Tag: Robert Gibbs

Gibbs: Prez could do Bush Tax Cut for Rich. Orszag: “Save” SocSec by Cutting It

More post election incompetence.

They forgot.  In the good cop, bad cop routine, one of them is supposed to be the “good cop.”  

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs starts off the Lame Duck post election session:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“He would be open to having that discussion and open to listening to what the debate is on both sides of that,” said Gibbs, during an off-camera gaggle with reporters. “Obviously… making those tax cuts for the upper end permanent is something the president does not believe is a good idea.”

The issue, Gibbs said, will be a topic of discussion when the president convenes a bipartisan meeting of lawmakers at the White House in two weeks. Included in that meeting (and working dinner) will be Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.), incoming Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), and Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

At his press conference on Wednesday, the president expressed his first openness to date with the process of negotiating on the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Peter Orszag, right wing neocon, concern troll “deficit spending hawk,” Wall Street mouthpiece, and former Obama Administration head of Office of Budget and Management (OMB)  writes in the New York Times the day after the election, November 3, that the harvest of the last of the middle and working class entitlement programs can’t begin fast enough for his new right wing think tank benefactors at the Council on Foreign Relations.  

Orszag & Gibbs Have A Bridge In Brooklyn They’d Like To Sell You- On Spec

Peter Orszag, the former White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), now a “Distinguished Visiting Fellow” at the   “Council of Foreign Relations,” launched his debut in the New York Times yesterday.  

Orszag’s found a cure for his personal employment prospects:  put himself out for hire to continue the Bush Years deficit spending.

In typical neocon- liberal fashion, he admits there is a problem, and them offers a “compromise” which is supposed to be a concession, which actually does not nothing but continue the current status quo, because it doesn’t really happen.  Orszag writes:


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09…

” Yet no one wants to make an already stagnating jobs market worse over the next year or two, which is exactly what would happen if the cuts expire as planned.  Higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand for what firms are capable of producing at full tilt. ”

_____

” …. extend the tax cuts for two years, and then end them altogether.  Ideally, only the middle class tax cuts would be continued for now.

Getting a deal in Congress, though, may require keeping the the high income tax cuts, too. And that would still be worth it. ”

On consumer demand, they spend on shelter/utilities and food and then transportation, clothes, and finally luxury goods.  Shelter- we have a housing glut, and don’t need to produce any in the immediate future.  Food- no shortages yet, thankfully, only HUNGER, aka “food insecurity,” whereby the millions of jobless and underemployed are relying on food stamps, food banks, and charities to feed themselves and the school lunch program to feed the kids.  Transportation, ie gasoline prices, are not spiking, but public transportation maintenance is lagging, and even the interstates are literally crumbling in hard hit states, such as CA.  Manufacturing for clothing and consumer goods for things like appliances and electronics, we outsourced overseas in the name of stockholder’s profits.  

BP’s Oil is NOT on the Surface — it’s on the Sea Floor

Two weeks ago we were being told the majority of the Oil Spilled was “mostly” gone …

How did five million barrels of oil simply disappear?

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs points to a pie chart on the BP oil spill during the Daily White House Press Briefing, Washington, DC.

AFP/ Getty Images

Now, University of South Florida, Marine Scientists are reporting Science has a different tale, to tell …

Omar Khadr Trial SUSPENDED ! Defense lawyer collapses in court !

Yesterday evening the news broke that Omar Khadr’s only attorney, Lt Col Jon Jackson, collapsed in the Guantanamo courtroom during the beginning of the trial !

(previous diary on the trial & background history here: https://www.docudharma.com/diar…  )

A witness posted this at Huffpo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

On Thursday afternoon I watched Omar Khadr’s sole defense lawyer, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, collapse in the Guantanamo Bay courtroom in the middle of conducting a cross-examination of a key government witness. He was taken away on a stretcher by ambulance, hooked up to an I.V. Fortunately Jackson, who’s only 39 years old, was breathing normally at the time, though as an observer in the courtroom I was stunned. It all happened so suddenly and he seemed to be in perfect health and in complete control of his questioning. I learned Friday morning that the trial has been suspended indefinitely.

This morning’s update says that Lt Col Jackson suffered a gall stone attack (after having had surgery 2 months ago)  and is being evacuated from Guantanamo to a hospital in the US for medical treatment.   Reporters were told by an official that the trial has been suspended for at least 30 days.  

Emptywheel at FDL also has this:

http://emptywheel.firedoglake….

There is a comment about removing one of the jurors from the case for having so called pre conceived notions


He said he thought that some earlier policies had lost America its “reputation for being a beacon of freedom.”

Asked specifically which policies had led him to this conclusion he authoritatively cited examples including; charge without trial, torture, rendition and the denial of access to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross to detainees held in secret locations. He went on to say that he believed a small number of detainees may have been killed while in American custody but added: “I don’t think my views differ from those of the President.”

By the time he had admitted that he would be “suspicious” of any evidence obtained under torture his fate was sealed.

Carol Rosenberg’s McClatchy Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/201…

We know from her report Khadr was in the courtroom after all,

Jackson was put on “convalescent leave,” according to Broyles, a status that allows him to continue to draw a salary and not use up vacation days.

He cited privacy reasons for not releasing the lieutenant colonel’s health condition but said he was likely being airlifted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Pentagon’s premier hospital. He was on a morphine drip Thursday night at the base hospital.

Jackson, who has been on the case for about a year, became Khadr’s lone lawyer within a week of his surgery after the Toronto-born teen fired volunteer civilian attorneys Barry Coburn and Kobie Flowers from Washington D.C.

Parrish ordered the Army defender to stay on the case, but the Pentagon Defense Office provided him no additional assistance beyond two enlisted paralegals who had already been on the case.

Khadr, who sits in court with three guards behind him, leaped to his feet when his Army defender collapsed about 4 p.m. Thursday, according to Khadr family lawyer Dennis Edney, who functions in the war court only as a consultant because he is not a U.S. citizen. The guards didn’t interfere.

“We were all shocked,” Edney said.

Canadian:

http://www.torontosun.com/news…

Ottawa Citizen

We Should Be Embarrassed 8/13/2010

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/n…

A United Nations special representative for children and armed conflict issued a statement on Aug. 9, saying “the Omar Khadr case will set a precedent that may endanger the status of child soldiers all over the world.”

“Even if Omar Khadr were to be tried in a national jurisdiction, juvenile justice standards are clear; children should not be tried before military tribunals,” the statement from Radhika Coomaraswamy explains. “The United States and Canada have led the way in creating and implementing these norms. … I urge both governments to come to a mutually acceptable solution on the future of Omar Khadr that would prevent him from being convicted of a war crime that he allegedly committed when he was a child.”

Canada’s government has ignored this, as it has ignored questions about the implications of Khadr’s age all along.

His age, though, is not the only factor that makes many observers of his trial queasy.

There is also the fact that the judge has ruled that statements Khadr made to his interrogators are admissible, even though they were, as Khadr’s defence argued, “fruit of a poisonous tree.” Khadr was, in the words of a defence submission, “asphyxiated, terrorized by dogs, doused with freezing water and left in the cold.” He was threatened with rape.  

More Canadian opinion from Chantal Hébert at Toronto Star 8/11/2010


Canada’s top court described Khadr’s treatment as “. . . state conduct that violates the principles of fundamental justice.” It added: “Interrogation of a youth, to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel (. . .) offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”

About violations of Khadr’s Charter rights, the Court found that: “. . . their impact on Mr. Khadr’s liberty and security continue to this day and may redound into the future.”

Despite those prescient words, the ruling stopped short of prescribing a remedy to the federal government.

On the face of it, the absence of Supreme Court prescriptions in the Khadr case falls short of its own, recently reaffirmed, deterrence principle. In a matter that involves state abuse of the right to liberty and security of a person in a fundamental way, that absence has ultimately tipped the scale towards virtually unfettered government discretion.

Got to love our northern sisters and brothers, “unfettered government discretion” is used to describe being held without charges or legal counsel, then put on trial in a foreign country in front of a jury of military officers, apparently selected to have no pre conceived notions about whether your age was relevant years ago, or how the “confessions” or just witness statements were obtained –  by shooting you in the back, first, then isolating you for years in the disgrace of Bush & Cheney’s little waterboarding gulag where you no doubt heard what happened to the prisoners who didn’t cooperate– or sometimes did.

No wonder poor Lt Col Jon Jackson might be feeling some physical stress attempting to navigate this.  Kids don’t get to select their parents.  

“Kildeer” Gibbs and Omar Khadr Trial

My contention is that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is doing the Kildeer maneuver, like the bird who cries to draw you away from its nest,  as a distraction from what is going on with the trial of Omar Khadr, who has been held in U.S. custody as an enemy combatant for 8 years and since he was only 15 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O…

Since Khadr was not yet of legal age when he was nearly killed then revived by the U.S. military, then used as part of Bush and Cheney’s sadistic little game to “prove” that this country needed to invade Iraq on false pretenses, it looks really awkward, not to mention immoral, to be trying the prisoner with the idea of permanent incarceration or the death penalty. (if the prosecution is to be believed, the maximum penalty in this case is life imprisonment)  Even more so that he was born in Canada.

Hence Kildeer Gibb’s dig about not being satisfied until we had Canadian healthcare.  Obviously we have the finest healthcare in the world because we can revive almost indefinitely people who have nearly been tortured to death.

Because I checked the usual suspects on the kick a hippie sh*t stirring list, the OFA/DNC paid campaigner and Beltway insider types, the ones who like to use the word “firebaggers,”   and they’re all ignoring this like it’s his turn.  Like they radioed in the strike coordinates to the WH @ PressSec office.

Or they are going to actually proxy bomb Iran next.  But then I remembered the game right wing people like to play called “you’re insincere in your concerns.”

Maybe Kildeer Gibbs could diss the Canadians’ troops next and they could pull out of Afghanistan like the Dutch did.

http://www.aolnews.com/world/a…

Aug 3 2010


“This is the start,” an Afghan political analyst, Haroon Mir, told Agence France-Presse. “It’s a chain — the Dutch start to withdraw, followed by the Canadians, then the British by 2014. In the middle I think we will see a number of other NATO members… setting a timetable to leave.”

The Dutch will be replaced by U.S. and Australian, Slovak and Singaporean soldiers.

Canadian press, this am:

Montreal Gazette Aug 12, 2010

Khadr trial to hear first arguments

http://www.montrealgazette.com…


More than eight years after U.S. forces captured a 15-year-old Omar Khadr on an Afghan battlefield, prosecution and defence lawyers present their opening arguments today in his war crimes trial -the first such case proceeding under the Obama administration.

Seven U.S. military officers will sit in judgment of the Canadian-born terror suspect after the military judge in the case yesterday excused eight others from the initial jury pool, acting on requests and challenges from either the defence or prosecution.

Postmedia News has also learned that the defence has been seeking to present two Canadian government officials as defence witnesses – a request likely to rankle the Conservative government, which has resisted calls from human- rights and other activist groups calling for Khadr’s immediate repatriation.

The officials – Sabine Nolke and Suneeta Millington – have over the years been dispatched to visit Khadr at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of the Canadian government’s bid to monitor his confinement conditions and other aspects of his treatment.  

Omar Khadr is so far intending on being tried in absentia because he considers the entire proceedings a sham and has fired his U.S. civilian lawyers. He has a Pentagon appointed attorney.

Gibbs the Mugger

So who is this Robert Gibbs, this Obama appointee who hates progressives (many to choose from there I know), this hippie puncher who is incensed that We The People would, you know, complain about being sold out on every serious progressive promise made by Obama during his 2008 snow-job of an election campaign?

I spent the first month after the 2008 election in shock over Rham-the-Blue-Shit, Geithner-the-bankster, and Summers-the-misogynistic-apologist-for-corporate-criminals.  Robert Gibbs wasn’t particularly noticed; I just assumed Obama would appoint, for his spokesperson at least, someone who would at least have some sympathy for the people (like me) who maxed out campaign donations, worked for his election, and celebrated long into the night when “we” succeeded.  

I never dreamed that he’d made as the voice of his “progressive” Administration one of the sorriest of the Clintonian Blue Shits, a progress hater who’d turn the nation over to the criminal banksters and thieving Cayman-Island-sheltered corporatists–and one who was instrumental in the elimination of the 2004 Presidential candidacy of Howard Dean.

Mr. G Is Right

by John Cory

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs ranted that “the professional left” needed to be drug tested for their complaints and attacks on the Obama administration after all the good things Obama has done.

I agree.

We “professional leftists” do indeed need drug testing because apparently the colorful liquid inducing hallucinogenic of “hope and change” has worn off and the ugly mediocrity of modern Democratic leadership stares us in the face with the not-so-friendly smugness of a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

Maybe some good old-fashioned Window Pane or Micro Dot, or better yet, some natural organic ‘Shrooms could do the trick. After all, we are all mushrooms now as the old joke goes, kept in the dark and fed a pile of bullshit.

Tuesday Truffles: WH Press Sec Gibbs Shares The Love

 As the House convenes today, Tuesday, August 10, to vote on some Senate last minute leftovers, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs shows the House members hesitating on voting for more stuff how to communicate effectively with the voters when they resume their 6 week August vacation and fundraising break.


http://thehill.com/homenews/ad…

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

Of those who complain that Obama caved to centrists on issues such as healthcare reform, Gibbs said: “They wouldn’t be satisfied if Dennis Kucinich was president.”

Gibbs said the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.

Progressives, Gibbs said, are the liberals outside of Washington “in America,” and they are grateful for what Obama has accomplished in a shattered economy with uniform Republican opposition and a short amount of time.

In the spirit of bipartisanshipthingee, I’ll quote Fox News now on what happened next:


http://www.foxnews.com/politic…

Tues Aug 10

WASHINGTON — In a rare moment of bipartisanship Tuesday, the House approved $600 million to pay for more unmanned surveillance drones and about 1,500 more agents along the troubled Mexican border.

Getting tougher on border security is one of the few issues that both parties agree on in this highly charged election season. But lawmakers remain deeply divided over a more comprehensive approach to the illegal immigration problem, and it’s unclear if Congress will go beyond border-tightening efforts.

The House passed the bill by an unrecorded voice vote after brief debate.

In fact, although Pelosi was supposedly calling the House back into session during break to vote on a “jobs” bill, ( which went flying under the radar as some Senate amendment to a House Amendment to a Senate Amendment,)   the HR 6080 Emergency Supplemental for Border Security for Fiscal Year 2010 was the very first thing they debated and suspended the rules and passed by voice vote today, at 10:54 am EDT.  You can see the Clerk of the House’s record here, look up Aug 10, 2010, because there will be NO ROLL CALL VOTE RECORD of this.  http://clerk.house.gov/floorsu…

text of bill from THOMAS here:  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…

When does ‘Mostly Gone’ actually mean, ‘A LOT is still There’?

The oil has gone? Tell that to Gulf coast residents

By Rupert Cornwell, independent.co.uk — 6 August 2010

And though only a quarter of the 4.9m barrels reckoned to have leaked is still unaccounted, that represents the equivalent of five Exxon Valdez, the tanker whose spill caused an environmental catastrophe in Alaska in 1989.

There are still boats out there every day working, finding turtles with oil on them and seeing grass lines with oil in it,” charter boat captain Randy Boggs, of Orange Beach in Alabama, told the Associated Press. “All the oil isn’t accounted for. There are millions of pounds of tar balls and oil on the bottom.”

Turns out, This — TIMES 5

IS mostly STILL There! … lurking somewhere, just below the surface …

Overnight Caption Contest

There’s Trouble Dead Ahead — And the Band Played On …

What the band played as Titanic slowly began to sink is never disputed – ragtime, waltzes, specific tunes noted by survivors included ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ and ‘In The Shadows’. But a question mark still hangs over what the last song was as Titanic’s stern began to rise clear of the Atlantic Ocean, and indeed, would it be physically possible for them to play anything in those conditions?

http://www.titanic-titanic.com…

Gibbs: Obama “absolutely” agrees with DoJ “states secrets” filing

According to White House Press Secretary Gibbs, who spoke yesterday to reporters, President Obama agrees with the position taken by his DoJ.

Responding late Friday afternoon to a suit filed by the EFF against the NSA, the Justice Department

argued that the case should be dismissed because information surrounding the program was a “state secret” and therefore couldn’t be litigated or discussed. It also proposed that the government was protected by “sovereign immunity” under federal wiretapping statutes and the Patriot Act, arguing that the United States could only face lawsuits if they willfully elected to disclose intelligence obtained by wiretapping.

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