and over.”

And it’s hard to claim it’s all just because the public is bored with Iraq and prefers a good story about incendiary pastors. If that’s true, why was there no feeding frenzy about Rev. John Hagee, the bigoted minister who endorsed McCain, partly because McCain’s foreign policy fits neatly into Hagee’s apocalyptic (and I’m not speaking metaphorically) worldview? Again, the media rushed to let McCain off the hook, even though, as Hagee himself said in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, “McCain’s campaign sought my endorsement.”

You can count me as one who actually does have Iraq on my mind and who wants the next president to have a mind capable of understanding it — and a thirst to do so. As his trip to Iraq makes clear, McCain is not a candidate who has crossed that threshold.

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McDubya

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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From the Creeps Who’ve Spent Billions on War

Posted on March 25, 2008 by RagBlog

White House Official Tells Judge: Searching for Missing Emails Too Much Work
by Jason Leopold / March 24th, 2008

The White House’s chief information officer said the Bush administration should not be compelled to search for millions of emails on individual computers and hard drives that may have been lost between 2003 and 2005 because it would be too expensive and require hundreds of hours of work, according to a filing the White House made with a federal court late Friday.

Friday’s court filing by the White House came in response to an order issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola last week demanding that the White House show cause why it should not be ordered to create and preserve a “forensic copy” of emails from individual hard drives. Facciola entered the order in part because the White House admitted that it did not preserve back-up tapes prior to October 2003.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and George Washington University’s National Security Archive sued the Bush administration last year alleging the White House violated the Presidential Records Act by not archiving emails sent and received between 2003 and 2005.

In documents filed with Faciolla Friday, Theresa Payton, the chief information officer at the White House Office of Administration, said the White House routinely destroyed its hard drives every three years “in order to run updated software, reduce ongoing maintenance, and enhance security assurance. So its unlikely that any lost emails would be retrieved anyway.

“When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired… under the refresh program, the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction in accordance with Department of Defense guidelines,” states Payton’s sworn affidavit filed with Facciola late Friday.

“And even if some older computer workstations were in use, finding them and copying their hard drives with the hope that the residual data contains relevant e-mail information would create an ‘awfully expensive needle to justify searching a haystack,’” a separate court filing the White House made Friday says.

“Even if computer workstations used during the relevant time period are identifiable and locatable, making “forensic copies” (as that term is defined by the Court) of the workstations that may or may not contain residual data of emails would impose a significant burden on OA,” added Payton’s affidavit. “As I understand it, an Order requiring defendants to make a copy of all active data on workstations containing profiles from the relevant time period would require hundreds of hours of work by… staff and management personnel. Such an effort would inevitably divert significant resources from the [Office of the Chief Administration Officer] functions and projects relating to core administration operations. The precise duration of the procurement process, as well as costs associated with that process, are not presently knowable, but they must be expected to be substantial given the sensitivity and significance of such a project.”

Read all of it here.

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Our Reputation in the World Is in the Toilet

Posted on March 25, 2008 by RagBlog


Happy Anniversary, America! How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be?
By David Michael Green

24/03/08 “ICH” — — Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy.

As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration, (No, it’s not a terrorist attack – that was 2001! No, it’s not a catastrophic war – that was 2003! No, it’s not a drowning city – that was 2005! This one is an economic meltdown, ladies and gentlemen!) bringing to it the same blithe disengagement with which he’s attended the previous ones, you cannot but stop and gaze in stark, comedic awe, realizing that the most powerful polity that ever existed on the planet twice picked this imbecilic buffoon as its leader, from among 300 million other choices. Seeing him clown with the Washington press corps yet once again – and seeing them fawn over him, laugh in all the right places, and give him a standing ovation, also yet once again – is the equivalent of having all your logic circuits blown simultaneously. Truly, the universe has a twisted and deeply ironic sense of humor. Monty Python is about as funny – and as stiff – as Dick Nixon, by comparison.

It’s simply incomprehensible. It’s not so astonishing, of course, that a country could have a bad leader whose aims are nefarious on the occasions when they are competent enough to rise to that level of intentionality. Plenty of countries have managed that feat, especially when – as was the case with Bush – every sort of scam is employed to steal power, and then pure corruption and intimidation used to keep it. History is quite littered indeed with bimbos and petty criminals of this caliber. What is harder to explain is how a country of such remarkable achievements in other domains, and with the capacity to choose, and in the twenty-first century no less, allows this to happen. And then stands by silently watching for eight years as the tragedy unfolds before their eyes, all 600 million of them, hardly any of them even blinking.

And so, remarkably, as we mark now the fifth anniversary of the very most tragic of these debacles, the most destructive and the most shameful – because it was the most avoidable – the sad question of the hour is less what is to be done about it than will anyone even notice? Not likely. And not for very long if they do. And, most of all, definitely not enough so as to take meaningful action to bring it to an end, even at this absurdly late date.

But let’s give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating regime since Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag. It was Göring himself who famously reminded us that, “Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. …Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here, because these guys were so absolutely careful to avoid exposing the costs of their war to those who could demand its end. For example, by some counts, there are more mercenaries fighting in Iraq, at extremely high cost, than there are US military personnel. There’s only one reason for that. If the administration implemented the draft that is actually necessary to supply this war with adequate personnel, the public would end both the war and the careers of its sponsors, post haste. For the same reason, this is the first American war ever which has not only not been accompanied by a tax increase, but has in fact witnessed a tax cut. Likewise – to ‘preserve the dignity’ of the dead, of course – you are no longer permitted to see photographs of flag-draped caskets returning to Dover Air Force Base.

And the press are embedded with forces who are also responsible for their safety, which is just a fancy way of saying that they’re so censored they make Pravda look good. It is, in short, quite easy for average Americans to get through their day, every day, without the war impacting their lives in any visible respect, and that is precisely what hundreds of millions of us are doing, week in and week out. All of this is courtesy of an administration that couldn’t run a governmental program to save its own life – but, boy, they sure as hell know how to market stuff.

Read the rest of it here.

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Republican Hit? Official Spitzer Story Questioned

Posted on March 24, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Republican operative Roger Stone.

GOP operative wrote investigators in November

In the 1970s, he was on the payroll of Richard Nixon’s now-infamous Committee to Reelect the President. In the 1980s, he helped George Bush Sr. trounce Michael Dukakis by floating a racially charged ad about the Democratic governor’s role in furloughing a black inmate. And in 2000, he organized the so-called “Brooks Brothers” riot, forcing the shutdown of a recount in Miami-Dade County, Florida, that may have turned the election to George W. Bush.

Last November, his lawyer wrote a letter to the FBI. In it, GOP political operative Roger Stone’s attorney, Paul Rolf alleged that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer “used the services of high-priced call girls” while in Florida, basing his information on a “social contact.”

The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Stone gleaned the information from “a social contact in an adult themed club.”

“The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services,” Rolf wrote. “It is Mr. Stone’s understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer.”

It continued, including particular detail — Stone’s lawyer wrote that the governor hadn’t taken off his calf-length socks “during the sex act.”

It’s unclear whether Stone’s letter sparked the investigation: court papers say the investigation began “in or about October 2007.”

The New York Times reported that law enforcement officials “stumbled upon” the prostitution ring after they’d begun an investigation of Spitzer for potential corruption, after a bank flagged “suspicious transfers.”

The missive’s timing — in November — was preceded by contact from the FBI. The Miami Herald, which first reported on Stone’s lawyer’s letter, said the letter was written in response to contact from federal investigators.

“His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted,” Herald reporter Amy Driscoll wrote Friday.

Subsequent reports shed little light on why the FBI sought to speak to Stone before the letter was sent. The Times speculated that the bureau might have wanted to talk to Stone about a threatening message he allegedly left for Spitzer’s father, which resulted in his being fired by New York’s top Senate Republican.

Stone chose his words carefully when speaking to the Times: “He said that he was never interviewed by federal officials and that he was not sure his lawyers were contacted because of the reported call to Bernard Spitzer.”

He did say, however, “in a series of e-mail messages on Sunday,” that “his lawyers were contacted by federal investigators three weeks after the allegations about the call surfaced.”
The FBI has declined to comment, either on whether they received Rolf’s letter or if they contacted Stone directly.

Conservative columnist Robert Novak hinted at a possible Stone role in a column earlier this month.

“Republican political operative Roger Stone, Eliot Spitzer’s longtime antagonist, predicted his political demise more than three months in advance,” Novak wrote. “Spitzer’s entrapment by federal authorities investigating a prostitution ring raised speculation that Stone, with a 40-year record as a political hit man, somehow was behind it.”

“Eliot Spitzer will not serve out his term as governor of the state of New York,” Stone said Dec. 6 on Michael Smerconish’s radio talk show,” Novak added. “He gave no details.”

Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, in the Wall Street Journal, avers that the Times’ explanation of Spitzer’s ‘capture’ after a bank flagged his transactions doesn’t entirely ring true to career prosecutors.

“There is no hard evidence that Eliot Spitzer was targeted for investigation, but the story of how he was caught does not ring entirely true to many experienced former prosecutors and current criminal lawyers,” Dershowitz wrote. “The New York Times reported that the revelations began with a routine tax inquiry by revenue agents ‘conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks.’ This investigation allegedly found ‘several unusual movements of cash involving the Governor of New York.’ But the movement of the amounts of cash required to pay prostitutes, even high-priced prostitutes over a long period of time, does not commonly generate a full-scale investigation.”

“We are talking about thousands, not millions, of dollars. We are also talking about a man who is a multimillionaire with numerous investments and purchases,” he added. “The idea that federal investigators would focus on a few transactions to corporations — that were not themselves under investigation — raises as many questions as answers.”

In a nod to his beginnings, Stone has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on the back of his neck.Raw Story / The Rag Blog / March 24, 2008

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4,000.

Posted on March 24, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Vigil in Austin, March 24, 5 p.m.

I am sorry to report that the U.S. casualty count in Iraq has just reached the sad milestone of 4,000 deaths.

Please join us for a vigil to mourn these tragic deaths this afternoon, March 24 at 5 p.m. This has been a standing call from CodePink..

We will meet at the corner of 6th and Lamar in Austin. We will wear black and we encourage you to do the same. We will have black veils available for those who wish to wear them.

Alice Embree / March 24, 2008 / The Rag Blog

The death toll for U.S. solders in Iraq has reached 4,000:

The overall U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 4,000 after four soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, a grim milestone that is likely to fuel calls for the withdrawal of American forces as the war enters its sixth year.

The American deaths occurred Sunday, the same day rockets and mortars pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad and a wave of attacks left at least 61 Iraqis dead nationwide.

From MSNBC / March 23, 2008 / The Rag Blog
Source.

Michael Ware of CNN reports from lraq on 4,000 GI Deaths

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