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20090330
Torture
-  Criminal
-  Dick
Cheney - War
Crimes - 
-  Military
-  Government
-  Intelligence
-  Terrorism
- Detainee
- Secret
- Censored
-  Videotapes
-  Legal
-  Politics
-  History
-  Book
"Bush's
Torture Rationale Debunked." ... "Abu Zubaida was
the alpha and omega of the [Republican President] Bush administration's
argument for torture." ... "That's why Sunday's front-page Washington Post
story by Peter
Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture
apologists." ... "Finn and Warrick reported that "not a single significant
plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaida's brutal treatment -- and that,
quite to the contrary, his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts
and sent hundreds of CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and FBI [Federal
Bureau of Investigation] investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms.""
... "Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction
of the [Republican President Bush] White House. Then he was President George
W. Bush's Exhibit A in defense of the "enhanced interrogation" procedures
that constituted torture. And he continues to be held up as a justification
for torture by its most ardent defenders." ... "But as author Ron Suskind
reported almost three years ago -- and as The Post now confirms -- almost
all the key assertions the Bush administration made about Zubaida were
wrong." ... "Zubaida wasn't a major al Qaeda figure. He wasn't holding
back critical information. His torture didn't produce valuable intelligence
-- and it certainly didn't save lives." ... "All the calculations the Bush
White House claims to have made in its decision to abandon long-held moral
and legal strictures against abusive interrogation turn out to have been
profoundly flawed, not just on a moral basis but on a coldly practical
one as well." ... "Indeed, the Post article raises the even further disquieting
possibility that intentional cruelty was part of the White House's motive."
... "There's no doubt that Zubaida's capture in spring 2002 was what sent
the administration down the path to state-sanctioned torture. Last April,
ABC
News reported that starting right after his capture, top Bush aides
including [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney micromanaged
his interrogation from the White House basement. "The high-level discussions
about these 'enhanced interrogation techniques' were so detailed," ABC's
sources said, "some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed
-- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic."
Bush has acknowledged
he was aware of those meetings at the time." ... "Techniques that created
damage short of "the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment
of a significant body function" were later authorized in an August 2002
Justice Department memo, known as the Torture
Memo." ... "Just two
weeks ago, in a New York Review of Books article based on a confidential
report from the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mark
Danner described the techniques used on Zubaida in harrowing detail."
... "I've [Dan
Froomkin] written extensively about Zubaida before, and about how the
facts of his case as unearthed by [author of the book "The
One Percent Doctrine" Ron] Suskind thoroughly undermine the Bush administration's
arguments. See, for instance, my Dec. 18, 2007 column, Exhibit
A for Torture, in which I suggested that "Bush's Exhibit A in defense
of torture may in fact be an exhibit for the prosecution." We learned in
December 2007 that the CIA had destroyed
videotapes of its secret interrogations -- 92 in all, it
turns out, 90 of them of Zubaida. In February
2008, I wrote about how the White House's torture argument had now
officially become that the ends justify the means." ... "Over the years,
I've made something of a point of debunking
the Bush White House's unsupported assertions that any really useful information
was gleaned from torture." -By Dan
Froomkin -WashingtonPost
 Corporate
-  Media
- Politics
- Marketing
- Religion
- Government
- Law
- History
- Television
"Rev.
Moon Exemplifies Right Wing GOP Subsidy of Big Media to Frame Message."
... "[Reverend] Rev. Moon has adopted a relatively low-profile in recent
years (if you don't count his bizarre "coronation" by elected officials
in a Capitol Hill House of Representatives meeting room a couple years
back), but that hasn't prevented the weird religious leader (and close
ally of the Bush family) from pouring an estimated 1 - 2.5 billion dollars
into subsidizing the Washington Times since 1982." ... "In 2002, Rev. Moon
pronounced "The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading
the truth about God to the world." But the reality is that the Washington
Times -- like the New York Post and Weekly Standard for Rupert Murdoch
-- are investments in obtaining financial regulatory and other favors from
Republican administrations in return for helping frame and market the GOP
[GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] talking points of tax cuts, cultural wars,
and Wall Street gambling." ... "The Washington Times has only about 100,000
subscribers, but its newsboxes are next to the Washington Post throughout
D.C. [America's capital], allowing it to appear as an equal -- and to have
its banner headlines seen by tens of thousands of D.C. "influencers" every
day. Then, it also gives a byline and title for its writers to appear
as D.C. pundits on television (just as Bill Kristol is identified as editor
of the chronically money losing "Weekly Standard" during his ubiquitous
"pundit" appearances on the tube) -- as well as all television reporters
need to quote it to provide "balance."" ... "In short, Moon, in essence,
shells out hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to use the Washington
Times as a public relations vehicle for "framing" the GOP perspective."
... "Meanwhile, wealthy liberal Democrats don't buy up or create large
media outlets; they just support efforts to criticize the corporate press
and the likes of Rev. Moon." ... "You can win elections, but you can't
make dramatic change unless you own part of the major media." ... "Rev.
Moon understands that. Why can't wealthy Democrats?" -By
Mark Karlin -BuzzFlash.com
Government
- Money
-  Accounting
- Politics
-  Jobs
- Deficit
-  Iowa
"Republican
Budget Plan: ‘Undo’ The Stimulus, Cut Taxes For The Rich."
... "Today, House Republicans released their budget plan, entitled “The
Republican Road To Recovery.” They claim the plan “curbs spending, creates
jobs and lowers taxes, and controls the debt; and it will soon have our
economy growing again.”" ... "For an “alternative budget,” however, it
is very
short on numbers, including no mention of deficit implications. And
the plan for creating jobs and sparking economic growth is actually undoing
the stimulus and then cutting additional spending[.]" ... "Of course,
stimulus dollars are already on their way out the door, so it’s difficult
to envision how one would “undo” the bill. But even if it could be done,
it would be an act of neo-Hooverism
that would make [Iowa Republican Senator] Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA [Republican-Iowa])
insane
three-year spending freeze look wise and prudent." ... "As Matthew
Yglesias noted, “It’s strange that the Republicans railing about long-term
deficits seem to love long-term deficits when the point of the deficits
is to further
enrich the rich.”" -By Pat
Garofalo -ThinkProgress.org/Wonk
Room
 Barack
Obama - Government
- Business
- Legislation
- Politics
-  Home
Mortgages -  IN
-  MO
"Bayh:
My Group Of Blue Dogs ‘Literally Has No Agenda’ Other Than Blocking Obama’s."
... "Yesterday, MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, and several other
progressive groups began running
ads urging “moderate” Democratic members of Congress to “get
on board with the president’s budget.” The ads are, in part, a response
to [Indiana Democratic Senator] Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN [Democratic-Indiana])
and 14 of his Democratic colleagues who are creating what they call a “moderate
coalition that will meet regularly to shape public policy.” Bayh responded
to the new ads late yesterday, telling Politico that his group of “moderates”
should not be targeted because they have “no agenda”:"
"Sen.
Evan Bayh (D-Ind. [Indiana]) is also unhappy with the friendly fire. Bayh…found
himself targeted by an ad accusing him of “standing in the way of President
Obama’s reforms.” “We literally have no agenda,” Bayh shot back. “How
can they be threatened by a group that has taken no policy positions?”"
"Bayh’s
claim that his group has no agenda is hard to believe. Indeed, as the Wall
Street Journal explained yesterday, the group’s “stated goal is to…protect
business interests.” Even before the group was officially formed, their
efforts dampened a number of progressive policy proposals and they clearly
have aspirations to expand their portfolio:"
"–
Shrinking Economic Recovery: The group’s first significant “success”
was “paring down the more than $900 billion economic stimulus bill to $787
billion,” reducing the government’s ability to spur
economic recovery quickly. [Roll Call, 3/12/2009]"
"–
Preserving The [former Republican President] Bush Tax Cuts: Regarding
[Democratic President] Obama’s plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire,
Bayh said, “I do think that before we raise revenue, we first should look
to see if there are ways we can cut back on spending.” [Politico, 3/3/2009]"
"–
Delaying Cap-and-Trade: Bayh coaltion member, [Missouri Democratic
Senator] Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO [Democratic-Missouri]), explained
that the group might “push for a more lenient phase-in period for a cap-and-trade
system and revenue-raising offsets to pay for expensive mandates.” [CQ
Politics, 3/9/2009]"
"–
Weakening Bankruptcy Protection: Centrist Democrats “forced changes
to a House bill that would allow bankruptcy judges to modify [home] mortgages,
ensuring that the legislation better reflected the concerns of the financial-services
industry.” [WSJ, 3/25/09]"
"If
Bayh is to be believed and his new group of moderates “literally have no
agenda,” then what exactly are they doing? As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow explained
last night, it appears that Bayh and his colleagues have found at least
one niche to fill by helping Republicans obstruct
the President’s agenda and deny voters the policies they endorsed last
November:"
"Anyone
voting against a Democratic agenda voted Republican. Those votes produced
a very small Republican minority in Congress. A small minority that
now has way more power than they otherwise would because of conservative
Democrats deciding to give Republicans as much power as they can."
 WATCH:
"'Conservadems' strike back" On Maddow show.
"
-By Ryan
Powers -ThinkProgress.org
Barack
Obama - Corporate
- Government
- Politics
- History
-  Texas
"Despair
over financial policy." ... "The [Democratic President
Obama's Treasury Secretary Tim] Geithner plan has now been leaked
in detail. It’s exactly the plan that was widely analyzed — and found
wanting — a couple of weeks ago. The zombie
ideas have won." ... "In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately!
— the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations
with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities.
For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win,
tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay
high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something;
and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem." ... "Or to put it another
way, Treasury has decided that what we have is nothing but a confidence
problem, which it proposes to cure by creating massive moral hazard."
-By
Paul
Krugman/Blog
-NYTimes
Government
- Economic
- Accounting
- Job
- History
- Politics
"The
New Deal and right-wing revisionism." ... "The best
regarded data excluding public-works employees traces a steady decline
in joblessness through the first five years of the New Deal, from 25 percent
when [Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt] FDR took office to 14.3
percent in 1937. Then, however, joblessness rose, hitting 19.1 percent
in 1938 before dropping back to 14.6 percent in 1940 and 9.9 percent in
1941." ... "Include work-relief employees, and unemployment declined more
steeply, falling to 9.2 percent in 1937. It then rose to 12.5 percent in
1938 before dropping back to 6 percent in 1941." ... "Why did Roosevelt's
recovery falter?" ... "Unfortunately for conservatives, the evidence cuts
against their conclusions. The rise in unemployment followed FDR's cutback
in government spending in 1937. The resulting spike in unemployment prompted
him to shift courses and expand spending again, whereupon unemployment
again fell." ... "Gross Domestic Product tracks the same way, notes economist
Dean Baker, who has matched the increase in federal spending during each
Depression year with the following year's growth in GDP. A 23.7 percent
increase in federal spending in 1933 was followed by a 10.8 percent increase
in GDP in 1934, for example, while a 34.2 percent increase in 1934 was
followed by an 8.9 percent GDP increase in 1935. But when FDR retrenched
and spending fell by 10 percent in 1937, the next year's GDP shrank by
3.4 percent." ... "There's virtually no disagreement that World War II
gave the country the strong final tug out of the Depression. Yet that reality
also argues for the efficacy of Keynesian remedies; economically, the war
constituted a huge government stimulus, financed by massive deficit spending."
-By Scott Lehigh -BostonGlobe
Secret
- Criminal
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Prison
-  Psychological
- Terrorism
- Military
- Government
-
-  Medical
-  Human
- Rights
- Law
-  US
- Guantánamo
-  Cuba
"Former
Gitmo Guard Tells All." ... "Army Private Brandon
Neely served as a prison guard at Guantánamo [US military prison
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba] in the first years the facility was in
operation. With the [Republican President] Bush Administration, and thus
the threat of retaliation against him, now gone, Neely decided to step
forward and tell his story. “The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just
wrong,” he
told the Associated Press. Neely describes the arrival of detainees
in full sensory-deprivation garb, he details their sexual abuse by medical
personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration,
fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous
shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and
beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally
ill detainees, an isolation regime that was put in place for child-detainees,
and his conversations with prisoners David Hicks and Rhuhel Ahmed. It makes
for fascinating reading." ... "Neely’s comprehensive account runs to roughly
15,000 words. It was compiled by law students at the University of California
at Davis and can be accessed
here." ... "... Neely and other guards had been trained to the U.S.
military’s traditional application of the Geneva Convention rules. They
were put under great pressure to get rough with the prisoners and to violate
the standards they learned. This placed the prison guards under unjustifiable
mental stress and anxiety, and, as any person familiar with the vast psychological
literature in the area (think of the Stanford Prison Experiment, for instance)
would have anticipated produced abuses. Neely discusses at some length
the notion of IRF (initial reaction force), a technique devised to brutalize
or physically beat a detainee under the pretense that he required being
physically subdued. The IRF approach was devised to use a perceived legal
loophole in the prohibition on torture. Neely’s testimony makes clear that
IRF was understood by everyone, including the prison guards who applied
it, as a subterfuge for beating and mistreating prisoners—and that it had
nothing to do with the need to preserve discipline and order in the prison."
... "[Neely] describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security
purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners. This was
a standardized [Republican President] Bush Administration tactic–the importance
of which became apparent to me when I participated in some Capitol Hill
negotiations with White House representatives relating to legislation creating
criminal law accountability for contractors. The Bush White House vehemently
objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality.
When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence
and then an embarrassed acknowledgement that a key part of the Bush program
included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed
rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes.
While these techniques have long been known, the role of health care professionals
in implementing them is shocking." ... "Neely’s account demonstrates once
more how much the Bush team kept secret and how little we still know about
their comprehensive program of official cruelty and torture."
-By Scott Horton
-Harpers.org
"Testimony
of Spc. Brandon Neely." via "The
Guantánamo Testimonials Project." ... "Testimonies
of Military Guards." via humanrights.ucdavis.edu
 Mitch
McConnell - Economic
- Emergency
- Jobs
- Accounting
- Politics
- Opinion
- People
-  Social
Security - Government
-  Reference
- Book
-  Kentucky
"Revisionists'
blind view of New Deal." ... "[N]early eight decades
after [Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt] FDR launched the New
Deal, amid possibly the greatest economic emergency since the 1930s, it’s
important to understand that the most sophisticated arguments seeking to
demolish the New Deal are based on a misreading of the bulk of the historical
evidence. University of California, Davis historian Eric Rauchway, the
author of “The Great Depression & The New Deal: A Very Short Introduction,”
dismantled Shlaes’ argument in a 2007 review in Slate. He showed how [right
wing writer Amity] Shlaes had tried to diminish the nation’s economic growth
during the 1930s using the narrow gauge of the Dow Jones Industrial Average
as opposed to the gross domestic product." ... "Shlaes cited unemployment
figures that excluded Americans who had New Deal-generated jobs, and she
virtually ignored what Rauchway calls “the authoritative reference work
Historical Statistics of the United States.” That reference book shows
that during FDR’s first term, the real GDP grew by some 9 percent annually;
and after the 1937-38 recession, the economy grew at an annual clip of
11 percent. By the fall of 1934, another New Deal historian, William E.
Leuchtenburg, explains, “the ranks of the unemployed had been reduced by
over 2 million and national income stood almost a quarter higher than in
1933.”" ... "The Shlaes-[ Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch] McConnell
anti-New Deal critics tend to minimize the enduring contribution of laws
such as the Wagner Act, which established workers’ rights to organize and
bargain collectively, and the Social Security Act of 1935 that provided
for unemployment as well as old-age insurance. They highlight, instead,
the failure of the National Industrial Recovery Act to fuel economic growth,
overlook the ways in which the New Deal alleviated people’s misery and
rarely acknowledge that World War II lifted the economy and ultimately
ended the Depression because the national government joined closely with
the private sector to provide a massive stimulus in the form of federal
wartime spending." ... "FDR’s New Deal had its share of failures, setbacks
and problems. But to argue that it harmed the American people, “failed
abysmally” (Shlaes’ words) to reduce unemployment, and retarded economic
growth is to twist the historical evidence beyond all reasonable recognition.
Such arguments are forms of revisionism that are misleading, polemical
and riddled with distortions of the overwhelming facts at hand about the
New Deal’s achievements as well as its real shortcomings. " -By
Matthew Dallek -Politico.com
Barack
Obama - Working
-  Families
- Economic
- Government
- Accounting
- History
- Lawmakers
- Politics
"BIGGEST.
TAX CUT. EVER." ... "A few weeks ago, when the House
approved the economic stimulus bill without any Republican votes, David
Weigel noted
that he literally couldn't remember "a time when the entire Republican
conference in either house voted against tax cuts."" ... "That's true,
but let's go a little further. The compromise plan announced last night
includes $282
billion in tax cuts over two years. With that in mind, Steven Waldman
argues,
persuasively, that when the vast majority of congressional Republicans
oppose the package, they'll be voting against the biggest tax cut "in history.""
"According
to the Wall Street Journal, [Republican President] Bush's first two
years of tax cuts amounted to $174 billion. A second batch in 2004 and
2005 cost $231. And those were thought to be bigger
than the tax cuts offered by Reagan, Kennedy or others."
"Now,
perhaps some new analysis will show that the tax cuts end up not quite
being the largest in history by this measure or that. But it's clear they're
massive."
"I'm
ducking the debate on whether this is economically a good or bad -- but
surely it ought to be a big story."
"True.
Waldman also notes that this is also an example of a liberal Democrat delivering
early on a tax cut he promised during the campaign, a pledge "few Republican
thought he'd keep."" ... "[Democratic President] Obama's tax cuts, meanwhile,
are short-term refunds paid directly to working and middle class families
(some of which Republicans have denounced as "welfare")." ... "As such,
GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] lawmakers are going to reject one
of the largest, if not the largest, tax cut ever proposed by a president
-- which just so happens to be targeted at the working and middle class
families Obama vowed to look out for." -By Steve Benen
-WashingtonMonthly.com
Money
- Law
-Politics
- Federal
- Workers
-  Maine
"Source:
Collins Strips Stim Bill Of Whistleblower Protections."
... "The House stimulus bill contained a provision designed to protect
federal whistleblowers. Currently, those protections are shockingly weak.
According to the Project On Government Oversight, whistleblowers who are
fired or demoted can file a complaint with a government board -- but over
the last eight years, that board has ruled in favor of whistleblowers only
twice in 55 cases." ... "More to the point, the protections were designed
to encourage federal workers to point out cases where taxpayer money is
subject to waste, fraud, or abuse -- a legitimate concern when Congress
spends $800 billion, and one that centrists and Republicans have been particularly
exercised about." ... "Yesterday, 20 members of the House, from both parties,
sent a letter to House negotiators urging them to ensure that the protections
remained." ... "But, according to a person following the bill closely,
Collins used today's conference committee to drastically water down the
measure, citing national security concerns as the reason for her opposition.
In the end, the protections were so weakened that House negotiators balked,
and the result was that the entire amendment was removed." ... "According
to the person following the bill, [Maine Republican Senator Susan] Collins
was the "central roadblock" to passing the protections." ... "So when,
in the coming months, conservatives start jumping up and down over the
fact that money from the stimulus bill is being wasted, as they surely
will, it's worth remember that a key measure designed to help expose that
waste was removed from the bill -- and by a senator said to be a champion
of fiscal discipline." -By Zachary Roth
-TPMMuckracker
.TalkingPointsMemo
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HavenWorks.com+A-Z
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|
Corporate
- Television
- Media
- Politics
"If
it’s Sunday, it’s still conservative." ... "In 2006,
Media Matters conducted a study on Sunday political talk shows, finding
that “Republicans and conservatives
have been offered more opportunities to appear on the Sunday shows
— in some cases, dramatically so.” From 2001 to 2005, conservative guests
outnumbered progressives “by 58 percent to 42 percent.” Atrios notes that
tomorrow’s shows will also be dominated by conservative
guests:"
"7
Appearances by Republican current elected officeholders"
"3
Appearances by Democratic current elected officeholders."
"2
Appearances by Republican former elected officeholders."
"1
Appearance by a [Republican President] Bush Cabinet Secretary."
"T.
Boone Pickens [former Republican swift boat contributor]"
"Ted
Turner. "
"
-ThinkProgress.org
Barack
Obama -  John
Boehner
-  Karl
Rove - 2008
Election - Media
-Politics
- Corporate
- Healthcare
-  Ohio
- US
-  Iraq
-  Global
- |
