From The Huffington Post -- 11/28/09
Senate Report: Bin Laden Was 'Within Our Grasp' In 2001
CALVIN WOODWARD 11/28/09 11:33 PM
WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora when American military leaders made the crucial and costly decision not to pursue the terrorist leader with massive force, a Senate report says.
The report asserts that the failure to kill or capture bin Laden at his most vulnerable in December 2001 has had lasting consequences beyond the fate of one man. Bin Laden's escape laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan, it says.
Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry, as President Barack Obama prepares to boost U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate has long argued the Bush administration missed a chance to get the al-Qaida leader and top deputies when they were holed up in the forbidding mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan only three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Although limited to a review of military operations eight years old, the report could also be read as a cautionary note for those resisting an increased troop presence there now.
More pointedly, it seeks to affix a measure of blame for the state of the war today on military leaders under former president George W. Bush, specifically Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary and his top military commander, Tommy Franks.
"Removing the al-Qaida leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat," the report says. "But the decisions that opened the door for his escape to Pakistan allowed bin Laden to emerge as a potent symbolic figure who continues to attract a steady flow of money and inspire fanatics worldwide. The failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that forever altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism."
The report states categorically that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora when the U.S. had the means to mount a rapid assault with several thousand troops at least. It says that a review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants "removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora."
On or about Dec. 16, 2001, bin Laden and bodyguards "walked unmolested out of Tora Bora and disappeared into Pakistan's unregulated tribal area," where he is still believed to be based, the report says.
Instead of a massive attack, fewer than 100 U.S. commandos, working with Afghan militias, tried to capitalize on air strikes and track down their prey.
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the Marine Corps and the Army, was kept on the sidelines," the report said.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Iran Is Rapidly Becoming The World's Number One Trouble Spot
A Defiant Iran Details Plan for 10 Enrichment Plants
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: November 29, 2009 -- The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Iran angrily refused Sunday to comply with a United Nations demand to cease work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant, and escalated the confrontation by declaring it would construct 10 more such plants.
The response to the demand, made in a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear regulatory arm of the United Nations, came as Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said his cabinet would also order a study of what it would take for Iran to further enrich its existing stockpile of nuclear fuel for use in a medical reactor — rather than rely on Russia or another nation, as agreed to in an earlier tentative deal.
While it is unclear whether Iran has the fuel technology, the declaration appeared intended to convince the West that Iran was prepared to move closer to bomb-grade quality, while stopping short of crossing that threshold.
Even if Iran proceeded with an ambitious plan to build 10 enrichment plants, it is doubtful Iran could execute that plan for years, maybe decades. But the announcement itself was enough to draw immediate condemnation from the White House, which clearly hoped that Iran’s defiant tone would help convince Russia and China that imposing harsh sanctions was justified.
Both countries, historically opposed to sanctions, had voted in favor of the atomic energy agency’s resolution. By refusing to accept that resolution, one senior administration official said, “Ahmadinejad may be doing more to assemble a sanctions coalition than we could do in months of work.”
The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said of Iran’s declaration: “If true, this would be yet another serious violation of Iran’s clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself.”
According to Iranian state television, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s cabinet voted to begin construction at five new sites designated for uranium enrichment plants — it did not specify where — and to determine locations for another five in the next few months.
In Europe, diplomats called the Iranian plan for a giant expansion of enrichment closer to a national aspiration than an imminent threat. Iran’s main enrichment facility, at Natanz, began early this decade and today the country has installed fewer than a tenth of the 50,000 centrifuges it is designed to handle. A second, once-secret plant — revealed two months ago — has been under construction for more than three years, and it is still at least a year from completion.
“It’s preposterous,” a diplomat in Vienna who collaborates with the International Atomic Energy Agency said of the plan for the 10 plants. The diplomat, who closely monitors the Iranian nuclear program, added: “It would be way, way more than they need no matter what their nuclear aspirations.” He noted that the United States had just one enrichment plant, in Paducah, Ky.
But the threat did appear to represent Iran’s decision to find a way to strike back politically at the West for the Security Council’s three resolutions demanding that Iran stop all enrichment activity. The international atomic agency’s board built on those Security Council resolutions on Friday, when it demanded that Iran halt work on construction of its second, once-secret enrichment plant. It was the first time the atomic agency had told Iran to halt construction of a plant.
What American and atomic agency officials fear is that the steady drumbeat of defiant declarations from Iran could lead to the one act that would truly touch off a crisis: Iran’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That would terminate the already limited presence of the West’s atomic inspectors in Iran. North Korea took that step in early 2003, and soon produced the fuel for eight or more nuclear weapons; it has since tested two.
More than 200 members of the Iranian Parliament signed a letter on Sunday, according to Iranian press accounts, urging that the atomic agency’s presence in Iran be further restricted, and individual political leaders have called for withdrawal from the nonproliferation treaty.
But Iran may be hesitant to follow North Korea’s lead. Such a declaration would signal to the world that Iran was heading for “nuclear breakout,” a rush to produce a bomb. Such a declaration would almost certainly build pressure for sanctions, and could lead to pre-emptive military action against Iran by Israel. “You have to think,” one of President Obama’s top national security advisers said recently, “that they would think twice before denouncing their treaty obligations.”
Instead, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, who once led Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, warned Sunday that Iran’s cooperation with the agency could “seriously decrease” in the near future.
Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful, and to date has enriched uranium to less than 5 percent, which is consistent with making fuel for a civilian nuclear power plant. But so far, there are no civilian nuclear plants under construction to receive that fuel; the two plants Iran is getting ready to open, at Bushehr, receive fuel from Russia. The absence of civilian reactors is one reason Western analysts suspect that Iran’s real intentions are to make atom bombs.
Iran has long talked of building as many as 19 more nuclear plants in addition to the complex at Bushehr. In the past, the plan for a total of 20 power plants resulted in a large gap between Iran’s declared ambitions and its envisioned needs for enrichment, and Sunday’s announcement sought to end that contradiction, at least in theory.
Western nuclear experts said that taking the declaration of the 10-plant goal at face value was akin to believing in the tooth fairy. “They’re hyping it,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation. “They couldn’t build that number of centrifuges. They don’t have the infrastructure.”
Mr. Albright added that Iran’s supplies of uranium were dwindling, casting more doubt on the vastly expanded commercial fuel goal. The result, he said, is that the new push for enrichment will probably end up producing “one small plant somewhere that they’re not going to tell us about” and be military in nature.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and William J. Broad from New York. Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto.
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: November 29, 2009 -- The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Iran angrily refused Sunday to comply with a United Nations demand to cease work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant, and escalated the confrontation by declaring it would construct 10 more such plants.
The response to the demand, made in a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear regulatory arm of the United Nations, came as Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said his cabinet would also order a study of what it would take for Iran to further enrich its existing stockpile of nuclear fuel for use in a medical reactor — rather than rely on Russia or another nation, as agreed to in an earlier tentative deal.
While it is unclear whether Iran has the fuel technology, the declaration appeared intended to convince the West that Iran was prepared to move closer to bomb-grade quality, while stopping short of crossing that threshold.
Even if Iran proceeded with an ambitious plan to build 10 enrichment plants, it is doubtful Iran could execute that plan for years, maybe decades. But the announcement itself was enough to draw immediate condemnation from the White House, which clearly hoped that Iran’s defiant tone would help convince Russia and China that imposing harsh sanctions was justified.
Both countries, historically opposed to sanctions, had voted in favor of the atomic energy agency’s resolution. By refusing to accept that resolution, one senior administration official said, “Ahmadinejad may be doing more to assemble a sanctions coalition than we could do in months of work.”
The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said of Iran’s declaration: “If true, this would be yet another serious violation of Iran’s clear obligations under multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself.”
According to Iranian state television, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s cabinet voted to begin construction at five new sites designated for uranium enrichment plants — it did not specify where — and to determine locations for another five in the next few months.
In Europe, diplomats called the Iranian plan for a giant expansion of enrichment closer to a national aspiration than an imminent threat. Iran’s main enrichment facility, at Natanz, began early this decade and today the country has installed fewer than a tenth of the 50,000 centrifuges it is designed to handle. A second, once-secret plant — revealed two months ago — has been under construction for more than three years, and it is still at least a year from completion.
“It’s preposterous,” a diplomat in Vienna who collaborates with the International Atomic Energy Agency said of the plan for the 10 plants. The diplomat, who closely monitors the Iranian nuclear program, added: “It would be way, way more than they need no matter what their nuclear aspirations.” He noted that the United States had just one enrichment plant, in Paducah, Ky.
But the threat did appear to represent Iran’s decision to find a way to strike back politically at the West for the Security Council’s three resolutions demanding that Iran stop all enrichment activity. The international atomic agency’s board built on those Security Council resolutions on Friday, when it demanded that Iran halt work on construction of its second, once-secret enrichment plant. It was the first time the atomic agency had told Iran to halt construction of a plant.
What American and atomic agency officials fear is that the steady drumbeat of defiant declarations from Iran could lead to the one act that would truly touch off a crisis: Iran’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That would terminate the already limited presence of the West’s atomic inspectors in Iran. North Korea took that step in early 2003, and soon produced the fuel for eight or more nuclear weapons; it has since tested two.
More than 200 members of the Iranian Parliament signed a letter on Sunday, according to Iranian press accounts, urging that the atomic agency’s presence in Iran be further restricted, and individual political leaders have called for withdrawal from the nonproliferation treaty.
But Iran may be hesitant to follow North Korea’s lead. Such a declaration would signal to the world that Iran was heading for “nuclear breakout,” a rush to produce a bomb. Such a declaration would almost certainly build pressure for sanctions, and could lead to pre-emptive military action against Iran by Israel. “You have to think,” one of President Obama’s top national security advisers said recently, “that they would think twice before denouncing their treaty obligations.”
Instead, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, who once led Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, warned Sunday that Iran’s cooperation with the agency could “seriously decrease” in the near future.
Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful, and to date has enriched uranium to less than 5 percent, which is consistent with making fuel for a civilian nuclear power plant. But so far, there are no civilian nuclear plants under construction to receive that fuel; the two plants Iran is getting ready to open, at Bushehr, receive fuel from Russia. The absence of civilian reactors is one reason Western analysts suspect that Iran’s real intentions are to make atom bombs.
Iran has long talked of building as many as 19 more nuclear plants in addition to the complex at Bushehr. In the past, the plan for a total of 20 power plants resulted in a large gap between Iran’s declared ambitions and its envisioned needs for enrichment, and Sunday’s announcement sought to end that contradiction, at least in theory.
Western nuclear experts said that taking the declaration of the 10-plant goal at face value was akin to believing in the tooth fairy. “They’re hyping it,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation. “They couldn’t build that number of centrifuges. They don’t have the infrastructure.”
Mr. Albright added that Iran’s supplies of uranium were dwindling, casting more doubt on the vastly expanded commercial fuel goal. The result, he said, is that the new push for enrichment will probably end up producing “one small plant somewhere that they’re not going to tell us about” and be military in nature.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and William J. Broad from New York. Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto.
Advanced Biblical Dermatology School -- Part II
In addition to requiring the teaching of Creationism in public schools, Kansas is also adding the following Biblical curriculum to its post-graduate medical school courses. Note the emphasis on the slaughter of birds to treat dermatological skin lesions. All Kansas hospitals are now building large coops to house the huge number of birds they will need to cure bird flu and skin lesions.
Leviticus 14
Purification of Diseased Skin Infections
14:1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 14:2 “This is the law of the diseased person on the day of his purification, when1 he is brought to the priest.2 14:3 The priest is to go outside the camp and examine the infection.3 If the infection of the diseased person has been healed,4 14:4 then the priest will command that two live clean birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric,5 and some twigs of hyssop6 be taken up7 for the one being cleansed.8 14:5 The priest will then command that one bird be slaughtered9 into a clay vessel over fresh water.10 14:6 Then11 he is to take the live bird along with the piece of cedar wood, the scrap of crimson fabric, and the twigs of hyssop, and he is to dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird slaughtered over the fresh water, 14:7 and sprinkle it seven times on the one being cleansed12 from the disease, pronounce him clean,13 and send the live bird away over the open countryside.14
The Seven Days of Purification
14:8 “The one being cleansed15 must then wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and bathe in water, and so be clean.16 Then afterward he may enter the camp, but he must live outside his tent seven days. 14:9 When the seventh day comes17 he must shave all his hair – his head, his beard, his eyebrows, all his hair – and he must wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and so be clean.18
The Eighth Day Atonement Rituals
14:10 “On the eighth day he19 must take two flawless male lambs, one flawless yearling female lamb, three-tenths of an ephah of choice wheat flour as a grain offering mixed with olive oil,20 and one log of olive oil,21 14:11 and the priest who pronounces him clean will have the man who is being cleansed stand along with these offerings22 before the Lord at the entrance of the Meeting Tent.
14:12 “The priest is to take one male lamb23 and present it for a guilt offering24 along with the log of olive oil and present them as a wave offering before the Lord.25 14:13 He must then slaughter26the male lamb in the place where27 the sin offering28 and the burnt offering29 are slaughtered,30 in the sanctuary, because, like the sin offering, the guilt offering belongs to the priest;31 it is most holy. 14:14Then the priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed,32 on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe33 of his right foot. 14:15 The priest will then take some of the log of olive oil and pour it into his own left hand.34 14:16 Then the priest is to dip his right forefinger into the olive oil35 that is in his left hand, and sprinkle some of the olive oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. 14:17 The priest will then put some of the rest of the olive oil that is in his hand36 on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, on the blood of the guilt offering, 14:18 and the remainder of the olive oil37 that is in his hand the priest is to put on the head of the one being cleansed. So the priest is to make atonement for him before the Lord.
14:19 “The priest must then perform the sin offering38 and make atonement for the one being cleansed from his impurity. After that he39 is to slaughter the burnt offering, 14:20 and the priest is to offer40 the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar. So the priest is to make atonement for him and he will be clean.
The Eighth Day Atonement Rituals for the Poor Person
14:21 “If the person is poor and does not have sufficient means,41 he must take one male lamb as a guilt offering for a wave offering to make atonement for himself, one-tenth of an ephah of choice wheat flour mixed with olive oil for a grain offering, a log of olive oil,42 14:22 and two turtledoves or two young pigeons,43 which are within his means.44 One will be a sin offering and the other a burnt offering.45
14:23 “On the eighth day he must bring them for his purification to the priest at the entrance46 of the Meeting Tent before the Lord, 14:24 and the priest is to take the male lamb of the guilt offering and the log of olive oil and wave them47 as a wave offering before the Lord. 14:25 Then he is to slaughter the male lamb of the guilt offering, and the priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed,48 on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe49 of his right foot. 14:26 The priest will then pour some of the olive oil into his own left hand,5014:27 and sprinkle some of the olive oil that is in his left hand with his right forefinger51 seven times before the Lord. 14:28 Then the priest is to put some of the olive oil that is in his hand52 on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, on the place of the blood of the guilt offering, 14:29 and the remainder of the olive oil that is in the hand53 of the priest he is to put54 on the head of the one being cleansed to make atonement for him before the Lord.
14:30 “He will then make one of the turtledoves55 or young pigeons, which are within his means,5614:31 a sin offering and the other a burnt offering along with the grain offering.57 So the priest is to make atonement for the one being cleansed before the Lord. 14:32 This is the law of the one in whom there is a diseased infection,58 who does not have sufficient means for his purification.”59
Purification of Disease-Infected Houses
14:33 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: 14:34 “When you enter the land of Canaan which I am about to give60 to you for a possession, and I put61 a diseased infection in a house in the land you are to possess,62 14:35 then whoever owns the house63 must come and declare to the priest, ‘Something like an infection is visible to me in the house.’ 14:36 Then the priest will command that the house be cleared64 before the priest enters to examine the infection65 so that everything in the house66 does not become unclean,67 and afterward68 the priest will enter to examine the house. 14:37 He is to examine the infection, and if69 the infection in the walls of the house consists of yellowish green or reddish eruptions,70 and it appears to be deeper than the surface of the wall,71 14:38 then the priest is to go out of the house to the doorway of the house and quarantine the house for seven days.72 14:39 The priest must return on the seventh day and examine it, and if73 the infection has spread in the walls of the house, 14:40 then the priest is to command that the stones that had the infection in them be pulled and thrown74 outside the city75 into an unclean place. 14:41 Then he is to have the house scraped76 all around on the inside,77 and the plaster78 which is scraped off79 must be dumped outside the city80 into an unclean place. 14:42 They are then to take other stones and replace those stones,81 and he is to take other plaster and replaster the house.
14:43 “If the infection returns and breaks out in the house after he has pulled out the stones, scraped the house, and it is replastered,82 14:44 the priest is to come and examine it, and if83 the infection has spread in the house, it is a malignant disease in the house. It is unclean. 14:45 He must tear down the house,84 its stones, its wood, and all the plaster of the house, and bring all of it85outside the city to an unclean place. 14:46 Anyone who enters86 the house all the days the priest87 has quarantined it will be unclean until evening. 14:47 Anyone who lies down in the house must wash his clothes. Anyone who eats in the house must wash his clothes.
14:48 “If, however, the priest enters88 and examines it, and the89 infection has not spread in the house after the house has been replastered, then the priest is to pronounce the house clean because the infection has been healed. 14:49 Then he90 is to take two birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric, and some twigs of hyssop91 to decontaminate92 the house, 14:50 and he is to slaughter one bird into a clay vessel over fresh water.93 14:51 He must then take the piece of cedar wood, the twigs of hyssop, the scrap of crimson fabric, and the live bird, and dip them in the blood of the slaughtered bird and in the fresh water, and sprinkle the house seven times. 14:52 So he is to decontaminate the house with the blood of the bird, the fresh water, the live bird, the piece of cedar wood, the twigs of hyssop, and the scrap of crimson fabric, 14:53 and he is to send the live bird away outside the city94 into the open countryside. So he is to make atonement for the house and it will be clean.
Leviticus 14
Purification of Diseased Skin Infections
14:1 The Lord spoke to Moses: 14:2 “This is the law of the diseased person on the day of his purification, when1 he is brought to the priest.2 14:3 The priest is to go outside the camp and examine the infection.3 If the infection of the diseased person has been healed,4 14:4 then the priest will command that two live clean birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric,5 and some twigs of hyssop6 be taken up7 for the one being cleansed.8 14:5 The priest will then command that one bird be slaughtered9 into a clay vessel over fresh water.10 14:6 Then11 he is to take the live bird along with the piece of cedar wood, the scrap of crimson fabric, and the twigs of hyssop, and he is to dip them and the live bird in the blood of the bird slaughtered over the fresh water, 14:7 and sprinkle it seven times on the one being cleansed12 from the disease, pronounce him clean,13 and send the live bird away over the open countryside.14
The Seven Days of Purification
14:8 “The one being cleansed15 must then wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and bathe in water, and so be clean.16 Then afterward he may enter the camp, but he must live outside his tent seven days. 14:9 When the seventh day comes17 he must shave all his hair – his head, his beard, his eyebrows, all his hair – and he must wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and so be clean.18
The Eighth Day Atonement Rituals
14:10 “On the eighth day he19 must take two flawless male lambs, one flawless yearling female lamb, three-tenths of an ephah of choice wheat flour as a grain offering mixed with olive oil,20 and one log of olive oil,21 14:11 and the priest who pronounces him clean will have the man who is being cleansed stand along with these offerings22 before the Lord at the entrance of the Meeting Tent.
14:12 “The priest is to take one male lamb23 and present it for a guilt offering24 along with the log of olive oil and present them as a wave offering before the Lord.25 14:13 He must then slaughter26the male lamb in the place where27 the sin offering28 and the burnt offering29 are slaughtered,30 in the sanctuary, because, like the sin offering, the guilt offering belongs to the priest;31 it is most holy. 14:14Then the priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed,32 on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe33 of his right foot. 14:15 The priest will then take some of the log of olive oil and pour it into his own left hand.34 14:16 Then the priest is to dip his right forefinger into the olive oil35 that is in his left hand, and sprinkle some of the olive oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. 14:17 The priest will then put some of the rest of the olive oil that is in his hand36 on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, on the blood of the guilt offering, 14:18 and the remainder of the olive oil37 that is in his hand the priest is to put on the head of the one being cleansed. So the priest is to make atonement for him before the Lord.
14:19 “The priest must then perform the sin offering38 and make atonement for the one being cleansed from his impurity. After that he39 is to slaughter the burnt offering, 14:20 and the priest is to offer40 the burnt offering and the grain offering on the altar. So the priest is to make atonement for him and he will be clean.
The Eighth Day Atonement Rituals for the Poor Person
14:21 “If the person is poor and does not have sufficient means,41 he must take one male lamb as a guilt offering for a wave offering to make atonement for himself, one-tenth of an ephah of choice wheat flour mixed with olive oil for a grain offering, a log of olive oil,42 14:22 and two turtledoves or two young pigeons,43 which are within his means.44 One will be a sin offering and the other a burnt offering.45
14:23 “On the eighth day he must bring them for his purification to the priest at the entrance46 of the Meeting Tent before the Lord, 14:24 and the priest is to take the male lamb of the guilt offering and the log of olive oil and wave them47 as a wave offering before the Lord. 14:25 Then he is to slaughter the male lamb of the guilt offering, and the priest is to take some of the blood of the guilt offering and put it on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed,48 on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe49 of his right foot. 14:26 The priest will then pour some of the olive oil into his own left hand,5014:27 and sprinkle some of the olive oil that is in his left hand with his right forefinger51 seven times before the Lord. 14:28 Then the priest is to put some of the olive oil that is in his hand52 on the right earlobe of the one being cleansed, on the thumb of his right hand, and on the big toe of his right foot, on the place of the blood of the guilt offering, 14:29 and the remainder of the olive oil that is in the hand53 of the priest he is to put54 on the head of the one being cleansed to make atonement for him before the Lord.
14:30 “He will then make one of the turtledoves55 or young pigeons, which are within his means,5614:31 a sin offering and the other a burnt offering along with the grain offering.57 So the priest is to make atonement for the one being cleansed before the Lord. 14:32 This is the law of the one in whom there is a diseased infection,58 who does not have sufficient means for his purification.”59
Purification of Disease-Infected Houses
14:33 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: 14:34 “When you enter the land of Canaan which I am about to give60 to you for a possession, and I put61 a diseased infection in a house in the land you are to possess,62 14:35 then whoever owns the house63 must come and declare to the priest, ‘Something like an infection is visible to me in the house.’ 14:36 Then the priest will command that the house be cleared64 before the priest enters to examine the infection65 so that everything in the house66 does not become unclean,67 and afterward68 the priest will enter to examine the house. 14:37 He is to examine the infection, and if69 the infection in the walls of the house consists of yellowish green or reddish eruptions,70 and it appears to be deeper than the surface of the wall,71 14:38 then the priest is to go out of the house to the doorway of the house and quarantine the house for seven days.72 14:39 The priest must return on the seventh day and examine it, and if73 the infection has spread in the walls of the house, 14:40 then the priest is to command that the stones that had the infection in them be pulled and thrown74 outside the city75 into an unclean place. 14:41 Then he is to have the house scraped76 all around on the inside,77 and the plaster78 which is scraped off79 must be dumped outside the city80 into an unclean place. 14:42 They are then to take other stones and replace those stones,81 and he is to take other plaster and replaster the house.
14:43 “If the infection returns and breaks out in the house after he has pulled out the stones, scraped the house, and it is replastered,82 14:44 the priest is to come and examine it, and if83 the infection has spread in the house, it is a malignant disease in the house. It is unclean. 14:45 He must tear down the house,84 its stones, its wood, and all the plaster of the house, and bring all of it85outside the city to an unclean place. 14:46 Anyone who enters86 the house all the days the priest87 has quarantined it will be unclean until evening. 14:47 Anyone who lies down in the house must wash his clothes. Anyone who eats in the house must wash his clothes.
14:48 “If, however, the priest enters88 and examines it, and the89 infection has not spread in the house after the house has been replastered, then the priest is to pronounce the house clean because the infection has been healed. 14:49 Then he90 is to take two birds, a piece of cedar wood, a scrap of crimson fabric, and some twigs of hyssop91 to decontaminate92 the house, 14:50 and he is to slaughter one bird into a clay vessel over fresh water.93 14:51 He must then take the piece of cedar wood, the twigs of hyssop, the scrap of crimson fabric, and the live bird, and dip them in the blood of the slaughtered bird and in the fresh water, and sprinkle the house seven times. 14:52 So he is to decontaminate the house with the blood of the bird, the fresh water, the live bird, the piece of cedar wood, the twigs of hyssop, and the scrap of crimson fabric, 14:53 and he is to send the live bird away outside the city94 into the open countryside. So he is to make atonement for the house and it will be clean.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
How Joe Lieberman Dropped The Ball Regarding Dick Cheney
During the 2000 presidential election, Joe Lieberman completely lost my respect through his cringing weakness during his Vice Presidential debate with Dick Cheney.
At one point, Lieberman said to Cheney: "You have certainly done well in business during the prosperity of the past eight Clinton years."
To which, Cheney replied: "Yes, I have done well. And the government had nothing at all to do with my success."
At that point, Lieberman sheepishly clammed up, and said no more. At which point, I began tearing my hair out. Lieberman's timid non-response helped cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000.
The fact is that the U. S. government had everything to do with Cheney's business success. He would have accomplished little or nothing in business without the government.
What Lieberman should have said is summarized in the following article published in 2002 in the LA Times:
Published on Tuesday, July 16, 2002 in the Los Angeles Times
Cheney's Grimy Trail in Business
His career offers a textbook example of shady doings.
by Robert Scheer
Vice President Dick Cheney has spent most of the past year in hiding, ostensibly from terrorists, but increasingly it seems obvious that it is Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the media and the public he fears. And for good reason: Cheney's business behavior could serve as a textbook case of much of what's wrong with the way corporate CEOs have come to play the game of business.
The game involves more than playing loose with accounting rules, as Halliburton Co. is accused of doing while Cheney was the Texas-based energy company's chief executive.
On Sunday, SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, whom Cheney pushed for the job, reluctantly turned on his sponsor and announced a vigorous investigation of Halliburton's accounting violations. Recent business scandals, however, are also the product of legal loopholes that allow firms to scoop up billions in unregulated profits.
It was just such loopholes that allowed the rise and subsequent fall of Enron and telecom heavyweights like WorldCom--in the process making CEOs like Dick Cheney very, very rich.
Recall that Cheney was a political hack for most of his professional life, first as a staffer in the Ford White House, then as a congressman for a decade and after that as secretary of Defense under the current president's father.
During the Clinton years, however, Cheney took an extremely lucrative five-year cruise into the private sector as chief executive of Halliburton.
After deciding, following an extensive search, that he would be George W. Bush's best candidate for vice president, Cheney resigned from the energy services company with a $36-million payoff for his final year of corporate service.
This journey from the public payroll to the corporate towers and back left a slimy trail of conflict-of-interest questions. For example, Defense Secretary Cheney conveniently changed the rules restricting private contractors doing work on U.S. military bases, allowing the Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary of his future employer, Halliburton, to receive the first of $2.5 billion in contracts over the next decade. When Cheney left to become CEO of the entire company, he recruited his Pentagon military aide, Joe Lopez, to become senior vice president in charge of Pentagon dealings, which ultimately formed the most lucrative part of the otherwise ailing company's business.
Since returning to the public office, these disturbing patterns have continued.
In a scathing expose of Halliburton's military contracts, for example, the New York Times revealed that the vice president's old company had been the main beneficiary of the Pentagon's rush to build anti-terrorism military bases around the world. This new work will cost taxpayers many billions, and, according to Pentagon investigators' estimates, without any cost controls the final bill will be considerably higher than if the military's own construction units do the work.
Cheney denies having a role in securing those recent contracts, as he does knowledge of Halliburton's alleged accounting improprieties.
Unfortunately for Halliburton's stockholders and employees, parlaying his Pentagon contacts into profit has proved to be Cheney's only major business success.
In fact, CEO Cheney put Halliburton's future in doubt by engineering the acquisition of rival Dresser Industries, a move ballyhooed at the time as justification of his $2.2-million annual salary and massive stock options.
But the acquisition has proved to be a disaster because Halliburton assumed Dresser's long-term liability under asbestos lawsuits.
Even without the Dresser acquisition, Cheney was running a failing operation at Halliburton.
The company, despite the government gravy garnered, had earnings well below Wall Street's expectations--until it suddenly changed its accounting rules. By assuming it would be able to collect on cost overruns on myriad construction projects, Cheney's Halliburton was able to inflate profits by $234 million over a four-year period.
Halliburton failed to disclose its accounting shenanigans to the SEC or the company's investors for more than a year afterward, leading to more than a dozen lawsuits alleging fraud, including one by Judicial Watch.
And why are we not surprised that Halliburton's accounting firm was Arthur Andersen, earlier this year convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents in connection with Enron?
Andersen's dubious methods have become the disgrace of American accounting. Cheney, however, was sufficiently enamored with it that in 1996 he glowingly endorsed the accounting firm in a video, thanking it for going "over and above the just-sort-of-normal, by-the-books audit arrangement."
Of course, ordinary investors did not know they were getting less than "by-the-books" auditing.
It is especially ugly that the president and vice president, men in a position to know just how sketchy the accounting practices of public companies are, were so eager to make our Social Security system a vehicle for pouring individuals' retirement money into a stock market they knew to be a house of cards.
At one point, Lieberman said to Cheney: "You have certainly done well in business during the prosperity of the past eight Clinton years."
To which, Cheney replied: "Yes, I have done well. And the government had nothing at all to do with my success."
At that point, Lieberman sheepishly clammed up, and said no more. At which point, I began tearing my hair out. Lieberman's timid non-response helped cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000.
The fact is that the U. S. government had everything to do with Cheney's business success. He would have accomplished little or nothing in business without the government.
What Lieberman should have said is summarized in the following article published in 2002 in the LA Times:
Published on Tuesday, July 16, 2002 in the Los Angeles Times
Cheney's Grimy Trail in Business
His career offers a textbook example of shady doings.
by Robert Scheer
Vice President Dick Cheney has spent most of the past year in hiding, ostensibly from terrorists, but increasingly it seems obvious that it is Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the media and the public he fears. And for good reason: Cheney's business behavior could serve as a textbook case of much of what's wrong with the way corporate CEOs have come to play the game of business.
The game involves more than playing loose with accounting rules, as Halliburton Co. is accused of doing while Cheney was the Texas-based energy company's chief executive.
On Sunday, SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, whom Cheney pushed for the job, reluctantly turned on his sponsor and announced a vigorous investigation of Halliburton's accounting violations. Recent business scandals, however, are also the product of legal loopholes that allow firms to scoop up billions in unregulated profits.
It was just such loopholes that allowed the rise and subsequent fall of Enron and telecom heavyweights like WorldCom--in the process making CEOs like Dick Cheney very, very rich.
Recall that Cheney was a political hack for most of his professional life, first as a staffer in the Ford White House, then as a congressman for a decade and after that as secretary of Defense under the current president's father.
During the Clinton years, however, Cheney took an extremely lucrative five-year cruise into the private sector as chief executive of Halliburton.
After deciding, following an extensive search, that he would be George W. Bush's best candidate for vice president, Cheney resigned from the energy services company with a $36-million payoff for his final year of corporate service.
This journey from the public payroll to the corporate towers and back left a slimy trail of conflict-of-interest questions. For example, Defense Secretary Cheney conveniently changed the rules restricting private contractors doing work on U.S. military bases, allowing the Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary of his future employer, Halliburton, to receive the first of $2.5 billion in contracts over the next decade. When Cheney left to become CEO of the entire company, he recruited his Pentagon military aide, Joe Lopez, to become senior vice president in charge of Pentagon dealings, which ultimately formed the most lucrative part of the otherwise ailing company's business.
Since returning to the public office, these disturbing patterns have continued.
In a scathing expose of Halliburton's military contracts, for example, the New York Times revealed that the vice president's old company had been the main beneficiary of the Pentagon's rush to build anti-terrorism military bases around the world. This new work will cost taxpayers many billions, and, according to Pentagon investigators' estimates, without any cost controls the final bill will be considerably higher than if the military's own construction units do the work.
Cheney denies having a role in securing those recent contracts, as he does knowledge of Halliburton's alleged accounting improprieties.
Unfortunately for Halliburton's stockholders and employees, parlaying his Pentagon contacts into profit has proved to be Cheney's only major business success.
In fact, CEO Cheney put Halliburton's future in doubt by engineering the acquisition of rival Dresser Industries, a move ballyhooed at the time as justification of his $2.2-million annual salary and massive stock options.
But the acquisition has proved to be a disaster because Halliburton assumed Dresser's long-term liability under asbestos lawsuits.
Even without the Dresser acquisition, Cheney was running a failing operation at Halliburton.
The company, despite the government gravy garnered, had earnings well below Wall Street's expectations--until it suddenly changed its accounting rules. By assuming it would be able to collect on cost overruns on myriad construction projects, Cheney's Halliburton was able to inflate profits by $234 million over a four-year period.
Halliburton failed to disclose its accounting shenanigans to the SEC or the company's investors for more than a year afterward, leading to more than a dozen lawsuits alleging fraud, including one by Judicial Watch.
And why are we not surprised that Halliburton's accounting firm was Arthur Andersen, earlier this year convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding documents in connection with Enron?
Andersen's dubious methods have become the disgrace of American accounting. Cheney, however, was sufficiently enamored with it that in 1996 he glowingly endorsed the accounting firm in a video, thanking it for going "over and above the just-sort-of-normal, by-the-books audit arrangement."
Of course, ordinary investors did not know they were getting less than "by-the-books" auditing.
It is especially ugly that the president and vice president, men in a position to know just how sketchy the accounting practices of public companies are, were so eager to make our Social Security system a vehicle for pouring individuals' retirement money into a stock market they knew to be a house of cards.
Anon 2 Reads The Beads of Conservatives
The ideology of cons is completely out of sync. They hate and look down on poor people yet hire people to work for them for as little as they can get away with. Then they hate the poor even more for not being able to purchase health care insurance. Logical thinking of them, eh?
Of course, then there are the poor cons who are wannabe cons and would love to be accepted by the established cons. But in reality they never will be. How sad.
--- Anon 2
Of course, then there are the poor cons who are wannabe cons and would love to be accepted by the established cons. But in reality they never will be. How sad.
--- Anon 2
Friday, November 27, 2009
The Bible Should Be Taught In Medical Schools as well as in Creationist Science Classes
Conservatives degrade, debase and insult the Holy Bible by insisting that Creationism be taught in public school science classes alongside the Theory of Evolution (which, after all, is only a theory) -- while omitting other, equally important sections of the Bible.
How offensive to God are these vain creatures of Kansas by not insisting that the Holy Bible also be studied in medical school.
As important as Creationism might be, how can it possibly compare to the following indispensable dermatological treatments which should by Divine Right be taught today in every American medical school.
Do you want real health care reform? How about Biblical Dermatology? Here it is:
Leviticus 13
Infections on the Skin
13:1 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: 13:2 “When someone has1 a swelling2 or a scab3 or a bright spot4 on the skin of his body5 that may become a diseased infection,6 he must be brought to Aaron the priest or one of his sons, the priests.7 13:3 The priest must then examine the infection8 on the skin of the body, and if the hair9 in the infection has turned white and the infection appears to be deeper than the skin of the body,10 then it is a diseased infection,11 so when the priest examines it12he must pronounce the person unclean.13
A Bright Spot on the Skin
13:4 “If14 it is a white bright spot on the skin of his body, but it does not appear to be deeper than the skin,15 and the hair has not turned white, then the priest is to quarantine the person with the infection for seven days.16 13:5 The priest must then examine it on the seventh day, and if,17 as far as he can see, the infection has stayed the same18 and has not spread on the skin,19 then the priest is to quarantine the person for another seven days.20 13:6 The priest must then examine it again on the seventh day,21 and if22 the infection has faded and has not spread on the skin, then the priest is to pronounce the person clean.23 It is a scab,24 so he must wash his clothes25 and be clean. 13:7 If, however, the scab is spreading further26 on the skin after he has shown himself to the priest for his purification, then he must show himself to the priest a second time. 13:8 The priest must then examine it,27 and if28 the scab has spread on the skin, then the priest is to pronounce the person unclean.29 It is a disease.
A Swelling on the Skin
13:9 “When someone has a diseased infection,30 he must be brought to the priest. 13:10 The priest will then examine it,31 and if32 a white swelling is on the skin, it has turned the hair white, and there is raw flesh in the swelling,33 13:11 it is a chronic34 disease on the skin of his body,35 so the priest is to pronounce him unclean.36 The priest37 must not merely quarantine him, for he is unclean.3813:12 If, however, the disease breaks out39 on the skin so that the disease covers all the skin of the person with the infection40 from his head to his feet, as far as the priest can see,41 13:13 the priest must then examine it,42 and if43 the disease covers his whole body, he is to pronounce the person with the infection clean.44 He has turned all white, so he is clean.45 13:14 But whenever raw flesh appears in it46 he will be unclean, 13:15 so the priest is to examine the raw flesh47 and pronounce him unclean48 – it is diseased. 13:16 If, however,49 the raw flesh once again turns white,50 then he must come to the priest. 13:17 The priest will then examine it,51 and if52 the infection has turned white, the priest is to pronounce the person with the infection clean53 – he is clean.
A Boil on the Skin
13:18 “When someone’s body has a boil on its skin54 and it heals, 13:19 and in the place of the boil there is a white swelling or a reddish white bright spot, he must show himself to the priest.55 13:20The priest will then examine it,56 and if57 it appears to be deeper than the skin58 and its hair has turned white, then the priest is to pronounce the person unclean.59 It is a diseased infection that has broken out in the boil.60 13:21 If, however,61 the priest examines it, and62 there is no white hair in it, it is not deeper than the skin, and it has faded, then the priest is to quarantine him for seven days.63 13:22 If64it is spreading further65 on the skin, then the priest is to pronounce him unclean.66 It is an infection.13:23 But if the bright spot stays in its place and has not spread,67 it is the scar of the boil, so the priest is to pronounce him clean.68
A Burn on the Skin
13:24 “When a body has a burn on its skin69 and the raw area of the burn becomes a reddish white or white bright spot, 13:25 the priest must examine it,70 and if71 the hair has turned white in the bright spot and it appears to be deeper than the skin,72 it is a disease that has broken out in the burn.73 The priest is to pronounce the person unclean.74 It is a diseased infection.75 13:26 If, however,76 the priest examines it and77 there is no white hair in the bright spot, it is not deeper than the skin,78 and it has faded, then the priest is to quarantine him for seven days.79 13:27 The priest must then examine it on the seventh day, and if it is spreading further80 on the skin, then the priest is to pronounce him unclean. It is a diseased infection.81 13:28 But if the bright spot stays in its place, has not spread on the skin,82 and it has faded, then it is the swelling of the burn, so the priest is to pronounce him clean,83 because it is the scar of the burn.
Scall on the Head or in the Beard
13:29 “When a man or a woman has an infection on the head or in the beard,84 13:30 the priest is to examine the infection,85 and if86 it appears to be deeper than the skin87 and the hair in it is reddish yellow and thin, then the priest is to pronounce the person unclean.88 It is scall,89 a disease of the head or the beard.90 13:31 But if the priest examines the scall infection and it does not appear to be deeper than the skin,91 and there is no black hair in it, then the priest is to quarantine the person with the scall infection for seven days.92 13:32 The priest must then examine the infection on the seventh day, and if93 the scall has not spread, there is no reddish yellow hair in it, and the scall does not appear to be deeper than the skin,94 13:33 then the individual is to shave himself,95 but he must not shave the area affected by the scall,96 and the priest is to quarantine the person with the scall for another seven days.97 13:34 The priest must then examine the scall on the seventh day, and if98 the scall has not spread on the skin and it does not appear to be deeper than the skin,99 then the priest is to pronounce him clean.100 So he is to wash his clothes and be clean. 13:35 If, however, the scall spreads further101 on the skin after his purification, 13:36 then the priest is to examine it, and if102 the scall has spread on the skin the priest is not to search further for reddish yellow hair.103 The person104is unclean. 13:37 If, as far as the priest can see, the scall has stayed the same105 and black hair has sprouted in it, the scall has been healed; the person is clean. So the priest is to pronounce him clean.106
Bright White Spots on the Skin
13:38 “When a man or a woman has bright spots – white bright spots – on the skin of their body,13:39 the priest is to examine them,107 and if108 the bright spots on the skin of their body are faded white, it is a harmless rash that has broken out on the skin. The person is clean.109
Baldness on the Head
13:40 “When a man’s head is bare so that he is balding in back,110 he is clean. 13:41 If his head is bare on the forehead111 so that he is balding in front,112 he is clean. 13:42 But if there is a reddish white infection in the back or front bald area, it is a disease breaking out in his back or front bald area.13:43 The priest is to examine it,113 and if114 the swelling of the infection is reddish white in the back or front bald area like the appearance of a disease on the skin of the body,115 13:44 he is a diseased man. He is unclean. The priest must surely pronounce him unclean because of his infection on his head.116
The Life of the Person with Skin Disease
13:45 “As for the diseased person who has the infection,117 his clothes must be torn, the hair of his head must be unbound, he must cover his mustache,118 and he must call out ‘Unclean! Unclean!’13:46 The whole time he has the infection119 he will be continually unclean. He must live in isolation, and his place of residence must be outside the camp.
As you can see, I always wanted my son to be a doctor.
Thank you, Leo, for graciously supplying Chapter and Verse.
How offensive to God are these vain creatures of Kansas by not insisting that the Holy Bible also be studied in medical school.
As important as Creationism might be, how can it possibly compare to the following indispensable dermatological treatments which should by Divine Right be taught today in every American medical school.
Do you want real health care reform? How about Biblical Dermatology? Here it is:
Leviticus 13
Infections on the Skin
13:1 The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: 13:2 “When someone has1 a swelling2 or a scab3 or a bright spot4 on the skin of his body5 that may become a diseased infection,6 he must be brought to Aaron the priest or one of his sons, the priests.7 13:3 The priest must then examine the infection8 on the skin of the body, and if the hair9 in the infection has turned white and the infection appears to be deeper than the skin of the body,10 then it is a diseased infection,11 so when the priest examines it12he must pronounce the person unclean.13
A Bright Spot on the Skin
13:4 “If14 it is a white bright spot on the skin of his body, but it does not appear to be deeper than the skin,15 and the hair has not turned white, then the priest is to quarantine the person with the infection for seven days.16 13:5 The priest must then examine it on the seventh day, and if,17 as far as he can see, the infection has stayed the same18 and has not spread on the skin,19 then the priest is to quarantine the person for another seven days.20 13:6 The priest must then examine it again on the seventh day,21 and if22 the infection has faded and has not spread on the skin, then the priest is to pronounce the person clean.23 It is a scab,24 so he must wash his clothes25 and be clean. 13:7 If, however, the scab is spreading further26 on the skin after he has shown himself to the priest for his purification, then he must show himself to the priest a second time. 13:8 The priest must then examine it,27 and if28 the scab has spread on the skin, then the priest is to pronounce the person unclean.29 It is a disease.
A Swelling on the Skin
13:9 “When someone has a diseased infection,30 he must be brought to the priest. 13:10 The priest will then examine it,31 and if32 a white swelling is on the skin, it has turned the hair white, and there is raw flesh in the swelling,33 13:11 it is a chronic34 disease on the skin of his body,35 so the priest is to pronounce him unclean.36 The priest37 must not merely quarantine him, for he is unclean.3813:12 If, however, the disease breaks out39 on the skin so that the disease covers all the skin of the person with the infection40 from his head to his feet, as far as the priest can see,41 13:13 the priest must then examine it,42 and if43 the disease covers his whole body, he is to pronounce the person with the infection clean.44 He has turned all white, so he is clean.45 13:14 But whenever raw flesh appears in it46 he will be unclean, 13:15 so the priest is to examine the raw flesh47 and pronounce him unclean48 – it is diseased. 13:16 If, however,49 the raw flesh once again turns white,50 then he must come to the priest. 13:17 The priest will then examine it,51 and if52 the infection has turned white, the priest is to pronounce the person with the infection clean53 – he is clean.
A Boil on the Skin
13:18 “When someone’s body has a boil on its skin54 and it heals, 13:19 and in the place of the boil there is a white swelling or a reddish white bright spot, he must show himself to the priest.55 13:20The priest will then examine it,56 and if57 it appears to be deeper than the skin58 and its hair has turned white, then the priest is to pronounce the person unclean.59 It is a diseased infection that has broken out in the boil.60 13:21 If, however,61 the priest examines it, and62 there is no white hair in it, it is not deeper than the skin, and it has faded, then the priest is to quarantine him for seven days.63 13:22 If64it is spreading further65 on the skin, then the priest is to pronounce him unclean.66 It is an infection.13:23 But if the bright spot stays in its place and has not spread,67 it is the scar of the boil, so the priest is to pronounce him clean.68
A Burn on the Skin
13:24 “When a body has a burn on its skin69 and the raw area of the burn becomes a reddish white or white bright spot, 13:25 the priest must examine it,70 and if71 the hair has turned white in the bright spot and it appears to be deeper than the skin,72 it is a disease that has broken out in the burn.73 The priest is to pronounce the person unclean.74 It is a diseased infection.75 13:26 If, however,76 the priest examines it and77 there is no white hair in the bright spot, it is not deeper than the skin,78 and it has faded, then the priest is to quarantine him for seven days.79 13:27 The priest must then examine it on the seventh day, and if it is spreading further80 on the skin, then the priest is to pronounce him unclean. It is a diseased infection.81 13:28 But if the bright spot stays in its place, has not spread on the skin,82 and it has faded, then it is the swelling of the burn, so the priest is to pronounce him clean,83 because it is the scar of the burn.
Scall on the Head or in the Beard
13:29 “When a man or a woman has an infection on the head or in the beard,84 13:30 the priest is to examine the infection,85 and if86 it appears to be deeper than the skin87 and the hair in it is reddish yellow and thin, then the priest is to pronounce the person unclean.88 It is scall,89 a disease of the head or the beard.90 13:31 But if the priest examines the scall infection and it does not appear to be deeper than the skin,91 and there is no black hair in it, then the priest is to quarantine the person with the scall infection for seven days.92 13:32 The priest must then examine the infection on the seventh day, and if93 the scall has not spread, there is no reddish yellow hair in it, and the scall does not appear to be deeper than the skin,94 13:33 then the individual is to shave himself,95 but he must not shave the area affected by the scall,96 and the priest is to quarantine the person with the scall for another seven days.97 13:34 The priest must then examine the scall on the seventh day, and if98 the scall has not spread on the skin and it does not appear to be deeper than the skin,99 then the priest is to pronounce him clean.100 So he is to wash his clothes and be clean. 13:35 If, however, the scall spreads further101 on the skin after his purification, 13:36 then the priest is to examine it, and if102 the scall has spread on the skin the priest is not to search further for reddish yellow hair.103 The person104is unclean. 13:37 If, as far as the priest can see, the scall has stayed the same105 and black hair has sprouted in it, the scall has been healed; the person is clean. So the priest is to pronounce him clean.106
Bright White Spots on the Skin
13:38 “When a man or a woman has bright spots – white bright spots – on the skin of their body,13:39 the priest is to examine them,107 and if108 the bright spots on the skin of their body are faded white, it is a harmless rash that has broken out on the skin. The person is clean.109
Baldness on the Head
13:40 “When a man’s head is bare so that he is balding in back,110 he is clean. 13:41 If his head is bare on the forehead111 so that he is balding in front,112 he is clean. 13:42 But if there is a reddish white infection in the back or front bald area, it is a disease breaking out in his back or front bald area.13:43 The priest is to examine it,113 and if114 the swelling of the infection is reddish white in the back or front bald area like the appearance of a disease on the skin of the body,115 13:44 he is a diseased man. He is unclean. The priest must surely pronounce him unclean because of his infection on his head.116
The Life of the Person with Skin Disease
13:45 “As for the diseased person who has the infection,117 his clothes must be torn, the hair of his head must be unbound, he must cover his mustache,118 and he must call out ‘Unclean! Unclean!’13:46 The whole time he has the infection119 he will be continually unclean. He must live in isolation, and his place of residence must be outside the camp.
As you can see, I always wanted my son to be a doctor.
Thank you, Leo, for graciously supplying Chapter and Verse.
Palin Alienates Canadians on Canada's Public Health Care System
Palin Says Canada Should Drop Public Health Care
From The Huffington Post -- 11-26-09:
At a recent stop on her "Going Rogue" book tour, Sarah Palin told Canadian comedian Mary Walsh that Canada should get rid of its public health care system.
Walsh is the co-creator and star of This Hour Has 22 Minutes -- a nightly news parody show in the same vein as The Daily Show -- and she arrived in character, as the conservative Marg Delahunty, to the Borders where Palin (the "Alaskan Aphrodite") was signing books.
"I just wanted to ask you if you have any words of encouragement for Canadian conservatives who have worked so hard to try to diminish the kind of socialized medicine we have up there." Walsh shouted to Palin as she approached the table.
Palin's handlers tried to help her by ushering Walsh out of the Borders, but Palin could not be deterred. When Palin left the signing, Walsh caught up with her in the parking lot, where Palin suggested that Canada should get rid of its public health care system. "Keep the faith" Palin said, "because common sense conservatism can be plugged in there in Canada too. In fact, Canada needs to reform its health care system and let the private sector take over some of what the government has absorbed."
Raw Story points out that it is unlikely this plan will go over well among Canadians -- even among conservatives.
A recent study found that 90 percent of Canadians support universal, single-payer health care. A poll taken last summer shows 82 percent of Canadians believe their health care system to be better than the US's, despite constant grumbling about waiting times for treatment of non-life-threatening conditions.
From The Huffington Post -- 11-26-09:
At a recent stop on her "Going Rogue" book tour, Sarah Palin told Canadian comedian Mary Walsh that Canada should get rid of its public health care system.
Walsh is the co-creator and star of This Hour Has 22 Minutes -- a nightly news parody show in the same vein as The Daily Show -- and she arrived in character, as the conservative Marg Delahunty, to the Borders where Palin (the "Alaskan Aphrodite") was signing books.
"I just wanted to ask you if you have any words of encouragement for Canadian conservatives who have worked so hard to try to diminish the kind of socialized medicine we have up there." Walsh shouted to Palin as she approached the table.
Palin's handlers tried to help her by ushering Walsh out of the Borders, but Palin could not be deterred. When Palin left the signing, Walsh caught up with her in the parking lot, where Palin suggested that Canada should get rid of its public health care system. "Keep the faith" Palin said, "because common sense conservatism can be plugged in there in Canada too. In fact, Canada needs to reform its health care system and let the private sector take over some of what the government has absorbed."
Raw Story points out that it is unlikely this plan will go over well among Canadians -- even among conservatives.
A recent study found that 90 percent of Canadians support universal, single-payer health care. A poll taken last summer shows 82 percent of Canadians believe their health care system to be better than the US's, despite constant grumbling about waiting times for treatment of non-life-threatening conditions.
Conservatives Love Palin -- America's Real Terrorists Flock Together
By Geoffrey Dunn -- Award-winning journalist, filmmaker and historian
From The Huffington Post --- November 25, 2009:
More Palin Lies: The Trooper in 'Troopergate' Breaks His Silence
The Alaska State Trooper at the center of Sarah Palin's so-called "Troopergate Scandal"--which impeded her run for the vice-presidency and stained her record as Alaska governor--has broken his more than year-long silence since his embattled divorce with Palin's sister, Molly, became a cause celebre during last year's presidential campaign.
After reading passages from Palin's memoirs Going Rogue that deal with his marriage and subsequent divorce, a "fed up" Mike Wooten, 37, who still serves as an Alaska State Trooper in Anchorage, called the book "a pack of lies."
According to Wooten, Palin and her father, Chuck Heath Sr., have "interfered with my life--and my children's lives--for at least the last five years. And it is still going on. I'm done with it."
Characterizing his adversaries as "snakes," Wooten said he has kept quiet long enough. "From this point on I'm speaking my mind," he declared. "I'm speaking the truth. Let the chips fall where they may." He acknowledged that he is considering taking legal action against Palin on multiple fronts.
Although Palin would try to claim otherwise during the presidential campaign, an independent investigation ordered by the bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council (composed of ten Republicans and four Democrats) and conducted by former Republican prosecutor Steve Branchflower, resulted in the finding "that Governor Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act."
The report issued by Branchflower documented more than thirty occasions in which then Governor Palin, her husband Todd or members of her staff tried to influence Alaska's highly regarded Commissioner of Public Safety, Walt Monegan, to fire Wooten. When Monegan refused, Palin fired him instead.
In addition to the finding that Palin "abused" her office, the Alaska Senate cited Todd Palin and nine other state employees for "contempt" for ignoring legislative subpoenas to testify in the Troopergate investigation.
A native of California whose father immigrated to the United States from Honduras, Wooten served 10 years in the Air Force and three more in the Air National Guard Reserves. He participated in a trio of U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf War--Desert Storm, Desert Shield and Restore Hope--before returning stateside to Alaska at Elmendorf Air Force Base, about 45 minutes from Wasilla.
Partially disabled from his military service, Wooten pointed out that neither Todd nor Sarah Palin, or Chuck Heath for that metter, served in the armed forces. Wooten said he was particularly "disgusted and incensed" by Palin's "insincere" dedication in Going Rogue to "our men and women in uniform."
Wooten further noted with irony that many of those who have been victimized by Palin during her political career--including former Wasilla police chief Irl Stambaugh; Monegan and himself--were all veterans. "Sarah is only about Sarah," Wooten said. "She doesn't care about the 'men and women in uniform.' It's all about advancing Sarah's career."
Public records from Alaska--some of which have been revealed for the first time--chronicle a half-decade long obsession with Wooten by Palin, her father and, later, by Palin's husband Todd.
"They're like poisonous snakes in the grass who spew nothing but venom," Wooten said. "They just lay in wait and they attack you until you're dead."
In Going Rogue, Palin mentions none of Wooten's military record, but cites many charges that were brought against Wooten that were subsequently dismissed. She contends that there were "ten different" citizen complaints field against Wooten--without acknowledging that all of them were filed by members of her family or close friends. "They filed every stinking one of the charges," Wooten contends. "But it's been more like two dozen."
In an interview conducted in Alaska this past summer, John Cyr, the former Alaska Public Safety Employees Association Executive Director, confirmed Wooten's charges:
Not one complaint has ever been made about Mike Wooten's professional performance from any member of the public other than the Palin/Heath family and their closest friends. The troopers that I've talked to that have worked with Mike tell me Mike is the kind of guy they'd go through a door with. That he does his work. He's a professional. You know, just no complaints out there about Mike's work.
"It's the product of an ugly divorce and custody battle," Cyr [pictured below, at left, with Wooten] said of the complaints against the State Trooper. "It's nothing more than that."
Wooten has acknowledged several mistakes he made while "I was younger" and admitted there were several things he "would have done differently," but he chose to remain silent as the McCain-Palin campaign portrayed him as a "rogue" Trooper (note the irony here) who Tased his step-son and went off on violent, drunken binges, to the point of threatening to kill Palin's father.
Wooten calls the version of events rendered in Going Rogue an "outright lie." Either it "didn't happen [the way she alleges]," he says, "or she exaggerated it all beyond recognition. I look forward to telling my side of this story."
Wooten now joins an ever-growing array of figures from John McCain on down who have challenged the veracity of Palin's memoirs. The list also includes McCain senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace, Palin's former legislative director John Bitney, her former political ally Andree McLeod, and former Alaska gubernatorial candidate Andrew Halcro. All Republicans. Wooten identifies himself as a "conservative" as well.
Palin contends "the chapter for our family was closed" with the divorce but fails to acknowledge any of the sustained harassment of Wooten, which, he says, continues to this day.
The father of three (two of whom are with Palin's sister), Wooten, still living in Wasilla, is described by his friends as a "very involved father," active as a coach in all of his three children's extracurricular sports activities--hockey, football and soccer. "I've committed my life to these children and being a good dad," he says. "I'm simply not going to allow the Palins or Chuck Heath to interfere in our lives any longer."
Palin recounts a story in Going Rogue that Wooten "asked me to write him a recommendation for the Alaska State Trooper Academy." What she doesn't acknowledge is that she wrote more than one on his behalf. In a letter dated January 1, 2000, written on official City of Wasilla stationery, Palin praises Wooten profusely, though she fails to declare her then-pending familial relationship with him.
It is my pleasure to provide character reference examples for Mr. Mike Wooten. Since I have become acquainted with Mike I continue to be impressed with his integrity, worthwhile community spirit and trustworthiness...
On a personal note, I have witnessed Mike's gift of calm and kindness towards many young kids here in Wasilla. I have never seen him raise his voice, nor lose patience, nor become agitated, in the presence of any child. Instead, Mike consistently remains a fine role model for my own children and other young people in Wasilla.
I wish America had more people with the grace and sincerity that mirrors the character of Mike Wooten. We would have a much kinder calmer trustworthy nation as a result.
I believe the United States Air Force has been fortunate to have the services of Mike the past 10 years. His work ethic, his American patriotism, his obvious dedication to traditional values, and his strong faith in God and truth is witnessed in Mike's everyday living.
--Sarah Palin, Mayor
None of which, of course, is mentioned in Going Rogue.
For his part, Wooten recalls a telling conversation with an associate of Palin's campaign team when she was running for Governor in 2006. "You could probably bring the whole campaign down," the aide said. "You probably know things about her that she doesn't want other people to know."
From The Huffington Post --- November 25, 2009:
More Palin Lies: The Trooper in 'Troopergate' Breaks His Silence
The Alaska State Trooper at the center of Sarah Palin's so-called "Troopergate Scandal"--which impeded her run for the vice-presidency and stained her record as Alaska governor--has broken his more than year-long silence since his embattled divorce with Palin's sister, Molly, became a cause celebre during last year's presidential campaign.
After reading passages from Palin's memoirs Going Rogue that deal with his marriage and subsequent divorce, a "fed up" Mike Wooten, 37, who still serves as an Alaska State Trooper in Anchorage, called the book "a pack of lies."
According to Wooten, Palin and her father, Chuck Heath Sr., have "interfered with my life--and my children's lives--for at least the last five years. And it is still going on. I'm done with it."
Characterizing his adversaries as "snakes," Wooten said he has kept quiet long enough. "From this point on I'm speaking my mind," he declared. "I'm speaking the truth. Let the chips fall where they may." He acknowledged that he is considering taking legal action against Palin on multiple fronts.
Although Palin would try to claim otherwise during the presidential campaign, an independent investigation ordered by the bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council (composed of ten Republicans and four Democrats) and conducted by former Republican prosecutor Steve Branchflower, resulted in the finding "that Governor Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act."
The report issued by Branchflower documented more than thirty occasions in which then Governor Palin, her husband Todd or members of her staff tried to influence Alaska's highly regarded Commissioner of Public Safety, Walt Monegan, to fire Wooten. When Monegan refused, Palin fired him instead.
In addition to the finding that Palin "abused" her office, the Alaska Senate cited Todd Palin and nine other state employees for "contempt" for ignoring legislative subpoenas to testify in the Troopergate investigation.
A native of California whose father immigrated to the United States from Honduras, Wooten served 10 years in the Air Force and three more in the Air National Guard Reserves. He participated in a trio of U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf War--Desert Storm, Desert Shield and Restore Hope--before returning stateside to Alaska at Elmendorf Air Force Base, about 45 minutes from Wasilla.
Partially disabled from his military service, Wooten pointed out that neither Todd nor Sarah Palin, or Chuck Heath for that metter, served in the armed forces. Wooten said he was particularly "disgusted and incensed" by Palin's "insincere" dedication in Going Rogue to "our men and women in uniform."
Wooten further noted with irony that many of those who have been victimized by Palin during her political career--including former Wasilla police chief Irl Stambaugh; Monegan and himself--were all veterans. "Sarah is only about Sarah," Wooten said. "She doesn't care about the 'men and women in uniform.' It's all about advancing Sarah's career."
Public records from Alaska--some of which have been revealed for the first time--chronicle a half-decade long obsession with Wooten by Palin, her father and, later, by Palin's husband Todd.
"They're like poisonous snakes in the grass who spew nothing but venom," Wooten said. "They just lay in wait and they attack you until you're dead."
In Going Rogue, Palin mentions none of Wooten's military record, but cites many charges that were brought against Wooten that were subsequently dismissed. She contends that there were "ten different" citizen complaints field against Wooten--without acknowledging that all of them were filed by members of her family or close friends. "They filed every stinking one of the charges," Wooten contends. "But it's been more like two dozen."
In an interview conducted in Alaska this past summer, John Cyr, the former Alaska Public Safety Employees Association Executive Director, confirmed Wooten's charges:
Not one complaint has ever been made about Mike Wooten's professional performance from any member of the public other than the Palin/Heath family and their closest friends. The troopers that I've talked to that have worked with Mike tell me Mike is the kind of guy they'd go through a door with. That he does his work. He's a professional. You know, just no complaints out there about Mike's work.
"It's the product of an ugly divorce and custody battle," Cyr [pictured below, at left, with Wooten] said of the complaints against the State Trooper. "It's nothing more than that."
Wooten has acknowledged several mistakes he made while "I was younger" and admitted there were several things he "would have done differently," but he chose to remain silent as the McCain-Palin campaign portrayed him as a "rogue" Trooper (note the irony here) who Tased his step-son and went off on violent, drunken binges, to the point of threatening to kill Palin's father.
Wooten calls the version of events rendered in Going Rogue an "outright lie." Either it "didn't happen [the way she alleges]," he says, "or she exaggerated it all beyond recognition. I look forward to telling my side of this story."
Wooten now joins an ever-growing array of figures from John McCain on down who have challenged the veracity of Palin's memoirs. The list also includes McCain senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace, Palin's former legislative director John Bitney, her former political ally Andree McLeod, and former Alaska gubernatorial candidate Andrew Halcro. All Republicans. Wooten identifies himself as a "conservative" as well.
Palin contends "the chapter for our family was closed" with the divorce but fails to acknowledge any of the sustained harassment of Wooten, which, he says, continues to this day.
The father of three (two of whom are with Palin's sister), Wooten, still living in Wasilla, is described by his friends as a "very involved father," active as a coach in all of his three children's extracurricular sports activities--hockey, football and soccer. "I've committed my life to these children and being a good dad," he says. "I'm simply not going to allow the Palins or Chuck Heath to interfere in our lives any longer."
Palin recounts a story in Going Rogue that Wooten "asked me to write him a recommendation for the Alaska State Trooper Academy." What she doesn't acknowledge is that she wrote more than one on his behalf. In a letter dated January 1, 2000, written on official City of Wasilla stationery, Palin praises Wooten profusely, though she fails to declare her then-pending familial relationship with him.
It is my pleasure to provide character reference examples for Mr. Mike Wooten. Since I have become acquainted with Mike I continue to be impressed with his integrity, worthwhile community spirit and trustworthiness...
On a personal note, I have witnessed Mike's gift of calm and kindness towards many young kids here in Wasilla. I have never seen him raise his voice, nor lose patience, nor become agitated, in the presence of any child. Instead, Mike consistently remains a fine role model for my own children and other young people in Wasilla.
I wish America had more people with the grace and sincerity that mirrors the character of Mike Wooten. We would have a much kinder calmer trustworthy nation as a result.
I believe the United States Air Force has been fortunate to have the services of Mike the past 10 years. His work ethic, his American patriotism, his obvious dedication to traditional values, and his strong faith in God and truth is witnessed in Mike's everyday living.
--Sarah Palin, Mayor
None of which, of course, is mentioned in Going Rogue.
For his part, Wooten recalls a telling conversation with an associate of Palin's campaign team when she was running for Governor in 2006. "You could probably bring the whole campaign down," the aide said. "You probably know things about her that she doesn't want other people to know."
Thursday, November 26, 2009
A Rush Limbaugh "Operation Chaos" in Reverse for Sarah Palin
Democrats should cross over into the Republican primaries in 2012 and vote for Sarah Palin to be the GOP presidential candidate. That would be using Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" in reverse. If Palin were the GOP's candidate for president in 2012, that would be the surest way of guaranteeing a landslide re-election for Obama.
Bush's Gut Vs. Obama's Brain
In his slow decision-making, Obama goes with head, not gut.
The president has been criticized for taking a long time to decide on a strategy for the war in Afghanistan.
By Joel Achenbach -- Washington Post
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
President George W. Bush once boasted, "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player." The new tenant of the Oval Office takes a strikingly different approach. President Obama is almost defiantly deliberative, methodical and measured, even when critics accuse him of dithering. When describing his executive style, he goes into Spock mode, saying, "You've got to make decisions based on information and not emotions."
Obama's handling of the Afghanistan conundrum has been a spectacle of deliberation unlike anything seen in the White House in recent memory. The strategic review began in September. Again and again, the war council convened in the Situation Room. The president mulled an array of unappealing options. Next week, finally, he will tell the American public the outcome of all this strategizing.
"He's establishing his decision-making process as being almost diametrically the opposite of the previous administration," says Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's chief of staff. Wilkerson, who teaches national security decision-making at George Washington University, says the Bush-Cheney style was "cowboy-like, typical Texas, typical Wyoming, and extremely secretive."
Stephen Wayne, who teaches about the presidency at Georgetown, said: "He's not an instinctive decision-maker as Bush was. He doesn't go with his gut, he thinks with his head, which I think is desirable." Referring to the Afghanistan decision, Wayne said, "I don't think he is an indecisive person, I just think this is a tough one."
Of course, Conservatives applaud Bush and Cheney's "gut" decision to rush our armies into Iraq to avenge a family blood feud (in search of Cheney's non-existent WMD's), while giving Al Quaida eight more years to grow and fester in Afghanistan and around the globe.
The president has been criticized for taking a long time to decide on a strategy for the war in Afghanistan.
By Joel Achenbach -- Washington Post
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
President George W. Bush once boasted, "I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player." The new tenant of the Oval Office takes a strikingly different approach. President Obama is almost defiantly deliberative, methodical and measured, even when critics accuse him of dithering. When describing his executive style, he goes into Spock mode, saying, "You've got to make decisions based on information and not emotions."
Obama's handling of the Afghanistan conundrum has been a spectacle of deliberation unlike anything seen in the White House in recent memory. The strategic review began in September. Again and again, the war council convened in the Situation Room. The president mulled an array of unappealing options. Next week, finally, he will tell the American public the outcome of all this strategizing.
"He's establishing his decision-making process as being almost diametrically the opposite of the previous administration," says Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's chief of staff. Wilkerson, who teaches national security decision-making at George Washington University, says the Bush-Cheney style was "cowboy-like, typical Texas, typical Wyoming, and extremely secretive."
Stephen Wayne, who teaches about the presidency at Georgetown, said: "He's not an instinctive decision-maker as Bush was. He doesn't go with his gut, he thinks with his head, which I think is desirable." Referring to the Afghanistan decision, Wayne said, "I don't think he is an indecisive person, I just think this is a tough one."
Of course, Conservatives applaud Bush and Cheney's "gut" decision to rush our armies into Iraq to avenge a family blood feud (in search of Cheney's non-existent WMD's), while giving Al Quaida eight more years to grow and fester in Afghanistan and around the globe.
The Tea Party Patriots -- What Great "Patriots"
From The Huffington Post -- 11-23-09:
A group called the Chicago Tea Party Patriots publicly heckled a grieving family and suggested that the couple fabricated their tragic story.
At a town hall held by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) on Nov. 14, Dan and Midge Hough spoke about how they believed the death of their daughter-in-law and her unborn child were caused, in part, by a lack of health insurance. Twenty-four-year old Jennifer was uninsured. According to her in-laws, she was not receiving regular prenatal care and was not properly treated when she got sick. She ended up in an emergency room with double pneumonia that developed into septic shock, had a heart attack, a brain bleed and a stroke. The baby died and Jennifer died a few weeks later.
Midge Hough was heckled and ridiculed by anti-reform crowd members. "You can laugh at me, that's okay," she said, crying. "But I lost two people, and I know you think that's funny, that's okay."
Of course, if you ask a Conservative, most of them will say: "I never heard of a single person dying in America for lack of health insurance". Maybe Conservatives should turn off FOX News and try exposing themselves to the real world.
A group called the Chicago Tea Party Patriots publicly heckled a grieving family and suggested that the couple fabricated their tragic story.
At a town hall held by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) on Nov. 14, Dan and Midge Hough spoke about how they believed the death of their daughter-in-law and her unborn child were caused, in part, by a lack of health insurance. Twenty-four-year old Jennifer was uninsured. According to her in-laws, she was not receiving regular prenatal care and was not properly treated when she got sick. She ended up in an emergency room with double pneumonia that developed into septic shock, had a heart attack, a brain bleed and a stroke. The baby died and Jennifer died a few weeks later.
Midge Hough was heckled and ridiculed by anti-reform crowd members. "You can laugh at me, that's okay," she said, crying. "But I lost two people, and I know you think that's funny, that's okay."
Of course, if you ask a Conservative, most of them will say: "I never heard of a single person dying in America for lack of health insurance". Maybe Conservatives should turn off FOX News and try exposing themselves to the real world.
"Dithering" Means "Thinking", The Dirtiest Word in the Conservative Lexicon
A day after former Vice President Cheney charged the Obama administration with "dithering" over its strategy for the war in Afghanistan, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs returned fire with guns blazing.
"What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform," Gibbs said Thursday. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."
Calling Cheney's comment "curious," Gibbs attacked the Bush administration for allegedly taking years to provide the support necessary for the war effort in Afghanistan.
"I think it's pretty safe to say that the vice president was for seven years not focused on Afghanistan," Gibbs said. "Even more curious given the fact that an increase in troops sat on desks in this White House, including the vice president's, for more than eight months."
Also on This Week, conservative pundit George Will praised Obama’s process on Afghanistan, stating, “Well, also, a bit of dithering might have been in order before we went into Iraq in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction."
"Dithering" is the new code word for the Conservative Bulls snorting and charging their way through China shops. To Conservatives, "dithering" is another word for "thinking", and we all know what a dirty word "thinking" is in the Conservative lexicon.
"What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform," Gibbs said Thursday. "I think we've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."
Calling Cheney's comment "curious," Gibbs attacked the Bush administration for allegedly taking years to provide the support necessary for the war effort in Afghanistan.
"I think it's pretty safe to say that the vice president was for seven years not focused on Afghanistan," Gibbs said. "Even more curious given the fact that an increase in troops sat on desks in this White House, including the vice president's, for more than eight months."
Also on This Week, conservative pundit George Will praised Obama’s process on Afghanistan, stating, “Well, also, a bit of dithering might have been in order before we went into Iraq in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction."
"Dithering" is the new code word for the Conservative Bulls snorting and charging their way through China shops. To Conservatives, "dithering" is another word for "thinking", and we all know what a dirty word "thinking" is in the Conservative lexicon.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Frank Rich's Wise Dissection of Sarah Palin
The Pit Bull in the China Shop
By FRANK RICH
The New York Times -- November 21, 2009
AT last the American right and left have one issue they unequivocally agree on: You don’t actually have to read Sarah Palin’s book to have an opinion about it. Last Sunday Liz Cheney praised “Going Rogue” as “well-written” on Fox News even though, by her own account, she had sampled only “parts” of it. On Tuesday, Ana Marie Cox, a correspondent for Air America, belittled the book in The Washington Post while confessing that she couldn’t claim to have “completely” read it.
“Going Rogue” will hardly be the first best seller embraced by millions for talismanic rather than literary ends. And I am not recommending that others follow my example and slog through its 400-plus pages, especially since its supposed revelations have been picked through 24/7 for a week. But sometimes I wonder if anyone has read all of what Palin would call the “dang” thing. Some of the book’s most illuminating tics have been mentioned barely — if at all — by either its fans or foes. Palin is far and away the most important brand in American politics after Barack Obama, and attention must be paid. Those who wishfully think her 15 minutes are up are deluding themselves.
The book’s biggest surprise is Palin’s wide-eyed infatuation with show-business celebrities. You get nearly as much face time with Tina Fey and the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in “Going Rogue” as you do with John McCain. We learn how happy Palin was to receive calls from Bono and Warren Beatty “to share ideas and insights.” We wade through star-struck lists of campaign cameos by Robert Duvall, Jon Voight (who “blew us away”), Naomi Judd, Gary Sinise and Kelsey Grammer, among many others. Then there are the acknowledgments at the book’s end, where Palin reveals that her intimacy with media stars is such that she can air-kiss them on a first-name basis, from Greta to Laura to Rush.
Equally revealing is the one boldfaced name conspicuously left unmentioned in the book: Levi Johnston, the father of Palin’s grandchild. Though Palin and McCain milked him for photo ops at the Republican convention, he is persona non grata now that he’s taking off his campaign wardrobe. Is Johnston’s fledgling porn career the problem, or is it his public threats to strip bare Palin family secrets as well? “She knows what I got on her” is how he put it. In Palin’s interview with Oprah last week, it was questioning about Johnston, not Katie Couric, that made her nervous.
The book’s most frequently dropped names, predictably enough, are the Lord and Ronald Reagan (though not necessarily in that order). Easily the most startling passage in “Going Rogue,” running more than two pages, collates extended excerpts from a prayerful letter Palin wrote to mark the birth of Trig, her child with Down syndrome. This missive’s understandable goal was to reassert Palin’s faith and trust in God. But Palin did not write her letter to God; she wrote the letter from God, assuming His role and voice herself and signing it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.” If I may say so — Oy!
Even by the standard of politicians, this is a woman with an outsized ego. Combine that with her performance skills and an insatiable hunger for the limelight, and you can see why she will not stay in Wasilla now that she’s seen 30 Rock. The question journalists repeatedly asked last week — What are Palin’s plans for 2012? — is a red herring. Palin has no obligation to answer it. She is the pit bull in the china shop of American politics, and she can do what she wants, on her own timeline, all the while raking in the big bucks she couldn’t as a sitting governor. No one, least of all her own political party, can control her.
The fact-checking siege of “Going Rogue” — by the media, Democrats and aggrieved McCain campaign operatives alike — is another fruitless sideshow. Palin’s political appeal has never had anything to do with facts — or coherent policy positions. The more she is attacked for not being in possession of pointy-headed erudition, the more powerful she becomes as an avatar of the anti-elite cause. As Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, has correctly observed, “She represents less a philosophical strain on the right than an affect and a demographic.”
That demographic is white and non-urban: Just look at the stops and the faces on her carefully calibrated book tour. The affect is emotional — the angry air of grievance that emerged first at her campaign rallies in 2008, with their shrieked threats to Obama, and that has since resurfaced in the Hitler-fixated “tea party” movement (which she endorses in her book). It’s a politics of victimization and sloganeering with no policy solutions required beyond the conservative mantra of No Taxes. Its standard-bearer can make stuff up with impunity: “Thanks, but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere”; Obama’s “palling around with terrorists”; health care “death panels.”
After the Palin-McCain ticket lost, conservative pundits admonished her to start studying the issues. If “Going Rogue” and its promotional interviews are any indication, she has ignored their entreaties during her months at liberty. Last week, Greta Van Susteren chastised Oprah for not asking Palin “one policy question,” but when Barbara Walters did ask some, Palin either recycled Dick Cheney verbatim (Obama is “dithering”) or ran aground. Her argument for why “Jewish settlements” should be expanded on the West Bank was that “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” It was unclear what she was talking about — unless it was the “rapture” theology that requires the mass return of Jews to settle the Holy Land as a precondition for the return of Christ.
The discredited neocon hacks who have latched on to Palin as a potential ticket back into power have their work cut out for them. But it’s better for Palin’s purposes to remain as blank a slate as possible anyway. Some of her most ardent supporters realize that she’ll drive still more independent voters away if she fills in too many details. And so Matthew Continetti, the author of the just-published “Persecution of Sarah Palin” and her most persistent cheerleader after William Kristol, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that her role model for 2012 should be Bob McDonnell, the new Republican governor-elect of Virginia, who won on “a bipartisan, center-right approach.”
What Continetti means is that Palin could still somehow fudge her history as McDonnell did; his campaign kept his career-long history as a political acolyte and financial beneficiary of Pat Robertson on the down-low. Even the far right has figured out that homophobia is a turnoff to swing voters, which is why Palin goes out of her way in “Going Rogue” to remind us she has her very own lesbian friend. (What’s left unsaid is that the book’s credited ghost writer, Lynn Vincent, labeled homosexuality as “deviance” in her own writings for World, the evangelical magazine.)
But no matter how much Palin tries to pass for “center-right,” she’s unlikely to fool that vast pool of voters left, right and center who have already written her off as unqualified for the White House. The G.O.P. establishment knows this, and is frightened. The demographic that Palin attracts is in decline; there’s no way the math of her fan base adds up to an Electoral College victory.
Yet among Republicans she still ties Mitt Romney in the latest USA Today/Gallup survey, with 65 percent giving her serious presidential consideration, just behind the 71 for her evangelical rival, Mike Huckabee. The crowds lining up in the cold for her book tour are likely to be the most motivated to line up at the polls in G.O.P. primaries. They don’t speak the same language as Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michael Steele, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner or, for that matter, McCain. They are more likely to heed Palin salesmen like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh than baffled Bush administration grandees like Peter Wehner, who last week called Palin “a cultural figure much more than a political one” on the Web site of the establishment conservative organ Commentary.
Culture is politics. Palin is at the red-hot center of age-old American resentments that have boiled up both from the ascent of our first black president and from the intractability of the Great Recession for those Americans who haven’t benefited from bailouts. As Palin thrives on the ire of the left, so she does from the disdain of Republican leaders who, with a condescension rivaling the sexism they decry in liberals, belittle her as a lightweight or instruct her to eat think-tank spinach.
The only person who can derail Palin is Palin herself. Should she not self-destruct, she will doom G.O.P. hopes of a 2012 comeback. But the rest of the country cannot rest easy. The rage out there is larger than Palin and defies partisan labeling. Her ever-present booster Continetti, writing in The Weekly Standard, suggested that she recast the century-old populist outrage of William Jennings Bryan by adopting the message “You shall not crucify mankind upon the cross of Goldman Sachs.” If Obama can’t tamp down that rage across the political map, Palin will at the very least pave the way for a demagogue with less baggage to pick up her torch.
By FRANK RICH
The New York Times -- November 21, 2009
AT last the American right and left have one issue they unequivocally agree on: You don’t actually have to read Sarah Palin’s book to have an opinion about it. Last Sunday Liz Cheney praised “Going Rogue” as “well-written” on Fox News even though, by her own account, she had sampled only “parts” of it. On Tuesday, Ana Marie Cox, a correspondent for Air America, belittled the book in The Washington Post while confessing that she couldn’t claim to have “completely” read it.
“Going Rogue” will hardly be the first best seller embraced by millions for talismanic rather than literary ends. And I am not recommending that others follow my example and slog through its 400-plus pages, especially since its supposed revelations have been picked through 24/7 for a week. But sometimes I wonder if anyone has read all of what Palin would call the “dang” thing. Some of the book’s most illuminating tics have been mentioned barely — if at all — by either its fans or foes. Palin is far and away the most important brand in American politics after Barack Obama, and attention must be paid. Those who wishfully think her 15 minutes are up are deluding themselves.
The book’s biggest surprise is Palin’s wide-eyed infatuation with show-business celebrities. You get nearly as much face time with Tina Fey and the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in “Going Rogue” as you do with John McCain. We learn how happy Palin was to receive calls from Bono and Warren Beatty “to share ideas and insights.” We wade through star-struck lists of campaign cameos by Robert Duvall, Jon Voight (who “blew us away”), Naomi Judd, Gary Sinise and Kelsey Grammer, among many others. Then there are the acknowledgments at the book’s end, where Palin reveals that her intimacy with media stars is such that she can air-kiss them on a first-name basis, from Greta to Laura to Rush.
Equally revealing is the one boldfaced name conspicuously left unmentioned in the book: Levi Johnston, the father of Palin’s grandchild. Though Palin and McCain milked him for photo ops at the Republican convention, he is persona non grata now that he’s taking off his campaign wardrobe. Is Johnston’s fledgling porn career the problem, or is it his public threats to strip bare Palin family secrets as well? “She knows what I got on her” is how he put it. In Palin’s interview with Oprah last week, it was questioning about Johnston, not Katie Couric, that made her nervous.
The book’s most frequently dropped names, predictably enough, are the Lord and Ronald Reagan (though not necessarily in that order). Easily the most startling passage in “Going Rogue,” running more than two pages, collates extended excerpts from a prayerful letter Palin wrote to mark the birth of Trig, her child with Down syndrome. This missive’s understandable goal was to reassert Palin’s faith and trust in God. But Palin did not write her letter to God; she wrote the letter from God, assuming His role and voice herself and signing it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.” If I may say so — Oy!
Even by the standard of politicians, this is a woman with an outsized ego. Combine that with her performance skills and an insatiable hunger for the limelight, and you can see why she will not stay in Wasilla now that she’s seen 30 Rock. The question journalists repeatedly asked last week — What are Palin’s plans for 2012? — is a red herring. Palin has no obligation to answer it. She is the pit bull in the china shop of American politics, and she can do what she wants, on her own timeline, all the while raking in the big bucks she couldn’t as a sitting governor. No one, least of all her own political party, can control her.
The fact-checking siege of “Going Rogue” — by the media, Democrats and aggrieved McCain campaign operatives alike — is another fruitless sideshow. Palin’s political appeal has never had anything to do with facts — or coherent policy positions. The more she is attacked for not being in possession of pointy-headed erudition, the more powerful she becomes as an avatar of the anti-elite cause. As Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, has correctly observed, “She represents less a philosophical strain on the right than an affect and a demographic.”
That demographic is white and non-urban: Just look at the stops and the faces on her carefully calibrated book tour. The affect is emotional — the angry air of grievance that emerged first at her campaign rallies in 2008, with their shrieked threats to Obama, and that has since resurfaced in the Hitler-fixated “tea party” movement (which she endorses in her book). It’s a politics of victimization and sloganeering with no policy solutions required beyond the conservative mantra of No Taxes. Its standard-bearer can make stuff up with impunity: “Thanks, but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere”; Obama’s “palling around with terrorists”; health care “death panels.”
After the Palin-McCain ticket lost, conservative pundits admonished her to start studying the issues. If “Going Rogue” and its promotional interviews are any indication, she has ignored their entreaties during her months at liberty. Last week, Greta Van Susteren chastised Oprah for not asking Palin “one policy question,” but when Barbara Walters did ask some, Palin either recycled Dick Cheney verbatim (Obama is “dithering”) or ran aground. Her argument for why “Jewish settlements” should be expanded on the West Bank was that “more and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” It was unclear what she was talking about — unless it was the “rapture” theology that requires the mass return of Jews to settle the Holy Land as a precondition for the return of Christ.
The discredited neocon hacks who have latched on to Palin as a potential ticket back into power have their work cut out for them. But it’s better for Palin’s purposes to remain as blank a slate as possible anyway. Some of her most ardent supporters realize that she’ll drive still more independent voters away if she fills in too many details. And so Matthew Continetti, the author of the just-published “Persecution of Sarah Palin” and her most persistent cheerleader after William Kristol, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that her role model for 2012 should be Bob McDonnell, the new Republican governor-elect of Virginia, who won on “a bipartisan, center-right approach.”
What Continetti means is that Palin could still somehow fudge her history as McDonnell did; his campaign kept his career-long history as a political acolyte and financial beneficiary of Pat Robertson on the down-low. Even the far right has figured out that homophobia is a turnoff to swing voters, which is why Palin goes out of her way in “Going Rogue” to remind us she has her very own lesbian friend. (What’s left unsaid is that the book’s credited ghost writer, Lynn Vincent, labeled homosexuality as “deviance” in her own writings for World, the evangelical magazine.)
But no matter how much Palin tries to pass for “center-right,” she’s unlikely to fool that vast pool of voters left, right and center who have already written her off as unqualified for the White House. The G.O.P. establishment knows this, and is frightened. The demographic that Palin attracts is in decline; there’s no way the math of her fan base adds up to an Electoral College victory.
Yet among Republicans she still ties Mitt Romney in the latest USA Today/Gallup survey, with 65 percent giving her serious presidential consideration, just behind the 71 for her evangelical rival, Mike Huckabee. The crowds lining up in the cold for her book tour are likely to be the most motivated to line up at the polls in G.O.P. primaries. They don’t speak the same language as Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michael Steele, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner or, for that matter, McCain. They are more likely to heed Palin salesmen like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh than baffled Bush administration grandees like Peter Wehner, who last week called Palin “a cultural figure much more than a political one” on the Web site of the establishment conservative organ Commentary.
Culture is politics. Palin is at the red-hot center of age-old American resentments that have boiled up both from the ascent of our first black president and from the intractability of the Great Recession for those Americans who haven’t benefited from bailouts. As Palin thrives on the ire of the left, so she does from the disdain of Republican leaders who, with a condescension rivaling the sexism they decry in liberals, belittle her as a lightweight or instruct her to eat think-tank spinach.
The only person who can derail Palin is Palin herself. Should she not self-destruct, she will doom G.O.P. hopes of a 2012 comeback. But the rest of the country cannot rest easy. The rage out there is larger than Palin and defies partisan labeling. Her ever-present booster Continetti, writing in The Weekly Standard, suggested that she recast the century-old populist outrage of William Jennings Bryan by adopting the message “You shall not crucify mankind upon the cross of Goldman Sachs.” If Obama can’t tamp down that rage across the political map, Palin will at the very least pave the way for a demagogue with less baggage to pick up her torch.
American Justice Vs. Al Quaida Terrorists
A Return to American Justice
The New York Times -- November 13, 2009
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. took a bold and principled step on Friday toward repairing the damage wrought by former President George W. Bush with his decision to discard the nation’s well-established systems of civilian and military justice in the treatment of detainees captured in antiterrorist operations.
From that entirely unnecessary policy (the United States had the tools to detain, charge and bring terrorists to justice) flowed a terrible legacy of torture and open-ended incarceration. It left President Obama with yet another mess to clean up on an urgent basis.
On Friday, Attorney General Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four others accused in the plot will be tried in a fashion that will not further erode American justice or shame Americans. It promises to finally provide justice for the victims of 9/11.
Mr. Holder said those prisoners would be prosecuted in federal court in Manhattan. It was an enormous victory for the rule of law, a major milestone in Mr. Obama’s efforts to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and an important departure from Mr. Bush’s disregard for American courts and their proven ability to competently handle high-profile terror cases. If he and Vice President Dick Cheney had shown more faith in the laws and the Constitution, the alleged mass murderers would have faced justice much earlier.
Republican lawmakers and the self-promoting independent senator from Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman, pounced on the chance to appear on television. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they said military tribunals are a more secure and appropriate venue for trying terrorism suspects. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a former judge who should have more regard for the law, offered the absurd claim that Mr. Obama was treating the 9/11 conspirators as “common criminals.”
There is nothing common about them — or Mr. Holder’s decision. Putting the five defendants on public trial a few blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center is entirely fitting. Experience shows that federal courts are capable of handling high-profile terrorism trials without comprising legitimate secrets, national security or the rule of law. Mr. Bush’s tribunals failed to hold a single trial.
The fact that defense lawyers are likely to press to have evidence of abuse aired in court — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was tortured by waterboarding 183 times — is unlikely to derail the prosecutions, especially given Mr. Holder’s claim to have evidence that has not been released yet.
Regrettably, the decision fell short of a clean break. Five other Guantánamo detainees are to be tried before a military commission for the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the attack.
The rules for the commissions were recently revised to bring them closer to military standards. And Mr. Holder cites the fact that the Cole bombing was an attack on a military target to justify a military trial. But that does not cure the problem of relying on a new system outside the regular military justice system. Nor does it erase the appearance that the government is forum-shopping to win convictions. Most broadly, it fails to establish a clear framework for assigning cases to regular courts or military commissions going forward.
Still, this much is clear: the Obama administration has yet to completely figure out how to rectify the disgraceful Bush detention policies, but it is getting there.
The New York Times -- November 13, 2009
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. took a bold and principled step on Friday toward repairing the damage wrought by former President George W. Bush with his decision to discard the nation’s well-established systems of civilian and military justice in the treatment of detainees captured in antiterrorist operations.
From that entirely unnecessary policy (the United States had the tools to detain, charge and bring terrorists to justice) flowed a terrible legacy of torture and open-ended incarceration. It left President Obama with yet another mess to clean up on an urgent basis.
On Friday, Attorney General Holder announced that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four others accused in the plot will be tried in a fashion that will not further erode American justice or shame Americans. It promises to finally provide justice for the victims of 9/11.
Mr. Holder said those prisoners would be prosecuted in federal court in Manhattan. It was an enormous victory for the rule of law, a major milestone in Mr. Obama’s efforts to close the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and an important departure from Mr. Bush’s disregard for American courts and their proven ability to competently handle high-profile terror cases. If he and Vice President Dick Cheney had shown more faith in the laws and the Constitution, the alleged mass murderers would have faced justice much earlier.
Republican lawmakers and the self-promoting independent senator from Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman, pounced on the chance to appear on television. Despite all evidence to the contrary, they said military tribunals are a more secure and appropriate venue for trying terrorism suspects. Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a former judge who should have more regard for the law, offered the absurd claim that Mr. Obama was treating the 9/11 conspirators as “common criminals.”
There is nothing common about them — or Mr. Holder’s decision. Putting the five defendants on public trial a few blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center is entirely fitting. Experience shows that federal courts are capable of handling high-profile terrorism trials without comprising legitimate secrets, national security or the rule of law. Mr. Bush’s tribunals failed to hold a single trial.
The fact that defense lawyers are likely to press to have evidence of abuse aired in court — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was tortured by waterboarding 183 times — is unlikely to derail the prosecutions, especially given Mr. Holder’s claim to have evidence that has not been released yet.
Regrettably, the decision fell short of a clean break. Five other Guantánamo detainees are to be tried before a military commission for the 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole, including Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning the attack.
The rules for the commissions were recently revised to bring them closer to military standards. And Mr. Holder cites the fact that the Cole bombing was an attack on a military target to justify a military trial. But that does not cure the problem of relying on a new system outside the regular military justice system. Nor does it erase the appearance that the government is forum-shopping to win convictions. Most broadly, it fails to establish a clear framework for assigning cases to regular courts or military commissions going forward.
Still, this much is clear: the Obama administration has yet to completely figure out how to rectify the disgraceful Bush detention policies, but it is getting there.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The GOP's Senate Blockade
The GOP's No-Exit Strategy
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
The Washington Post -- Thursday, November 19, 2009
Normal human beings -- let's call them real Americans -- cannot understand why, 10 months after President Obama's inauguration, Congress is still tied down in a procedural torture chamber trying to pass the health-care bill Obama promised in his campaign.
Last year, the voters gave him the largest popular-vote margin won by a presidential candidate in 20 years. They gave Democrats their largest Senate majority since 1976 and their largest House majority since 1992.
Obama didn't just offer bromides about hope and change. He made specific pledges. You'd think that the newly empowered Democrats would want to deliver quickly.
But what do real Americans see? On health care, they read about this or that Democratic senator prepared to bring action to a screeching halt out of displeasure with some aspect of the proposal. They first hear that a bill will pass by Thanksgiving and then learn it might not get a final vote until after the new year.
Is it any wonder that Congress has miserable approval ratings? Is it surprising that independents, who want their government to solve a few problems, are becoming impatient with the current majority?
Democrats in the Senate -- the House is not the problem -- need to have a long chat with themselves and decide whether they want to engage in an act of collective suicide.
But it's also time to start paying attention to how Republicans, with Machiavellian brilliance, have hit upon what might be called the Beltway-at-Rush-Hour Strategy, aimed at snarling legislative traffic to a standstill so Democrats have no hope of reaching the next exit.
We know what happens when drivers just sit there when they're supposed to be moving. They get grumpy, irascible and start turning on each other, which is exactly what the Democrats are doing.
Republicans know one other thing: Practically nobody is noticing their delay-to-kill strategy. Who wants to discuss legislative procedure when there's so much fun and profit in psychoanalyzing Sarah Palin?
Yet there was a small break in the Curtain of Obstruction this week when Republican senators unashamedly ate every word they had spoken when George W. Bush was in power about the horrors of filibustering nominees for federal judgeships. On Tuesday, a majority of Republicans tried to block a vote on the appointment of David F. Hamilton, a rather moderate jurist, to a federal appeals court.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama explained the GOP's about-face by saying: "I think the rules have changed."
That was actually a helpful comment, because the Republicans have changed the rules on Senate action up and down the line. Hamilton's case is just the one instance that finally got a little play.
Thankfully, this filibuster failed because some Republicans were embarrassed by it. But Republican delaying tactics have made Obama far too wary about judicial nominations for fear of controversy. He is well behind his predecessor in filling vacancies, a shameful capitulation to obstruction. There's also the fact that the nomination of Christopher Schroeder as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, which helps to vet judges, is snarled -- guess where? -- in the Senate.
Republicans are using the filibuster to stall action even on bills that most of them support. Remember: The rule is to keep Democrats from ever reaching the exit.
As of last Monday, the Senate majority had filed 58 cloture motions requiring 32 recorded votes. One of the more outrageous cases involved an extension in unemployment benefits, a no-brainer in light of the dismal economy. The bill ultimately cleared the Senate this month by 98 to 0.
The vote came only after the Republicans launched three filibusters against the bill and tried to lard it with unrelated amendments, delaying passage by nearly a month. And you wonder why it's so hard to pass health care?
Defenders of the Senate always say the Founders envisioned it as a deliberative body that would cool the passions of the House. But Sessions unintentionally blew the whistle on how what's happening now has nothing to do with the Founders' design.
The rules have changed. The extra-constitutional filibuster is being used by the minority, with extraordinary success, to make the majority look foolish, ineffectual and incompetent. By using Republican obstructionism as a vehicle for forcing through their own narrow agendas, supposedly moderate Democratic senators will only make themselves complicit in this humiliation.
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
The Washington Post -- Thursday, November 19, 2009
Normal human beings -- let's call them real Americans -- cannot understand why, 10 months after President Obama's inauguration, Congress is still tied down in a procedural torture chamber trying to pass the health-care bill Obama promised in his campaign.
Last year, the voters gave him the largest popular-vote margin won by a presidential candidate in 20 years. They gave Democrats their largest Senate majority since 1976 and their largest House majority since 1992.
Obama didn't just offer bromides about hope and change. He made specific pledges. You'd think that the newly empowered Democrats would want to deliver quickly.
But what do real Americans see? On health care, they read about this or that Democratic senator prepared to bring action to a screeching halt out of displeasure with some aspect of the proposal. They first hear that a bill will pass by Thanksgiving and then learn it might not get a final vote until after the new year.
Is it any wonder that Congress has miserable approval ratings? Is it surprising that independents, who want their government to solve a few problems, are becoming impatient with the current majority?
Democrats in the Senate -- the House is not the problem -- need to have a long chat with themselves and decide whether they want to engage in an act of collective suicide.
But it's also time to start paying attention to how Republicans, with Machiavellian brilliance, have hit upon what might be called the Beltway-at-Rush-Hour Strategy, aimed at snarling legislative traffic to a standstill so Democrats have no hope of reaching the next exit.
We know what happens when drivers just sit there when they're supposed to be moving. They get grumpy, irascible and start turning on each other, which is exactly what the Democrats are doing.
Republicans know one other thing: Practically nobody is noticing their delay-to-kill strategy. Who wants to discuss legislative procedure when there's so much fun and profit in psychoanalyzing Sarah Palin?
Yet there was a small break in the Curtain of Obstruction this week when Republican senators unashamedly ate every word they had spoken when George W. Bush was in power about the horrors of filibustering nominees for federal judgeships. On Tuesday, a majority of Republicans tried to block a vote on the appointment of David F. Hamilton, a rather moderate jurist, to a federal appeals court.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama explained the GOP's about-face by saying: "I think the rules have changed."
That was actually a helpful comment, because the Republicans have changed the rules on Senate action up and down the line. Hamilton's case is just the one instance that finally got a little play.
Thankfully, this filibuster failed because some Republicans were embarrassed by it. But Republican delaying tactics have made Obama far too wary about judicial nominations for fear of controversy. He is well behind his predecessor in filling vacancies, a shameful capitulation to obstruction. There's also the fact that the nomination of Christopher Schroeder as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, which helps to vet judges, is snarled -- guess where? -- in the Senate.
Republicans are using the filibuster to stall action even on bills that most of them support. Remember: The rule is to keep Democrats from ever reaching the exit.
As of last Monday, the Senate majority had filed 58 cloture motions requiring 32 recorded votes. One of the more outrageous cases involved an extension in unemployment benefits, a no-brainer in light of the dismal economy. The bill ultimately cleared the Senate this month by 98 to 0.
The vote came only after the Republicans launched three filibusters against the bill and tried to lard it with unrelated amendments, delaying passage by nearly a month. And you wonder why it's so hard to pass health care?
Defenders of the Senate always say the Founders envisioned it as a deliberative body that would cool the passions of the House. But Sessions unintentionally blew the whistle on how what's happening now has nothing to do with the Founders' design.
The rules have changed. The extra-constitutional filibuster is being used by the minority, with extraordinary success, to make the majority look foolish, ineffectual and incompetent. By using Republican obstructionism as a vehicle for forcing through their own narrow agendas, supposedly moderate Democratic senators will only make themselves complicit in this humiliation.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
A Good Health Care Reform Bill From The Senate
Reid bill would cost $849B, expand coverage to 31 million people, aide says
By Lori Montgomery, Washington Post Staff Writer --- Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has assembled a compromise health package that would expand coverage to more than 31 million Americans at a cost of $849 billion over the next decade, a senior leadership aide said late Wednesday.
The cost of the package would be more than made up for by cuts in future Medicare spending and an array of new taxes, the aide said, reducing projected budget deficits by $127 billion no later than 2019 -- the biggest cost savings of any health care package so far assembled by congressional Democrats. The measure would also save the government money in the long term, the aide said, cutting projected deficits by as much as $650 billion between 2019 and 2029.
The aide did not release a formal cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, saying Reid was still awaiting a final report. But, he said, Reid has "received very good news from CBO confirming that we have produced a fiscally responsible bill that reduces the deficit, extends coverage to millions of Americans and meets the President's cost test."
By Lori Montgomery, Washington Post Staff Writer --- Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has assembled a compromise health package that would expand coverage to more than 31 million Americans at a cost of $849 billion over the next decade, a senior leadership aide said late Wednesday.
The cost of the package would be more than made up for by cuts in future Medicare spending and an array of new taxes, the aide said, reducing projected budget deficits by $127 billion no later than 2019 -- the biggest cost savings of any health care package so far assembled by congressional Democrats. The measure would also save the government money in the long term, the aide said, cutting projected deficits by as much as $650 billion between 2019 and 2029.
The aide did not release a formal cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, saying Reid was still awaiting a final report. But, he said, Reid has "received very good news from CBO confirming that we have produced a fiscally responsible bill that reduces the deficit, extends coverage to millions of Americans and meets the President's cost test."
Monday, November 16, 2009
Having the Trials in New York Could Be of Great Benefit to the USA
Since we are locked in a propaganda war with Al Quaida -- not just a military war -- having the trials in New York could turn into a huge boon for the USA.
We will show the world how our system of justice operates, and we will be able to publicize the viciousness of Al Quaida terrorists from the testimony and all the other evidence submitted in open court.
If we are trying to win the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Muslim countries, these trials could turn out to be of great benefit to us.
Everyone knew of the enormity of the Nazi crimes by the time World War II ended. We could have shot the leading Nazi war criminals the moment they were caught.
However, the Nuremberg Trials produced a huge mountain of testimony and documentary evidence which created a full record of those crimes for all the world to see and remember -- a record which is preserved forever.
Today, after all, why do so many of the local people in Afghanistan and Pakistan still give help and refuge to Al Quaida and the Taliban? Our enemies have been very successful in using the abuses that were committed at Gitmo as propaganda against us.
Hopefully, the evidence which is produced at the New York trials, and the very existence of these trials themselves -- will give us a powerful new propaganda weapon to use against our enemies in the battle for the hearts and minds of the local populations.
We will show the world how our system of justice operates, and we will be able to publicize the viciousness of Al Quaida terrorists from the testimony and all the other evidence submitted in open court.
If we are trying to win the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Muslim countries, these trials could turn out to be of great benefit to us.
Everyone knew of the enormity of the Nazi crimes by the time World War II ended. We could have shot the leading Nazi war criminals the moment they were caught.
However, the Nuremberg Trials produced a huge mountain of testimony and documentary evidence which created a full record of those crimes for all the world to see and remember -- a record which is preserved forever.
Today, after all, why do so many of the local people in Afghanistan and Pakistan still give help and refuge to Al Quaida and the Taliban? Our enemies have been very successful in using the abuses that were committed at Gitmo as propaganda against us.
Hopefully, the evidence which is produced at the New York trials, and the very existence of these trials themselves -- will give us a powerful new propaganda weapon to use against our enemies in the battle for the hearts and minds of the local populations.
Michael Daly of NY Daily News on New York Terror Trials
Here's a great article by Michael Daly from yesterday's NY Daily News on the upcoming New York Terror Trials. I couldn't have said it better myself:
Daly: 9/11 Terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed & Crew will Face Jury -- Like any other Criminal Trash
By MICHAEL DALY
New York Daily News --- Sunday, November 15th 2009, 4:00 AM
If KSM decides to plead guilty in Manhattan Federal Court, he will do so as a criminal afraid to face the judgment of everyday people.
Every time the jury enters the courtroom, the clerk calls out an order.
"All rise!"
All would include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his co-defendants. They would be required to stand for a group of everyday folks much like those who were murdered at the towers just a dozen blocks away.
These jurors will have been drawn at random from a list of registered voters. Their faces will no doubt be as varied as those on the missing flyers after 9/11.
The random victims at the World Trade Center perished at the start of a workday. These random jurors will begin the work day by filing into Manhattan Federal Court. Only after they are seated will the defendants be allowed to sit.
Mohammed and his crew of morally stunted lowlifes can glare and smirk all they want. Their fate will still be in the hands of 12 citizens whose very presence in the jury box gives lie to what the extremists preach about America.
Power here ultimately resides in people of all races, faiths and orientation who each have an equal say, be it in the voting booth or the jury room.
Mohammed and his pals must have been thrilled when 9/11 roused us to a global war on terrorism, as if they were more than just a ragtag bunch of killers.
They wanted nothing more than to imagine themselves holy warriors. We gave them a war to do it in when we should have stayed focused on catching the rest of the perps as we would in any other murder case.
Just when we had Osama Bin Laden trapped in his cave, we let him get away and went after Saddam Hussein in his palaces.
We did manage to get Mohammed, but even then we made him more than just a killer.
We elevated him to an "enemy combatant." And we lost such faith in our own system that we built special jails for him and his bunch outside the United States.
While he was being waterboarded, Mohammed no doubt suffered as much as we might hope. But when it was over he had the immense satisfaction of knowing we had reduced ourselves even as we further elevated him.
That ends now.
The government has announced that Mohammed and his pals will be put on trial like any other criminals in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed.
Mohammed will be reduced to what he really is. We will be restored to who we truly are.
And what President Obama should say is that in our shock and grief and anger after 9/11 we lost focus, but now have it back.
Our primary purpose in going into Afghanistan was to catch the people who murdered thousands of innocents.
We have caught some and we will keep on until we grab the rest.
Daly: 9/11 Terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed & Crew will Face Jury -- Like any other Criminal Trash
By MICHAEL DALY
New York Daily News --- Sunday, November 15th 2009, 4:00 AM
If KSM decides to plead guilty in Manhattan Federal Court, he will do so as a criminal afraid to face the judgment of everyday people.
Every time the jury enters the courtroom, the clerk calls out an order.
"All rise!"
All would include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his co-defendants. They would be required to stand for a group of everyday folks much like those who were murdered at the towers just a dozen blocks away.
These jurors will have been drawn at random from a list of registered voters. Their faces will no doubt be as varied as those on the missing flyers after 9/11.
The random victims at the World Trade Center perished at the start of a workday. These random jurors will begin the work day by filing into Manhattan Federal Court. Only after they are seated will the defendants be allowed to sit.
Mohammed and his crew of morally stunted lowlifes can glare and smirk all they want. Their fate will still be in the hands of 12 citizens whose very presence in the jury box gives lie to what the extremists preach about America.
Power here ultimately resides in people of all races, faiths and orientation who each have an equal say, be it in the voting booth or the jury room.
Mohammed and his pals must have been thrilled when 9/11 roused us to a global war on terrorism, as if they were more than just a ragtag bunch of killers.
They wanted nothing more than to imagine themselves holy warriors. We gave them a war to do it in when we should have stayed focused on catching the rest of the perps as we would in any other murder case.
Just when we had Osama Bin Laden trapped in his cave, we let him get away and went after Saddam Hussein in his palaces.
We did manage to get Mohammed, but even then we made him more than just a killer.
We elevated him to an "enemy combatant." And we lost such faith in our own system that we built special jails for him and his bunch outside the United States.
While he was being waterboarded, Mohammed no doubt suffered as much as we might hope. But when it was over he had the immense satisfaction of knowing we had reduced ourselves even as we further elevated him.
That ends now.
The government has announced that Mohammed and his pals will be put on trial like any other criminals in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed.
Mohammed will be reduced to what he really is. We will be restored to who we truly are.
And what President Obama should say is that in our shock and grief and anger after 9/11 we lost focus, but now have it back.
Our primary purpose in going into Afghanistan was to catch the people who murdered thousands of innocents.
We have caught some and we will keep on until we grab the rest.
Mike Lupica Says Khalid Sheik Mohammed Should Not Be Tried In New York
Mike Lupica wrote a well-reasoned article in today's New York Daily News contending that Khalid Sheik Mohammed should not be tried in New York City.
Then, near the end of Mike's article, came the following sentence:
"But Mohammed isn't going to get off if he gets tried on the moon, or by a military tribunal; he's going to be convicted whether he defends himself or not."
Now, on that point, Mike, I couldn't agree with you more.
Then, near the end of Mike's article, came the following sentence:
"But Mohammed isn't going to get off if he gets tried on the moon, or by a military tribunal; he's going to be convicted whether he defends himself or not."
Now, on that point, Mike, I couldn't agree with you more.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
McCain Campaign E-Mails Vs. Sarah Palin's New Book, "Going Rogue"
The Huffington Post has obtained internal McCain campaign emails -- addressed to and by the former vice presidential candidate -- that directly contradict or cast serious doubt on several of Palin's assertions. The emails were passed along by a mid-level staffer who called early excerpts of "Going Rogue", "a serious mixing of truth and imagination."
All told, the three emails provided to the Huffington Post are the clearest contradictions yet of the account of the campaign that Palin painted in her book.
Far from being eager to go on SNL, Palin - according to the emails - showed trepidation.
Meanwhile, McCain's campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, in the aftermath of the Sarkozy gaffe, doesn't direct his anger to Palin over the phone. But rather, according to two aides, he directs his anger at staffers via email.
And while Palin goes to great lengths in "Going Rogue" to paint the McCain campaign manager as tempermental and constantly opposed to allowing her to play a bigger role on the trail, just days before the election she was expressing her "love" for the help he had provided in covering up her blunders.
Reflecting on it all, the campaign aide who provided the emails said the following of the book:
"There are elements of truth underlying a narrative that is completely false."
All told, the three emails provided to the Huffington Post are the clearest contradictions yet of the account of the campaign that Palin painted in her book.
Far from being eager to go on SNL, Palin - according to the emails - showed trepidation.
Meanwhile, McCain's campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, in the aftermath of the Sarkozy gaffe, doesn't direct his anger to Palin over the phone. But rather, according to two aides, he directs his anger at staffers via email.
And while Palin goes to great lengths in "Going Rogue" to paint the McCain campaign manager as tempermental and constantly opposed to allowing her to play a bigger role on the trail, just days before the election she was expressing her "love" for the help he had provided in covering up her blunders.
Reflecting on it all, the campaign aide who provided the emails said the following of the book:
"There are elements of truth underlying a narrative that is completely false."
The Odds Are Not In Favor of Khalid Sheik Mohammed
Bush allowed more than 800 terrorism indictments to be handed up by federal grand juries, resisting constitutional protections only for those he declared to be "unlawful enemy combatants." The current administration has granted such rights to six of the 241 detainees who were at Guantanamo Bay when Obama took office, and senior government lawyers have said there is next to no prospect of bringing more than 20 more to trial in any tribunal, civilian or military.
A study by New York University's Center on Law and Security found that New York prosecutors have convicted 94 percent of terrorism defendants since Sept. 11, 2001, and 100 percent in cases with domestic targets.
A study by New York University's Center on Law and Security found that New York prosecutors have convicted 94 percent of terrorism defendants since Sept. 11, 2001, and 100 percent in cases with domestic targets.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Khalid Sheik Mohammed and His Big Ego
"To be treated as a common criminal is the last thing Khalid Sheik Mohammed wants," said Tom Malinowski, head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. "It disintegrates the warrior mystique that al-Qaeda promotes to sustain itself -- a mystique that a military trial would have reinforced."
The 9/11 Commission Report, discussing Mohammed's terrorist ambitions, called him a "self-cast star." "I am the mastermind of 9/11, not Osama bin Laden," he said in one court hearing.
While at Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held since September 2006, Mohammed said he wants to be executed so that he can die a martyr. It is unclear whether he will maintain that position in U.S. District Court.
Chances are that the US District Court will grant him his wish anyway.
The 9/11 Commission Report, discussing Mohammed's terrorist ambitions, called him a "self-cast star." "I am the mastermind of 9/11, not Osama bin Laden," he said in one court hearing.
While at Guantanamo Bay, where he has been held since September 2006, Mohammed said he wants to be executed so that he can die a martyr. It is unclear whether he will maintain that position in U.S. District Court.
Chances are that the US District Court will grant him his wish anyway.
The Gitmo Prisoners Will Be Tried in New York
The prisoners who were released from Gitmo by the military under the Bush administration were released because they were low-level operatives. They were people like drivers or cooks, who took those jobs because they needed the money. I believe that one of the people released was actually Osama Bin Laden's personal driver.
They were released because there was no proof that they had ever taken up arms against Americans, or had ever fired a shot or engaged in any violent activity.
They were not released because of technicalities like the "Miranda rule" or a "jury of their peers" -- which are red herrings that totally don't apply to this situation. Don't expect to hear anyone try to apply those concepts here because it won't happen.
As to those Gitmo detainees who are about to be tried in New York, the first motion their defense counsel will probably make is for a Change of Venue. Why? Very simple. Their lawyers know that, if these folks are tried in a civilian court in New York, they are dead ducks.
They were released because there was no proof that they had ever taken up arms against Americans, or had ever fired a shot or engaged in any violent activity.
They were not released because of technicalities like the "Miranda rule" or a "jury of their peers" -- which are red herrings that totally don't apply to this situation. Don't expect to hear anyone try to apply those concepts here because it won't happen.
As to those Gitmo detainees who are about to be tried in New York, the first motion their defense counsel will probably make is for a Change of Venue. Why? Very simple. Their lawyers know that, if these folks are tried in a civilian court in New York, they are dead ducks.
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Poor Conservatives Are Upset That Hasan Has Not Been Labeled a "Terrorist"
The mindless stupidity of Conservatives is that they get hung up on whether or not Hasan is labeled a "terrorist", when in fact he has been labeled a "murderer" and has now been charged with 13 separate counts of premeditated murder, each one of which carries the death penalty.
That's why liberals consider Conservatives to be a bunch of bleating sheep who are so easily manipulated by their Right-Wing media puppeteers.
What practical difference does it make whether or not Hasan is labeled a "terrorist"? Why are Conservatives so angry and upset by whether or not that particular word is applied to him?
There are many other, more accurate words which have been applied to Hasan -- all of which carry the death penalty.
It's sickening to watch Conservatives react like Pavlovian dogs to the fact that he has not been labeled a "terrorist", when applying that word is totally irrelevant to the final result in this case.
The definition of a "terrorist", according to the Random House Dictionary, is: "The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes."
That is what Al Quaida does, so effectively, -- "intimidate or coerce, for political purposes" --which is why it is rightly called a terrorist organization.
However, even though Hasan shot and killed 13 people, and wounded many more, under this definition, he was not a "terrorist" because he was not trying to intimidate people or change their behavior.
Aside from the semantics, I ask once again, what practical difference does it make whether Hasan is charged with 13 counts of first degree murder as a "terrorist" or as a "murderer"?
The only practical difference I can see is that, when his case comes to trial, it will be a lot easier to prove that Hasan is a murderer rather than a terrorist, making his conviction that much easier.
That's why liberals consider Conservatives to be a bunch of bleating sheep who are so easily manipulated by their Right-Wing media puppeteers.
What practical difference does it make whether or not Hasan is labeled a "terrorist"? Why are Conservatives so angry and upset by whether or not that particular word is applied to him?
There are many other, more accurate words which have been applied to Hasan -- all of which carry the death penalty.
It's sickening to watch Conservatives react like Pavlovian dogs to the fact that he has not been labeled a "terrorist", when applying that word is totally irrelevant to the final result in this case.
The definition of a "terrorist", according to the Random House Dictionary, is: "The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes."
That is what Al Quaida does, so effectively, -- "intimidate or coerce, for political purposes" --which is why it is rightly called a terrorist organization.
However, even though Hasan shot and killed 13 people, and wounded many more, under this definition, he was not a "terrorist" because he was not trying to intimidate people or change their behavior.
Aside from the semantics, I ask once again, what practical difference does it make whether Hasan is charged with 13 counts of first degree murder as a "terrorist" or as a "murderer"?
The only practical difference I can see is that, when his case comes to trial, it will be a lot easier to prove that Hasan is a murderer rather than a terrorist, making his conviction that much easier.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
FOX News on ACORN vs. Blackwater
After aggressively promoting ACORN videos, Fox News ignores reports of Blackwater bribes:
On the evening of November 11, Fox News personalities did not discuss reports from the previous evening that officials at Xe Services, formerly Blackwater Worldwide, had authorized $1 million in bribery payments to Iraqi officials in the aftermath of a fatal shooting involving Blackwater security guards. By contrast, Fox News devoted more than one hour on September 10 to discussing videos of conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles posing as a pimp and a prostitute while asking for assistance from employees at an ACORN office.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200911120037
Hey, FOX News, how come a few stupid comments by low-level ACORN employees rate one hour of news coverage, whereas $1 million in bribes authorized by the highest level of Blackwater executives is not newsworthy? What's your definition of "News", FOX News?
FOX News doesn't seem to know its News from its Elbow.
On the evening of November 11, Fox News personalities did not discuss reports from the previous evening that officials at Xe Services, formerly Blackwater Worldwide, had authorized $1 million in bribery payments to Iraqi officials in the aftermath of a fatal shooting involving Blackwater security guards. By contrast, Fox News devoted more than one hour on September 10 to discussing videos of conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles posing as a pimp and a prostitute while asking for assistance from employees at an ACORN office.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200911120037
Hey, FOX News, how come a few stupid comments by low-level ACORN employees rate one hour of news coverage, whereas $1 million in bribes authorized by the highest level of Blackwater executives is not newsworthy? What's your definition of "News", FOX News?
FOX News doesn't seem to know its News from its Elbow.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
US Ambassador to Afghanistan Says Don't Send More US Troops
The Washington Post -- November 11, 2009 -- 6:15 PM:
U.S. Ambassador Dissents on Afghan Troop Increase
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the last week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban’s rise, said senior U.S. officials.
(Hey, it must be real easy to be president and make the snap decision to rush 42,000 more US troops to Afghanistan overnight).
U.S. Ambassador Dissents on Afghan Troop Increase
The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the last week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban’s rise, said senior U.S. officials.
(Hey, it must be real easy to be president and make the snap decision to rush 42,000 more US troops to Afghanistan overnight).
Nidal Malik Hasan Was Not a "Terrorist"
Why aren't more people calling Nidal Malik Hassan a "terrorist", I have been asked. Maybe that's because what Hassan did does not constitute "terrorism", as that word is properly defined. As you can see, from the following article:
By RJ Eskow
The Huffington Post -- November 11, 2009
People who label Nidal Malik Hasan a "terrorist," like Joe Lieberman just did, literally don't understand the meaning of the word. And how can they keep us safe from terrorism if they don't even know what it is?
Here's what Sen. Lieberman said: ""There are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act."
Here's a fairly concise definition of the word 'terrorism', drawn from the Random House Dictionary: "The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes." (emphasis mine)
Had Dr. Hasan become "an Islamist extremist"? It sure looks that way. But was the horrific slaughter he carried out intended to "intimidate or coerce" anyone? We've heard no evidence to that effect. These terrible killings may have just been an expression of inchoate rage. And if we don't know whether coercion or intimidation was the goal, then we certainly don't know if it was done "for political purposes."
Sen. Lieberman's statement, on the other hand, probably was made "for political purposes." And bigotry might be a factor, too, don't you think? After all, the Senator made no such statements about other shootings at military facilities.
Let's get one thing straight: This is not a liberal, knee-jerk defense of someone because he belongs to an unpopular minority (although defending unpopular minorities is generally a good practice). If we learn that Malik Hasan left a note saying "anybody who serves in the US Armed Forces must know they will face retribution," we'll know that he is a terrorist. He will have committed his murders in order to intimidate or coerce. But right now we don't have any evidence that suggests Hasan is any different from the civilian who killed 23 people at a cafeteria right down the road from Ft. Hood, shouting "This is what Central Texas did to me!"
Apparently that guy really hated Central Texas. But he wasn't a terrorist, because he wasn't trying to intimidate people or change their behavior.
So if the Luby's Cafeteria Murderer wasn't a terrorist, what does qualify as terrorism? Al Qaeda's dirty deeds do, of course. Those cowardly killings are intended to provoke US withdrawal from all Muslim countries. (No, they don't do it because "they hate our freedoms.") Christian extremist Scott Roeder's act of murder was terrorism, too, because he wants doctors to stop performing abortions. (He and others like him have nearly achieved their goal, too, which makes it pretty effective terror.)
By RJ Eskow
The Huffington Post -- November 11, 2009
People who label Nidal Malik Hasan a "terrorist," like Joe Lieberman just did, literally don't understand the meaning of the word. And how can they keep us safe from terrorism if they don't even know what it is?
Here's what Sen. Lieberman said: ""There are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act."
Here's a fairly concise definition of the word 'terrorism', drawn from the Random House Dictionary: "The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes." (emphasis mine)
Had Dr. Hasan become "an Islamist extremist"? It sure looks that way. But was the horrific slaughter he carried out intended to "intimidate or coerce" anyone? We've heard no evidence to that effect. These terrible killings may have just been an expression of inchoate rage. And if we don't know whether coercion or intimidation was the goal, then we certainly don't know if it was done "for political purposes."
Sen. Lieberman's statement, on the other hand, probably was made "for political purposes." And bigotry might be a factor, too, don't you think? After all, the Senator made no such statements about other shootings at military facilities.
Let's get one thing straight: This is not a liberal, knee-jerk defense of someone because he belongs to an unpopular minority (although defending unpopular minorities is generally a good practice). If we learn that Malik Hasan left a note saying "anybody who serves in the US Armed Forces must know they will face retribution," we'll know that he is a terrorist. He will have committed his murders in order to intimidate or coerce. But right now we don't have any evidence that suggests Hasan is any different from the civilian who killed 23 people at a cafeteria right down the road from Ft. Hood, shouting "This is what Central Texas did to me!"
Apparently that guy really hated Central Texas. But he wasn't a terrorist, because he wasn't trying to intimidate people or change their behavior.
So if the Luby's Cafeteria Murderer wasn't a terrorist, what does qualify as terrorism? Al Qaeda's dirty deeds do, of course. Those cowardly killings are intended to provoke US withdrawal from all Muslim countries. (No, they don't do it because "they hate our freedoms.") Christian extremist Scott Roeder's act of murder was terrorism, too, because he wants doctors to stop performing abortions. (He and others like him have nearly achieved their goal, too, which makes it pretty effective terror.)
Clinton Urges Senate Democrats to Pass Health Care Reform Now
By Shailagh Murray -- The Washington Post
November 11, 2009
Former president Bill Clinton urged Senate Democrats on Tuesday to resolve their differences with a health-care bill and pass an overhaul as soon as possible. Summoning the lessons of his own history with health-care reform, Clinton warned, "The worst thing to do is nothing."
Clinton noted the grim consequences of the failed reform effort 15 years ago, when he was in office: Democrats lost control of Congress in that year's midterm elections, health-care costs skyrocketed, and the rate of Americans without insurance continued to rise. This time, the former president admonished, senators should compromise for the sake of a deal.
"It's not important to be perfect here. It's important to act, to move, to start the ball rolling," Clinton told reporters after the meeting. "There will be amendments to this effort, whatever they pass, next year and the year after and the year after, and there should be. It's a big, complicated, organic thing. But the worst thing to do is nothing."
November 11, 2009
Former president Bill Clinton urged Senate Democrats on Tuesday to resolve their differences with a health-care bill and pass an overhaul as soon as possible. Summoning the lessons of his own history with health-care reform, Clinton warned, "The worst thing to do is nothing."
Clinton noted the grim consequences of the failed reform effort 15 years ago, when he was in office: Democrats lost control of Congress in that year's midterm elections, health-care costs skyrocketed, and the rate of Americans without insurance continued to rise. This time, the former president admonished, senators should compromise for the sake of a deal.
"It's not important to be perfect here. It's important to act, to move, to start the ball rolling," Clinton told reporters after the meeting. "There will be amendments to this effort, whatever they pass, next year and the year after and the year after, and there should be. It's a big, complicated, organic thing. But the worst thing to do is nothing."
Obama Signs Executive Order to Create More Federal Jobs for Veterans
By Joe Davidson, The Washington Post
November 11, 2009
Speaking of jobs, President Obama has just signed an Executive Order Designed to facilitate the hiring of more veterans by the federal government. The quiet signing ceremony in the Oval Office on Monday evening established an interagency council, requiring that progress be tracked and reported back to the president. The executive order created a mechanism with teeth.
"This is a very definite step forward in what veterans can take advantage of," Clarence E. Hill, the American Legion's national commander, said in an interview. "There has never been anything like a veterans employment office. This is a big step," added Hill, who attended the signing.
Soon after Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry took office this spring, he listed increased employment opportunities for veterans as one of his goals.
The executive order signed by the president establishes a Council on Veterans Employment, tasked with creating a government-wide program to increase hiring of vets and instituting measures to gauge how well Uncle Sam does. There were approximately 480,000 veterans working for the federal government at the end of fiscal year 2008, according to the White House. How that number changes will tell the tale of the order's effectiveness.
"We know exactly right now how many vets each agency in government is hiring," Berry said. "We will know very clearly a year from now if we have succeeded -- or are we on the right track, or have we missed the mark? The metric for accountability on this is very clear: Are more vets getting jobs in the federal civil service?"
The order lists 24 executive branch agencies that each must form a Veterans Employment Program "to be responsible for enhancing employment opportunities for veterans within the agency." The agencies are told to develop an operational plan, training programs for disabled vets, and mandatory instruction for human resources personnel and hiring managers on veterans' preference.
November 11, 2009
Speaking of jobs, President Obama has just signed an Executive Order Designed to facilitate the hiring of more veterans by the federal government. The quiet signing ceremony in the Oval Office on Monday evening established an interagency council, requiring that progress be tracked and reported back to the president. The executive order created a mechanism with teeth.
"This is a very definite step forward in what veterans can take advantage of," Clarence E. Hill, the American Legion's national commander, said in an interview. "There has never been anything like a veterans employment office. This is a big step," added Hill, who attended the signing.
Soon after Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry took office this spring, he listed increased employment opportunities for veterans as one of his goals.
The executive order signed by the president establishes a Council on Veterans Employment, tasked with creating a government-wide program to increase hiring of vets and instituting measures to gauge how well Uncle Sam does. There were approximately 480,000 veterans working for the federal government at the end of fiscal year 2008, according to the White House. How that number changes will tell the tale of the order's effectiveness.
"We know exactly right now how many vets each agency in government is hiring," Berry said. "We will know very clearly a year from now if we have succeeded -- or are we on the right track, or have we missed the mark? The metric for accountability on this is very clear: Are more vets getting jobs in the federal civil service?"
The order lists 24 executive branch agencies that each must form a Veterans Employment Program "to be responsible for enhancing employment opportunities for veterans within the agency." The agencies are told to develop an operational plan, training programs for disabled vets, and mandatory instruction for human resources personnel and hiring managers on veterans' preference.
The Do-Nothing Senate
By Harold Meyerson -- The Washington Post
November 11, 2009
"In 2009, though, 10 months have come and gone, and of the president's major initiatives, only the emergency stimulus package has been enacted. Health care and climate change bills have passed the House but have yet to move in the Senate. Financial reform limps along in both chambers; proponents of labor law reform await a resolution of health care before taking this up again.
Why is 2009 so different from 1933 and 1965? For one thing, the Republicans are different. In 1933 and 1965, there were moderate and even liberal Republicans -- George Norris and Fiorello LaGuardia in 1933, Jacob Javits and Thomas Kuchel in 1965, to name a few -- who voted with the Democrats. Today, there are virtually no moderate Republicans. The GOP base has shrunk to the white South as Republicans have become uniformly conservative, and their elected officials deviate from radical-right orthodoxy at their peril.
The other reason is the decline of the Senate, where no measure of any substance can pass without the 60 votes needed to ensure movement. There are 58 Democrats and two independents who caucus with them. But Democrats have ditherers within their ranks.
At least three Democratic senators -- Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu and Nebraska's Ben Nelson -- haven't even agreed to vote to permit health-care legislation to come to the floor. They may believe it's in their interest to come across as slowing down the process (which is already flowing with all the speed of molasses on a winter day). But it is surely not in the nation's interest to have one of its two legislative bodies dead set against legislating, which is the absurd reality the three are reinforcing.
Nor is it in the interest of their party. The Democrats and Obama supporters who flocked to the polls one year ago had reasonable expectations that the promise of change embodied in an Obama presidency and large congressional majorities would be real. Republicans understand that if they can keep the Democrats from delivering on that promise, as they did in the first two years of Bill Clinton's presidency, Democratic turnout in next year's midterm elections will collapse, as it did in Virginia and New Jersey last week. Why Democratic members of the Senate want to abet this process is beyond comprehension."
November 11, 2009
"In 2009, though, 10 months have come and gone, and of the president's major initiatives, only the emergency stimulus package has been enacted. Health care and climate change bills have passed the House but have yet to move in the Senate. Financial reform limps along in both chambers; proponents of labor law reform await a resolution of health care before taking this up again.
Why is 2009 so different from 1933 and 1965? For one thing, the Republicans are different. In 1933 and 1965, there were moderate and even liberal Republicans -- George Norris and Fiorello LaGuardia in 1933, Jacob Javits and Thomas Kuchel in 1965, to name a few -- who voted with the Democrats. Today, there are virtually no moderate Republicans. The GOP base has shrunk to the white South as Republicans have become uniformly conservative, and their elected officials deviate from radical-right orthodoxy at their peril.
The other reason is the decline of the Senate, where no measure of any substance can pass without the 60 votes needed to ensure movement. There are 58 Democrats and two independents who caucus with them. But Democrats have ditherers within their ranks.
At least three Democratic senators -- Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu and Nebraska's Ben Nelson -- haven't even agreed to vote to permit health-care legislation to come to the floor. They may believe it's in their interest to come across as slowing down the process (which is already flowing with all the speed of molasses on a winter day). But it is surely not in the nation's interest to have one of its two legislative bodies dead set against legislating, which is the absurd reality the three are reinforcing.
Nor is it in the interest of their party. The Democrats and Obama supporters who flocked to the polls one year ago had reasonable expectations that the promise of change embodied in an Obama presidency and large congressional majorities would be real. Republicans understand that if they can keep the Democrats from delivering on that promise, as they did in the first two years of Bill Clinton's presidency, Democratic turnout in next year's midterm elections will collapse, as it did in Virginia and New Jersey last week. Why Democratic members of the Senate want to abet this process is beyond comprehension."
The Health Care Bill Will Not Put People In Jail for Not Having Health Insurance
Michigan Republican Congressman Dave Camp: "Americans could face five years in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands to buy approved health insurance."
Not true. The bill requires people to obtain insurance or, with some hardship exceptions, pay a fine. No one is being jailed for being uninsured. People who intentionally evade paying the fine could, in theory, be prosecuted -- just like others who cheat on their taxes.
Not true. The bill requires people to obtain insurance or, with some hardship exceptions, pay a fine. No one is being jailed for being uninsured. People who intentionally evade paying the fine could, in theory, be prosecuted -- just like others who cheat on their taxes.
Monday, November 9, 2009
A Comment From Tracy on The Health Care Reform Bill
Tracy said...
"Thank you! As a USAmerican who believes that every person in my country should have access to affordable health care, I applaud your words. It isn't so much conservatism that is fueling the fight against health reform in this country; it is pure, obscene greed. The health insurance companies make billions in profits, and they pay politicians to fight for the shamefully wrong status quo. Some politicians do the right thing; the others take the money happily and spread lies to keep the money coming.
I don't have health insurance, and I can't afford it. If the conservatives manage to block me from getting it, and then come back into power, I will no longer feel like a citizen of this country...because obviously, to them, I and my life do not matter."
Thank you for your comment, Tracy. Very well said. I think your words should be seen by everyone, so I have put them up here as a separate post of their own.
CJP
"Thank you! As a USAmerican who believes that every person in my country should have access to affordable health care, I applaud your words. It isn't so much conservatism that is fueling the fight against health reform in this country; it is pure, obscene greed. The health insurance companies make billions in profits, and they pay politicians to fight for the shamefully wrong status quo. Some politicians do the right thing; the others take the money happily and spread lies to keep the money coming.
I don't have health insurance, and I can't afford it. If the conservatives manage to block me from getting it, and then come back into power, I will no longer feel like a citizen of this country...because obviously, to them, I and my life do not matter."
Thank you for your comment, Tracy. Very well said. I think your words should be seen by everyone, so I have put them up here as a separate post of their own.
CJP
Government Is Good -- Right-Wing Ideologues Are Bad
From The Washington Post
On Election Day, A Win For Government
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Here's a story you may have missed because it flies in the face of the dreary conventional wisdom: When advocates of public programs take on the right-wing anti-government crowd directly, the government-haters lose.
This is what happened in two statewide referendums last week that got buried under all of the attention paid to the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey. In Maine, voters rejected a tax-limitation measure by a walloping 60 percent to 40 percent. In Washington state, a similar measure went down, 57 percent to 43 percent.
They lost in part because opponents of the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights measures (known as TABOR) did something that happens too rarely in the national debate: They made a case for what government does, why it's important and why cutbacks in public services can be harmful to citizens and the common good.
The idea that most voters hate government has an outsize influence on the thinking of both parties. Republicans try to exploit this feeling; Democrats try to get around it.
Only rarely do those who believe in active government take the argument head-on and insist that many of the things government does are necessary and, yes, good. The media almost never discuss what the sweeping dismantling of public services inherent in the rhetoric of the anti-government movement would mean in practice. It's far easier to replay footage from a few tea-party rallies over and over, and discuss some vague "mood" in the electorate.
But in Maine and Washington, the voters knew they didn't have the luxury of expressing a mood. They faced up to how limiting future tax revenue would affect the things they expect government to do. And opponents of the TABOR measures brought that idea home in straightforward terms.
In Maine, one ad featured several taxpayers warning about what less government would mean in practice: "Our school budgets have already been cut. This would mean even less money for our classrooms. . . . Community health centers could be cut. People rely on them, especially now." A sympathetic-looking man then appeared on the screen to add: "My wife relies on our home nurse visits. What will we do?"
Nor was the anti-TABOR campaign confined to what individuals get out of government. Another ad highlighted the larger social and economic impact of public education. "Without strong public schools, our kids won't be prepared for good jobs," the announcer said. "Maine's future could be in doubt."
In Washington state -- where tax limitation was opposed by leading moderate Republicans, including former governor Dan Evans and former senator Slade Gorton -- the No campaign offered a cross-generational message, focusing on cuts in both school budgets and home care for seniors.
Opposition to these measures went well beyond the ranks of ideological liberals. Recall that on the same day that Maine rejected TABOR, it also rejected gay marriage. In Lewiston, a socially conservative working-class city, 59 percent voted against gay marriage -- but 58 percent also opposed TABOR.
It's true that Washington and Maine have been reliably Democratic in recent presidential elections. But this is precisely why the defeat of these anti-tax measures was so important. Anti-government crusaders were getting ready to argue that if TABOR measures could pass in blue states, theirs was the wave of the future.
"I think the Maine TABOR will sort of be a spark to other states," Grover Norquist, the country's premier anti-tax agitator, told voters during a visit to South Portland in October. "I'm talking to taxpayer activists and citizens' groups, all of whom are looking to see that if Maine, a moderate Northeastern state says, 'Yes, let's take a look at this,' it then becomes a stronger sell in Arizona and Washington and Oregon and Florida."
By that logic, it's now a weaker sell. That's why conservatives hope no one pays attention to the news from Maine and Washington, where voters decided not to be part of a laboratory experiment being pushed by the Beltway Right.
But will President Obama and his party take the lesson and go on offense against the simple-minded anti-government screeds now getting so much play?
Obama took a brief whack at doing so in his September health-care speech. He noted that his predecessors "understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited." Why aren't we hearing more of this?
On Election Day, A Win For Government
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Here's a story you may have missed because it flies in the face of the dreary conventional wisdom: When advocates of public programs take on the right-wing anti-government crowd directly, the government-haters lose.
This is what happened in two statewide referendums last week that got buried under all of the attention paid to the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey. In Maine, voters rejected a tax-limitation measure by a walloping 60 percent to 40 percent. In Washington state, a similar measure went down, 57 percent to 43 percent.
They lost in part because opponents of the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights measures (known as TABOR) did something that happens too rarely in the national debate: They made a case for what government does, why it's important and why cutbacks in public services can be harmful to citizens and the common good.
The idea that most voters hate government has an outsize influence on the thinking of both parties. Republicans try to exploit this feeling; Democrats try to get around it.
Only rarely do those who believe in active government take the argument head-on and insist that many of the things government does are necessary and, yes, good. The media almost never discuss what the sweeping dismantling of public services inherent in the rhetoric of the anti-government movement would mean in practice. It's far easier to replay footage from a few tea-party rallies over and over, and discuss some vague "mood" in the electorate.
But in Maine and Washington, the voters knew they didn't have the luxury of expressing a mood. They faced up to how limiting future tax revenue would affect the things they expect government to do. And opponents of the TABOR measures brought that idea home in straightforward terms.
In Maine, one ad featured several taxpayers warning about what less government would mean in practice: "Our school budgets have already been cut. This would mean even less money for our classrooms. . . . Community health centers could be cut. People rely on them, especially now." A sympathetic-looking man then appeared on the screen to add: "My wife relies on our home nurse visits. What will we do?"
Nor was the anti-TABOR campaign confined to what individuals get out of government. Another ad highlighted the larger social and economic impact of public education. "Without strong public schools, our kids won't be prepared for good jobs," the announcer said. "Maine's future could be in doubt."
In Washington state -- where tax limitation was opposed by leading moderate Republicans, including former governor Dan Evans and former senator Slade Gorton -- the No campaign offered a cross-generational message, focusing on cuts in both school budgets and home care for seniors.
Opposition to these measures went well beyond the ranks of ideological liberals. Recall that on the same day that Maine rejected TABOR, it also rejected gay marriage. In Lewiston, a socially conservative working-class city, 59 percent voted against gay marriage -- but 58 percent also opposed TABOR.
It's true that Washington and Maine have been reliably Democratic in recent presidential elections. But this is precisely why the defeat of these anti-tax measures was so important. Anti-government crusaders were getting ready to argue that if TABOR measures could pass in blue states, theirs was the wave of the future.
"I think the Maine TABOR will sort of be a spark to other states," Grover Norquist, the country's premier anti-tax agitator, told voters during a visit to South Portland in October. "I'm talking to taxpayer activists and citizens' groups, all of whom are looking to see that if Maine, a moderate Northeastern state says, 'Yes, let's take a look at this,' it then becomes a stronger sell in Arizona and Washington and Oregon and Florida."
By that logic, it's now a weaker sell. That's why conservatives hope no one pays attention to the news from Maine and Washington, where voters decided not to be part of a laboratory experiment being pushed by the Beltway Right.
But will President Obama and his party take the lesson and go on offense against the simple-minded anti-government screeds now getting so much play?
Obama took a brief whack at doing so in his September health-care speech. He noted that his predecessors "understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited." Why aren't we hearing more of this?
Saturday, November 7, 2009
RINOS VS. DINOS
For Republicans, this year's special Congressional election in New York 23 furnished a preview of the internecine Civil War that will RIP* the GOP apart in 2010. Next year's elections will pit the RINOS against the DINOS -- Republicans In Name Only vs. Neanderthal Far-Right Dinosaurs.
If Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Malkin, FOX News, The Washington Times, Newsmax, etc. can succeed in remaking the Republican Party in their own image, and turn the Party of NOPE into the Party of Dinosaurs, then they will doubtlessly bring about a new Ice Age for the GOP.
RIP, GOP.
*RIP = Rest in Peace.
If Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Malkin, FOX News, The Washington Times, Newsmax, etc. can succeed in remaking the Republican Party in their own image, and turn the Party of NOPE into the Party of Dinosaurs, then they will doubtlessly bring about a new Ice Age for the GOP.
RIP, GOP.
*RIP = Rest in Peace.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Conservative Kamikaze in NY 23
Congratulations to Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, FOX News, The Washington Times, et al, on your kamikaze mission into New York's 23rd Congressional District this past Election Day.
You have committed Hari Kari and helped deliver the ashes of the Republican Party back to its honorable ancestors.
Let's see how many more Republican Congressional Districts you can turn over to the Democrats in 2010.
Keep flying your kamikaze missions, purge the Republican moderates and centrists out of the Party, fill your ballots with Right-Wing Conservative ideologues, and we'll all be able to worship at the Shrine of the Ashes of the Republican Party forever. Bring your own urns to help collect the GOP ashes. In 2010, the Republicans will really have their ashes on the line.
You have committed Hari Kari and helped deliver the ashes of the Republican Party back to its honorable ancestors.
Let's see how many more Republican Congressional Districts you can turn over to the Democrats in 2010.
Keep flying your kamikaze missions, purge the Republican moderates and centrists out of the Party, fill your ballots with Right-Wing Conservative ideologues, and we'll all be able to worship at the Shrine of the Ashes of the Republican Party forever. Bring your own urns to help collect the GOP ashes. In 2010, the Republicans will really have their ashes on the line.
Obama's Anzio
Obama Faces His Anzio
By PAUL KRUGMAN -- The New York Times
Published: November 5, 2009
Remember those Republican boasts that they would turn health care into President Obama’s Waterloo? Well, exit polls suggest that to the extent that health care was an issue in Tuesday’s elections, it worked in Democrats’ favor. But while health care won’t be Mr. Obama’s Waterloo, economic policy is starting to look like his Anzio.
This bodes ill for the Democrats in the midterm elections next year — not because voters will reject their agenda, but because all indications are that a year from now unemployment will still be painfully high. And Republicans may well benefit, despite having become the party of no ideas.
Which brings me to the Anzio analogy.
The World War II battle of Anzio was a classic example of the perils of being too cautious. Allied forces landed far behind enemy lines, catching their opponents by surprise. Instead of following up on this advantage, however, the American commander hunkered down in his beachhead — and soon found himself penned in by German forces on the surrounding hills, suffering heavy casualties.
The parallel with current economic policy runs as follows: early this year, President Obama came into office with a strong mandate and proclaimed the need to take bold action on the economy. His actual actions, however, were cautious rather than bold. They were enough to pull the economy back from the brink, but not enough to bring unemployment down.
Thus the stimulus bill fell far short of what many economists — including some in the administration itself — considered appropriate. According to The New Yorker, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimated that a package of more than $1.2 trillion was justified.
Meanwhile, the administration balked at proposals to put large amounts of additional capital into banks, which would probably have required temporary nationalization of the weakest institutions. Instead, it turned to a strategy of benign neglect — basically, hoping that the banks could earn their way back to financial health.
Administration officials would presumably argue that they were constrained by political realities, that a bolder policy couldn’t have passed Congress. But they never tested that assumption, and they also never gave any public indication that they were doing less than they wanted. The official line was that policy was just right, making it hard to explain now why more is needed.
And more is needed. Yes, the economy grew fairly fast in the third quarter — but not fast enough to make significant progress on jobs. And there’s little reason to expect things to look better going forward. The stimulus has already had its maximum effect on growth. Even Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, admits that banks remain reluctant to lend. Many economists predict that the economy’s growth, such as it is, will fade out over the course of next year.
The problem is that it’s not clear what Mr. Obama can do about this prospect. Conventional wisdom in Washington seems to have congealed around the view that budget deficits preclude any further fiscal stimulus — a view that’s all wrong on the economics, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Meanwhile, the Democratic base, so energized last year, has lost much of its passion, at least partly because the administration’s soft-touch approach to Wall Street has seemed to many like a betrayal of their ideals.
The president, then, having failed to exploit his early opportunities, is pinned down in his too-small beachhead.
If the Democrats lose badly in the midterms, the talking heads will say that Mr. Obama tried to do too much, this is a center-right nation, and so on. But the truth is that Mr. Obama put his agenda at risk by doing too little. The fateful decision, early this year, to go for economic half-measures may haunt Democrats for years to come.
By PAUL KRUGMAN -- The New York Times
Published: November 5, 2009
Remember those Republican boasts that they would turn health care into President Obama’s Waterloo? Well, exit polls suggest that to the extent that health care was an issue in Tuesday’s elections, it worked in Democrats’ favor. But while health care won’t be Mr. Obama’s Waterloo, economic policy is starting to look like his Anzio.
This bodes ill for the Democrats in the midterm elections next year — not because voters will reject their agenda, but because all indications are that a year from now unemployment will still be painfully high. And Republicans may well benefit, despite having become the party of no ideas.
Which brings me to the Anzio analogy.
The World War II battle of Anzio was a classic example of the perils of being too cautious. Allied forces landed far behind enemy lines, catching their opponents by surprise. Instead of following up on this advantage, however, the American commander hunkered down in his beachhead — and soon found himself penned in by German forces on the surrounding hills, suffering heavy casualties.
The parallel with current economic policy runs as follows: early this year, President Obama came into office with a strong mandate and proclaimed the need to take bold action on the economy. His actual actions, however, were cautious rather than bold. They were enough to pull the economy back from the brink, but not enough to bring unemployment down.
Thus the stimulus bill fell far short of what many economists — including some in the administration itself — considered appropriate. According to The New Yorker, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, estimated that a package of more than $1.2 trillion was justified.
Meanwhile, the administration balked at proposals to put large amounts of additional capital into banks, which would probably have required temporary nationalization of the weakest institutions. Instead, it turned to a strategy of benign neglect — basically, hoping that the banks could earn their way back to financial health.
Administration officials would presumably argue that they were constrained by political realities, that a bolder policy couldn’t have passed Congress. But they never tested that assumption, and they also never gave any public indication that they were doing less than they wanted. The official line was that policy was just right, making it hard to explain now why more is needed.
And more is needed. Yes, the economy grew fairly fast in the third quarter — but not fast enough to make significant progress on jobs. And there’s little reason to expect things to look better going forward. The stimulus has already had its maximum effect on growth. Even Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, admits that banks remain reluctant to lend. Many economists predict that the economy’s growth, such as it is, will fade out over the course of next year.
The problem is that it’s not clear what Mr. Obama can do about this prospect. Conventional wisdom in Washington seems to have congealed around the view that budget deficits preclude any further fiscal stimulus — a view that’s all wrong on the economics, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Meanwhile, the Democratic base, so energized last year, has lost much of its passion, at least partly because the administration’s soft-touch approach to Wall Street has seemed to many like a betrayal of their ideals.
The president, then, having failed to exploit his early opportunities, is pinned down in his too-small beachhead.
If the Democrats lose badly in the midterms, the talking heads will say that Mr. Obama tried to do too much, this is a center-right nation, and so on. But the truth is that Mr. Obama put his agenda at risk by doing too little. The fateful decision, early this year, to go for economic half-measures may haunt Democrats for years to come.
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