Tag: 4@4

1. The New York Times reports Congress passes bill to bar bias based on genes. “A bill that would prohibit discrimination by health insurers and employers based on the information that people carry in their genes won final approval in Congress on Thursday by an overwhelming vote.” Bush has suggested he will sign the legislation and if he doesn’t the bill, which “passed the House on Thursday by a 414-to-1 vote, and the Senate by 95-to-0 a week earlier” likely has the votes to override his veto.

   The legislation is a start, but doesn’t prohibit the government from using genetic discrimination. And according to the NY Times story, “as genetic tests provide ever more information at lower costs, the entire notion of insuring against unknown risk that has long defined the industry may be upended.” This may “give ammunition to those who argue for universal health care”.

2. The Washington Post reports White House plans proactive cyber-Security role for spy agencies. “America’s spy agencies for the first time would be tasked with gathering intelligence on threats to the nation’s computer networks under a policy set to be detailed by the White House next week… The [anonymous] official said the president’s new cyber-security directive will share the intelligence gleaned through monitoring threats across the government space with the private sector, which experts say is being hit with the same types of attacks that the federal dot-gov space is battling… Most of the 18 strategic goals laid out in the cyber initiative are currently classified, and few within the government have been fully briefed on the the plan.”

   Alan Paller, director of research at the Bethesda based SANS Institute, which tracks hacking trends, said few federal civilian agencies or private sector companies have the analysts or computer power to spot the most stealthy cyber attacks. Agencies like the NSA, he said, are in a bit of a tight spot in sharing new threat information with allies and the private sector, because spy agencies very often glean intelligence by exploiting the very same security vulnerabilities in hardware and software used by enemies of the United States.

   “This is the oldest conflict in security, because if we give away our best exploits, we lose the ability to use them offensively,” Paller said. “That’s a conflict the guys at NSA deal with every day. When you find good ones, how long do you wait before you tell the vendors and people defending our own networks?”

   On the surface, does this government-private partnership seems similar to the collusion between the telcos and the Bush Administraion?

Four at Four continues below the fold with the expanding ocean’s hypoxic zones, the collapse of the west coast salmon fishery, and fungal doom for Pacific Northwest amphibians.

1. From the International Longshore and Warehouse Union:

   Longshore Workers Stand Down at West Coast Ports

   “Longshore workers are standing-down on the job and standing up for America,” said ILWU International President Bob McEllrath. “We’re supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it’s time to end the war in Iraq.” …

   “Big foreign corporations that control global shipping aren’t loyal or accountable to any country,” said McEllrath. “For them it’s all about making money. But longshore workers are different. We’re loyal to America, and we won’t stand by while our country, our troops, and our economy are destroyed by a war that’s bankrupting us to the tune of 3 trillion dollars. It’s time to stand up, and we’re doing our part today.”

   Perhaps the most significant protest against the Iraq occupation ever is receiving scant attention from the corporate media. The Los Angeles Times reports Dockworkers take May Day off, idling all West Coast ports. Notice, how LA Times headline mentions nothing about protesting the war?

   Thousands of dockworkers at all 29 West Coast ports, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, took the day off work today in what their union called a protest of the war in Iraq, effectively shutting down operations at the busy complexes.

   The action came two months before the contract expires between the dockworkers, represented by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, and the Pacific Maritime Assn., which represents port operators and large shippers, many of them foreign-owned.

   The Associated Press reports Arbitrator orders union to tell West Coast dockworkers they can’t skip work for war protest. The ‘man’ has ordered the workers back to work.

   [Coast Arbitrator John Kagel] ordered the union that represents dockworkers at West Coast ports to tell its members they must report to work on Thursday and not take the day off to protest U.S. military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan…

   Union spokesman Craig Merrilees said the union was complying with the contract, but he declined to specify whether it had taken steps to order members to report to work as the arbitrator ordered.

   “The decision by members to take a day off work on May 1 to protest the war is their right under the U.S. Constitution and it’s about time that citizens stood up to tell the truth about the need to end the war,” he said.

   According to Peter Cole, an associate professor of history at Western Illinois University, who wrote a guest column for the Seattle Post-Intelligence:

   For those unfamiliar, the ILWU is perhaps the most militant and politicized worker organization in the nation. It operates in one of the most important sectors of the world economy — marine transport — and, thus, is in a strategic location to put peace above profits…

   The ILWU is highly democratic. A caucus of more than 100 longshore workers representing every union local establishes policies for the Longshore Division. It was this caucus that voted to declare the May Day strike…

   These days, such examples of worker power are increasingly rare in the U.S. The tragedy is that, historically, labor activism gave us the 40-hour workweek (and the weekend) and helped humanize the exploitative excesses of unregulated capitalism. As income inequality continues to grow in the United States, it is wise to remember how, in the past, strong unions created a larger middle class as well as a more democratic and egalitarian nation.

   The ILWU strike also reminds us that unions still have an important role in public discussions beyond the workplace. As a democratic institution, the ILWU is precisely the sort of “civic society” that the Bush administration has been trying to create in Iraq. On May 1, dockworkers will speak loud and clear — end the endless war in Iraq. Other American workers who want to support our troops by bringing them home can make their voices heard by joining with the brave men and women of the ILWU and taking the day off.

   A big thank you to the 60,000 ILWU members.

Four at Four continues below the fold…

1. Lurita Doan, the horribly incompetent GSA head and certified Bush political hack, has resigned. It only took her a year to do so. The Washington post reports “At the request of the White House, General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan resigned last night as head of the government’s premier contracting agency… Doan’s resignation came almost a year after Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he believed Doan could no longer be effective because of the allegations about her leadership.”

   Doan “violated the Hatch Act in January 2007 by asking political appointees how they could “help our candidates” at an agency briefing conducted by a White House official, according to several of the appointees present for the briefing”. She still needs to be prosecuted for sponsoring illegal political meetings.

   Video from June 2007.

2. The Washington Post reports U.S. Role Deepens in Sadr City. Since Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ‘stir the hornet’s nest’ campaign last month in Basra, the U.S. has been drawn deeply into the fighting between rival Shi’ite factions. Yesterday, U.S. troops fight a four-hour battle against Shi’ite militia fighters that killed at least 28 Iraqis dead.

   “Until Maliki’s push into the southern city of Basra, U.S. troops were not intensely engaged in Sadr City, a Baghdad neighborhood of roughly 3 million people that was among the most treacherous areas for U.S. forces early in the war.” Since Maliki’smove against Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army in Basra, “more than 500 people have been killed and 2,100 injured in Sadr City“.

   The Iraqis are deliberately escalating the fighting in Iraq to prove the “surge” has not worked, which of course, McCain will explain that this means the “surge” has worked and the Iraqis are just trying to influence the U.S. election. The “surge” cannot possibly fail.

   To prove how right McCain is, al-Sadr “has threatened to call off the eight-month cease-fire, which has been widely credited with lowering the level of violence in Iraq, if the government does not end its offensive against his followers.” And according to a random Mahdi Army member quoted by WaPo, they are “very close to the Zero Hour” meaning time is nearly up.

   McClatchy Newspapers reports Defense War Secretary Robert Gates as saying Lull in Iraq has ended, but withdrawal will go on. He’s sending a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf, but denied it has anything to do with the Bush administration’s plans to attack Iran. The “surge” is working though, because:

   April has been the bloodiest month for Americans in Iraq since September, with 44 troops killed, compared to 39 in March and 29 in February.

   April also was the first month since November that saw U.S. Marines killed in once restive Anbar province. Two Marines were killed in April in Anbar, which had been the deadliest part of Iraq for U.S. troops before a widely heralded tribal rebellion drove Sunni militants from the province.

   Meanwhile, to distract Americans from the obvious success of the “surge”, a trial for Tariq Aziz has begun. BBC News reports, “The trial of Iraq’s former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz over the deaths of a group of merchants in 1992 has opened in Baghdad,” but “after a brief session the judge adjourned the trial until 20 May”.

Four at Four continues below the fold with stories about the show trials in Guantánamo Bay and the Bush administration’s meddling with science.

1. The New York Times reports Consumer confidence plunges as home prices crash. “Americans’ confidence in the economy continued to plunge this month as their homes lost value at the fastest rate in two decades.”

   The slump in home prices was more severe than the worst point of the recession of the 1990s, the last time values fell so far, so quickly…

   The fall in home prices has also cut into Americans’ home equity and forced many to grapple with mortgages now worth more than the house itself. The problems have contributed to a deepening gloom, which was reinforced on Tuesday by a grim confidence survey released by the Conference Board.

   The private report, which surveys up to 5,000 American households, dropped to its lowest point since March 2003, at the start of the invasion of Iraq. Americans feel worse about the economy’s prospects than any time since the mid-1970s, and many are bracing for job losses.

   The index fell in April to 62.3 from a revised 65.9 in March and 76.4 in February, the Conference Board said.

   George W. Bush is whining that Americans shouldn’t blame him for the dismal economy, rather, according to the Washington Post, Bush blames the Democrats for the sliding economy. “In a news conference at the White House, Bush declined to characterize the economic troubles as a recession, saying he would not get into a debate about ‘words’ and would let economists decide the terminology.” La-la-la… I can’t here you.

   Bush claimed he has “repeatedly submitted proposals to help address these problems. Yet time after time Congress chose to block them.” He is annoyed that Congress is blocking his promise to big oil to throw open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploitation. He also accused Congress of blocking big energy handouts and “provisions needed to increase domestic electricity production by expanding the use of clean, safe nuclear power.” Because what Americans really need is to keep feeding big oil profits to keep the economy humming along.

2. The Bush administration’s destruction of our environment continues unchecked. The Washington Post reports a Federal judge has had to order the Bush administration to classify the polar bear. U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken “ordered the Bush administration to decide by May 15 whether the polar bear deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act. The decision… forces the Interior Department to determine whether climate change is pushing polar bears toward extinction. The agency proposed listing polar bears in December 2006 because warmer temperatures are shrinking the sea ice they depend on for survival, but officials have delayed a final decision on the matter for months” while the Bush administration auctions off oil leases in the polar bears’ habitat.

   In addition, the Los Angeles Times reports Groups sue to get gray wolves back on endangered species list. “A dozen environmental groups sued the federal government Monday in an attempt to reverse a decision to remove gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains from the endangered species list. Since the delisting went into effect March 28, at least 35 wolves have been killed in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming… Environmental groups also requested a preliminary injunction to stop wolf kills until the lawsuit was resolved. The suit says federal officials ignored scientists who said a connected population of 2,000 to 5,000 wolves was necessary to ensure long-term genetic viability of the wolf in the northern Rockies.” Some Americans seem obsessed with killing animals for “sport”.

Four at Four continues below the fold with another assertion that the vice president is above the law, finding a long lost relative from 300 years ago, and a giant CO2 sucking sound.

1. The Associated Press reports 2.28 million homes vacant in the United States. “The percentage of vacant homes for sale in the United States set a record high in the first quarter of this year, the government said today. The Census Bureau report shows that shows that 2.9 percent of U.S. homes — excluding rental properties — were vacant and up for sale, compared with 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. It was the highest quarterly number in records going back to 1956. That works out to 2.28 million properties”.

   Reuters adds Homeowner vacancies hit record high. This was “the third quarter in a row in which the vacancy rate increased”. “Analysts attributed the rising vacancy rate to a surge in foreclosures brought on by the subprime mortgage crisis” and “believe home prices will not rebound until 2010.”

   Meanwhile, The New York Times reports the Loan industry is fighting new rules on mortgages. “As the Federal Reserve completes work on rules to root out abuses by lenders, its plan has run into a buzz saw of criticism from bankers, mortgage brokers and other parts of the housing industry. One common industry criticism is that at a time of tight credit, tighter rules could make many mortgages more expensive by creating more paperwork and potentially exposing lenders to more lawsuits.” The NY Times also notes Investments in self-storage stocks are doing well. The industry is being helped by foreclosures and long-term military deployments.

Four at Four continues below the fold with news about Department of Justice’s approval of CIA use of torture, Baghdad’s storm of mortars and sand, and a colossal squid thaw.

1. U.S. Preparing Military Options Against Iran
   By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post

   The nation’s top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq.

   Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be “extremely stressing” but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.

   “It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability,” he said at a Pentagon news conference.

   Still, Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the tensions with Iran and does not foresee any imminent military action. “I have no expectations that we’re going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future,” he said.

   The Los Angeles Times adds Mullen believes Iran is increasing, not curbing, arms flow to Iraq. “Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman, said there was not a massive infusion of weapons but said over time there had been ‘a consistent increase’ in arms shipments. Speaking at a morning news conference, Mullen said weapons had been intercepted in Iraq that showed evidence of relatively recent manufacture in Iran, adding that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, would lay out a fuller account of the evidence in the weeks to come.”

   Yes, I know the U.S. has a war plan for every nation on the planet, but that’s not the point. The point is the Bush administration has been, once again, beating the drum for war with Iran more loudly. The biggest infuser of weapons to Iraq is the United States. The biggest source of foreign fighters in Iraq, next to the U.S., is Saudi Arabia. The Bush administration’s rhetoric is increasing and they are determined to have a war and almost any encounter in the Gulf could be used as a catalyst. Such as…

   The Guardian reports US military ship shoots at ‘Iranian’ boats. “A ship contracted by the US military fired warning shots towards two ‘Iranian’ boats, American defence officials said today. The Westward Venture, a cargo vessel chartered by the US department of defence, was travelling north in international waters in the central Gulf at around 8am local time yesterday when the incident took place, the US navy said… Tehran played down the incident, saying there was no confrontation. A US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the boats were believed to be Iranian.”

   Yesterday it was Syria, today it is Iran. Bush is determined to have total war.

Four at Four continues below the fold…

1. The Washington Post reports the CIA foresaw interrogation issues and thought investigations into their use of torture “virtually inevitable”. So “inevitable” that the CIA sought Department of Justice legal support.

   The CIA said it had identified more than 7,000 pages of classified memos, e-mails and other records relating to its secret prison and interrogation program, but maintained that the materials cannot be released because they relate to, in part, communications between CIA and Justice Department attorneys or discussions with the White House.

   Nineteen of those documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration decided they are covered by a “presidential communications privilege,” according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan. Some were “authored or solicited and received by the President’s senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president.“

   Although the precise content of the documents is unknown, the agency’s statements illustrate the extent to which senior White House officials were involved in decision-making on CIA detentions, interrogations, and renditions, a term for forced transfers of prisoners.

   Translation: If this memo was the smoking gun, those nineteen documents are the smoking howitzer. Impeach.

2. The New York Times reports Inmate count in the United States dwarfs all other nations’. “The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners… The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London… The gap between American justice and that of the rest of the world is enormous and growing.”

Four at Four continues below the fold with the Bush administration’s interfering with EPA scientists and Bush’s secret deal with Israel.

1. What’s wrong with this scenario? The Guardian reports the Senate wants Pentagon to investigate courting of TV analysts. “The US Senate armed services committee today asked the Pentagon to investigate its practice of courting military analysts on popular TV programmes in order to push positive spin on the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policy.”

   Carl Levin, the Democratic senator who chairs the armed services committee, asked for an internal probe of the Pentagon’s relationship with TV networks in a terse letter to defence secretary Robert Gates.

   Levin chastised the defence department for “giving both special treatment and valuable access” to military analysts who agreed with its decisions “while cutting off access to others who didn’t deliver as expected”.

   “While the media clearly have their own shortfalls for paying people to provide ‘independent’ analysis when they have such real and apparent conflicts, that doesn’t excuse the department’s behaviour,” Levin wrote to Gates.

   Bzzt. Levin cannot honestly expect the Pentagon to investigate itself. Levin needs to hold hearings and put network and Pentagon officials before the kleig lights answering questions. This go and investigate yourself nonsense is bunk. The Pentagon’s motive to lie and hide the evidence is too great. Put it this way Carl, what you propose is like trusting the Iranians to monitor their own nuclear program.

Four at Four continues below the fold with Iran’s alleged nuclear program, the march to war with Syria, an Israeli spy in the U.S., the “war on terror” backfiring, and the struggles of Iraqi women with dead or missing husbands since Bush brought his war to Iraq.

1. The Los Angeles Times reports Bush opens summit with leaders of Canada and Mexico. George W. Bush, Felipe Calderón of Mexico, and Stephen Harper of Canada are meeting for the fourth annual summit between the three nations. New Orleans was chosen as a venue by the Bush administration for propaganda value. Bush said he was celebrating “the comeback of a great American city” that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

   The summit will focus on trade, immigration, and cross-border drug and weapons smuggling, just as free-trade agreements and NAFTA in particular are under political attack more than at any time since the U.S.-Canada-Mexico agreement began eliminating tariffs and other barriers to North American trade 14 years ago.

   Three-way trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico has grown since 1994 from about $290 billion to $930 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.

   But Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, long an opponent of the pact, said the increase was largely the result of a “massive surge in imports” into the United States, bringing with it what the group calculated was a 691% increase in the trade deficit attributed to NAFTA.

   According to the AP, Bush refuses to admit the U.S. is in a recession. “Bush, replying to criticism from Democratic presidential candidates, said Tuesday that ‘now is not the time to renegotiate … or walk away from’ the North American Free Trade Agreement… Asked about the state of the U.S. economy, Bush said: ‘We’re not in a recession. We are in a slowdown.‘”

Four at Four continues below the fold with stories of big oil supporting state-sponsored terrorism, a plea to “eliminate capitalism” to save the planet and humanity, and an update on the Chinese arms ship en route to Zimbabwe.

1. Lugo wins Paraguay Presidency, ending 62 years of one party rule, reports The New York Times. Fernando Lugo, the “bishop of the poor”, a former Roman Catholic bishop “who resigned from the church two years ago to run, will be the first Paraguayan president since 1946 not to be from Colorado Party.”

   Mr. Lugo, a gray-bearded man who exudes natural warmth and often wears sandals, was backed by the Patriotic Alliance for Change, Paraguay’s second-largest party… [He] tapped into a deep frustration with single-party rule in Paraguay. He accused the Colorado Party of entrenched patronage and corruption, a theme that resonated with voters. Paraguay has struggled since the Stroessner days to rid itself of a reputation for being among the most-corrupt countries in Latin America.”

   According to The Guardian, Lugo quit the clergy because “he felt powerless to help Paraguay’s poor”.

   “We ask you never to abandon us. We’ll make democracy together!” Lugo, 56, told cheering supporters as firecrackers resounded around Asuncion last night…

   Eight months ago, Lugo welded unions, Indians and poor farmers into a coalition with the main opposition party to form the Patriotic Alliance for Change… Lugo calls himself an independent and has steered clear of Latin America’s more radical leftwing leaders…

   Lugo will take office on 15 August, and has vowed to carry out agrarian reform to ensure poor peasant farmers can till their own land in a country where a small, wealthy elite owns the vast majority of farmland and cattle ranches.

   Did the door to Bush’s escape route to Paraguay just slam shut?

Four at Four continues below the fold with news of the al-Sadr-Rice Grudge Cage Match, torture at Guantánamo, and the Bush administration’s dismal record of prosecuting terrorism cases.

1. Top general ‘hoodwinked’ over torture
   By Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian

   The US’s most senior general was “hoodwinked” by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques for terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, the Guardian can reveal.

   The development led to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

   General Richard Myers, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.

   The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington – who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date – is disclosed in a devastating account of their role… in his new book…

   Is this operation CYA for Myers?

2. NATO mistakenly supplying arms and food to Taliban
   By Anil Dawar, The Guardian

   Nato forces mistakenly supplied food, water and arms to Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, officials today admitted.

   Containers destined for local police forces were dropped from a helicopter into a Taliban-controlled area of Zabul province. The coalition helicopter had intended to deliver pallets of supplies to a police checkpoint in Ghazni, a remote section of Zabul late last month…

   A Nato spokesman said the pallets were carrying rocket propelled grenades, ammunition, water and food.

   Heckuva a job NATO! Actually, it wasn’t NATO per se. It was their private military contractors. Mercenaries at their finest.

3. Pentagon institute calls Iraq war ‘a major debacle’ with outcome ‘in doubt’
   By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott, McClatchy Newspapers

   The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.

   The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.

   The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.

   It was published by the university’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center.

   “Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” says the report’s opening line…

   The report also singles out the Bush administration’s national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying that “senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect.”

   No one could have predicted an invasion and occupation of Iraq could go badly… oh wait. Nevermind.

Four at Four continues below the fold with an effort to convert polar bears into oil.

1. Why we fight

   Bloomberg reports “Iraq will open at least six major oil and natural-gas fields for exploration and production in its first licensing round since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, as the country seeks to raise output without a national energy law. Iraq, which pre-qualified international oil companies this week for the bidding round, will open the southern Rumaila, West Qurna and Zubair fields for exploration, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said in an interview in Brussels today. In the north, international oil companies will be invited to develop the Kirkuk oil field and the Akkaz gas field.”

   Here are some of the pre-qualified companies: Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron. and Total SA. “Others were Russia’s OAO Gazprom, the world’s largest natural-gas producer, and OAO Lukoil, the Russian oil producer with the most overseas assets. Mitsubishi Corp. and Inpex Holding Inc. of Japan and China’s Sinochem Corp. were also accepted.”

2. Our military men and women pay

   The Los Angeles Times reports 18.5% of Iraq, Afghanistan veterans have depression or PTSD. “Nearly one in five veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is currently suffering from depression or stress disorders, according to the latest and most comprehensive study of current and former military service members, released today. Less than half of those 300,000 veterans have received care for depression or post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to the study, signaling significant problems with the U.S. mental healthcare system.”

   Meanwhile CommonDreams notes that Vets have to press McCain to back greater benefits.

   The McCain Hypocrisy

   According to Disabled American Veterans (DAV), McCain voted almost a dozen separate times against spending additional money on veterans’ health care in 2005 and 2006 – even as hundreds of thousands of soldiers and Marines were returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and filing disability claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

   During that time, McCain voted against expanding mental health care and readjustment counseling for returning service members, efforts to expand inpatient and outpatient treatment for injured veterans, and proposals to lower co-payments and enrollment fees veterans must pay to obtain prescription drugs…

   McCain’s vote also helped defeat a proposal by Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow that would have made veterans’ health care an entitlement programme like social security, so that medical care would not become a political football to be argued over in Congress each budget cycle.

   John McCain supports the troops like George W. Bush does.

Four at Four continues below the fold with news of peace in Iraq and Afghanistan and the booming U.S. economy.