I just heard on the radio that that DLC quisling Rahm Emanuel is Obama’s likely choice for Chief of Staff. Crap.

While my opinion doesn’t mean squat, here’s my dream cabinet, which includes promoting FEMA back to cabinet level (and taking it out of Dept. of Homeland Security):

Department of Agriculture: Senator Tom Harkin
Department of Commerce: Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon
Department of Defense: General Wesley Clark
Department of Education: Geoffrey Canada
Department of Energy: Angelina Galiteva
Federal Emergency Management Agency: Jane A. Bullock
Department of Health and Human Services: Former Oregon Governor - and author of the Oregon Health Plan - Dr. John Kitzhaber
Department of Homeland Security: Domestic Terrorism expert Morris Dees
Department of Housing and Urban Development: National Urban League president Marc Morial
Department of the Interior: former Alaska Governor Tony Knowles
Department of Justice: Andrew Cuomo
Department of Labor: SEIU president Andy Stern
Department of State: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson
Department of Transportation: Outgoing Chair of the American Public Transportation Association Michael S. Townes
Department of Treasury: anyone but Larry Summers
Department of Veterans Affairs: Tammy Duckworth

Who would be in your dream cabinet?

What are your priorities for an Obama administration? Mine are, in no particular order because they are all of critical importance:

(1) Get out of Iraq.

(2) Use undispersed portion of the $700 billion bailout for transportation and renewable energy infrastructure projects as economic stimulus.

(3) Repeal FISA law changes.

(4) Repeal the Military Commissions Act.

(5) Repeal new FBI guidelines for “intelligence gathering.”

(6) Remove ban on gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

(7) Close Guantanamo and release all prisoners not charged with any crime.

(8) Get started on universal health care.

(9) Undertake prosecution for fraud, where appropriate, in the banking, mortgage brokerage and insurance industries and bond rating agencies; direct any civil fines levied into a program to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure.

(10) Remove the gag order from all family planning funding, both domestic and international, and allow family planning funding for groups that also provide contraception and abortion services; fully de-fund abstinence-only education and re-direct these funds into complete family planning and human sexuality education.

(11) Repeal Bush tax cuts.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

1 Comments

• At November 5, 2008, John wrote:

  My laundry list is more what some would call "unrealistic" but I think you have to start at the source of the problems.

  I'd take a platform from Kucinich and establish a Department of Peace.

  Disband Homeland Security.

  I would push legislation that requires all elections officials to be elected in nonpartisan races rather than appointed, require all elections to have paper ballots and outlaw voter purging.

  Push legislation for public financing of campaigns and instant run-off voting in all national, state and local elections.

  Appoint new FCC commissioners who support re-instituting the previous bans on too much concentration of media ownership and the equal time rule.

  Repeal the Patriot Act.

  Re-institute the Glass-Steagall act and tighten up bank leverage ratios. Force banks to divest into smaller entities to reduce the "too big to fail problem".

  Make it explicitly illegal for a President to execute signing statements and disobey any existing or future legislation passed by Congress. Take steps (not sure what they would be) to ensure the Department of Justice is never again used as a political tool of the White House.

  Remove tax deductibility for compensation paid to an individual (with no exceptions like we presently have in the tax law) in excess of $1 million annually (indexed for inflation) and add a 5% corporate tax surcharge to wages paid in excess of this amount. Use the funds to help pay for lower college tuitions.

  I would appoint at least one Republican cabinet member, Chuck Hagel would be a good pick.

  Do something creative to punish corporations who outsource employees.

  Limit Supreme Court judges terms to 15 or 20 years.

  Once the above is done, I would turn to energy, global warming, healthcare, tax reform, redirect military spending into programs that help foreign countries reduce their propensity to breed terrorists (let's kill them with our kindness instead of killing them) and the many other issues that must be addressed.

As Aziz Huq wrote in his piece published at truthout yesterday, the financial meltdown currently being experienced on Wall Street and in the Federal Treasury may be the start of unwinding another complicated and ill-considered U.S. investment strategy: our military presence in almost every country on earth.

Even before the mid-September unraveling began, international creditor goodwill toward the “sole superpower” and its fiscal overreach seemed to be evaporating fast. Asian investors, for instance, were quick to evince “unprecedented” skepticism about U.S. assets in the opening moments of the crisis…

Since September, however, the same sovereign wealth funds have proved skittish indeed about helping U.S. financial outfits, thus eliminating another possible resource for responding to credit shortfalls.

At some point, tighter global credit conditions are sure to significantly constrain America’s freedom of action internationally. After all, Chinese and East Asian investors, to offer but one example, are now quite capable of reining in, and even undermining, the federal government (if they choose to), rather than vice versa.

The United States has always prized individualism, and in the beginning, this extended to avoiding “foreign entanglements” as well, as George Washington warned against in his farewell address. But the expansion across the North American continent not only provided the impetus for excluding other nations from our land- and resource-rich prize, but also granted the U.S. the wealth necessary to defend this prize and to project our power first in the Western hemisphere with the Monroe Doctrine, and then across the Pacific with Manifest Destiny, and finally, after World War II and with the advent of the Cold War, into the many places abandoned by the imperial powers of Europe and Japan. Our alliance with Israel brought further military “investment” in the Middle East; the fall of the Soviet Union opened up Eastern Europe to U.S. troops; and after September 11 the Bush Administration expanded our presence into almost every other vacant spot on the map. Currently, the U.S. military has bases or troops in more than 150 countries.

Power may be the ultimate aphrodisiac, as Henry Kissinger famously quipped; but the man himself is living proof that power is also a gateway drug to an addiction only satisfied by more, and greater, power.

The U.S. military budget for fiscal 2009 - which does not include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as these continue to be “emergency expenditures” despite the fact that each has now surpassed World War II in duration - is $515 billion dollars, a breathtaking amount considering that it is only for a single year, and that U.S. military expenditures seem to know no direction but “up.” Only Social Security takes more from the U.S. Treasury, and military spending absorbs more tax dollars than Education, Transportation, Veterans, Justice, Natural Resources, Environment, Agriculture, Foreign Affairs, Community Development, Science and Technology, and Government Administration combined.

Is this really the best use of our resources, in a world where we spend more on our military than all of the other nations on the planet - again - combined, and when we are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in areas as critical as education, infant mortality, and the availability of health care?

On the same day that Aziz Huq published his piece about the inevitable contraction of the American empire, Barrons published a bullish article on the near-term prospects for defense-related stocks, even under an Obama administration:

“It doesn’t really matter” who wins the presidency since both candidates are making defense a priority, says Thomas Nyheim, portfolio manager at Christiana Bank & Trust.

He is overweight defense in part because “a lot of the projects that are on the books have three-year, five-year and 10-year life for their contracts.”

Many defense stocks are hovering near decade-low valuations. Yet, the industry’s annual earnings are expected to climb in the double-digits for the next few years.

In post-9/11 America, “it is political suicide” to even cut a dollar from the defense budget” given the threat of terrorism and increasing geopolitical strife, says Scott Sacknoff, manager of the Spade Defense Index.

The U.S. needs to upgrade and replace military equipment that is either decades old or battered from fighting simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These realities make the overall defense budget fairly bulletproof.

Time will tell.

The last four decades have seen U.S. citizens pulling back, intellectually, from any involvement in the world other than military; our focus has become increasingly parochial, and infamously shallow. This has been nowhere more evident than in our elections, which have been influenced far more by John Kerry’s windsurfing and Bush’s beer-buddy persona than the critical issues now crashing around our ears.

But this latest crisis seems to have woken us from our reverie; we are out of the poppy field and looking critically, if also fearfully, at the issues and the candidates for the first time in decades. September 11 could not keep us sane for more than a few news cycles, but the threat to our livelihoods, our homes, our bank and retirement accounts have proved a stronger antidote to the ether of American Idol and Fox News.

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, perhaps the weakening of the absolute power of Wall Street (and the waning appeal of T-Bills worldwide) will force us to look realistically at our position in the world, and come to terms with our deep national need for global dominance.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

From Michael Schwartz care of Jon at ATR:

As the Bush administration was entering office in 2000, Donald Rumsfeld exuberantly expressed its grandiose ambitions for Middle East domination, telling a National Security Council meeting: “Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond.”

Remember when the war was going to take less than 6 months, oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction, and it would be raining candy-coated unicorns from Tel Aviv to Tehran?

WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - More oil is needed on the market, not less, the White House said on Wednesday, disagreeing with a surprise decision by OPEC to cut production by about half a million barrels a day.

“We need more supplies on the market, not less,” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said. “Energy prices are still very high, despite their recent decline.”

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries had been expected to keep existing output allocations though some members had voiced concern about a growing surplus of oil on the market as high prices have affected demand.

In the immortal words of Otter in Animal House: “You fucked up. You trusted us.” I would not be in the least surprised if this - taking Iraq’s oil off the market rather than getting the Iraqi taps turned on full blast - was all part of the evil Cheney plan: start a war that puts oil prices through the roof while eventually gaining control of the Iraqi oil fields, and at the same time ramping up political pressure to open up coastal reserves and ANWR to drilling. After all, in 2003 we were almost a quarter century past the Exxon Valdez disaster, which was just about buried in the vast U.S. memory hole.

We “certainly disagree” with [the OPEC] decision, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, who also urged lawmakers in the U.S. Congress to complete legislation aimed at fostering the production of more energy resources.
…
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on an energy package this week that would open the coasts of at least four Southeastern states to offshore drilling: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

Notice that the two states with the most coastline outside of Alaska - and with Republican governors to boot - aren’t included; though both Ahnold and Charlie Crist have offered tepid support for offshore drilling, both know that a single accident could torpedo their states’ respective tourist industries.

So if the Dems were smart they’d throw in Florida and California as a poison pill to kill the legislation. But poison pills are the GOP’s specialty - Reid and Pelosi are too high minded for such underhanded duplicity. And look where it’s gotten us.

Meanwhile, back in the Green Zone, General Petraeus is busy burnishing his legacy, and stoking the Iraq-al Qaeda connection for McCain’s benefit:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the departing commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said that the country remains “the central front” for al-Qaeda and other extremist groups but acknowledged that violence is rising in Afghanistan and Pakistan — battlegrounds he will soon oversee as the next head of the U.S. military’s Central Command.

Of course, as soon as he takes over in Waziristan, that will become “the central front.” Because he’s The Man.

In an interview Tuesday, hours before President Bush spoke about the need to send more troops to Afghanistan, Petraeus said, “Iraq is still viewed as the central front, if you will, for al-Qaeda and extremism of that flavor.”

Would that be Terrorist Crunch?

Petraeus oversaw the dramatic drop in violence in Iraq that began last summer as the Bush administration deployed 30,000 additional troops here. “We have gone from being on the brink to being on the mend,” he said at his office in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

But what happens when we stop paying the Iraqis not to shoot at us? Nice of the WaPo to neglect pointing that out. Wouldn’t want to question The Man.

But Petraeus said the gains in Iraq are not irreversible. “There are a number of what we call storm clouds in the horizon,” he said.

If there weren’t, then we might be able to withdraw our troops all together. And we can’t have that.

Petraeus said recent intelligence reports suggest that Iranian-backed Shiite fighters who left the country in recent months to avoid a military confrontation with U.S. and Iraqi forces are considering returning to Iraq.

Political tension, particularly over disputed internal boundaries in northern Iraq, had the potential of “erupting into something more significant,” the general said.

Like a casus belli? (Latin for “October surprise.”

The Iraqi parliament, which reconvened Tuesday after its summer break, failed to pass a law this year to provide a framework for provincial elections that were scheduled to take place next month.

But isn’t that what your oh-so-successful surge was for? To provide “room” for a political solution to Iraq’s ethnic and territorial issues? Where’s the success, Senator McCain?

But as with everything BushCo does, it’s the ends that count. The reason - and the means - are as meaningless as the hundreds of thousands of lives they’ve destroyed to get what they want.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Minneapolis in September, perhaps?

SEOUL, South Korea - Police fired water cannons at thousands of protesters Tuesday as President Bush got a volatile reception in South Korea at the start of his three-nation Asian trip.

Some 18,300 police were on high alert with riot gear and bomb-sniffing dogs to maintain order during Bush’s brief visit, the National Police Agency said.
…
As evening approached, an estimated 20,000 anti-Bush protesters gathered nearby. Police turned water cannons on them as they tried to move onto the main central downtown boulevard, telling the crowd that the liquid contained markers to tag them so they could be identified later.

Our allies are so awesome. They torture our prisoners for us and model the latest in crowd control/surveillance techniques.

Bonus Bush stupidity:

“Iraq has changed — a lot — thanks to the bravery of people in this hangar and the bravery of troops all across our country. The terrorists (are) on the run. The terrorists will be denied a safe haven, and freedom is on the march. And as a result, our children are more likely to grow up in a peaceful world.”

For the millionth time, you hairless son of a bald monkey: Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until you opened the door for them; “freedom” is just another word for 1 million civilian dead (and counting); and our children will only be more likely to grow up in a peaceful world once you and your criminal cohort are out of Washington and out of power, forever.

But enjoy your valedictory tour, Dummy - especially since the repression and surveillance activities of the regimes you are visiting have gained so much legitimacy during your tenure.

Asshole.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

No? Maybe just a little preemptive strike, then?

Bush has made me so gun-shy that even Obama’s Pax Americana talk is starting to scare me:

This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.

Instead of the world’s policeman, why don’t we try a few decades as the world’s Shriner clown? We can pick up all the shit our military has dropped over the last hundred years as it has paraded through countries that caused us no harm. We could build a few hospitals, entertain the people, and never kill or maim a soul.

We may think such a role is beneath us, but just think about all those old guys bellydancing down Main Street in their fezzes: they may look ridiculous, but they do a lot of good. And they clean up after themselves.

We could reduce our expenditures on military hardware and personnel so that we have only twice or three times what the next largest national military has, instead of ten times our nearest competitor. And we could use the “peace dividend” that results to retire our massive and unprecedented national debt, rebuild the dollar, pay reparations to the Iraqis and help get their country truly back on track, and reduce the amount of hatred and anger the world feels for the U.S.

Domestically, we could fully fund the care and education of our returning veterans and still have money left over for universal single-payer healthcare, free college education for all qualifying citizens, and the biggest infrastructure construction and rebuilding investment since the Great Depression.

We could invest in green technologies and wean ourselves off fossil fuels within ten years.

We could reduce green house emissions and invest in reforestation projects around the globe to trap decades of the carbon that we have released into our atmosphere.

But, with talk like Obama’s in Berlin, it looks like we’ll stay in the Big Stick business whether Obama wins or loses.

And that’s is something we should all grieve. Because while we do have the power to be the world’s policeman, with a change of motivation from fear and nationalism to compassion and humanism, we could build a global commonwealth of true freedom: political, social and economic.

But being the world’s policeman makes us feel much better about our national penis size - and keeps the GEs and Halliburtons of the world fat and greedy - so rational change is unlikely.

And that is the type of terrorism we should be fighting.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

For anyone who wants to try to understand what is going on in Somalia. (5 parts will all play together)

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

I had to run some errands for work this morning, and so caught John Bolton making the case for bombing Iran on Thom Hartmann’s program.

But before we get to Bolton’s peculiar madness, the EU has, today, succumbed to Bush & Cheney’s warmongering illogic, demanding that Iran to submit to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1696 requiring Iran to stop all processing of fissile material even though the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, clearly allows nations to develop civilian nuclear power.

So, the double standard holds once again: everyone but the U.S. and Israel must obey U.N. mandates:

Washington and Brussels promised to “fully and effectively” implement existing UN security council resolutions on Iran’s nuclear activities, warning also they were “ready to supplement those sanctions with additional measures”.

Later, the EU’s external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, said these could include moves to freeze bank assets.

“We want to indeed show to Iranians that we mean it very seriously … [We are] particularly thinking of asset freezes of banks,” she told reporters.

Bush … said Tehran must transparently end uranium enrichment if it wanted closer ties.

“They can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us,” he said, adding: “Now’s the time for all of us to work together to stop them.”

So, the U.S. and E.U. have weighed in; but what does the International Atomic Energy Agency say?

[T]he IAEA’s technical report and the interpretations of its findings are spinning into an overheated strategic standoff between Western nations, Israel, and Iran that, analysts say, may become reason for a military strike against Iran.

Even as Europeans expect to offer Iran an upgraded incentive package to suspend uranium enrichment in the coming weeks, analysts say that cherry-picking of quotes and Western spin, coupled with “breathless” media reporting about Iranian recalcitrance, could point in a nondiplomatic direction.
…
At issue in Vienna is the meaning of 18 documents that point to secret weaponization work, which the IAEA calls “alleged studies.” Most were provided by US intelligence but were only shown, not given, to the IAEA and to Iran, which dismisses them as fakes.

Those studies “remain a matter of serious concern,” and Iran “has not yet agreed to implement all the transparency measures required to clarify this cluster of allegations,” IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the agency’s 35-member board of governors when they convened on Monday.

….The IAEA, he added, “has not seen indications of the actual use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies.”
…
“Perhaps it’s like Iraq, where the intelligence wasn’t shared because the intelligence wasn’t there,” says [a Western diplomat in Vienna close to the IAEA]. “Certainly there are some people who say this is getting a bit like the pre-Iraq war. [When] finally the inspectors were there and investigated, of course none of the claims stood up.”

Anyone hungry for some Niger yellowcake?

So, back to the Mustachioed One. According to Bolton, the U.S. (and/or Israel) does not need proof of Iranian nuclear enrichment beyond the confines of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Neither does the U.S. (and/or Israel) need an overt threat to enrich weapons-grade uranium or pursue a nuclear weapon. The U.S. (and/or Israel) doesn’t even need the blessing of the U.N. to go beyond the sanctions outlined in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1696.

Why?

Because all the U.S. (and/or Israel) needs to Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran is the concern that Iran might be attempting to enrich uranium to weapons grade. Because that, to Bolton, is justifiable self-defense. The attenuated threat is there.

So, Mr. Bolton, you have just made a much less attenuated threat to attack a sovereign nation which has done nothing to provoke a military response under the internationally-recognized understanding of what constitutes self-defense.

By your own logic, why would Iran not preempt the U.S. from making such a first strike?

It may be suicidal, yes. But, under your own very broad definition of self-defense, that would not make it any less justifiable.

Unless, of course, your real justification is Might Makes Right, also known as “fuck the brown people, we need another election-year war.”

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Inflation on the rise, foreclosures at records levels and the dollar’s in the toilet; have fun running on Republican fiscal responsibility, St. John! From our international banker this morning:

Heavy and continuing dollar sales for euro. Reportedly the dollar sales are coming from Chinese, Korean and Middle East names. The sales drove the US dollar to record lows against its basket of currencies and moved the euro to a record high. The move occurred without being tied to any particular news event. Fairly scary stuff as we don’t really have an good historical precedence…

Perhaps the Weimar Republic would provide some historical perspective?

To quote Atrios: WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Bonus dollar cover: is “sturzflug” German for “fucked”?

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

The Commerce Department has been forced by Judicial Watch to turn over records of spring, 2001 meetings held between Dick Cheney and execs from global oil giants, records that suggest that the group decided months before September 11th that the US energy policy would center on taking control of Iraq’s oil:

In the late spring of 2001, Vice President Cheney held a series of top secret meetings with the representatives of Exxon-Mobil, Conoco, Shell and BP America for what was later called the Energy Task-force. Their job, ostensibly, was to map out America’s Energy future. Since late 2001 several public interest groups, including the very conservative Judicial Watch, sued to have the proceedings of those meetings opened to public scrutiny. In March 2002, the Commerce Department turned over a few documents from the Task-force meetings to Judicial Watch, among which was the map of Iraq’s Oil Fields, dated March 2001 (above) and a list of the existing “Foreign Suitors” for Iraq Oil. Since that time, Cheney’s office has fought fiercely (and so far, successfully), right up to the Supreme Court, to keep the proceeding secret and to keep any of the private industry officials from disclosing any information about the meetings. Since we all now know the Bush administration’s energy policy, there can be only one explanation for the extraordinary efforts Cheney has taken to keep this secret–he was discussing the potential for a takeover of Iraq’s oil with the companies that might manage the resource, even before 9/11 gave him the excuse to do it.

Link

Found at Boing Boing

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Photos defy state’s version of events

THE official version of how Benazir Bhutto was killed lay in tatters last night as the Pakistani Government faced mounting demands, led by the US, for a full investigation.

The Government’s claims that she died from massive brain damage sustained when she smashed her head against the sunroof of the Toyota Land Cruiser in which she was travelling were undermined by the publication of photographs clearly showing a gunman firing directly at her.
…
Further crucial backing for the gunshot theory came yesterday from one of Bhutto’s closest aides, her spokeswoman Sherry Rehman, who helped bathe her body for burial. Ms Rehman said she had clearly seen a gunshot wound.

Brigadier Cheema, however, insisted she was not shot, even though his own boss, the caretaker Interior Minister, went on television immediately after the assassination to say Bhutto had been hit by bullets. No post-mortem examination was conducted.

With many Pakistanis openly voicing their belief that there was some official complicity in her death, other events are contributing to the mystery. Within minutes of her being killed, for example, high-pressure hoses were produced to wash the area clean.

Something stronger than high-pressure hoses will be required to wash the blood off Bush & Cheney’s hands. U.S. support for Musharraf has given that dictator the kind of security and safe passage that Bush’s fondest dictatorial dreams are made of.

I was going to quote all of Bush’s blather over the years (from March 2006, September 2006, December 2004, June 2003, etc., etc.), as if any of Bush’s proclamations of support for Pakistani democracy, and the administration’s expectations of Musharraf, were anything but the purest distilled bullshit.

Bush doesn’t want Pakistan to be a democracy any more than he wants the U.S. to leave Iraq. Democracies make bad puppets. While BushCo may have jawboned Bhutto into returning to Pakistan, that was surely only in the hope that if Musharraf was finally forced into holding elections (or if events overtook Musharraf), the U.S. would have a finger in the back of the next puppet to take the stage.

Bhutto never intended to be a puppet. But just as Musharraf has been kept alive and in power by the billions we have thrown his way, which he has used to payoff the various factions that might want to assassinate him, the literal and political survival of Musharraf’s successor has always depended on the continued largesse of the U.S. government. Our machinations in that part of the world for the last 3 decades have ensured such fatal polarization that U.S. aid money is the only thing standing between Pakistan and its devolution into Afghanistanic anarchy.

Even if Bhutto’s return was engineered by the administration, it was surely not to advance Pakistani democracy. This is about imperialism, pure and simple. And the blood of hundreds of thousands, of which Bhutto is just the latest prominent victim, is as nothing next to the voracious geopolitical appetites of Bush & Cheney.

[emphasis added.]

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated near the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto, who was appearing at a political rally, was fired upon by a gunman at close range, quickly followed by a blast that the government said was caused by a suicide attacker.

Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan, was declared dead by doctors at a hospital in Rawalpindi at 6:16 p.m. At least a dozen more people were killed in the attack.
…
A close aide to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf blamed Islamic militants for the assassination, and said it was carried out by a suicide bomber.

Bhutto was no Aung San Suu Kyi. Her administration was run out of power on charges of massive corruption. But Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who founded the party his daughter would later lead, worked for a democratic Pakistan, and served as the country’s President and then Prime Minister from 1971-1977. He was executed in 1979 after a show trial by Musharraf’s predecessor in military dictatorship, General Zia-al-Haq. And his daughter was a courageous voice for democracy; losing her father and two brothers to murder did not silence Bhutto’s calls for a secular, democratic, pluralistic Pakistan, whatever her failures at governing.

Benazir Bhutto’s return to Pakistan gave at least some promise of a return to democracy and political pluralism. But either the Islamic fundamentalists, who cannot countenance a woman in power, or Musharraf, or the two working together saw to it that democracy is not in Pakistan’s immediate future. Militant Islamic fundamentalists have worked hand-in-glove with Musharraf and the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, since Musharraf took power, and it was certainly in both their interests to eliminate Bhutto as a rallying point for a return to secular democracy.

The U.S. has not helped the people of Pakistan either maintain or reclaim their democracy, using military support and financial aid largely against Pakistan’s democratically elected governments, starting after the coup that toppled Pakistan’s first civilian government after partition from India. In typical Cold War realpolitik style, the U.S. backed Pakistan’s military government so long as Pakistan’s military government opposed the Soviet Union. When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto returned Pakistan to civilian rule (and a softer stance on communism), the aid dried up - just until General Zia took over and joined the fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. U.S. aid was again withdrawn after the Soviet’s fled Afghanistan and Pakistan returned to civilian rule in the late 80’s and throughout the 90’s; and now, of course, Musharraf gets $1 billion a year for his assistance (however fictional) in the War on Terror.

Bush et al. may finally be tiring of Musharraf’s lies, his cozy relationship with militant Islamic fundamentalists, his peace treaty with al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, and his recent forays into overt despotism. One can only hope that Bhutto’s assassination, if nothing else, rationalizes U.S. policy toward that benighted country.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Either Bush really is Cheney’s puppet, told what to say when and kept in the dark until the last moment; or, he’s a craven, power-mad asshole:

The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) took U.S. friends and foes by surprise after years of strident rhetoric from Washington accusing Iran of pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program.

Bush warned just last month that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War III.

And speaking of craven, power-mad assholes, here’s Stephen Hadley, yesterday:

Q There had to be more than an inkling before today that this information, this intelligence, that the Iranians had an ongoing nuclear weapons program was incorrect. So why wasn’t — why then would the President allow it or advise to go ahead with ratcheting up the rhetoric, instead of toning it down…?

MR. HADLEY: Two things. One, when the President was told that we had some additional information, he was basically told: stand down; needs to be evaluated; we’ll come to you and tell you what we think it means…

Q The President — you said the President was told to stand down on that –

MR. HADLEY: No, I said just the opposite. I said the President was told, we have some information, we have some new information not to stand down — said, we have some new information; give us some time to analyze it, and we will come to you and tell you what we think it means.
…
Q But was he given that advice before or after the World War III comment?

MR. HADLEY: I’ll have to — I’ll have to look.

Q Which was on October 20th.

MR. HADLEY: From my mind, it doesn’t make any difference, because the World War III comment you characterize as stepping up the rhetoric. I would say it was making a point that the President and we have been making for two or three years, that the international community has to exert more pressure because Iran needs to suspend its enrichment program.
…
Q So was it recent weeks that this intelligence came in?

MR. HADLEY: What the intelligence community has said is in the last few months…

But CIA analysts say different:

Two CIA officers have revealed Dick Cheney tried to silence dissidents within US intelligence who contradicted him over Iran’s nuclear case.

“The publication of a position paper on Iran, bringing together the views of the various American intelligence agencies, was adjourned for more than a year,” ISNA reported from Le Monde.

According to a former CIA official who was involved in the preparation of the fact sheet, known as the National Intelligence Estimate, brings together the analysis of the sixteen American intelligence agencies, the report has been ready for a year and gives an account of assessments different from that espoused by the White House and Dick Cheney.
…
“The White House wants a document which it could use as evidence to justify its strategy towards Iran,” he added.

…[D]espite the pressure, several analysts refuse to assume the alarmist conclusions defended by Dick Cheney, because they consider that these conclusions are not supported by evidence.

What’s incredibly frustrating is that anyone who has been paying attention had surmised long before yesterday’s release of the NIE that Iran does not have a nuclear program that rises to the level of an immediate threat, that the NIE was being delayed while Cheney bludgeoned the analysts into line, and that Cheney and Bush have been pushing to attack Iran with the same level of vitriol and deceit that they did on Iraq. But the zeitgeist seems to be that this is business as usual, as if this is the way we should expect our President and Vice President to behave.

These are shrunken times indeed.

[emphasis added.]

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Tim Probst, CEO of the Washington Workforce Association based in Vancouver, along with Rep. Jim McDermott published an article in yesterday’s Seattle Times entitled “Invest in American workers”.

The article points out Bush’s gross fiscal irresponsibility:

The president is casting himself as the defender of fiscal responsibility, when his record shows the opposite: He is increasing spending at 7 percent per year — twice as fast as prior presidents, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office.

The piece goes on to point out that Bush’s broken budget is jeopardizing the 1998 Workforce Investment Act (WIA):

WIA programs have been constantly threatened in the past seven years, despite the stalwart support of senators and representatives who understand our critical need to invest in our country’s human potential.Funding for programs in Washington state has dropped by 21 percent overall since 2001, and Seattle-King County has lost 43 percent — or $7 million — of its WIA funding since 2004.

Meanwhile there is no end in sight for the billions being squandered in our name in Iraq. We must restore fiscal sanity to our Federal government. But with an uncaring President (see SCHIP veto) and an ineffective Congress, the insanity continues…

Link to Article

Tim Probst recently announced he is running for 17th Legislative District State Representative as a Democrat against incumbent Jim Dunn (R). You can visit Tim’s campaign website here.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

“Investors seem to be moving money outside of the U.S. which leads us to believe they are planning for a continual U.S. dollar decline,” said Mark Meadows, currency strategist at Tempus Consulting in Washington.

But BushCo sez we need more Free Trade Agreements. Now.

Last week President Bush launched a campaign to win support for four pending free trade agreements and to reverse a political tide that is increasingly running against free trade.

However, his arguments that free trade means more and better jobs seem to be getting little traction, even among his own Republicans. A recent poll found that six of 10 Republicans felt free trade was bad for the country…

The four pending agreements are with Peru, Panama, Colombia and South Korea. The one with Peru may pass, but the others are doubtful, even though the president insists the Colombian agreement is vital for diplomatic and national security reasons.

Peru is the first to step up to the plate. Contact your rep (202-225-3121 or email) and Senators (202-225-3121 or email) and tell them to vote NO on the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Georgie’s radio address on Saturday (I can’t listen to the moron without getting nauseous, but I do read the transcripts):

…Last week, we learned that September was America’s 49th consecutive month of job creation — the longest uninterrupted period of job growth on record.

As usual, Chimpy is full of shit. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the latest numbers available are for August):

Nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-4,000) in August…

And this is what the job growth statistics look like over BushCo’s two terms, so far (150,000 jobs a month need to be added just to keep pace with demand):

And on Thursday, we learned that the American economy set a new record for exports in a single month. Millions of American jobs depend on exports. More exports support better and higher-paying jobs — and to keep our economy expanding, we need to keep expanding trade.

Exports rise when the dollar is in the toilet, and the dollar is in the toilet because our national debt currently stands at something over $9 trillion dollars, and our bond holders can’t think of a rational way that this debt can be paid off. But…

This week, I traveled to Miami to discuss the importance of trade and to call on Congress to pass new free trade agreements… [W]e have agreements in force with 14 countries, including seven in Latin America. And Congress now has an opportunity to increase America’s access to markets in our hemisphere by passing three more free trade agreements in Latin America with Peru, Colombia, and Panama.

And how have those trade agreements worked to improve our balance of trade thusfar?

So jobs are down, the dollar’s in the crapper and we still can’t manage to export more than we import. It’s mourning in America.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver