Feels Just Like A Random Flickr Blogging Monday To Me
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Why Pay More? -- Speaking Truth and Cracking Wise to Power Since 2004.
As Jim Dempsey and Marty Lederman both note, not even the nation's most foremost FISA experts really know the full extent to which this bill allows new warrantless spying. Obviously, Jonathan Alter has no idea what he's saying, but nonetheless decrees that this bill -- now that Obama supports it -- restores the Fourth Amendment. Those are the Orwellian lengths to which people like Olbermann and Alter are apparently willing to go in order to offer their blind devotion to Barack Obama.
Moreover, Alter's own explanation is self-contradictory. In the course of praising Obama's FISA stance, he says that a politician looks "weak if you're flip-flopping" and "you look weak if you don't fight back against your political adversaries." But that's exactly what Obama is doing here -- completely reversing himself on telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping, all in order to give the right-wing of the GOP everything it wants on national security issues in order to avoid a fight. By Alter's own reasoning, what Obama's doing is "weak" in the extreme, yet Alter bizarrely praises Obama for showing "strength."What Glenn said. And this as well, though right now definitely is a time for that extreme criticism:
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What's much more notable is Olbermann's full-scale reversal on how he talks about these measures now that Obama -- rather than George Bush -- supports them. On an almost nightly basis, Olbermann mocks Congressional Democrats as being weak and complicit for failing to stand up to Bush lawbreaking; now that Obama does it, it's proof that Obama won't "cower." Grave warning on Olbermann's show that telecom amnesty and FISA revisions were hallmarks of Bush Fascism instantaneously transformed into a celebration that Obama, by supporting the same things, was leading a courageous, centrist crusade in defense of our Constitution.
It isn't that difficult to keep the following two thoughts in one's head at the same time -- though it seems to be for many people:(1) What Barack Obama is doing on Issue X is wrong, indefensible and worthy of extreme criticism;
(2) I support Barack Obama for President because he's a better choice than John McCain.
Yes, he is. But let's not lose sight of the fact that he is not a savior, he's simply a politician, and politicians need to know that they are -- or should be -- accountable for their actions. Voting for the current FISA bill granting the telecoms immunity is simply inexcusable and indefensible.
**UPDATE** The Senate has just delayed voting on the FISA bill until after the July 4 recess. Thank you, Senators Fiengold and Dodd. There is still a slim chance that this assault on the Fourth Amendment can be killed.
They sell one item only each day. When it's gone you have to wait until the next day before you see what new item they are selling. It's always a good price, and each day the item is different.
Sometimes they have a woot-off and change the item about every ten minutes, and sometimes they have mystery bags of stuff. You pay $5.00 for a bag and wait to see what you get. My friend John says his son's friend got a flat-screen screen tv. No, it didn't fit in the bag, but there was a redeemable certificate in there.
Anyway, it isn't about the stuff - I find the ad-writer's prose to be laugh-out-loud material.
The Bush administration misused intelligence to build a case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a report issued Thursday.
When did the laws of this country become null and void for anyone occupying elected office? When did the Constitution disappear?The report also found that the administration misled the American people about contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
"Policymakers' statements did not accurately convey the intelligence assessments" about contacts between the then-Iraqi leader and Osama bin Laden's group, "and left the impression that the contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation or support of al Qaeda," the report said.
"Statements and implications by the president and secretary of state suggesting that Iraq and al Qaeda had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al Qaeda with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence," according to the committee's exhaustive report on prewar intelligence.
Glenn Greenwald
Jun. 02, 2008 | (updated below - Update II)
Bill Kristol today proudly announces that one of his Weekly Standard staff members, Michael Goldfarb, was just named the Deputy Communications Director of the McCain campaign. Last April, this newest McCain official participated in a conference call with former Senator George Mitchell, during which Mitchell advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Afterwards, this is what Goldfarb wrote about what he thinks are the powers the President possesses in our country:
Mitchell's less than persuasive answer [to whether withdrawal timetables "somehow infringe on the president's powers as commander in chief?"]: "Congress is a coequal branch of government...the framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government."As I noted at the time:True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.
Until the Bill Kristols and John Yoos and other authoritarians of that strain entered the political mainstream, I never heard of prominent Americans who describe the power that they want to vest in our political leaders as "near dictatorial." Anyone with an even passing belief in American political values would consider the word "dictatorial" -- at least rhetorically, if not substantively -- to define that which we avoid at all costs, not something which we seek, embrace and celebrate.And the very idea that the Founders -- whose principal concern was how to avoid consolidated power in any one person -- sought to vest "near dictatorial power" in the President is too perverse for words. But that's been the core "principle" driving the destructive radicalism of the last seven years, and it's an extremist view that is obviously welcomed at the highest levels of the McCain campaign.
Kristol closes his boastful announcement by noting that the pro-dictatorial Goldfarb will return to the Weekly Standard after the campaign ends -- "unless he's appointed national security adviser in the McCain White House." Somehow, McCain continues to be depicted in the media as a "moderate" and the like despite the enthusiastic support of our nation's most crazed and unprincipled warmongers. But even more revealing is that McCain is now staffing his communications apparatus at the highest levels by reaching into Bill Kristol's The Weekly Standard -- one of the most deceptive propaganda organs of the Bush years. Does one even need to point out that there are few things more incompatible with one another than "straight talk" and The Weekly Standard?
UPDATE: Michael Goldfarb on waterboarding and other illegal interrogation practices internationally considered to be "torture" (h/t A.L.):
The Times indicts the Bush administration for exposing terrorists captured abroad to "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." Boo hoo.McCain is a deeply principled opponent of torture and waterboarding which is why his new communications official's view of objections to those techniques is "Boo hoo."
[I]f federal agents show up at a corporate headquarters for a major American company and urgently seek that company's officers for assistance in the war on terror, the companies damn well ought to give it as a matter of simple patriotism, whether the CIA wants a plane for some extraordinary rendition or help in tracking terrorists via email. . . . [T]o expect a company to resist a plea from the government for help in a time of war is ridiculous.So, consistent with his President-as-Dictator vision, McCain's new communications official believes that -- as I wrote at the time -- when "federal agents" come knocking at your door and issue orders, you better "damn well" obey -- you had better not "resist" -- even if the orders you're being given are illegal, even if they're designed to spy on Americans in violation of the law, and even if they're intended to facilitate the torture of detainees. That's what patriotic Americans do -- they obey the orders of their near-dictatorial Leader, so sayeth the heel-clicking Michael Goldfarb. That's a superb, and very mainstream, new addition to the maverick McCain team.
By Joe Conason
May. 30, 2008 | Even as John McCain struggles to preserve his image as a reformer by dismissing a few of the Washington lobbyists who dominated his presidential campaign, the futility of that effort suddenly became painfully obvious. Dire bulletins in the financial media warned of many billions in rotting mortgage paper held by UBS, the financial conglomerate that just happens to employ former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, McCain's campaign chairman and chief economic advisor. Until two months ago UBS listed Gramm as a federal lobbyist on housing and mortgage issues.
So there at the shoulder of the Arizona maverick is perched yet another special-interest shill, in this instance not merely an errand boy for various dictators but the vice chairman of a Swiss bank whispering advice on how to cope with our economic woes. Or how not to cope, as in McCain's do-nothing approach to the foreclosure crisis, which displayed the strong influence of the financial lobby on his campaign.
Undoubtedly Gramm is promoting the agenda of those who subsidize him, as he has done ever since he entered politics as a servant of oil interests in his home state. He took hundreds of thousands of dollars from energy and financial interests as a congressman and then as a senator, rising to the chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee, where he could really perform major favors. He is famed for slipping in an amendment desired by Enron Corp. back when his wife was on that doomed company's board. His employment by UBS, a company that recently warned some of its executives to avoid entering the United States for fear of criminal prosecution, demands fresh scrutiny of him as well as McCain.
But if Gramm's role as a banker and lobbyist is embarrassing to McCain, the greater harm is likely to be done by his economic advice. He and McCain have been friends since they were young congressional "foot soldiers in the Reagan revolution," as both like to say, and he is often touted (or was until lately) as a likely candidate for Treasury secretary should McCain win the White House.
Now that Gramm has resurfaced in national politics, he surely deserves to be arraigned for his long history of service to powerful interests, dating from the Enron scandal and beyond. But for most Americans, the dubious connections of McCain's lobbying pals, including Gramm, should be less worrisome than the likely results of yet another four years of Republican economic nostrums. Gramm's career stands for the false promises of right-wing ideology and the troubles that such schemes, embodied in legislation, have repeatedly inflicted on us.
The former Texas senator is less voluble these days than he used to be, perhaps unsurprisingly, but in years past he has boasted of his central role in key conservative legislation, especially in liberating major sectors of the economy and finance from public oversight and skewing taxation in favor of the wealthy.
So how has that worked out over the past few decades?
Back in the '80s, Gramm smiled upon the abrupt deregulation of the savings-and-loan industry, described by his idol Ronald Reagan as America's opportunity to "hit the jackpot" of growth. He used his political clout to protect the Texas operators whose crooked machinations eventually helped to bankrupt the S&L industry. In fact, the S&L debacle cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Gramm had lent his name and energy to passage of the first Reagan budget in 1981, whose sweeping tax cuts failed to prevent recession -- and eventually required a long series of tax increases, beginning in 1982, to stanch the enormous deficits they created. At the same time he coauthored the Gramm-Rudman Act, which supposedly placed sharp constraints on federal spending but in reality had little impact.
When Bill Clinton came into office and found that the Reagan and Bush administrations had left the nation in deep deficit, he got no help from Gramm in cleaning up their mess. When Clinton bravely demanded a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans, who had profited hugely from Reagan policies skewed to their benefit, Gramm and his fellow Republicans bawled piteously about the nation's impending doom.
"I want to predict here tonight," he said on the evening that Clinton's budget passed in the spring of 1993, "that if we adopt this bill the American economy is going to get weaker and not stronger, the deficit four years from today will be higher than it is today and not lower ... When all is said and done, people will pay more taxes, the economy will create fewer jobs, the government will spend more money, and the American people will be worse off."
Is it necessary to point out how utterly wrong that prediction turned out to be? Most Americans did not pay more taxes, the economy created millions more jobs, the deficit was sharply reduced, and people were better off by every measure of economic progress, from productivity and profits to homeownership and reduced poverty.
But Gramm was not the kind of economist whose convictions are shaken by evidence, no matter how compelling. So obsessed with protecting bankers from government oversight was he that when Clinton tried to place stronger controls on terrorist money laundering, Gramm opposed even that measure as a "totalitarian" incursion.
Before he retired from the Senate in 2002, he wrote the Gramm-Bliley bill, an act broadly deregulating the financial industry -- and now blamed by many economists for the epidemic of speculation and fraud that has shaken the global economy.
Touting those changes as a way to "modernize" American finance for a global future, Gramm said they would bring wonderful new efficiencies and savings to consumers. As with the energy deregulation that he sponsored -- which was supposed to bring lower prices and better service, but led to blackouts and price gouging -- those economic wonders never quite appeared. The damaging effects of banking deregulation took nearly a decade to be felt, but whether we have experienced the worst still remains to be seen.
Over and over again, from the savings-and-loan fiasco to the Enron shock to the global banking meltdown, the golden promises of deregulation have turned to leaden ruin. Perhaps nobody cares about the lobbyists surrounding McCain, but someone should ask him why he would cherish the advice of a man whose devotion to ideology has already done us so much damage.