Posts by Scarecrow

Scarecrow is a regular blogger for FireDogLake

81% of Americans Dissatisfied with Our Country's Direction -- the Highest Level Ever
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on April 4, 2008 at 6:22 AM.

How do you know when government has abysmally failed and driven the country into a ditch? Just ask the American people.

Americans are more dissatisfied with the country's direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll.

In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed that "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track," up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2003. . . .

A majority of nearly every demographic and political group -- Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school -- say that the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off. . . .

Only 21 percent of respondents said that the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992, when the recession that began in the summer of 1990 had already been over for more than a year. In the latest poll, nearly two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today.

To understand these results simply compare what Americans told pollsters with what Washington has done recently.

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Al Gore Launches $300 Million Climate Change Initiative, Meanwhile Bush Keeps Torturing
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on March 31, 2008 at 8:13 AM.

Two contrasting stories on CBS' 60 Minutes illustrated for the hundredth time why selecting the right person for President matters. In 2000, the American people made the right choice in voting for Al Gore over George Bush, but five conservative justices of the Supreme Court overruled the people and instead installed perhaps the most lawless regime in American history. We have paid a huge price for the Court's lawless dishonesty.

The imprisonment and torture of innocent people. President Bush surrounded himself with men and women who have little respect for the rule of law but plenty of zeal for giving the executive branch expanded powers unchecked by the Constitution. The created a Justice Department without integrity that sanctioned massive warrantless spying on Americans, kidnapping, rendition, secret prisons, indefinite imprisonment, the suspension of habeas corpus, kangaroo trials and torture. And the Administration is still lying about it all.

From 60 Minutes' story of the innocent German man we kidnapped, tortured and held for years at Guantanamo long after authorities knew he was completely innocent:

(CBS) At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one.

The story Kurnaz told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley is a rare look inside that clandestine system of justice, where the government's own secret files reveal that an innocent man lost his liberty, his dignity, his identity, and ultimately five years of his life.

. . .

"Have you ever in your legal career run across anything like this?" Pelley asks [detainee counsel] Baher Azmy.

"In my legal career, no," Azmy says. "But in Guantanamo, no detainee has ever been able to genuinely present evidence before a neutral judge. And so as absurd as Murat Kurnaz's case is, I assure you there are many, many dozens just as tenuous."

The campaign to save the planet. Had we had an honest Supreme Court, we would have had a very different man as President. However he might have responded to 9/11, it is certain Al Gore would never have invaded Iraq and equally certain he would never have destroyed the Constitution's Bill of Rights through illegal spying on Americans, nor would he have trampled on statutes and treaties outlawing abuse of prisoners and torture for the sake of a mindless "global war on terror." But our nation would have been leading a global effort to deal with the threat of climate change.

From 60 Minutes' interview with Al Gore:

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McCain Gets Remedial Economics Lesson
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on March 28, 2008 at 6:04 AM.

On Tuesday, John McCain attempted to address the economy by promising he would only do what makes sense and never be dogmatic. He then repeated standard Republican dogma by excusing the Fed's massive bailout of Wall Street investment bankers while offering nothing to its Mainstreet victims. The problem was a few bad actors (including irresponsible homeowers) but surely didn't require a fundamental overhaul of regulatory oversight.

"It is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers," McCain declared, giving only scant attention to "deserving" homeowners while using the same tone he uses when promising never to surrender in Iraq.

But then he got hammered in speeches by Senators Clinton and Obama.

By Thursday, faced with Democratic criticism, McCain's advisers had to explain he really did want to help deserving homeowners and really would consider regulatory remedies.

In a speech Tuesday, McCain pointedly stopped short of offering the kind of wholesale measures to stem the subprime mortgage and bankruptcy crises that Obama and Clinton are tossing about, suggesting that to do so would only reward bad behavior at taxpayer expense. Instead, McCain repeated his call for the lending industry to do all it could to help struggling homeowners with a legitimate claim to assistance. . . .

So the McCain campaign revisited the issue today, issuing a statement saying that he would not be opposed to all attempts to help struggling homeowners, as long as speculators were not bailed out. . . .

McCain's economic adviser, Doug Holtz-Eakin, chimed in by seeking to associate McCain with Obama's call for more effective financial regulation in a Wall Street speech today.

On Tuesday, McCain had warned that undue new regulations would threaten economic recovery, but Holtz-Eakin argued that Obama's proposals were in essence little different than what McCain was talking about. " They are wonderful words and they are words that you could hear out of a Republican or a Democrat," he said of the Obama speech. "I don't think there is any grand disagreement about the need for effective regulation. The bottom line that Senator Obama came up with is what Senator John McCain said on Tuesday."

Right.

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Hillary Wants to Let Greenspan Decide Whether to Rescue Home Owners
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on March 25, 2008 at 6:10 AM.

I wonder what Paul Krugman, who has pointed to Alan Greenspan's role in fostering the current financial crisis, would think of asking Greenspan to help decide if the US should help rescue home owners, and not just the Wall Street financial giants. From Reuters:

WHITE PLAINS, New York (Reuters) - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and other economic experts should determine whether the U.S. government needs to buy up homes to stem the country's housing crisis, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will propose on Monday.

Clinton, a presidential candidate and senator from New York, said the Federal Housing Administration should "stand ready" to buy, restructure and resell failed mortgages to strengthen the ailing U.S. economy. . . .

Clinton threw her weight behind legislation proposed by Democrats Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut that would "expand the government's capacity to stand behind mortgages that are reworked on affordable terms."

But she said a bipartisan group should determine whether that approach was sufficient or whether the U.S. government should step in as a temporary purchaser.

The working group could be led by bipartisan economic heavyweights such as Republican Greenspan, Democratic former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Under the Frank plan, the government would take failing mortgages off the hands of investors and write new terms that would prevent foreclosure. It would see lenders write down the mortgage amount in exchange for a government guarantee.

Krugman has been beating the drums for more closely regulating the financial industry, which has taken over much of the mortgage market once held by regulated banks and savings and loans. Greenspan has opposed such regulation, and Rubin I suspect is only a recent convert.

Over time, however, many of the roles traditionally filled by regulated banks were taken over by unregulated institutions -- the "shadow banking system," which relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass those safety regulations.

Now, the shadow banking system is facing the 21st-century equivalent of the wave of bank runs that swept America in the early 1930s. And the government is rushing in to help, with hundreds of billions from the Federal Reserve, and hundreds of billions more from government-sponsored institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.

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Corporate Media Uses Rev. Wright as Excuse for Racist Remarks About Black Pastors
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on March 17, 2008 at 12:08 PM.

If you wondered how the nation's mainstream media would ensure that racism and religious militarism influence the next election, just watch MSNBC and ABC stage endless faintings about "Obama's pastor problem." America's DC pundits are bullying a black candidate while making racist attacks on black pastors and churches, thinly disguising them as a defense of American civility and patriotism.

MSNBC spent Friday evening's political commentary probing the adequacy of Obama's renunciation of statements made by his Pastor Jeremy Wright, including those following 9/11. Obama has categorically rejected those sentiments, but that will not stop the Republicans and Fox News from replaying Wright's comments to maliciously brand Obama as secretly anti-white and anti-American. But MSNBC was hardly better, running the headline banner, "Obama's Pastor Problem" throughout the discussion.

Let us be clear. Barack Obama does not have a "pastor problem." There is a problem, but it's being framed as "Obama's Pastor Problem" only because he lives in a country whose irresponsible media pretends that America does not have a "racism problem" and a "religiously driven militarism problem" neither of which can be honestly discussed in a Presidential campaign because we have a "corrupt media problem."

As expected, Fox News obsessed over Reverend Wright , but ABC and ABC's This Week, were not to be outdone. And who better to pontificate on what constitutes acceptable political speech by black pastors than the self-righteous team of Ruth Marcus, George Will and Mark Halperin, arrayed against the ever polite Donna Brazile. You can guess the rest.

Will asserted that Obama was probably lying because Will knows that anyone who sits in a black church will hear unpatriotic, un-American views. Halperin announced the litmus test for Presidential eligibility that if it can be proved that Obama personally heard views that might offend George Will, then Obama is [black] toast. When Donna Brazile tried to explain to her white panelists that it's not unusual for black ministers to preach against the evils of racism and militarism in America, George Stephanopoulus ignored her and ask whether Obama should condemn Wright even further. Ms. Marcus happily added that he should.

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Did DC Media Applaud Bush After Approving Waterboarding?
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on March 10, 2008 at 6:12 AM.

As he warned, on Saturday President Bush sanctioned future torture by vetoing an intelligence bill that would have restricted the CIA's interrogation practices to those sanctioned by Congress via the Army Field Manual. As the Times article notes, Bush's veto, which seems highly unlikely to be overridden (e.g. McCain voted against this Bill, so an override will get no Republican support), seals Bush's legacy as the President responsible for authorizing violations of the Geneval Conventions and damaging America's honor and reputation throughout the civilized world.

There have been innumerable media stories of the damage Bush's pro-torture policies have done to the US image, the dubious efficacy of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that amount to torture, and the danger such policies pose to our own troops as confirmed by General Petraeus.

Never mind the overriding moral problem that sanctioning/conducting torture is simply evil. A consistent majority of Americans say we as a nation should just not do it.

The media knows that our President first denied he authorized torture, while his administration systematically lied and withheld evidence that it had used torture which it later had to admit, even after it destroyed some evidence. Even now the White House spokesperson, Dana Perino, makes up ludicrous rationales that the only reason we don't allow the Army to engage in torture via the Army Field Manual is that, unlike the CIA's professional interrogators (but see here), our Army volunteers are simply too young and inexperienced to be able to handle torture techniques. Is there any responsible journalist who takes this gibberish seriously and who is not appalled by the White House arguments and what they imply?

So why did Washington's elite press corps reportedly rise to applaud this President Saturday night? What were they thinking?

WASHINGTON - President Bush said an early farewell to political Washington on Saturday night, making his first appearance on the stage of the Gridiron Club of Washington journalists.

Bush surprised the white-tie audience of more than 600, including Supreme Court justices, Cabinet members and lawmakers, by appearing as the final act of the club's annual revue. To the tune of "Green Green Grass of Home," he sang about looking forward to his return to Texas.

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McCain: The Answer to Bush's Prayers
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on March 5, 2008 at 9:12 AM.

In his acceptance/victory speech, last night, John McCain made clear his foreign policy would be based on a world view that assumes a global war with radical Islam is the great calling of our time. He essentially endorsed George Bush's good versus evil mentality and the Administration's imperial notions of America's role in the world.

He did not mention, however, that Secretary of State Rice was in the Middle East and Admiral Mullen was in Pakistan, both trying to obscure the embarrassing fact that every single application of the Bush Administration's foreign policy against Islam has collapsed in total chaos, leaving America's strategic interests in shambles.

McCain tried both to evade responsibility for the strategic blunder of invading Iraq -- he simply asserted there is no value in "relitigating" past decisions -- and in the very next sentence to take credit for deposing Saddam Hussein.

America is at war in two countries, and involved in a long and difficult fight with violent extremists who despise us, our values and modernity itself. It is of little use to Americans for their candidates to avoid the many complex challenges of these struggles by re-litigating decisions of the past. I will defend the decision to destroy Saddam Hussein's regime as I criticized the failed tactics that were employed for too long to establish the conditions that will allow us to leave that country with our country's interests secure and our honor intact.

It is a neat trick to claim credit for deposing an unpopular dictator while denying all responsibility for opening the Pandora's Box of catastrophic consequences that flowed from removing a non-sectarian regime and replacing it with the murderous clerics and chaos that filled the governance vacuum we created.

McCain was defiant on Iraq, laying out a set of preconditions for withdrawing so impossible that even George Bush has been reluctance to make them explicit.

But Americans know that the next President doesn't get to re-make that decision. We are in Iraq and our most vital security interests are clearly involved there. The next President must explain how he or she intends to bring that war to the swiftest possible conclusion without exacerbating a sectarian conflict that could quickly descend into genocide; destabilizing the entire Middle East; enabling our adversaries in the region to extend their influence and undermine our security there; and emboldening terrorists to attack us elsewhere with weapons we dare not allow them to possess.

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The Oscar for Best Performance by a Candidate Goes to...
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on February 25, 2008 at 6:39 AM.

Hillary Clinton showed a range of emotions from anger to mockery towards the upstart, pretentious Barack Obama. Reacting first to an Obama campaign mailing on health care:

"I have to express my deep disappointment that he is continuing to send false and discredited mailings," Clinton said, holding the fliers in her hand. "He says one thing in his speeches, and then he turns around and does this. It is not the new politics the speeches are about. It is not hopeful. It is destructive."

She added, "Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public."

And then showing her range, Clinton pivots Sunday to ridicule Obama on his hopes of taming special interests:

"Now I could stand up here and say, let's get everybody together, let's get unified the sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing," she said, to a smattering of giggles. "And everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect."

She added: "But I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and make the special interests disappear."

Barack Obama demonstrates an ability to keep his cool in the face of simultaneous attacks not only from his Democratic rival . . .

"She's essentially presented herself as co-president during the Clinton years. Every good thing that happened she says she was a part of," he said. "So the notion that she can selectively pick what you take credit for and then run away from what isn't politically convenient, that doesn't make sense. If she's suggesting she had nothing to do with economic policy in the Clinton White House, then it would not be fair [to attack her on NAFTA], but as you know, that's not the claim that she's making."

. . . but also from announced 3rd party candidate Ralph Nader:

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Isn't FISA Enough?
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on February 18, 2008 at 6:39 AM.

As Jane noted last evening, Democrats and Republicans skirmished yesterday over the blame for allowing the misnamed Protect America Act to expire. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell made sure everyone knew that the nation's capabilities to conduct surveillance had instantly diminished, a claim repeated by Senator Mitch McConnell and denied by Jack Reed on CNN, echoing earlier statements by Pelosi and Harry Reid. However, the Democrats' responses to the charge of an intelligence gap are not very reassuring.

Democrats are arguing that there isn't an immediate problem of a surveillance gap, because the PAA provided that surveillance programs it authorized could continue for up to a year, with some expansion of related targets. In the meantime, entirely new surveillance could begin under the traditional FISA procedures, which require a warrant either before the fact or within 72 hours after surveillance begins. In effect, therefore, Democrats are denying we have a surveillance gap but only because the PAA's warrantless procedures continue. Is that really where they want to be?

When the PAA was enacted last August, the rationale given by DNI McConnell was that a FISA court had secretly ruled that foreign-to-foreign communications, which Congress had never intended to require FISA warrants and oversight, nevertheless required such oversight if routed through US facilities. No one desired that outcome, so the original purpose of the PAA was to fix this unexpected glitch in FISA, under the assumption that the FISA's warrant and court oversight were adequate for all other foreign surveillance involving US citizens/residents. In other words, prior to PAA, Democrats apparently believed that FISA's warrant and oversight were an adequate structure for surveillance and thus made FISA the exclusive means for conducting such surveillance.

It was only the shameless fearmongering, including the false revelation that an attack might be imminent, that allowed DNI McConnell and the Administration to bully Congress into a wholesale gutting of FISA last August -- an action the Democrats immediately regretted and promised to amend before the PAA expired six months later. Yet here are the Democrats now defending themselves by arguing that our surveillance programs are sufficient only because the PAA's provisions can extend another year.

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House Democrats Call Bush’s FISA Bluff
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on February 15, 2008 at 5:58 AM.

Yesterday, House Democrats finally said "enough" and called George Bush's bluff. The President had threatened to leave the country in an intelligence blackout if Congress did not accede to his demands for sweeping warrantless surveillance and telecom immunity. But this time, for the first time, Democrats said, "we don't believe you." That moment of courage may well define the fall campaign.

This President has falsely cried "wolf" too many times. Statements from Speaker Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Reyes dismissed as irresponsible and false fear mongering the President's claims that the expiration of the notoriously unconstitutional "Protect American Act" would preclude the government from continuing necessary foreign surveillance. From Chairman Reyes:

I, for one, do not intend to back down - not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

As Glenn Greenwald (and many others) explained, "we're not all going to die under FISA." By statute, existing surveillance efforts are allowed to continue for a year.

By statute, related new surveillance under the existing efforts can be added during that period.

By statute, unrelated new surveillance can be initiated under the pre-existing FISA provisions which remain in effect when the PAA expires.

And, telecom entities who follow lawful FISA requests are, as they always have been, immune for those actions.

In short, there is no break in surveillance coverage and no danger of non-cooperation by telecoms.

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Senate Passes Bush's Massive Illegal Spying Program, Immunity for Telecoms
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on February 13, 2008 at 6:35 AM.

The US Constitution and the principle that no one is above the law suffered a numbing setback, Tuesday, when every Republican Senator, Independent Joe Lieberman and 18 faux Democrats voted to gut the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, one of the most important bulwarks again tyrannical government since 1789. The Senate voted 68 - 29 to ratify the President's massive illegal spying program and provide immunity for the telecoms who invaded the privacy of millions of innocent Americans.

The Fourth Amendment has been handed down to us unchanged for over two centuries:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Almost none of that is left if today's bill stands. In an age in which "bipartisan" has come to mean weak Democrats joining unanimous Republicans to vote against the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment would be eviscerated by a bill that provides a virtual blank check for the executive to invade the privacy of Americans:

-- The President can direct US spy agencies to intercept every e-mail, telephone or internet communication of every American and anyone legally in the US with only the most minimal safeguards. Although the bill was supposed to deal with exclusively "foreign" communications, the techniques it sanctions will in fact sweep up domestic and foreign combined.

-- Acting without individual or particularized warrants from any court, spy agencies can sweep up millions of communications without differentiating between those warranting surveillance and those not. Procedures for separating out totally innocent persons or communications that have nothing to do with foreign intelligence or any security threat to the US are minimal to non-existent. Procedures allowing a secret court to review such procedures have been weakened, along with measures to correct violations of even these limited procedures.

-- Persons spied upon have no ability to determine what information the government has collected, or to affect what the government does with the information. Americans will never know which persons or government agencies were shown private information about them, and if restrictions are placed on their activities or travel because of this secret information, it will be impossible for victims to determine why or to challenge the information.

-- Telecommunication companies who participated in government's illegal spying activities, and those who ordered this, would be forever immune from any consequences for their actions and cannot be required to disclose what they did.

-- As bad as the Senate Bill is, the Senate rejected an effort to make the bill the exclusive means by which surveillance can be authorized. So the President arguably can conduct further spying on Americans even without the minimal protections left in the Bill.

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John McCain Owns Bush's Surge...and Its Consequences
Posted by Scarecrow , Firedoglake on February 11, 2008 at 12:16 PM.

John McCain is claiming personal ownership of the surge, boasting of his advocacy as the central element of his national security credentials. But the wisdom of this strategy depends on the media and the voters having an improbably narrow view of the surge's consequences.

Doubts about the wisdom of McCain's political calculation do not require the standard argument that the surge failed to achieve its political objectives, nor the fact there are several plausible, alternative reasons for whatever reported reductions in violence may have occurred. One can even discount as temporary the dreadful news that violence appears to have increased in recent weeks, with dozens more killed yesterday, and hope that killings of civilians will decline rather than increase.

The strategic choice whether to increase troops or begin withdrawing them always required the Administration to consider what would happen not only in Iraq but everywhere else. And it's clear that since the President's -- now McCain's -- policy choice to surge more troops into Iraq, conditions everywhere else have substantially worsened, with increasingly alarming consequences for US security interests.

Recently the negative consequences of the surge decision have been in full view. The Bush Administration sent Secretary Rice, Secretary Gates and senior military officials to Europe, Afghanistan and Pakistan trying to repair the damage caused by the Administration's neglect of Afghanistan, its neglect of Pakistani democracy and its over reliance on a despised military dictator to cover Afghanistan's southern flank. At the same time, National Security Director McConnell was warning Congress, in effect, that the Afghanistan/Pakistan region has now become the major threat to American security.

Who can doubt these entirely predictable consequences are linked to the preoccupation with Iraq? And whom should we hold responsible for tying up our strategic reserves to that preoccupation? Admiral Mullen and General Casey have been warning the Administration for months that the size of our occupation was unsustainable, weakening the US military and eliminating the nation's strategic flexibility to deal with any other contingency.

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