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Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

John Bolton Won't Shut Up About Bombing Iran
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on July 2, 2009 at 4:31 PM.

A PATTERN EMERGES.... Time's Joe Klein notices that a certain former U.N. ambassador has a preoccupation with bombing a certain Middle Eastern country, and manages to keep finding major newspapers to publish his thoughts on the subject.

In the Washington Post today, screw-loose wingnut extraordinaire John Bolton has a column in which he advocates an Israeli strike against Iran. This would be shocking, except that...

On June 26, Bolton had an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in which he advocated bombing Iran. And, well, er...

On June 12, he had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he advocated bombing Iran.

And that's just three op-eds in three weeks. We could go back a little further and find Bolton -- in op-eds, on Fox News -- advocating military attacks on Iran for years.

Indeed, as Adam Serwer noted, given Bolton's incessant rhetoric on the subject, "it's hard to take seriously his proposal that now is actually the opportune moment to bomb Iran."

I'd just add that it's interesting to consider the competing conservative messages on Iran. For the better part of June, the line was that the United States needed to do more to support Iranians. What we really needed to do, neocons said, was speak up and let the Iranian people know we're on their side. And yet, here's Bolton, arguing again that the one thing that's really needed is a bombing campaign on Iran.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Celebrate Immigration and Diversity This Independence Day
Posted by Staff, Immigration Impact on July 2, 2009 at 2:46 PM.

In Order to Form a More Perfect Union

America is now--and has always been--nation of immigrants. What better time, then, to turn our attention this Independence Day to the demographic diversity that has long been a principal strength of the U.S. economy and civil society? Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians play critical economic roles as workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers. As a result, they will be crucial players in the nation's efforts to recover from the current recession and the success of America's economic future.

Major City Police Chiefs Just Say No To Immigration Enforcement

Tired of spending scant time and resources on immigration enforcement, major city police chiefs called on Congress, Wednesday, to move on comprehensive immigration reform.  Like most law enforcement officers across the country, chasing down undocumented immigrants proves to be too much of a strain when faced with real priorities like keeping violent criminals off the street.

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Jeb Bush Tests Water for 2012 Presidential Bid?
Posted by Deeky , Shakesville on July 2, 2009 at 1:18 PM.

Jeb Bush (the less dignified of the two in the photo; wrap your head around that) may be testing the waters for a 2012 presidential bid.

Maude help us all.

Recent robocalls to Iowa asked potential voters which of the following they'd most likely vote for: Huckabee, Palin, Gingrich, Jindal, or Jeb Bush. As if two previous Bushes weren't enough already.

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Official Unemployment Hits 9.5% (Reality Even Worse)
Posted by Meteor Blades, Daily Kos on July 2, 2009 at 12:15 PM.

Unemployment rose to 9.5% in June, a 26-year high, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A total of 14.7 million Americans are now officially out of work, and payroll employment has fallen by 6.5 million since the downturn began in December 2007, 19 months ago. The BLS also reported this morning that yet another 467,000 non-farm payroll jobs were lost in June. That was more than 100,000 above what a consensus of economists had estimated. Job losses in May were revised to 322,000 from an earlier estimate of 345,000.

The official count – known as U3 and dutifully reported by most of the media – fails to show the true extent of the wreckage. Left out of most reporting is U6, the BLS  calculation that includes involuntarily underemployed people. That is, those who want a full-time job, but can only find part-time work. Also missing from U3 are discouraged jobless people who haven’t looked for work during the past four weeks. The U6 figure rose in June to 16.5%.

The average workweek fell another 0.1 hour to 33 hours, the lowest since 1964 when the BLS began keeping statistics for that factor.

Another set of interconnected gauges of economic misery released today was the number of new claims filed for unemployment benefits, the four-week average of new claims, and the number of continuing claims. There were 614,000 new claims, the four-week average of claims – which levels ups and downs – dropped to 615,250, and continuing claims fell 53,000 to 6.7 million. The continuing claims number, however, may be affected by the fact that a growing number of out-of-work Americans have exhausted their benefits and no longer show up in these statistics. A little less than 40% of workers are covered by unemployment insurance.

In late May, 74% of economists surveyed by the National Association of Business Economists said the economy would begin expanding this quarter although they expected unemployment to continue rising into 2010 before beginning its recovery. One disturbing trend can be found in how long it took in the four previous recessions before the number of workers with jobs equaled the number employed at the beginning of those recessions. In 1974, the job recovery took 19 months; in 1981, 28 months; in 1991, 32 months; in 2001, 47 months.

Jack Healy of The New York Times reports:

"There are going to be massive, massive numbers of people who are out of work for long periods of time," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director for the National Employment Law Project. "It’s one of the most important aspects of where the economy is right now."

Although the number of people filing for unemployment insurance has leveled off recently, more workers are falling back on safety nets intended for the most troubled workers. More than 2.7 million people received emergency or extended unemployment benefits in the first week of June — the most recent period for which data was available — compared with 2 million at the beginning of the year.

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Gay Sailor Found Dead on Military Base in a Suspected Homicide
Posted by Matt Corley, Think Progress on July 2, 2009 at 11:00 AM.

Yesterday, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the body of openly gay Seaman August Provost was discovered in a guard shack at Camp Pendelton. A “person of interest” in connection to the suspected homicide is now being held in the Navy brig at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. According to Provost’s sister, he had recently complained to his family that “someone was harassing and bothering him.” According to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Provost likely didn’t report the harassment because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:

The Navy would not comment on whether Provost’s orientation had anything to do with the death.

“While ‘Don’t ask, Don’t tell’ is in place, anybody in the military who is a homosexual has no place to go to get assistance or counseling,” said Ben Gomez of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group for gays in the military.

(HT: Raw Story)

Sleazy Newspaper Scheme Exposed: Washington Post Offers Lobbyists Access to Lawmakers for Cash
Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet on July 2, 2009 at 9:17 AM.

This will require some hilariously desperate backpedaling.

The Washington Post is offering lobby groups access to its editorial staff, top officials in the Obama Administration, and lawmakers in Congress for $25,000 to $250,000. Politico reports that a flier circulated by the paper this week promises lobbyists the chance to mix with top lawmakers in a setting described as, "Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No." The flier further explains:

"Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate," says the one-page flier. "Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. ... Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders."

The flier was leaked by a health lobbyist, who felt the event represented a breach of the Post's journalism ethics. Does that bear repeating? A health lobbyist  scolded the paper for poor ethical practices.

Read the rest of the story here.

The Religious Right Strangely Silent on Sanford's Sordid Sex Drama
Posted by Steve Benen on July 2, 2009 at 6:01 AM.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT'S 'WALL OF SILENCE'.... Most of the relevant players have weighed in on South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's (R) personal and professional difficulties, but Dan Gilgoff reports there's one group whose silence stands out.

One week after Mark Sanford admitted to his affair with an Argentine woman -- and a day after he called his mistress his "soul mate" and acknowledged further indiscretions -- I'm struck by the total silence of pro-family groups.

The Family Research Council has been completely quiet on the South Carolina governor's affair. So has Concerned Women for America. Ditto for Focus on the Family.

The wall of silence is all the more striking given that 10 Palmetto State senators in Sanford's own party have called for him to step down. Does the pro-family movement burn up credibility if it looks the other way when Republican allies own up to extramarital affairs?

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Old Fossil Takes On Darwin
Posted by PZ Myers, Pharyngula on July 2, 2009 at 5:01 AM.

The old fossil is Pat Buchanan, who has published a freakishly antiquated diatribe against Darwin. It's extremely old school — he uses arguments straight out of 1960s era "scientific creationism", trying to tar Darwin with guilt by association with Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. He is apparently inspired by a "splendid little book," The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold, by a creationist crank named Eugene G. Windchy. You can get an idea of Windchy's level of scholarship by this quote:

That Darwinism has proven "disastrous theory" is indisputable.

"Karl Marx loved Darwinism," writes Windchy. "To him, survival of the fittest as the source of progress justified violence in bringing about social and political change, in other words, the revolution."

"Darwin suits my purpose," Marx wrote.

John Lynch has rebutted this claim; I rather doubt that Marx could love someone as bourgeois as Darwin, a prosperous landowner and investor, a fellow who thought his greatest success in life was his talent as a businessman, and I can be fairly confident that any affection would not have been returned. And please, don't even mention the false claim that Marx wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin.

It's not enough to link Darwin to Marx; Windchy also has to turn Hitler into a committed Darwinist. You'd think he'd stop to marvel at the idea that Darwin could have inspired two such antagonistic philosophies, but Windchy and Buchanan aren't quite that thoughtful.

Darwin suited Adolf Hitler's purposes, too.

"Although born to a Catholic family Hitler become a hard-eyed Darwinist who saw life as a constant struggle between the strong and the weak. His Darwinism was so extreme that he thought it would have been better for the world if the Muslims had won the eighth century battle of Tours, which stopped the Arabs' advance into France. Had the Christians lost, (Hitler) reasoned, Germanic people would have acquired a more warlike creed and, because of their natural superiority, would have become the leaders of an Islamic empire."

Charles Darwin also suited the purpose of the eugenicists and Herbert Spencer, who preached a survival-of-the-fittest social Darwinism to robber baron industrialists exploiting 19th-century immigrants.

For being a "hard-eyed Darwinist", Hitler certainly seems to have failed to make much use of the theory. Read Mein Kampf and you will find nothing about Darwin or evolution, but you will find much about God. And don't his strange notions about an Aryan Islamic empire simply mark Hitler as a crazy crackpot, and say nothing at all about Darwin?

They do make some outrageous accusations against Darwin: he was a thief and a liar who stole his whole theory from Wallace.

Darwin, he demonstrates, stole his theory from Alfred Wallace, who had sent him a "completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection."

"All my originality ... will be smashed," wailed Darwin when he got Wallace's manuscript.

Unfortunately for their thesis, Darwin's writings are preserved to an amazing degree — the history of his idea can be traced almost to the day. We know that he was putting together an outline of his theory within a few years of returning from the voyage of the Beagle; we have an early draft of his thesis written in 1842, well before the contact with Wallace; we have his correspondence where he bounced these ideas off his colleagues. He didn't steal his theory at all, but had it well formulated before Wallace wrote his fateful letter, triggering him to finally publish.

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Why Do We Pretend the Saudis Are Our Friends?
Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune on July 1, 2009 at 5:30 PM.

Bush held hands with Saudi Princes as if he were a blushing bride. Obama has been castigated for "bowing" to the Saudi King. Yet almost everyone on both sides of the political aisle agrees that Saudi Arabia is a key ally of the United States in the Middle East. Why?

They support the most extreme brand of Islam, the equivalent of White Nationalist Identity Christianity in the US. They exploit their dominance of the world's oil reserves to keep us dependent on fossil fuels, adding to the danger of global warming. They supplied most of the individuals who attacked us on 9/11 and they supply most of the "foreign fighters" in Iraq responsible for suicide bombing attacks on US troops and Shi'ite communities. Oh, and they covered up Al Qaueda's involvement on the most deadly attack on American troops stationed on their soil, the 1995 bombings of the Khobar Towers. Yes, your read that right, they covered upo the complicity of Al Qaeda, pointing the finger at Iran, when all the evidence suggested it was their own homegrown Sunni fundamentalist Islamic terrorists who were responsible:

On June 25, 1996, a massive truck bomb exploded at a building in the Khobar Towers complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which housed United States Air Force personnel, killing 19 airmen and wounding 372.

Immediately after the blast, more than 125 agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were ordered to the site to sift for clues and begin the investigation of who was responsible. But when two US Embassy officers arrived at the scene of the devastation early the next morning, they found a bulldozer beginning to dig up the entire crime scene. [...]

United States intelligence then intercepted communications from the highest levels of the Saudi government, including interior minister Prince Nayef, to the governor and other officials of Eastern Province instructing them to go through the motions of cooperating with US officials on their investigation but to obstruct it at every turn.

That was the beginning of what interviews with more than a dozen sources familiar with the investigation and other information now available reveal was a systematic effort by the Saudis to obstruct any US investigation of the bombing and to deceive the US about who was responsible for it.

The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi'ite allies with the apparent intention of keeping US officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organizer.

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Cynthia McKinney Detained (Again) by Israeli Defense Force; Israeli Protesters Brutally Beaten in West Bank
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on July 1, 2009 at 4:15 PM.

The Israeli right is moving U.S. perceptions of the I-P conflict to a tipping point. Among Americans -- and especially the Jewish community -- Israel had long enjoyed the moral high ground. But sentiment is shifting, in large part to the terror wrought by the settler's movement, the unyielding stance of the Netanyahu government, and stories such as these ...

A boat carrying aid to pro-Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip was surrounded and boarded by Israeli forces off the coast of the Gaza Strip Tuesday. Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was one of the 21 people on board who were taken into Israeli custody and held at the port of Ashrod in Israel.

McKinney is quoted as saying that the confrontation was "an outrageous violation of international law," and she claimed the boat was on a humanitarian mission and was not in Israeli waters.

The Israeli military said the boat tried to violate Israel's security blockade and enter Gaza illegally.

The 21 passengers and crew on the Greek-registered ship "Arion" was working for the U.S.-based "Free Gaza Movement." Among them, besides McKinney, was 1977 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Mairead Maguire.

Israeli forces have maintained a blockade on the Palestinian territory since 2007, partly to prevent smugglers from delivering weapons and munitions to Gaza.

It's a farce to claim that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza resulted in some semblance of sovereignty when its military controls Gaza's airspace, waterways and land routes, and Israeli forces continue to strike targets within the canton.

Israeli forces in the West Bank have long reacted violently to Palestinian protests, even peaceful ones. But recently, they used similar tactics on Israeli protesters -- an unusual occurrence ...

I am reporting the testimony of Dr. Amiel Vardi, and many other supporting testimonies. There is graphic photographic documentation, including a live video clip, which can be seen here. The pictures seen here are part of a series that can be viewed at this Flickr site...

The activists arrived in the morning at al-Safa to accompany Palestinian farmers to their fields, since it is nearly impossible for these farmers to work their land without the physical protection of Israelis: violent settlers from nearby Bat 'Ayin invariably attack the farmers and chase them away. This time, however, the army and Border Police were waiting, in force—dozens of soldiers (the Border Police are part of the army), including two Brigade Commanders. As usual, they declared the area a Closed Military Zone.

But they also immediately arrested the activists and then attacked several of them brutally with fists, rifle butts, and other weapons.

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Bernie Sanders Demands Democrats Commit To Stopping Health Care Filibuster
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on July 1, 2009 at 3:16 PM.

One of the Senate's most vocal progressives is demanding that the Democratic Party commit to voting against filibustering health care legislation now that, with the impending arrival of Al Franken, the party has 60 caucusing members.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called on the White House and Democratic leadership in Congress to ensure that party members agree unanimously to support cloture on legislation that would revamp the nation's health care system. Democratic senators on the fence, he added, could still oppose the bill. But at the very least they should be required to let the legislation come to an up-or-down vote.

"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents," Sanders said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'"

"I think the idea of going to conservative Republicans, who are essentially representing the insurance companies and the drug companies, and watering down this bill substantially, rather than demanding we get 60 votes to stop the filibuster, I think that is a very wrong political strategy," Sanders added.

Coming hours after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Franken the winner in a nearly eight-month recount process, Sanders' remarks reflect what will likely be a more aggressive political ethos from within the Democratic Party. Having a sixtieth caucusing member in the Senate gives the party the margin it needs to stave off a Republican filibuster, which seems all but certain should health care reform include a public option for insurance coverage. But the reality remains that the Democratic caucus is far from united. Corralling all of its members behind one piece of health care legislation -- especially the public option -- remains elusive.

Sanders' advice, which he hinted at in a separate interview with the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, is to simply take the parliamentary hurdles out of the process. The Party wouldn't have to worry about whip counts and could, in the end, get a more favorable final product, he believes.

"I think that politically that is something everybody can handle. You say, 'Look, I think there should be a vote. I'm gonna vote against it for A, B and C reasons. But I think the process has to move forward and it's unacceptable that Republicans keep trying to stop everything," said the Vermont Independent, who added that "The White House could play a very important part in this process"

"I think it would be great if we could have 100 senators voting for this, but what is important is the product that you get, not bipartisanship," Sanders went on. "So we should ask Republicans to support it. If they choose not to they do so at their own political risk. The focus should be on a strong bill trying to get Republican support rather than a weak bipartisan bill."

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Sanford Drops Pledge To Release Travel Records
Posted by Jed Lewison, Daily Kos on July 1, 2009 at 1:51 PM.

Smoke, meet fire?

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has backed out of a promise to release personal financial records proving he did not use state money for trips to see his mistress.

A day after Sanford declared in an emotional Associated Press interview that his mistress is his soul mate, spokesman Joel Sawyer says the governor does not want to discuss personal matters in the media anymore.

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It's Time to Drop "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- End of Story
Posted by Melissa McEwan on July 1, 2009 at 12:15 PM.

Shaker Phira just emailed me this story about Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying he's looking at ways to make the US military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy "more humane," including possibly changing the rule to allow "letting people serve who may have been outed due to vengeance or a jilted lover."

Phira writes (which I'm posting with her permission):

There's just so much wrong with this. DADT is based in hatred, cruelty, fear, and discrimination; to make it "more humane" would require it to become humane. And to become humane would mean, at least to me, that DADT would be thrown out. And I doubt that's Gates' goal right now. Or Obama's.

 

And being selective about which LGBT people are allowed to stay in the army is just further discrimination. "Oh, you're gay? You're out of the army. Oh, but we know about it because your ex-girlfriend got angry and told us? Then I GUESS you can stay," vs. "Oh, you're gay? You're out of the army. Oh, but we know about it because you had the courage to stand up for yourself and be up-front about your sexuality? Then get out. I don't care if you're our last Arabic translator."

I don't have much to add, aside from this: The stated rationale for forcing soldiers into the closet is troop cohesion (or some wacky variation thereof) -- which has long been debunked, anyway -- but I can't imagine how the military expects to continue trying to justify the policy on that basis if they let some openly gay soldiers serve, with, inevitably, no discernible effect on morale.

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Right-Wing Insanity: Former CIA Official Wishes for Terrorist Attack on U.S. (!)
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on July 1, 2009 at 10:29 AM.

WHAT AMERICANS REALLY NEED.... Former CIA official Michael Scheuer has taken some provocative policy positions over the years, but I never thought he'd go this far.

Talking with Fox News' Glenn Beck, Scheuer argues, "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama Bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States --- because it's gonna take a grassroots, bottom up pressure -- because these politicians prize their offices, prize the praise of the media, and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary."

The context of this is a plan to send National Guard volunteers to the southern U.S. border to address the drug trade.

Instead of saying, "That's completely insane," Glenn Beck nodded along, in apparent approval of his guest's ridiculous argument.

I was trying to think of how best to describe how spectacularly offensive this lunacy really is, but it looks like Adam Serwer beat me to it: "[U]nderstand, this is not unpatriotic. You can wish all manner of horrors on this country, but as long as these horrors might serve a specific political agenda, you're not being unpatriotic. Unpatriotic is a public health care plan. Unpatriotic is a judge modifying subprime mortgage loans to keep a roof over someone's head. Unpatriotic is phosphate free detergent. Patriotic is wishing for a terrorist attack on the United States."

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God Tells Joe the Plumber Not to Run for Office
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on July 1, 2009 at 9:45 AM.

Last year at the height of his "fame," Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher — aka "Joe the Plumber" -- said that he was considering a run for public office. "I’d be up for it," he said. Excited fans even set up a "Draft Joe the Plumber" site. But in a new interview with WorldNetDaily, Wurzelbacher said that he now isn’t planning to run because God doesn’t want him to:

Asked if he has plans to run for public office, he replied, "I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, ‘No.’”

He continued, "I believe he’s gotten me on this grassroots movement. If I can encourage leaders to step up, that’s what I would like to do. That’s a heavy role. That’s something I don’t know if I am prepared to do yet."

But Wurzelbacher said he will keep that door open if God ever calls him to be that leader.

Right now, Wurzelbacher is preparing to participate in the upcoming tea parties.