May 27, 2009 archive

TPM Reporting Sestak WILL run against Specter.

Brian Buetler of TPM is reporting that Congressman Sestak will run against Senator Specter in the Pa. Democratic primary.

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) is privately telling supporters that he intends to run for Senate, TPMDC has confirmed.

“He intends to get in the race,” says Meg Infantino, the Congressman’s sister, who works at Sestak for Congress. “In the not too distant future, he will sit down with his wife and daughter to make the final decision.”

TPM: EXCLUSIVE: Sestak Intends To Run For Senate

Follow the link and read the handwritten note to a supporter in which Sestak announces he will run and asks for a contribution.  And give TPM some views, because they broke the story.  

Four at Four

  1. Reuters reports Iraq starts oil exports from Kurdistan. “Iraq started exporting oil from its largely autonomous Kurdistan region for the first time on Wednesday, Iraq’s Oil Ministry said, in an apparent breakthrough after years of deadlock over disputed Kurdish oil contracts.” The oil is flowing over pipelines to the “Turkish port of Ceyhan at an initial test rate of 10,000 barrels per day”.

    The Financial Times adds Baghdad may yet fulfill its potential. “After almost 40 years of exile, international oil companies are about to return to Iraq. For companies such as BP, Shell, Total and ExxonMobil, Iraq represents the biggest opportunity in decades.”

    A reason for war? “International groups have been short of opportunities to tap easy oil as oil-rich countries have closed their borders to them and relied on their own national companies and on service contractors”.

    Meanwhile, the NY Times reports “A roadside bomb killed three Americans traveling in Falluja,” including State Department official Terrence Barnich, the deputy director of the Iraq Transition Assistance Office in Baghdad. “The attack also killed an American soldier and a civilian working for the Defense Department.” The AP adds May was “the deadliest month for the American military since September.”

Four at Four continues with CO2 emissions, national security changes, and Sotomayor is the antithesis of the Republicans’ “stealth candidate”.

Breaking The Taboo: What We Face On Every Front

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones,

So let it be with Caesar

Billy Shakespeare

This essay is taboo, this essay speaks an awkward, uncomfortable truth. This essay is controversial. This essay speaks plainly of something that is not easily spoken about. This essay will contain more caveats than I have ever written!

Los Caveats: Please read before proceeding.

For I place this essay before you today not to condemn a subset of humanity, not to say that they are evil, not to call for their heads, and certainly not to condemn every person reading it who shares any of the characteristics of the subset in question. I share them myself.

If you are reading this and yet do share some of those characteristics…you have probably been fighting your whole life to defeat…..”it.” Yet, it will probably still sting. You may feel a sense of shame, but I say to you now, with all of the honesty I can muster after examining my heart and conscience, I do not write this to shame you. You may what I am about to write and you are about to read… ‘insensitive.’ You may even find it insulting. You may become angry. The words on this page may make you feel…..a certain way. Which is why they are taboo. But they are, to the best of my ability to perceive it, The Truth. And though I take full responsibility for writing them, I do not take responsibility for how they make you feel. I did not make this Truth. I just have the temerity to set it in print.

As the subset I am writing about often are heard to say….I apologize if what I say offends you in any way.

If you have read and understand these caveats, you may proceed below the fold.

Contract Bids Invited For Gitmo Upgrade

From RawStory: “Even with President Obama’s looming deadline to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, and the U.S. Senate’s refusal to supply funding to do so until its prisoners can be transferred anywhere but the United States, somehow money has been approved to upgrade the prison’s access control system and to install new video surveillance cameras.

According to Government Security News magazine:

When it initially posted its “special notice” of the upcoming security work on May 1, the Gitmo contracting branch indicated it planned to award a sole source, fixed price contract to Norment Security Group, Inc., of Tracy, CA, for its “proprietary electronic access control system,” but a subsequent notice published May 22 appears to open the procurement contract to all qualified security vendors.

Norment performed the original systems integration work on the access control system in Camp Six, under a contract worth about $600,000, when it was built during the Bush administration, Steve Stonehouse, a sales and marketing executive at the company, told GSN on May 26.

“They want to add some cameras, so they can see some areas better,” said Steve Adams, an electronics estimator with Norment.

The Joint Task Force – Guantanamo described the current access control system as including a programmable controller by Omron, of Kyoto, Japan; an Access database from Microsoft; touch screen software from the Wonderware unit of Invensys Group, of London, UK; and other products by Honeywell.

Neither Stonehouse nor Adams could explain why the Guantanamo contracting office would be spending additional money on the access control and video surveillance systems, if the president intends to close the detention facilities during the coming year. They guessed that the upgrades were simply temporary measures that would enhance security on a short-term basis.

The original contract posting is here

Dispatch from the Front!

From David Swanson.

I posted this proposal earlier today on the president’s open government site and it has shot up to #2 (in the category of legal and policy changes) right behind legalizing pot.  I think we can take first place.  Can your organization help?

1. Vote Up This Proposal on Obama’s Open Government Website

Here’s a direct link to a proposal I’ve just posted on the president’s new website.  Please go there, read the proposal, and if you like it vote for it.  And post your ideas to improve it.

http://opengov.ideascale.com/a…

Candidate Obama asked for our opinions through a website.  Our top demand was that he keep his promise to vote against immunity for telecoms that spied illegally.  He ignored us, promised to do better as president, and hasn’t.

President-Elect Obama asked for our opinions through his transition website.  Our top question was whether he would appoint a special prosecutor for Bush, Cheney, and gang.  He refused to answer the question until asked by the corporate media, and then talked about “looking forward”.

Now President Obama is asking for our opinions on a website.  This is a good thing but should be gone into with some caveats.  First, Obama has always ignored us before, and ignoring people who obediently type on your website as supporters of whatever you do first and citizens with their own opinions second is easier than ignoring just about anything else.  Here are other actions you can take following the 30 seconds needed for this one: http://prosecutebushcheney.org

Second, we have representatives and senators whom we are supposed to lobby and whom we are much more likely to lobby successfully, and they are supposed to run the country, not the executive.  Third, majority opinion and the clear mandates of our nation’s laws ought to carry more weight than the opinions of a self-selected group of presidential advisors (I mean other than Congress which has devolved into more or less just that).

But what if a flood of American citizens were to give the president the kind of advice that is most useful rather than the kind that is most enjoyable to hear?  What if we were to ask President Obama to (allow the attorney general to) prosecute his predecessors and (encourage Congress to) remove the unconstitutional powers they claimed from the presidency?  Might someone hear our voices, repeat our questions on camera, begin thinking about our point of view, or ask about our issues before confirming a new Supreme Court Justice?

It’s certainly possible. Here’s the proposal to read and vote for:

http://opengov.ideascale.com/a…

And by the way…David has an excellent diary up at Dkos right now!

“Looting of America” Author Sees Opportunity in Meltdown by David Swanson

Dispatch from the Front!

From David Swanson.

I posted this proposal earlier today on the president’s open government site and it has shot up to #2 (in the category of legal and policy changes) right behind legalizing pot.  I think we can take first place.  Can your organization help?

1. Vote Up This Proposal on Obama’s Open Government Website

Here’s a direct link to a proposal I’ve just posted on the president’s new website.  Please go there, read the proposal, and if you like it vote for it.  And post your ideas to improve it.

http://opengov.ideascale.com/a…

Candidate Obama asked for our opinions through a website.  Our top demand was that he keep his promise to vote against immunity for telecoms that spied illegally.  He ignored us, promised to do better as president, and hasn’t.

President-Elect Obama asked for our opinions through his transition website.  Our top question was whether he would appoint a special prosecutor for Bush, Cheney, and gang.  He refused to answer the question until asked by the corporate media, and then talked about “looking forward”.

Now President Obama is asking for our opinions on a website.  This is a good thing but should be gone into with some caveats.  First, Obama has always ignored us before, and ignoring people who obediently type on your website as supporters of whatever you do first and citizens with their own opinions second is easier than ignoring just about anything else.  Here are other actions you can take following the 30 seconds needed for this one: http://prosecutebushcheney.org

Second, we have representatives and senators whom we are supposed to lobby and whom we are much more likely to lobby successfully, and they are supposed to run the country, not the executive.  Third, majority opinion and the clear mandates of our nation’s laws ought to carry more weight than the opinions of a self-selected group of presidential advisors (I mean other than Congress which has devolved into more or less just that).

But what if a flood of American citizens were to give the president the kind of advice that is most useful rather than the kind that is most enjoyable to hear?  What if we were to ask President Obama to (allow the attorney general to) prosecute his predecessors and (encourage Congress to) remove the unconstitutional powers they claimed from the presidency?  Might someone hear our voices, repeat our questions on camera, begin thinking about our point of view, or ask about our issues before confirming a new Supreme Court Justice?

It’s certainly possible. Here’s the proposal to read and vote for:

http://opengov.ideascale.com/a…

About Military Commissions

Last week the President made a speech about the closing of Guantanamo Bay Prison. Most of us politically savvy (obsessed?) folks have heard it and heard some of the various analysis of it. One area of concern was the President’s contention that, due to factors which happened in the previous administration, he might not be able to try all of the accused prisoners in Federal Courts as he had previously promised. He went further to saying he thought that a revamped Military Commissions structure could be used to do the job, and thus avoid trying these men in Federal Court.  

Class war focuses on Sotomayor. Empathy only for the poor rich people.

Crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

   Now that Sonia Sotomayor has been named by President Obama to be his first (of hopefully many) nominee to the Supreme Court the political wing of the Oligarchy will attack her for voting in her interests as a minority, a female and a plebian.

   Republicans and other plutocrats find it threatening when poor/non-white/non-Christian/minority people vote and act in their own interests. The only way to win an election for the 1% is to trick another 50% into voting for rich people. Fear and hatred is to trick them into it with falsity and wedge issues. If more people succeed like Judge Sotomayor the GOP will lose. The last thing they want is educated and informed plebeians acting in their best interests. If that shit catches on it is the end of the GOP.

   Sotomayor’s confirmation will be opposed on the front lines of the class war. Whether she or we know it or not, Sotomayor just stepped up to the status quo. Expect them to take this threat seriously.

   The only arguments the GOP can make against Sotomayor will be on sexist/racist/elitist or flat out ridiculous grounds. This is class warfare. Sotomayor just took center stage.

   Prepare for war.  

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

They are easy to do,

things of no good

and of no use to yourself.

What is truly useful and good

is truly harder than hard to do.

–The Dhammapada, 163

Phenomena VIII: accepting


Becalmed

Breathing

A few people

standing on the deck

of this boat

blowing at the sail

will not move it

Newton ensured that

We’ll always have

that equal

and opposite

reaction

Moving this boat

will require

the collective breath

of millions

who are not on it

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–April 4, 2008

On Cutting Dealerships, Or, We Examine The Costs Of Selling Cars

So there’s a lot of conversation out there about car dealerships being told they won’t be selling cars for Chrysler and GM any more.

The idea, we are told, is to save the auto manufacturers money by reducing the number of dealerships with whom they do business.

I don’t really know that much about the car business; and I really didn’t understand where these cost savings would come from, but I was able to have a conversation with the one person I do know who actually could offer some useful insight.

Follow along, Gentle Reader, and you’ll get a bit of an education at a time when we all need to know a bit more about these companies we suddenly seem to own…and about the closure of thousands of local businesses that will make the news about our bad job market worse.

Late Night Karaoke

No Wednesday Songs

News Now

Huge blast hits central Lahore

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — A huge explosion reduced at least one building to rubble and sent plumes of thick smoke miles into the sky in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday.

The blast occurred on Mall Road near the city police headquarters and the high court, according to witnesses and GEO-TV, a CNN affiliate.

There were no immediate details on confirmed casualties, though television reports said the blast wounded several people, destroyed dozens of cars and damaged buildings.

Lahore is the same city where gunmen hurled grenades and opened fire on officers at a police training center in March.

The same month, gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying members of the Sri Lankan national cricket team on their way to a stadium for a match. The well-coordinated attack wounded at least eight members of the team and killed a driver and six Pakistani police officers.

North Korea Threatens Armed Strike, End to Armistice

May 27 (Bloomberg) — North Korea threatened military action in response to South Korea joining a program to seize weapons shipments, and said it’s no longer bound by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

South Korea’s actions are tantamount to a “declaration of war,” the official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement today. “If the armistice agreement loses its validity, the Korean peninsula will revert to a state of war.”

The threats are the strongest since North Korea tested a nuclear weapon on May 25th, drawing international condemnation and the prospect of increased sanctions against Kim Jong Il’s reclusive regime. South Korea yesterday joined the U.S.-led initiative to locate and seize shipments of equipment and materials used to make weapons of mass destruction.

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