August 25, 2009 archive

1. The NY Times reports President Obama nominates Ben Bernanke to a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. “The announcement is a major victory for Mr. Bernanke, a Republican who was appointed by President George W. Bush almost four years ago and who had briefly served as chairman of Mr. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers.”

   A “senior official said Mr. Obama did not offer the job to anyone else, even though a number of high-powered Democratic economists were considered potentially strong candidates to replace him.”

   Reuters reports Obama credits Bernanke as having saved the U.S. economy. Which overlooks it collapsed in the first place. Also, this leaves Republicans in charge of the nation’s defense and, at least in part, the economy. How is this different from Republican rule?

2. The Los Angeles Times reports Supreme Court considers major shift in election law to allow corporate spending in campaigns. In 1904, “Congress passed a law to keep corporate money out of political races. Now, that century-old ban stands in danger of being overturned by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, on the basis of… free speech in politics.”

   Striking down corporate spending limits would be “a radical step” that would change the character of elections, said Fred Wertheimer, president of the nonprofit Democracy 21…

   “This could take us back to the era when people referred to the senator from Standard Oil,” said Washington lawyer Trevor Potter… “If you have hundreds of millions of corporate dollars flowing into these races, it could drown out the speech of ordinary voters.”

   A return to the bad, old days.

Four at Four continues with a look at Holder’s narrow CIA probe, swine flu, and coral reefs.

When I want to be dazzled by human intellect, I read IOZ.  He delivers.  In a similar vein, I love Bernard Chazelle’s posts on music: they make me feel edified in the absence of my own personal knowledge on the topic.  Thus, despite my shortcomings, I feel lifted by them, each in their own way.

However, fuck the fuck off, IOZ, you bitchy fucking cunt.  Gratuitously attacking Glenn Greenwald based on John Caruso’s misplaced bitchiness?  Please, don’t be a spiritless bitch.

IOZ may dazzle, but Glenn Greenwald moves mountains.

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This is a live blog from the front porch at Sen. Dick Durbin’s office in Springfield, Illinois. See the last paragraph for details about the location.

Cross-posted at DailyKos.  http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

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It’s not just me.  Lots of people are questioning the premises for expending our troops’ lives, plus hundreds of billion of dollars, in Afghanistan.

The Washington Post and ABC News released results of a poll of Americans last week.  

To question #26,  All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting, or not?   51%  responded that it was not worth fighting.

Their arguments have always been, and continue to be especially from their propaganda machines, TV and Radio, that what they did was cleared by the administrative lawyers, as I heard one say this morning “Highly experienced Lawyers!”, and they were are then legal!

The George Washington University National Security Archives have posted up the reports, side by side, from the Bush administration, in May 2008, and the newly released same report from the Obama administration, August 24th 2009.

In over eight years past now, with all our screaming (rallying, calling, e-mailing, LTE’s, etc.), have we Americans ever gotten anything we’ve felt was the morally and legally correct thing to be done?  Even if anything at all was ever offered, it was but mere “crumbs” – a form of appeasement.  And, then, later, we most always learn there was an underlying reason for not wanting to really deal with the issue.  It seems that we may be in the same place, once again, as concerns investigations and prosecutions of Bush Administration officials, with Holder’s idea being the limited focus on some CIA incidents.

Unrelated?  Many of you are aware of the cases of Siegelman, Scrushy, Minor and Walker and Rove’s * involvement.  Yet, nothing seems to be going anywhere with these cases – status quo!  Some of you may even receive Don Siegelman’s appeal e-mail letters now and again.  Dana Jill Simpson, as many of you will recall, is the attorney that has acted as “whistleblower,” in the Siegelman case.  Her home was burnt down and while driving, she was run off the road after having spoken out the truth.  

Ms. Simpson recently received a tip and one that she followed up on.   Why is that important?  Just read!

Next up!

Shackles and blindfold for freed detainee on his way home



By Jonathan S. Landay, Hashim Shukoor and Carol Rosenberg | McClatchy Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan – A young Afghan held for six years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rejoined his family in southern Kabul late Monday, ending an odyssey that came to symbolize many of the problems of the Bush administration’s war on terror detention policies.

Mohammed Jawad, who may have been as young as 12 when he was arrested in 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade that wounded two American soldiers, pronounced himself “very happy” but tired after a day in which he arrived in Afghanistan on a U.S. military flight – in shackles and blindfolded, according to his lawyer.<

Diving Deep for a Living Fossil



http://topics.nytimes.com/top/…  

For 33 years, Peter A. Rona has pursued an ancient, elusive animal, repeatedly plunging down more than two miles to the muddy seabed of the North Atlantic to search out, and if possible, pry loose his quarry.Like Ahab, he has failed time and again. Despite access to the world’s best equipment for deep exploration, he has always come back empty-handed, the creature eluding his grip.

The animal is no white whale. And Dr. Rona is no unhinged Captain Ahab, but rather a distinguished oceanographer at Rutgers University. And he has now succeeded in making an intellectual splash with a new research report, written with a team of a dozen colleagues.

Do to work commitments  I will be unable to  provide my usual contribution from Wednesday August 26 until Saturday August 29. I regret any inconvenience this may cause.    

American military commanders have been steadily repeating the message that more U.S. troops may be needed in Afghanistan, while the support for the open-ended war is diminishing by the American people and some members of the U.S. Congress despite President Obama’s saying Afghanistan is a ‘war of necessity‘.

The New York Times reported, “American military commanders with the NATO mission in Afghanistan told Obama’s chief envoy to the region this weekend that they did not have enough troops to do their job, pushed past their limit by Taliban rebels who operate across borders.”

Then on Monday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) told the Appleton Post-Crescent editorial board that now a timeline for a military pullout from Afghanistan is needed.