November 26, 2008 archive

Four at Four

  1. The LA Times reports the Iraq parliament delays vote on security agreement. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was unsure he had enough votes to pass the agreement to allow the United States to stay in Iraq for another three years past the December 31, 2008 deadline. Sunni lawmakers have been pressing Maliki’s Shiite-led government for concessions in exchange for their support. The vote is seen as a referendum on the Maliki administration.

    The delay, coming after days of political bargaining and cajoling, underscored Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s concerns about passing the controversial Status of Forces Agreement without a wide margin. The legislature’s main Shiite Muslim and Kurdish blocs support the deal, virtually ensuring it would win the 138 votes needed to pass the 275-seat parliament. But Shiite Muslim leaders want to ensure sufficient Sunni votes to guarantee its legitimacy in the eyes of Iraq’s Sunnis.

    As a result, what began as a debate over the future of U.S. forces here has evolved into a political showdown reflective of the resentment, sectarian distrust and grudges among Iraqi lawmakers. The main Sunni bloc, Tawafiq, led the way in using the security agreement as a bargaining chip for getting its own demands met, but smaller political factions followed.

    By today, a host of mainly Sunni parties were demanding that the pact be accompanied by legislation encompassing a range of demands. They included amnesty for U.S.-held detainees, who are mainly Sunni; the elimination of a special court established to try figures in Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led regime for crimes committed on the regime’s behalf; and the lifting of restrictions that prevent former members of Hussein’s Baath Party from holding high-level government jobs.

Four at Four continues with Obama’s national security team, a possible coup in Thailand, and Greenland’s greater self-rule.

Anti-Torture Activists Chase Brennan from CIA Post

The Washington Post reports in an article today that the “criticism of a number of groups” regarding John Brennan’s positions on torture and rendition led him to withdraw his name from nomination to CIA director in an Obama administration.

Brennan’s withdrawal came three days after a group of about 200 psychiatrists and academics wrote to Obama opposing his appointment, saying Brennan was tainted by his association with some of the CIA’s most controversial policies of the Bush era. They include the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods against captured al-Qaeda leaders in secret CIA prisons.

“Mr. Brennan served as a high official in George Tenet’s CIA and supported Tenet’s policies, including ‘enhanced interrogations’ as well as ‘renditions’ to torturing countries,” the coalition stated in the letter. The group said Brennan’s appointment would “dishearten and alienate those who opposed torture under the Bush administration.”

Anti-Torture Activists Chase Brennan from CIA Post

The Washington Post reports in an article today that the “criticism of a number of groups” regarding John Brennan’s positions on torture and rendition led him to withdraw his name from nomination to CIA director in an Obama administration.

Brennan’s withdrawal came three days after a group of about 200 psychiatrists and academics wrote to Obama opposing his appointment, saying Brennan was tainted by his association with some of the CIA’s most controversial policies of the Bush era. They include the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods against captured al-Qaeda leaders in secret CIA prisons.

“Mr. Brennan served as a high official in George Tenet’s CIA and supported Tenet’s policies, including ‘enhanced interrogations’ as well as ‘renditions’ to torturing countries,” the coalition stated in the letter. The group said Brennan’s appointment would “dishearten and alienate those who opposed torture under the Bush administration.”

Competence Uber Alles

I don’t want to write this essay!

For one thing it is the topic du jour in the blogosphere and I hate being a copy cat and a kneejerker. I also hate looking like a toady or an an Obamabot. But mainly I don’t want to write it because it argues against Progressivism….sorta. The twitter in the blogosphere today is over Obama’s Cabinet picks. He is definitely NOT packing his cabinet with Progressives. As the blogosphere apparently wants him to do. At the center of the storm is SecDef Gates. Well, no, actually that is wrong. At the center of the storm is impatience. And a feeling of betrayal. And ideology.

A construction analogy: George Bush blew up the house and Obama has to rebuild it before the snows come.

The first order of business is not, can not be….ideology. The first order of business is ….getting the house rebuilt. You don’t select carpenters on the basis of their ideology, and then have an ideological argument BEFORE starting to rebuild. You take the pieces that have been left to you and start to put them back together so people aren’t left out in the cold. You get some walls up and a roof on. THEN you can start to discuss what the house should look like, and what you want to do with it.

But, before you can even do that…..you have to gain the trust of the people building the house. NOT all the people. Especially not all the critics. You get the trust of the people who will do the actual work of building. In this case, that is the existing bureaucracy. And then you get the trust of the people who could sabotage the house as you are building it, in this case that is The Powers That Be behind the government. The folks who REALLY run this country.

The Ruling Class.

How To Steal Eight Trillion Dollars And Get Away With It

The easiest way is to steal $26,000 from you. And then steal $26,000 from everyone you know. And then steal $26,000 from everyone you don’t know.

Nomi Prins is a journalist and Senior Fellow at Demos. She writes about politics, money and relationships.

Nomi is the author of Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and also author of Jacked: How “Conservatives” are Picking your Pocket.

Before becoming a journalist, Nomi worked on Wall Street as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and running the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London.

Financial “bailouts” spending your money just since Monday this week… yes, since two days ago… have been over One Trillion Dollars.

With the credit crisis continuing to worsen, the US federal government is pledging a seemingly endless amount of money to shore up failing institutions hit hard by toxic assets. Federal government pledges now top $8 trillion with the most recent $800 billion announced Tuesday.

The Real News Network spoke to journalist and author Nomi Prins.

Real News: November 26, 2008 – 8 min 54 sec

Bailout costs $8.5 trillion

The US Federal Government has pledged $8.56 trillion in economic bailout for financial institutions so far

Counting the teenage dead, bringing the war to campus

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Reports from Iraq Moratorium #15, observed Nov. 21, are coming in to the Moratorium website.  This one from Santa Barbara:

Vets for Peace, Chapter 54: A war memorial honoring exclusively the 18- 19- year-old military personnel, men and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, was erected on a lawn overlooking the ocean at Santa Barbara City College. The local chapter of Veterans for Peace and students set up the memorial, which currently honors 303 young men & women.

Dr. Gilberto Robledo, former faculty member of SBCC and VFP member along with several other VFP/SBCC students sets up the memorial the third Friday of every month in conjunction with the national Iraq Moratorium. As students, faculty, staff & community members pass by, they’re asked to place a placard on a white tombstone. The military person’s picture, name, unit, circumstance surrounding the death, and birth date is on the placard. This interactive memorial depicts the cost of war, especially to the college age students, who in many cases are in the same age range as the teen casualties of these two current conflicts.

American teenage casualties, of course, are the tip of the iceberg when measuring the costs of the wars.  In Iraq alone, hundreds of thousands of civilians — some estimates say a million — have died.  Even before the war, 500,000 Iraqi children died unnecessarily because of economic sanctions that prevented them from getting the food and medical care they needed.

Reminding college students that young men and women their age are dying is one way to bring the cost of war home.  There are many others, like a “health care not warfare” campaign in Wisconsin aimed at redirecting our tax dollars from killing to life-saving.  You’ll find reports from there, and other actions across the country, on the website, too.

Check it out.

Open Thread

 

Please pass the thread.

Watching the Iraq Parliament on the Iraq/U.S. SOFA pact

The voting comes today but the dealing goes to the wire.

Iraq’s ruling Shiite and Kurdish blocs have made a key concession to a large group of Sunni Arab legislators in hopes of securing a big majority in a parliamentary vote on a U.S.-Iraqi security pact, a senior Shiite lawmaker and a close aide to the prime minister said Wednesday.

Just this past Sunday al-Maliki said if pack isn’t passed, Occupation Forces Out!

“Extending the presence of the international forces on Iraqi soil will not be our alternative,” Maliki told journalists. “The alternative will be their immediate withdrawal from Iraq.”

Holiday Food Porn

Its hot. Its steamy. It makes you tremble in anticipation.  It makes you covet thy neighbor’s portion even while sated on your own.

Food, Glorious Food!

Photobucket

(Yeah, I’m a Mom, I now picture the vulture scene from Ice Age 3, not Oliver Twist when this song plays in my head!)

Here is a space to share your innermost oral-fixation secrets, lay bare your culinary souls.

LOL!

C’mon you know what I want. Right here. In the Kitchen. I’m so naughty….

I want every recipe you can give me!!!!!

From Turkey to Christmas Cookies!  Of course, it doesn’t have to be Holiday food, any favorite recipe you want to share.

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

State of the Onion XV

Art Link

Wallpaper

Flames

The fire

that may burn

in the belly

or on the tongue

slowly smoulders

in the mind

over the kindling

of traditional thought

Progress begins

when I flambé

the tissue of my brain

over the white hot flame

of new perspective

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–February 8, 2006

The Morning News

The Morning News is an Open Thread

120 Stories.  Top, World, U.S., and Science

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Obama: Economic rescue will trump deficit fight

By BETH FOUHY and DAVID ESPO, Associated Press Writers

11 mins ago

CHICAGO – The economy growing weaker, President-elect Barack Obama said Tuesday that recovery efforts will trump deficit concerns when he takes office in January. Yet he pledged a “page-by-page, line-by-line” budget review to root out unneeded spending.

The president-elect set no goals for reducing the federal deficit – now in record territory and headed ever higher – an obvious contrast to Monday’s announcement that he hopes to create a recession-busting 2.5 million jobs by 2010.

He spoke as he appointed Peter Orszag, currently head of the Congressional Budget Office, to be his own budget director.

Late Night Karaoke

Talking Is Wonderful

James – Laid

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