Inspire Political Discourse

BLACKWATER aka XE Contracted With Foreign Operatives to Staff Secret CIA Program

Blackwater, who recently changed it's name to XE. the world's most powerful private army, owned by Erik Prince, a right-wing Christian, hired foreign operatives to implement a secret CIA operation. The question here is WHY would the CIA hire Blackwater for an operation well within it's own bailiwick.

WASHINGTON — When the CIA revived a plan to kill or capture terrorists in 2004, the agency turned to the well-connected security company then known as Blackwater USA.

With Blackwater's lucrative government security work and contacts arrayed in hot spots around the world, company officials offered the services of foreigners supposedly skilled at tracking terrorists in lawless regions and countries where the CIA had no working relationships with the government.

Blackwater told the CIA that it "could put people on the ground to provide the surveillance and support – all of the things you need to conduct an operation," a former senior CIA official .....

Continue reading article.

Krugman on Wingnut Paranoia

Paul Krugman on the wingnuts:

“The truth is that the factors that made politics so ugly in the Clinton years — the paranoia of a significant minority of Americans and the cynical willingness of leading Republicans to cater to that paranoia — are as strong as ever. In fact, the situation may be even worse than it was in the 1990s because the collapse of the Bush administration has left the G.O.P. with no real leaders other than Rush Limbaugh.»

IPD Political News Summary: Monday, April 13, 2009

Political News Summary: Friday, April 10 – Sunday, April 12, 2009

| The hostage crisis near the Somali coast was resolved on Sunday, when Navy Seals engaged in a brief firefight with the pirates, killing 3  of them, and wounding one. The hostage, Captain Richard Phillips, has been rescued, and is not injured. Thanks to President Obama who managed the crisis, and to the Navy Seals who accomplished it. It is so nice to have an adult once again in charge.  AP article:

[Unlike Bush] “Obama didn't go before the cameras Sunday to trumpet the success, instead releasing a written statement that saluted the bravery of the military and Phillips but claimed no credit for himself.”

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| The “teabagging” insanity continues, generating massive sales in related merchandise, and demagoguery: Tea Party Insanity: "Burn The Books!" (VIDEO)

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| Mayor Bloomberg will seek re-election to a third term this fall by running as a Republican.

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| First she was for it, then she was against it. Last Tuesday, Texas lawmaker, State Rep. Betty Brown (R), set herself up for an enormous amount of criticism when she said that Asian-Americans should change their names because they’re too hard to pronounce:

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” source

She was called upon to apologize or to resign, and up until a couple of days ago, she resisted either course of action, . Her spokesman suggested that Democrats “want this to just be about race.”. Ahem.
Brown finally issued an apology, saying that “the remark came during a conversation on the difficulty of translating names and that she was referring to transliteration issues when she asked a representative of the Organization of Chinese Americans whether Asian-Americans could adopt names that "we could deal with more readily here."”

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| Certain news organizations have intentionally mischaracterized President Obama’s stance on supplemental spending bills having to do with the Iraq War, claiming that his war funding request is the same type of supplemental war spending that he [Obama] opposed during the Bush administration. In point of fact, in 2007, when Obama opposed those spending bills, he made the statement then that he opposed them because they contained NO timeline for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. source
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| John McCain’s former economic adviser, and ex-CBO director, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, flipped re his stance on the Bush tax cuts. Throughout the presidential campaign, not only was Eakin very vocally in favor of McCain’s plan to retain the Bush tax cuts, he wanted to double these cuts for the very wealthy. He has now said that he believes the tax cuts should be allowed to expire in 2010 for fear of a fiscal meltdown, and rising deficits. Said Holtz-Eakin:

"If you ask: 'Who pays the taxes?', it's the first step toward not having the answer be: 'Our kids.”

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| MEDIA MATTERS log, April 13 - April 19, 2009

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The GOP and the Economy

Bush Wanted to Get Rid of the First Amendment Right to Freedom of the Press

:: In one of the secret Bush memos released by the DOJ yesterday, we learned exactly how far Bush was willing to go.
Freedom of the press, guaranteed under the First Amendment, necessary for a Democracy to exist, was nothing to Bush. From Newsweek:

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.had been asked to

Many of the actions discussed in the Oct. 23, 2001, memo to then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's chief lawyer, William Haynes, were never actually taken.

But the memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel—along with others made public for the first time Monday—illustrates with new details the extraordinary post-9/11 powers asserted by Bush administration lawyers. Those assertions ultimately led to such controversial policies as allowing the waterboarding of terror suspects and permitting warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens—steps that remain the subject of ongoing investigations by Congress and the Justice Department. The memo was co-written by John Yoo, at the time a deputy attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel. Yoo, now a professor at the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, has emerged as one of the central figures in those ongoing investigations.

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Obama Administration Releases Secret Bush Memos

 
Justice Department memos from 2001 are seen in Washington Monday, March 2, 2009. The Justice Department on Monday released a long-secret legal document from 2001 in which the Bush administration claimed the military could search and seize terror suspects in the United States without warrants. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

:: Nine documents/memos were released by the DOJ today, and posted online.
All are related to the war on terror, dated between 2001-2002, and one of the memos indicates that  the Bush administration was looking for ways to accomplish warrantless wiretapping within a couple of weeks of the events of 9/11,
In this excerpt from an AP report, the writer is referring to one of the documents.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department on Monday released a long-secret legal document from 2001 in which the Bush administration claimed the military could search and seize terror suspects in the United States without warrants.

The legal memo was written about a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It says constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure would not apply to terror suspects in the U.S., as long as the president or another high official authorized the action.

:: Secret Bush Memo Authorizing Warrantless Seizure Of 'Terror Suspects' Released
:: Secret Bush Memos Released: FULL TEXT
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
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CIA Destroyed 92 Terror Interrogation Tapes

  :: The AP reports that close to 100 CIA terror interrogation tapes were destroyed, many more than previously acknowledged.
The 'good' news continues to be revealed in this ongoing disgrace to our country.

One word. Prosecute.
Four names. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld.

From the AP:

WASHINGTON — New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations, far more than has previously been acknowledged.

AP photo.
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Holder to End Raids on State-Sanctioned Medical Marijuana Clubs

:: During the Bush administration, the Feds raided even the clubs legalized by the state. Fulfilling a promise made by Obama during his campaign, Holder will now move to end these raids. From HUFFPOST:

Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference Wednesday that the Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana clubs that are established legally under state law. His declaration is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by President Barack Obama, and marks a major shift from the previous administration.

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How the Republican Party Has Defined Itself, and What We Must Do About It

I hate that I have been unable to report the political news for the past two weeks. In part because I truly enjoy it, but primarily because it has been completely mind-boggling to watch the GOP as they finish themselves off via their refusal to work for their constituents and their country rather than the corporate interests who put them in office, and the party who now claims Rush Limbaugh as it's fearless leader, and Joe-the-not-a-plumber as a valued adviser (and don't even let me get started on Joe-the-freaking-loser-idiot!!).

On the other hand, I believe that it is naive to expect the GOP to work in concert with a Democratic leadership. Good for the country though it would most certainly be, the Republicans have shown complete disdain for Democrats for at least 28 years now, and during the reign of Bush-the-Fascist-King, the intensity of that disdain only grew ever larger. The Republican party with whom we often managed to find consensus in the distant past, is gone. In it's place is a a theo-fascist amalgam which seeks to serve only itself and corporate interests. That amalgam, combined with their unwillingness to live up to their original credo, and go for fiscal restraint, makes them a very out-dated, and dangerous force in this country, and yet still a force with which we must deal, until they go the way of the Whig party. More on the dealing with the Repubs in a later post.

At this point, the GOP has become, through it's own doing, nothing more than a regional fringe party for the wealthy, and the stupid, with common ground in their worship of theocratic values, social absence, and civil inequality. These people are not our partners or friends, in fact, they demonize and disdain everything even approaching liberal thought. We must make sure that they are even further marginalized and made completely irrelevant prior to the 2010 elections. We can not afford not to. 

 

Frank Rich/NYT on Michael Steele:

Steele’s argument against the stimulus package is that “in the history of mankind” no “federal, state or local” government has ever “created one job.” As it happens, among the millions of jobs created by the government are the federal investigators now pursuing Steele for alleged financial improprieties in his failed 2006 Senate campaign.

FULL VIDEO: President Obama's First Press Conference - February 9, 2009

To read the complete transcript, click here.

John Yoo Blasts Obama for Banning Torture

:: The author of the Bush administration legal memos on torture, Yoo predicted dire consequences in an opinion piece on The Wall Street Journal online.

Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.
Relying on the civilian justice system not only robs us of the most effective intelligence tool to avert future attacks, it provides an opportunity for our enemies to obtain intelligence on us.

In fact, the Army Field Manual explicitly permits good cop-bad cop interrogations under the name of “Mutt and Jeff” interrogations, which involve two interrogators “display[ing] opposing personalities and attitudes toward the source.” The Field Manual says the “goal of this technique is to make the source identify with one of the interrogators and thereby establish[ing] rapport and cooperation.”

Response to Yoo, from Think Progress:

Yoo has no idea what he’s talking about. Nothing requires anyone to “be polite” — although the rapport building method has often proved to be interrogators’ most effective technique. And the notion that good-cop/bad-cop would be banned is simply false, Media Matters pointed out earlier this week:

It’s no secret that Yoo is an ardent torture enthusiast: He famously said that only those techniques that inflict pain equivalent to “death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions” constitute torture, and last year refused to agree that the president could not order a detainee buried alive. With Obama signaling a clean break from the Bush administration’s terrorism policies, it’s no wonder Yoo is desperate to restore his crumbling torture regime.

AP photo.
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Obama Says "Yes" to Labor and the Middle Class

:: The Prez signs executive orders which reverse anti-labor orders enacted by Bush H.W. and Bush 43. He is also re-introducing Biden's task force which focuses on the middle class, and Joe will be in charge. GO, OBAMA! :)
From HUFFPOST:

Among the George W. Bush-era executive orders that Obama was to reverse was one that allowed unionized companies to post signs informing workers that they are allowed to decertify their union. Critics claimed it was unfair because nonunion businesses are not required to post signs letting workers know they are legally allowed to vote for a union.
Two Democratic sources also said Obama would prevent federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses that were intended to influence workers' decisions to form unions or engage in collective bargaining. A third Obama order would require federal vendors with more than $100,000 in contracts to post workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
The final order would require service contractors at federal buildings to offer jobs to qualified current employees when contracts changed. For instance, rank-and-file workers could continue working on the same federal project even if the administrative contract expired.

AP photo/Ron Edmunds 
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Political News Summary: Wednesday, January 28, 2009

:: More on HuffPost re Republican behavior (besides, I had to share this great graphic from HP). The headline over the elephant pic reads "Toeing the Party Line". Gotta admit, we Dems have a much keener sense of humor than the Repubs. Oh, and by the time you click on this link, the headline and the image may be different because it's on the HuffPost home page. From HUFFPOST:

:: On Republican behavior. From Bob Cesca (I love this guy):

Political News Summary: Tuesday, January 27, 2009

:: Rush Limbaugh copies GOP liars, makes false claim that ACORN is mentioned in the stimulus and will receive $4.19 billion. What a sad loser cherub-cheeked Rushie is...... From Media Matters:

Summary: Parroting GOP talking points, Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed $4.19 billion of President Barack Obama's economic recovery package "is going to ACORN." In fact, the bill does not mention ACORN or otherwise single it out for funding.

TAGS: Rush Limbaugh, Conservative Pundits, GOP/Republicans, President Obama, LIES,
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Former Bush Speechwriter, David Frum, Slams Republican Leadership

Bush speechwriter, David Frum: GOP "leaders cocoon themselves, refuse to hear unwelcome news, and reward yesmanship." Amen.
This is more than obvious to those of us on the left, Mr. Frum. The problem is not just with your leaders however, your far right-wing/evangelical followers suffer from the same lack of ability to self-examine, and their ability to see and tell the truth appears to be at an all-time low. And, that is putting it in very polite terms. From NewMajority:

Our party has been crippled by an all-pervading assumption at the center that if you just don’t talk about bad news, it will go away: whether it’s an extravagant wardrobe decision - or a bad job creation record. Our leaders cocoon themselves, refuse to hear unwelcome news, and reward yesmanship.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

A Democracy Requires That We All Become Aware and Involved, or We Risk Losing it

My reasons for writing this post are solely to encourage you, and to arm you. I am compelled to do so not only by the events of the past eight years, but by what has been revealed in Keith Olbermann's interview with former National Security Agency analyst, Russell Tice.

My intent is simple: that you and your family, if you have not been focusing your attention on national politics, as indeed, I myself did not until last August, are able to become aware of and absorb the events that occurred in this country under the auspices of the Bush administration.

The events which sent the United States barreling towards becoming a Fascist Republic, and signified the end of our Democratic Republic. Indeed, in the 200+ year history of our nation, such a situation had never been allowed to occur, and yet it did, on our watch. We must guard our freedom well to prevent any possibility of a recurrence, because we love our children and our country. And guarding it requires awareness and action.

But..... it's over, you say. President Bush and Vice President Cheney are no longer in power. In part, certainly. However, in order to safeguard our freedom for future generations, we must all be aware of, and pass on what happened to this country to cause it to conform with the ideals of a fascist republic, and give up our constitutional rights to a group of men who sought power that was not their's under the tenets of our constitution.

This is so important, that this era of our history will forever become a part of all unbiased teachings about our constitution, the history of our republic, and so on. We as a country, came just this close to becoming what the constitution was supposed to have prevented.

It occurred because a group of men, led by President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove, sought an inordinate amount of power in order to personally benefit from the wielding of that power. Their methods included the intent to instill so much fear in the American people that we would willingly accept restrictions upon our liberty, the revocation of the tenets of our constitution, and they were indeed highly successful. They benefited personally on a scale never before seen, and we have been left with the nation's coffers empty, the monies handed over to Halliburton, Blackwater, and others, a resulting economic crisis of a magnitude not yet reached, a global financial crisis that may take years to recover from, two wars, one of them completely unnecessary and immoral, and our reputation in shreds all over the world. 

videos after the jump

VIDEO - Keith Olbermann: Cheney Confesses to War Crimes

Full Transcript - This Week's George Stephanopoulos' Interview With Obama, January 11, 2009

George Stephanopoulos' Exclusive Interview with President-Elect Barack Obama

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Hello, again. In nine days he will be president of the United States. This morning Barack Obama is our exclusive headliner. Welcome back to THIS WEEK.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT-ELECT: Thank you, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Does it feel like you're president already?

OBAMA: No.

Political News Summary - Wednesday, January 7, 2009

:: The Obama Inaugural poster released.

 

Source: HUFFPOST
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:: The White House snubs Obama re Blair House?

Last night we learned the identity of the guest scheduled to stay at Blair House that caused the White House to decline Obama's request to move in earlier than planned so that his daughters could start school. It turned out to be the former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, scheduled for a one-night stay in January.

Now, however, according to Think Progress, if what a Bloomberg reporter said last night on Countdown is true, Obama was actually snubbed. And here I didn't think that George W. Bush could do anything else to further embarrass this country. From Think Progress:

“Last night on MSNBC's "Countdown," Bloomberg journalist Margaret Carlson revealed that when the White House turned down Obama's request in early December, it had not yet even invited Howard to stay at the Blair House:
I reported...on December 11 and 12 that there were no foreign dignitaries booked into Blair House during that period of time. ... I have the feeling they asked him [Howard] to come and stay so that there might be some plausible reason for not letting the Obamas stay there.”

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:: IPD Daily Political Cartoon Find

Cartoon by Gary Varvel for indystar.com
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:: Additional confirmation hearings announced for next week. See schedule below. For info on cabinet nominees, click here.

Hearings held on Tuesday, January 13:

NOMINEE	COMMITTEE TO HEAR
Hillary Clinton	Foreign Relations
Peter Orszag	Budget Committee
Arne Duncan	HELP panel
Steven Chu	Energy and Natural Resources Committee
Lisa Jackson	Environment and Public Works Committee

Hearings on Wednesday, January 14:

NOMINEE	COMMITTEE TO HEAR
Tom Vilsack	Agriculture Committee
Eric Shinseki	Veterans Affairs Committee
Peter Orszag	Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

Hearings on Thursday, January 15:

NOMINEE	COMMITTEE TO HEAR
Eric Holder Jr.	Judiciary Committee
Ken Salazar	Energy & Natural Resources panel
Susan Rice	Foreign Relations
Timothy Geithner	Finance Committee
Janet Napolitano	Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee

Source: Tables Copyright © IPD 2009
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In 2009: Signs of Things to Come

Please note that the Daily Political News Summary will resume publication on January 5.

On December 31, I woke up, grabbed my first cup of coffee, and began my daily reading.

When I landed on Huffpo, the top two headlines were,

"Burris builds monument to himself in Chicago cemetary" [politico link],

                                           and

"Gonzales writing a book: "I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror." [wsj link].

Is this a sign of things to come in 2009?     Hilarious, and only in the political world.

Have an extremely healthy, happy, and productive 2009!