Sunday, January 6, 2008

Brent Budowsky: Fox News Should Ban Giuliani From Debates, and Include Ron Paul. By any standards of participation in debates, Fox News should take Rudy Giuliani out, and put Ron Paul in. There are two obvious standards for inclusion versus exclusion in debate, first the number of real voters in a real state vote, and second the amount of real money donated by real people to the campaigns. In Iowa, the only real state that has voted so far, Ron Paul kicked Rudy's butt in the voting. In campaign fundraising, Ron Paul appears set to kick Rudy's butt again. In my view, Rudy, Ron Paul and Kucinich should all be included. But if Fox News insists on playing the censor of democracy, Paul should be in, Rudy should be out. Otherwise, Fox should be forced to declare the expense of their debates to the FEC as campaign contributions. If Giuliani ever does better in a primary or caucus than he did in Iowa, he could then be brought back into the debates. Fair enough? [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 12:18:58 PM    comment []

Edwards Vows To Stay In Race "Through The Convention And To The White House". Democrat John Edwards said Sunday he will stay in the presidential race through the party's convention in late August, even if he fails to win any of the early presidential primary states. "This is the call of my life, and I have no intention of stopping," Edwards said on ABC's This Week. "I'm in this through the convention and to the White House." Asked specifically if he'd remain a candidate even if he failed to garner a win over the next month, Edwards said, "Absolutely." The former North Carolina senator and 2000 vice presidential candidate edged out rival Hillary Clinton for second place in the Iowa caucuses Thursday, and a new CNN/WMUR poll taken entirely after Iowa voters weighed in shows a slight bump for Edwards in the Granite State, though he remains in a distant third at 20 percent among like Democratic voters there. Barack Obama, the winner of the Iowa caucuses, and Clinton are tied at 33 percent. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 12:01:36 PM    comment []

THIS IS AN INFORMATIVE POST, BUT I'M QUITE DISTURBED BY ITS FINAL PARAGRAPH. IS THIS GUY ACTUALLY ADVOCATING THAT PEOPLE CONSIDER ASSASSINATION? PLEASE TELL ME I'M READING HIM WRONG. FOR IF NOT, HE IS INDEED A CRACKPOT. A LEARNED CRACKPOT PERHAPS, BUT A CRACKPOT NONETHELESS. Joseph A. Palermo: Political Assassination 101. The French philosopher Michel Foucault called the unfolding of history the "exteriority of accidents," which was his way of saying "shit happens." Any historian will tell you that political assassinations are not surprising or new. As grade school students we all learned that President Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated, shot with a pistol by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater. And Booth was part of a "conspiracy." Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield in Washington, D.C. with a handgun. And Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York, also with a pistol. There was an assassination attempt on President Theodore Roosevelt. Introductory history textbooks often claim that World War I was sparked by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. And the Bolsheviks assassinated Czar Nicholas II and the entire Romanoff family to make sure they never returned to power. Anarchists tried to kill Attorney General G. Mitchell Palmer, which sparked the "Palmer Raids." There was also an assassination attempt against President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt while he was giving a speech in Miami, Florida. Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico with a pickaxe because he had the temerity to stand up to Josef Stalin. And in Nazi Germany, there was the "Night of the Long Knives," or the "Roehm Purge," which was nothing more than a coordinated set of political assassinations. In the United States in the modern era, the Central Intelligence Agency played a role in the assassination of the democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, as well as the Domican Republic's Rafael Trujillo. There were also at least eight documented attempts by the CIA to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In June 1963, the NAACP's first field secretary for the state of Mississippi, Medgar Evers, was assassinated. In South Vietnam, a CIA-engineered coup d'etat ended in the assassination of Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. (The U.S-backed General Duong Van Minh didn't want to risk the return of the Ngo brothers in a "re-coup.") And then followed the most spectacular assassination in American history in Dallas, Texas when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot in the head by a high-powered rifle in Dealey Plaza. In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem, the result of an internal beef within the Nation of Islam. And then three years later, in Memphis, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., honored today with a national holiday, was killed with a rifle outside of room 306 on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Eight weeks later, New York Senator Robert Francis Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel after winning the California Democratic primary. In 1972, former Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace was the victim of an assassination attempt that left him paralyzed. In 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was assassinated in yet another CIA-engineered coup. In 1975, there were two assassination attempts against President Gerald Ford. And in November 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk both were assassinated. (Dianne Feinstein owes her political career to these killings.) President Ronald Reagan was almost assassinated early in his first term. In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was spectacularly assassinated while reviewing his own troops in a stadium. In 1983, Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was assassinated, which precipitated the U.S. invasion of the island. And on March 8, 1985, the CIA tried to assassinate Hezbollah chief Sheik Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. Lebanese agents working for the CIA detonated a car bomb filled with 440 pounds of explosives outside a Mosque in Beirut killing 80 innocent people but missing the elusive Shia cleric. The assassination attempt was in response to Hezbollah's suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in October 1983 that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and wounded 60 other Americans. (You can read all about this incident where CIA Director William Casey bares his soul in Bob Woodward's "Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987," which is his best book.) In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was shot in the stomach with a pistol and killed by a right-wing Israeli assassin who was proud of his deed. (The Israel government as conducted "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian leaders for over 40 years.) And most recently, on December 27, 2007, Benizar Bhutto was assassinated while waving to an adoring crowd in Rawalpindi. Every nation on earth has had their share of political assassinations. One might trace such acts back to Brutus's assassination of Caesar in ancient Rome. Or maybe to the internecine conflicts that Machiavelli describes in Medici Florence. During the French Revolution there were so many political assassinations that historians often lose count. So, as a historian, I don't understand why people, including many of my colleagues, seem to believe that political assassination in the United States in 2008 is an impossibility; something that only crackpots and lunatics contemplate. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:25:52 AM    comment []

A RARE "HATS OFF!" TO THE GOP FOR THIS ..... NH GOP backs out of Fox debate.. The New Hampshire Republican Party expressed its disapproval with Fox News’ decision to exclude Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter from an upcoming debate by severing its partnership with the network. “We believe that it is inconsistent with the first in the nation primary tradition to be excluding candidates in a pre-primary setting,” said New Hampshire GOP state chair Fergus Cullen. [Think Progress] 11:22:36 AM    comment []

Deborah Emin: Melissa Etheridge speaks out for Dennis Kucinich. Melissa Etheridge, speaking from California on Saturday, January 5th was asked what she thought of Dennis Kucinich being shut out of the ABC News/Facebook Democratic Debate this evening in New Hampshire, just days away from the primary election. In a voice that rang clear as a bell she enunciated a list of her concerns about what is happening to this country's democracy. What struck this interviewer the most about her comments was how impassioned she was about how corporate control has shut out sincere political discourse. As she said, "The consequences of this action is we see infomercials rather than a debate. The system is infected and pressing down on those who are progressives. Look what they did in Iowa," she said when I asked her about Dennis Kucinich in New Hampshire. "I have been reading definitions of fascism and the ways in which the corporations are excluding those who threaten their industries--health care, war machines--is a good definition of how fascism works.They don't want to let anyone who will jeopardize their interests gain any visibility. This is an important election, they will be manipulating us for their own ends. They have been at it for the last 8 years with the Bush administration." And then she added, "It was the Clinton administration that first opened the door to these corporate interests." When asked why she thought everyone was asleep when it came to these issues, she provided another long analysis of how television has altered our sense of what is real and what is actual. She said, "If I hear one more person say that Dennis has good ideas but he is unelectable or that this country is not ready to elect a black man or a woman, I will scream. The sad part about these statements coming out of our television set is that people believe them. I don't want my country's future to depend on the comments about Dennis' height." "As a cancer survivor, as an out lesbian, I am a firm believer in intentional survival. We can change the world and make things better." But then her thoughts turned to the consequences of living in California where the feeling is live and let live. "We have a blue state with a Republican governor. We don't feel the same things you do out east. Our biggest fear is that by the time we get to vote, all the decisions will have been made for us." That ended our talk and was truly her biggest fear: If the corporations are allowed to say who can and who cannot speak to us, then they are saying what kind of democracy we can or cannot have. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:20:21 AM    comment []

Pakistan: US Forces Cannot Hunt Al Qaida, Taliban Militants On Our Soil. Pakistan reiterated Sunday that it will not let American forces hunt al-Qaida and Taliban militants on its soil, after a news report said Washington was considering expanding U.S. military and intelligence operations into Pakistan's tribal regions. The Foreign Ministry dismissed as "speculative" a story in the New York Times on Sunday saying U.S. President George W. Bush's top security officials discussed a proposal Friday to deploy American troops to pursue militants along the Pakistan-Afghan border. "We are very clear. Nobody is going to be allowed to do anything here," said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the army's top spokesman. "The government has said it so many times," Arshad said. "No foreign forces will be allowed to operate inside Pakistan." In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:06:20 AM    comment []

Israel To Brief Bush On Options For Iran Strike. ISRAELI security officials are to brief President George W Bush on their latest intelligence about Iran's nuclear programme - and how it could be destroyed - when he begins a tour of the Middle East in Jerusalem this week. Ehud Barak, the defence minister, is said to want to convince him that an Israeli military strike against uranium enrichment facilities in Iran would be feasible if diplomatic efforts failed to halt nuclear operations. A range of military options has been prepared. Last month it was revealed that the US National Intelligence Estimate report, drawing together information from 16 agencies, had concluded that Iran stopped a secret nuclear weapon programme in 2003. Israeli intelligence is understood to agree that the project was halted around the time of America's invasion of Iraq, but has "rock solid" information that it has since started up again. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:04:02 AM    comment []

George Tenet Lawyers Up Over CIA Tapes Probe. Attorney general Michael Mukasey's decision to launch a full-scale FBI probe into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes has sent several alarmed agency employees scrambling to find lawyers. To lead the probe, the A.G. named John Durham, a hard-nosed veteran prosecutor who is assembling a team of deputies and FBI agents. Some CIA veterans fear the move is tantamount to unleashing an independent coun sel on Langley. "A lot of people are worried," says one former CIA official, who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. "Whenever you have the bureau running around the building, it's going to turn up some heads. This could turn into a witch hunt." Justice officials say Durham was assigned to investigate the 2005 decision to destroy the tapes--not the activities recorded on them, including the use of waterboarding on Al Qaeda suspects. But at this point, Durham has no formal mandate on the probe's scope, giving him the freedom to ex pand it if he chooses. "We're going to follow this wherever it leads," says one Justice official, who asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing probe. One key figure, Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA chief of clandestine services who gave the order to destroy the videotapes, has retained Robert Bennett, a renowned defense lawyer who represented Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Another potential witness, George Tenet, who was CIA director when the tapes were made, will be represented by former FBI general counsel Howard Shapiro. Roy Krieger, a Washington lawyer who has repre sented about 100 CIA employees, says that two agency officers have approached him about representation, though neither has retained him yet. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:03:28 AM    comment []

Dana Kennedy: What if Bill Secretly Wants Hillary to Lose?. Before Iowa, I was rooting for Hillary Clinton. For purely emotional reasons. First, I wanted to see the first woman president in my lifetime. Second, I wanted the happy ending. I wanted Hillary to get hers at last. I'm not someone who sucks it up and stands by her horndog man, but I like to believe it's an option. I want to believe that we're all human and we disappoint each other - but that some people can hang in and work it out, no matter what. I was looking forward to seeing someone who kept her eyes on the prize actually get the prize. After Iowa, when the stench of loser hit Hillary, I realized what 9-11, George Bush and a catastrophic war had almost wiped out. I forgot for a minute that Iowa was not Hillary's first big humiliation. I remembered the "bimbo eruptions." I thought of the times Bill Clinton hung Hillary out to dry. Or, Hillary let herself be hung out to dry, depending on how you look at it. I remembered Hillary on "60 Minutes" in 1992 defending Bill against allegations he had an affair with Gennifer Flowers; Hillary on "The Today Show" in 1998 defending Bill against the Monica Lewinsky allegations and blaming a "vast right-wing conspiracy." It occurred to me: If I were gunning for the biggest job in the world, would I want a guy who repeatedly publicly humiliated me as my cornerman? What does infidelity mean, anyway? Were Bill Clinton's affairs merely because he's a complicated guy with a weird, white trash past who can't keep his pants zipped? To me, a man's infidelity is sometimes as much about achieving a malignant power over his wife and hurting her, as it is with needing to scratch a sexual itch. If you're married to someone like that, do you want him behind you in the race of your life? How do you know he's not going to trip you, like he did before? Much is being made now of Bill Clinton's odd role in his wife's campaign. About how much he talks about himself, that maybe he's worried Hillary will be a better president than he was, to what the The New York Times called the failure of Hillary's chief strategist Mark Penn and Clinton to "fully grasp the personality deficit that Mrs. Clinton had with voters." Interesting that Hillary's political genius husband, who has been married to her for 33 years, failed to grasp that she might have a personality deficit with voters. Or maybe he grasped it all too well. I've known relationships like the Clintons. A charming narcissist married to a brainy plain Jane. They may be intellectual equals but the fuckable one is the star. The star rarely relinquishes the stage to his sidekick. People hate Hillary so much that it's easy to chalk up their marriage as a codependence-fest. Certainly nobody was a bigger enabler than Hillary. I always hoped it wasn't proof she wasn't a total chump, but because she saw the big picture: herself as president. But I have a vivid memory of a 15-minute interview I had with Hillary when I was covering her for the AP during the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York. We were alone together in the back of a van going to the next stop. My impression of her was tough, brittle, supersmart. At the very end of my interview, I asked her about Gennifer Flowers, since that was the Clinton scandal du jour in 1992. I was amazed when her face and entire demeanor completely changed. She seemed instantly wounded. Far from being mad at me for asking the question, or keeping her game face on, she seemed truly vulnerable. It did not seem fake. She drew back from me and said, "It's not true!," almost like a teenage girl. Her voice was higher than usual and it sounded like a cry. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Bill is just eternally conflicted, not subconsciously Machiavellian, and two old pros who love a fight will figure out a way to make Hillary the second Clinton "Comeback Kid." But if I had to bet, I wouldn't roll the dice for a Clinton victory. In fact, I'm wondering if the dice Hillary rolled so long ago, when she sacrificed her own career in Washington to join Bill in Arkansas, is coming up snake eyes. And I wonder if her insistence so long ago that she was no Tammy Wynette, standing by her man, is coming back to haunt her. Bill Clinton got his moment in the sun, eight years actually. Will Hillary get her shot? The lyrics of "Stand by Your Man" are telling. "You'll have bad times," Wynette sang. "He'll have good times." [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 11:02:26 AM    comment []

In This Race, Independents Are the Prize. Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, writes: "The race for president, steeped in appeals to each party's base for nearly a year, is for the next few days largely in the hands of voters who identify themselves as neither Republican nor Democrat." [t r u t h o u t] 11:00:20 AM    comment []

George McGovern | Why I Believe Bush Must Go. Writing for The Washington Post, George McGovern says, "As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president." [t r u t h o u t] 10:59:30 AM    comment []

Erin Kotecki Vest: How Hillary Can Win Me Back. I saw it during the ABC/Facebook debate last night. That spark. I SAW IT. When Edwards and Obama started hammering her tag-team style, she got ANGRY-that's when the Hillary I used to love came back out to fight. Of course, that Hillary is the one that tends to fire me up while turning others off. That's the Hillary that gets the sexist and conservative voters calling her the b word and railing against having a crazy woman in power. That fight I saw in her? It was real. Genuine. It was the kind of thing her campaign was trying to manufacture with those cackles on national television and giggles of a "softer side." Why can't they just admit "Hillary lite" isn't nearly as exciting and commanding as "Hillary pissed and yelling" - don't sell me a softer Hillary, sell me what I KNOW works and gets stuff done: Raging Ass Kicker Hillary. I don't care anymore if you hate her for it. You hated her anyway and you'll hate her again. I don't care if she's so far into the establishment she is considered the "same old thing." Bring back the Hillary people love to hate instead of this Middle-of-The-Road-play-all-sides, rhetoric spewing android democrat and she'll get me back. Then we can talk about experience AND history. Then we can talk about having the resume AND being the First Woman President. She was right last night-a woman in the oval office would be huge. But no one is talking about it yet. No one is excited about it yet-why? She's made us forget she could make history by becoming one of the many drones of politics. By becoming one of them. She used to be trail blazer, now she's lost in the herd. Show me that trail blazer again. Show me the woman who tried to push universal health care while not even a politician. Who, when I was still a teenager, had me reading up on drug makers and their lobby. Who had me proud and excited a strong and vocal woman was injecting herself into the national spotlight in a way no other First Lady has. Let her loose. Then all those women and young people the Hillary camp took for granted-all those WOMEN LIKE ME who have been waiting their ENTIRE LIVES for this just might consider making it happen. Let her loose. And hope it's not too late. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 10:58:18 AM    comment []

McCain: ‘I Dont Think Americans Are Concerned’ If We Stay In Iraq For ‘10,000 Years’. Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said it “would be fine with” him if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq for “a hundred years” or even a “million years.” Fifty-nine percent say the U.S. should “stick to a withdrawal timetable” instead of keeping “a significant number of troops in Iraq until the situation there gets better, even if that takes many years.” But on CBS’s Face the Nation, McCain claimed that Americans would not be “concerned” if the U.S. spends “10,000 years” in Iraq: The point is it’s American casualties. We’ve go to get American’s off the frontlines, have the Iraqis as part of the strategy, take over more and more of the responsibilities, and then I don’t think Americans are concerned if we’re there for one hundred years or a thousand years or ten thousand years. Watch it: As Crooks and Liars notes, on NBC’s Meet the Press, McCain further expressed his desire for a permanent Iraq occupation, going as far as to suggest that he supports “permanent bases” in the country: RUSSERT: Would you have permanent bases? McCAIN: If that seems to be necessary in some respects. It depends on the threat. Not long ago, McCain felt very differently about occupying Iraq. In November, he told Charlie Rose that arguing that a South Korea-like presence is not an “analogy” he would use for Iraq. On June 10, 2007, McCain told George Stephanopolous that he opposes permanent bases: STEPHANOPOULOS: So no permanent bases? McCAIN: No, not forever, but certainly, we would be there for a long period of time in a support role, in many ways. But by McCain’s logic, 10,000 or even one million years is not “forever.” [Think Progress] 10:55:29 AM    comment []