Gotta love #occupywallstreet as the anti-Tea Party protest with real truth behind it -- that an unbridled Wall Street serving the 1% at the top got us into the current financial mess and they have paid no real price for it, not one that counts. Not one that will keep them from doing this again.
This weekend it spread to other cities and also intensified in NYC, with 700 arrests at the Brooklyn Bridge. People of all ages are represented and one has to wonder if the cops really want to be doing this where there's real crime going on all the time in NYC, and not just in the those towers being protested. Not to mention that those cops are the ones who get hurt when those big money-backed Republicans like those in Wisconsin start taking away public union rights. And how come 700 people have been arrested for protesting, yet not one indictment has been handed down to the high finance crooks themselves.
In the age of online social media, there is a huge amount to look at, to learn from, to help connect with the organizing. The Facebook page, the Twitter handle, the Tumblr. Here's some great pics at The Atlanticshowing the sweep of the protest. Help pay the movement's media costs here.
Most importantly, the grievances. Peaceful and damning. We have yet to see if it lasts or fizzles, if it leads to change or fractures, if the authorities start sending in undercover thugs to turn things violent as they did regularly in the 1960's and the repressive Middle East regimes have done during Arab Spring, to discredit the movement.
If nothing else, it does the heart good to see there are protesters in America who aren't carrying posters of President Obama with a black toothbrush mustache.
So do you think there might be a connection between this:
The Obama administration’s pursuit of an expedited U.S. Supreme Court review of its health care law is a roll of the political dice with enormous implications for the president and the 2012 campaign.
While the signature issue of Obama’s presidency has already figured prominently in rhetoric on both sides, an expected ruling on its constitutionality by June guarantees a dramatic pre-election debate in which Obama may have the most to gain.
A victory for the Affordable Care Act in a high court dominated by conservatives could tame the most fiery criticism from the right, undermining charges popularized by the Tea Party that the administration usurped its constitutional authority.
A ruling against it, while a setback to the law itself, could serve to embolden the argument Obama has already been making that Republicans across all branches of government have become obstructionists without solutions.
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday called for a federal investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars on annual financial disclosure forms.
Led by House Rules Committee ranking member Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), 20 House Democrats sent a letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States -- the entity that frames guidelines for the administration of federal courts -- requesting that the conference refer the matter of Thomas' non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to the Department of Justice.
The letter outlines how, throughout his 20-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Thomas routinely checked a box titled "none" on his annual financial disclosure forms, indicating that his wife had received no income. But in reality, the letter states, she earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003 to 2007 alone.
Hmm.
My theory: Obama wouldn't get into a fight unless he had a long-range plan for winning it. Especially not now that he's pivoted from acting like Neville Chamberlain to Ronald Reagan.
If nothing else, he's certainly set up a huge hurdle. And he must have known the Affordable Care Act would come down to those eleven jurists before it would be settled law. Big questions if the GOP can force Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself for being Solicitor General during the legislation of healthcare reform. If so, this is bench-one-of-ours, bench-one-of-yours ploy.
But if they can knock out Thomas, on possible felony charges, and keep Kagan (without any of the other left-leaning Justices getting sick or worse), then those are odds Obama would like to have.
Twenty minutes. Think about that. Twenty minutes without the prank caller from The Beast making him suspicious, even when he said:
Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this…[explains that planting troublemakers may not work.] My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that maybe the governor has to settle to solve all these problems…[something about '60s liberals.]…Let ‘em protest all they want…Sooner or later the media stops finding it interesting.
That means that this is the way the Koch brothers talk to the politicians they've purchased and furnished with ideological claptrap designed to take America back -- to the Robber Baron Era. It's exactly as bad as the worst you think. Because if they're considering planting agitators, you know that they've done it before.
Liar Walker's denial is hilarious: "I take phone calls all the time." What the hell does that even mean? I take phone calls from my corporate overlords all the time?
I'm just wondering which Koch brother has made his feelings known to toady Walker about this boneheaded screw up.
Murphy: [Laughs] Well, I tell you what, Scott: Once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali (California) and really show you a good time.
Walker: All right, that would be outstanding. Thanks for all the support in helping us move the cause forward, and we appreciate it, and we’re doing it the just and right thing for the right reasons and it’s all about getting our freedoms back.
He's revealed his strategy for all to see. He didn't campaign on ending collective bargaining, he's deliberately taking eyes off the banks that got the states into debt, and if his governorship doesn't crumble to the point of legislative failure (i.e. pressure on Republican legislators who don't want to be recalled or voted out next time) it will be a huge victory for him, the GOP crony con (including their conning of their easiest dupes, the tea partiers) and the Koch brothers.
It's rfall at Daily Kos who provides the most apt analysis of the call, and the most chilling:
What I haven't heard a lot about it the one thing which leapt out at me when listening to the tape after my years in corporate life.
Walker sounds exactly like someone who is in a one-on-one meeting with his boss.
He provides status on what he's doing and plans to do.
He provides rationalizations for his actions which he thinks his boss might not like.
He makes promises as to what he plans to do, things the boss wants done.
He expresses false bravado, trying to be a "good enforcer" to his boss.
In summary, he sounds like he's not talking to a Wisconsin citizen, or even a campaign contributor, but someone to whom he's clearly beholden for his job.
As I've heard it said about success in the corporate world: It's all about the reporting. Well, in some ways it's now like a bestselling political thriller.
True motives and relationships have been revealed.
The House ethics committee on Thursday laid out 13 charges of ethical violations committed by Representative Charles B. Rangel, accusing him of a pattern of “indifference and disregard” for the law and the rules of the House.
...
In the 40-page report, the committee said it substantiated the major charges that had been hanging over Mr. Rangel for two years: that he improperly used his office to solicit donations for a school to be named in his honor; failed to pay taxes on and report rental income from his Dominican villa; filed incomplete financial disclosure forms; and improperly accepted from a Manhattan developer rent-stabilized apartments, one of which he used as a campaign office.
But while those alleged infractions had been widely reported, the committee unearthed new details about Mr. Rangel’s conduct. The committee said Mr. Rangel not only reached out to corporate executives seeking contributions to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College, but he also personally sought donations from registered lobbyists whose corporations had business before Congress. In some cases, Mr. Rangel asked for contributions of as much as $30 million from businesses with issues before the Ways and Means Committee, of which he was the chairman until March.
Famed Dallas billionaire investors Sam and Charles Wyly made $550 million in undisclosed profits through 13 years of insider trading in the shares of companies on whose boards they served, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed Thursday.
In a 78-page complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court in New York, the SEC said the Wylys held and traded tens of millions of securities in the companies and "defrauded the investing public" by misrepresenting the Wylys' ownership and trading of those shares.
"The apparatus of the fraud was an elaborate sham system of trusts and subsidiary companies located in the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands ... created by and at the direction of the Wylys," the SEC complaint stated.
Using this offshore system, the Wylys were able to sell stock worth more than $750 million in four public companies where they served as corporate directors. They also committed an insider trading violation at one of the companies that resulted in an unlawful gain of over $31.7 million, according to the complaint.
Coincidentally, the number thirteen figures in both stories. For Rep. Rangel, that's thirteen charges of ethical violations. For the Wylys, thirteen years of insider trading.
Anyone on the Right who complains about "activist judges" without tossing their very own John Roberts-led Supreme Court is full of it. Witness how this Court's decision to open the floodgates of corporate spending on elections will now directly benefit the wife of rightwing ideologue Justice Clarence Thomas:
She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.
In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.
The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources -- including corporations -- as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.
"I adore all the new citizen patriots who are rising up across this country," Thomas, who goes by Ginni, said on the panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "I have felt called to the front lines with you, with my fellow citizens, to preserve what made America great."
The move by Virginia Thomas, 52, into the front lines of politics stands in marked contrast to the rarefied culture of the nation's highest court, which normally prizes the appearance of nonpartisanship and a distance from the fisticuffs of the politics of the day.
Justice Thomas, 61, recently expressed sensitivity to such concerns, telling law students in Florida that he doesn't attend the State of the Union because it is "so partisan." Thomas, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush, has been a reliable conservative vote since he joined the court in 1991.
This is beyond hypocrisy -- it's out and out corruption.
Virginia Thomas has long been a passionate voice for conservative views. She has worked for former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas and for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with strong ties to the GOP.
In 2000, while at the Heritage Foundation, she was recruiting staff for a possible George W. Bush administration as her husband was hearing the case that would decide the election. When journalists reported her work, Thomas said she saw no conflict of interest and that she rarely discussed court matters with her husband.
Wow, two huge pieces of evil implicating Justice Thomas. First there's the Dick Armey connection -- Armey being the head of the group that has fomented the whole Tea Party movement, astroturfing for GOP-sponsoring corporations and pretending it's "grassroots." So Ms. Thomas knows she's lying here where she claims this is some sort of inspired citizen's movement.
And then there's the Court decision that handed George W. Bush the 2000 election. Which she directly benefited from as well.
Here's the news revealed today about the Administration's approach to Afghanistan:
The White House signaled Sunday that President Obama would postpone any decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the disputed election there had been settled and resulted in a government that could work with the United States. ...
“It would be irresponsible,” Mr. Emanuel told CNN. Then he continued, paraphrasing the senator, that it would be reckless to decide on the troop level without first doing “a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing.” ...
The election in Afghanistan was so badly marred by allegations of fraud that they helped prompt Mr. Obama to rethink the strategy he unveiled just in March, officials have said. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., among others at the White House, had already soured on Mr. Karzai, whose government and family are accused of corruption and ties to drug dealing. The election reinforced those doubts, officials said.
This sounds to me like the opposite answer that we gave in Vietnam, the opposite of trying to prop up a corrupt regime that will just look at the U.S. as fools with money to waste on them. I'd be interested to see if there's consensus agreement among Nettertainment readers on this, since I haven't seen as much divergence on the Afghanistan issue as, say, health insurance reform.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai may not accept the results of a vote recount from the summer's general election, officials from his campaign hinted, adding a further twist to the already fraught post-poll political environment. On Sunday, his supporters began demonstrations against "foreign interference" in the elections.
As they await the results of a recount to try to adjust for widespread fraud, officials from the Karzai campaign began over the weekend to cast aspersions on the process, centering their criticism on the United Nations-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, which is re-tallying the numbers. The commission finished its audit Saturday, and is reviewing it before releasing it in coming days. If Mr. Karzai is found to have less than 50% of the vote, it could force a run-off with his top challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
Sounds like a little too much like Iran, doesn't it?
Here's two health insurance reform heroes. #1 is famed blogger and cancer survivor Jane Hamsher, known best for the group blog Firedoglake. Here she bats back Andrea Mitchell's latest media chamber line about the Public Option, particularly wailing on anti-real reform Blue Dog Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) for his wife's conflict of interest:
And taking the Morning Joe Show to school over their collective rush to declare the Public Option dead and the politics of the situation, welcome back, Dr. Dean:
He's the man who should be running the Department of Health & Human Services. Former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius appears either over her head...or too Blue Dog for the job herself.
The whole teabagging movement is a further development of the phony but devastating "Brooks Brothers Riots" that the GOP pulled together in Florida back in 2000 to disrupt the Presidential election recount. This was falsely reported as "populist rage" in the media and the result was George W. Bush as acting President with Richard Bruce Cheney as actual President and eight years of snowballing economic disaster (financial meltdown), catastrophic foreign policy (Iraq, isolation, clearing away Iran's enemies, continuing Israel-Palestine crisis), failure to deliver basic services (Katrina) as had been successfully executed under President Bill Clinton, fascistic practices (unauthorized wiretapping of Americans, torture of innocents along with any guilty) not to mention more and more Americans losing their health insurance or finding themselves not getting the benefits they paid for.
The danger is back.
With the fascistic shouting down of civil discourse by ignorant rightwing cranks both coordinated and egged on by the GOP and their proxy organizations and media, America risks dropping back into the rabbit hole that is decreasing our life expectancy against the rest of the world and threatening to permanently establish a class-tiered system for basic survival in the U.S. This threat cannot be understated. If the corporations behind and people in front in this brownshirt shout-down movement are allowed to succeed in scuttling real health insurance reform this summer, you'll see cowed Representatives, some dropping out for fear of violence, and status quo America as feeding trough for the parasitic rich for the rest of its history, until it collapses under the weight of it's own lack of foresight.
Here's the media struggling to reveal the truth, even if it's corporate parents would rather not:
It looks like they've picked up the Libertarian "LaRouchies" now, another crackpot group that used to be marginalized when I was growing up but, like birthers and Birchers, is poised for legitimization by Fox News and their fellow travelers.
Yesterday I called this fascist movement racist as well. Thomas Edsall backs me up today:
With Republican party leaders so constrained by ideological blinders that none of their positions is likely to produce gains among non-white minorities, especially Hispanics, the GOP is finding it has no real alternative but to revert to a "white voter" strategy.
To some extent, it's working. The party's opposition to President Obama's agenda -- particularly his cap-and-trade energy proposal and health care reform plan -- is resonating strongly with disaffected white Democratic voters. Republican grievances about Obama, combined with race-baiting commentary from the far-right ideologues who have become some of the most dominant voices of the modern GOP, have led to a precipitous drop in the president's approval ratings among whites.
It's all very reminiscent of the party's notorious Southern Strategy, which carried the GOP for decades.
Think I'm being alarmist? Think my racism charge is going too far?
The effort will feature town-hall-style meetings by lawmakers and the president, including a swing through Western states by Mr. Obama, grass-roots lobbying efforts and a blitz of expensive television advertising. It is intended to drive home the message that revamping the health care system will protect consumers by ending unpopular insurance industry practices, like refusing patients with pre-existing conditions.
“I think what we want to communicate is that this is going to give people who have insurance a degree of security and stability, the protection that they don’t have today against the sort of mercurial judgments of insurance bureaucrats,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, adding, “Our job is to help folks understand how this will help them.” ....
The tough talk, however, has risks. The industry trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, is urging members to confront Democrats at public meetings, and the rising tensions could make it difficult for the president to keep insurers at the negotiating table.
All I can say is, Gobama. The health insurance energy claims they will cooperate on reform -- as long as there's no Public Option. Which is why I wish they were threatened properly with Single payer, before Sen. Max Baucus and other Dems unilaterally took it off the table.
...some institutions, including Goldman Sachs, have been using superfast computers to get the jump on other investors, buying or selling stocks a tiny fraction of a second before anyone else can react. Profits from high-frequency trading are one reason Goldman is earning record profits and likely to pay record bonuses.
On a seemingly different front, Sunday’s Times reported on the case of Andrew J. Hall, who leads an arm of Citigroup that speculates on oil and other commodities. His operation has made a lot of money recently, and according to his contract Mr. Hall is owed $100 million.
What do these stories have in common?
The politically salient answer, for now at least, is that in both cases we’re looking at huge payouts by firms that were major recipients of federal aid.
Something has to be done to clean this country up, and it's either not going to be the Obama Administration or, more importantly, not that leader and team alone.
If it's a participatory democracy we live in here, it's time to participate.
Efforts to pass sweeping health care legislation took a big step forward on Wednesday as House Democratic leaders reached an agreement with fiscally conservative party members that would cut the bill’s cost and exempt many small businesses from having to provide health benefits to workers.
The agreement, brokered by aides to President Obama, overcame a 10-day impasse and would allow a pivotal House committee to resume work on the bill, with an expectation that the panel could approve it later this week.
Under the deal, the Democratic leaders promised to defer a vote by the full House until September, so lawmakers could test public sentiment on the measure, which could fundamentally restructure one-sixth of the nation’s economy.
So maybe the bill has enough imperfections to cause the progressives to vote against it, or maybe it will be even further gutted by the time it finishes markup and reconciliation with the Senate, who knows. At least there's something that reads like progress, and I have a lot of faith in my Congressman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA).
On the Senate side, however, the arguably corrupt Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) continues to create garbage and impasses that only helps his insurance company donors. Check out this chart of his connections here. Sickening.
Obama and Reid: replace him on this ASAP, if it takes getting the bill out of Baucus' Finance Committee to do it.
If I were anyone of note in the Republican party, I'd want this woman buried as deep as possible after this speech:
If she's the party, whether on Fox on in a 2012 Presidential Primary, the party is over. She makes Mark Sanford's meandering public confessions seem a little saner. Or maybe she just earned herself the next room in the sanatorium.
Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out.
I've now been able to get independent information from multiple sources that all of this precedes what are said to be possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin's house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure as Mayor. Both structures, it is said, feature the "same windows, same wood, same products." Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources.
The BRAD BLOG has not been able to receive confirm from any federal sources on this. Our information comes from local Alaskans who follow Palin, and who have been keeping an eye on this for some time, while keeping it quiet at the request of federal investigators.
She'll spin it, to be sure. Federal Obama government intruding into Alaska and personal life, political vendetta, blah blah. And her stupid, I mean committed fans will eat it up.
Bottom line, though: same ol' same ol'. If true, just another narcissistic corrupt pol.
So AIG, the massive insurance company our nation has just bailed out, is using our tax money to pay bonuses to the least deserving -- the pigs that got us into this mess:
"This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," Mr. Obama said Monday, his voice rising in anger. "Under these circumstances, it's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay."
At issue are retention bonuses for employees of AIG's financial-products division, whose credit default swaps brought AIG to the brink of collapse. The government controls AIG through an 80% equity stake and as a major lender and doesn't have legal authority to freeze payments on its own. The U.S. has committed $173.3 billion to AIG, including $70 billion from Treasury's rescue fund.
Obama's pissed, per the above quote from this appearance today:
What's to be done? For one, New York State Attorney General (and frontrunner for next NYS Governor) Andrew Cuomo is getting strapped:
The attorney general is seeking the list of employees who will receive these bonuses, as well as their job information and performances. Mr. Cuomo said that the company had failed to heed a previous request for this list.
Mr. Cuomo is also demanding the contracts guaranteeing these bonuses and the names of individuals who developed and negotiated the agreements.
A spokeswoman for A.I.G. told DealBook in an e-mailed statement: “We are in ongoing contact with the Attorney General and will respond appropriately to the subpoena.”
One wonders what the government can do -- especially for the money that's already in the hands of the scumbags who built the derivatives business and live in a different America than 99% of us. If we own the company, can we abrogate our own contracts? Or, per these very smart guys:
Firstly, the US trustees in charge of the firm must immediately instruct the corporate treasurer to make no payments of any bonuses. They also need to order him to issue stop payment orders on any checks that fly out the door at the last minute, as with Merrill Lynch. Then the trustees need to split off the derivatives unit from the rest of the firm and separately incorporate it. This step leaves AIG's other businesses free to operate as usual. If the recipients of the bonuses refuse to waive them, then the derivatives unit should at once be thrown into bankruptcy, terminating all obligations to pay them. Right now, press reports suggest that the firm's top management waited until the last minute to inform the government of what was happening. AIG CEO Edward Liddy, accordingly, should be asked to resign at once, for the sake of public confidence and to send a clear signal that gaming the system is unacceptable. It is also past time for an investigation of the validity of AIG's past accounting and securities disclosures and its executive compensation program by the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the FBI.
Here's my theory: if you investigate deeply enough into anyone at this level of securities trading and manipulation, there is sure to be something prosecutable that comes up.
It was all anybody could talk about today, and it was pretty intense because clearly our big expensive news media can't do their job. CBS felt that Murrow blood running through their veins and ran Jeff Greenfield's excellent piece:
Time media critic James Poniewozik gets to the core of the modern television journalism problem -- and how Cramer was trapped by it under Stewart's questioning:
"These people were my friends." Cramer said that, or something like it, repeatedly: that longtime friends flat-out lied to him. So problem one: coziness with sources is death for the information business. Now, Cramer is a commentator, not a reporter, and I don't begrudge him friends per se. But it is a problem when reporters either become too close to their subjects to treat them skeptically, or become so obsessed with access that they are leery of being too skeptical: i.e., "If I do that, they'll never talk to me again."
Journalists prize getting people to talk to them, with good reason, but they shouldn't be hostage to it. Part of the problem is a culture in which interviewing is privileged over research: "reporting" is defined as getting a person to talk to you, preferably a famous person. But as the original Daily Show CNBC clip showed, research can be pretty powerful—then it created a situation where Cramer pretty much had to talk.
So what I heard today was that Jon Stewart is doing CNN and MSNBC job for them, that it's only the court jester who can speak truth to the emperor as he reveals him to have no clothes, and that he's essentially our century's Mark Twain.
If you want Obama, take it up a notch. Close this election strong, not complacent. Visit your local Obama/Dem headquarters. Make a few calls. Convince one more friend. Put the sticker on your car.
He's not letting up -- he's still getting on the phone himself:
After decades of broken politics in Washington, eight years of failed policies from George Bush, and twenty-one months of a campaign that has taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are one week away from change in America.
In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street.
In one week, you can choose policies that invest in our middle-class, create new jobs, and grow this economy from the bottom-up so that everyone has a chance to succeed; from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor; from the factory owner to the men and women who work on its floor.
In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.
In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need.
Here's the close of his closing argument:
Does anyone doubt what Joe Biden says about Barack in this ad any more?:
The GOP is falling apart, with Palin political godfather Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) now no longer legal to vote, even for his own re-election -- Guilty x 7. Telemarkers are going all Norma Brockovich, refusing to robocall filthy, lying GOP smears about Obama. And lowlifes who even fantasize about killing Obama are getting nailed by the law.
The BBC has an astonishing report providing definitive proof of vote-rigging by dictator Robert Mugabe's forces using a concealed camera bravely carried by one Shepherd Yuda, who has now fled the country with his family:
With over 200 members of Mugabe's opposition seeking refuge in the U.S. Embassy to avoid the systematic murder that has intensified in the aftermath of the rigged run-off election, it's a stark reminder of the very right so many Americans take for granted. When people all over the world put their actual mortality on the line for the right to free and fair elections, it's a shaming rebuke to all those in our country who don't bother to exercise their right here.
Worth noting this Independence Day weekend, and godspeed to those who would take Mugabe down.
If, per former Bush Administration Press Secretary Scott McClellan, El Presidente himself authorized the Valerie Plame covert CIA identity leak, can we impeach him now? Per Emptywheel:
Thus far, though, we only had Dick Cheney's word that he had actually asked Bush to declassify this information. We didn't have Bush's confirmation that he had actually declassified the information. In fact, we've had Dick Cheney's claims that he--Dick--had insta-declassified via his super secret pixie dust declassification powers.
But now we've got George Bush, confirming that he, the President of the United States, authorized the leaks of "this information."
Now, though Scottie refers, obliquely, to "this information," he explicitly refers only to the NIE. But as I've described over and over again, it's not just the NIE Bush authorized Dick to order Libby to leak.
Here's McClellan seeming to let this slip on the Today Show. According to him, Bush was fine with having done it, treating Scottie as inner circle, having come from Texas, his mother a GOP stalwart -- until the last election.
What appears to have happened here is that McClellan was young, idealistic, and more the older type Republican, probably more like Bush Senior. He's put in the middle of this thing after Ari Fleischer broke in the job through the selling of the Iraq War and then wisely jumped ship. Fleischer had seen what was being passed around Air Force One the night or so before Cheney set Libby loose to smear Wilson, having run it by the President with a bunch of other slightly less impeachable deception plans, and (a very smart, if misaligned guy) must have gone home to his family after with every Spidey sense in his head going off at once, panic vertigo, got to get out of there before he ends up on a executive prison farm, got to protect myself and my family.
Then, I imagine, as Scottie got these weird moments of revelation, mainly that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had hung him out to dry, he must have leaked it back to his mom, the old hand politico. Just imagine what that did to her Party alignment -- I could tell you what it would do to mine if one of my boys was played the patsy that way, by people so powerful.
So mom's approval must have given him the courage to put out the book. To let loose the truth, no matter the rusted bullybats of the disparate remaining pieces of what was once Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's character assassination machine. Just as Paul O'Neill. He did an hour tonight with Olbermann. He hits The Daily Show on Monday. Assuming he stays healthy.
John Dean says this may be prosecutable. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) has been pushing for impeachment hearings for awhile, now has new evidence to pursue. Rove has been subpoenaed, not looking good for weaseling out. But even if we don't get our impeachment, our public flogging (and with Bush's escape pod ready), maybe we'll get, looking ahead to November, the most important thing of all. Per gpack:
If one thing is clear, it is that McClellan just confirmed that Obama was right from the start - the war should never have been waged. McClellan has destroyed McCain's argument that there is any reason to remain in Iraq. Even Pat Buchannan said that the core principle of the GOP has always been to avoid foreign entanglements. He added that going into Iraq, which he too opposed, is not a conservative ideal. It is the product of neo-conservatives who developed an ideology best described by McClellan as "coercive democracy." Knowing that this idea would not even float in the Republican Party, McClellan presents the story of how it was sold as a lie to the American people.
If Hillary Clinton announces that if she has to win ugly, if it's backroom, party-splitting politics, she'll do it:
With every delegate precious, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also made it clear that they were prepared to take a number of potentially incendiary steps to build up Mrs. Clinton’s count. Top among these, her aides said, is pressing for Democrats to seat the disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, who held their primaries in January in defiance of a Democratic Party rules.
She's now not only mathematically incapable of winning the nomination through the popularly-elected delegate count, it's nearly impossible to beat his final popular total. So this is how she decides to play it, sending out her multi-million dollar campaign consultants:
"We don't make distinctions between delegates chosen by million of voters in a primary and those chosen between tens of thousands in caucuses,'' Wolfson said. "And we don't make distinctions when it comes to elected officials'' who vote as superdelegates at the convention.
"We are interested in acquiring delegates, period,'' he added.
Clinton advisers rejected the notion that the candidate -- and the party -- would be badly wounded in the general election if the nominee were essentially selected by a group of party insiders.
"This is a nomination system that exists of caucuses, primaries, superdelegates and also the issue of voters in Florida and Michigan,'' states whose delegates currently will not be seated at the convention because they broke party rules by moving up their primaries to January, said Mark Penn, senior strategist for the Clinton campaign. But "whoever the nominee is, the party will come together behind that nominee,'' he said.
They are under a bunkered delusion. They don't understand the lay of the land. Dems are racking up huge vote totals because independents and some Republicans, lifelong ones, are coming over to vote for a man of character. If she's successful, she will not only lose all those voters to Sen. John McCain, she will not only lose the youth vote that's just joined the party, but she will lose an arctic ice floe of longtime Democrats. And if she still manages to squeak out 51% of the vote, she can kiss her mandate goodbye.
On the other hand, if she wins through these back channel manipulative means, doesn't prove she's tough, bending whatever scruples to get the job done -- and if we want her to do what she's promising, that'll be what it takes. She'll have recovered from a full-blown campaign disaster -- it only takes one more nudge ahead in the polls for the media to give her the "Comeback Kid" moniker, regaining front-runner status after having been down, deserving of a win any way she can, that's the real world, that's proof.
So is that what's going to happen?
Even given the replacement of longtime confidante Patty Solis Doyle with longtime confidante Maggie Williams as Campaign Manager, the stories emerging from her campaign, if true, suggest that Sen. Clinton has neither the judgment nor the management skills to be President of the United States of America:
The Texas and Ohio presidential primaries, on March 4, have become must-win contests for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, her advisers say. So why is she just opening campaign field offices across those states?...
...She and her team showered so much money, attention and other resources on Iowa, New Hampshire and some of the 22-state nominating contests on Feb. 5 that they have been caught flat-footed — or worse — in the critical contests that followed, her political advisers said.
She also made a strategic decision to skip several small states holding caucuses, states where Mr. Obama scored big victories, accumulating delegates and, possibly, momentum.
Her heavy spending and relatively modest fund-raising in January compounded the problems, leaving the campaign ill-equipped to plan after Feb. 5, advisers and donors say.
“It sure didn’t look like they had a game plan after Super Tuesday,” Mr. Rendell said in an interview on Wednesday.
That's from the PA Governor who supports her. No plan for success. Sound familiar?
Why does her younger opponent seem more experienced than her:
In Maine, Arden Manning, chairman of the state’s Democratic Party, attributed Mr. Obama’s victory by almost 20 percentage points in Sunday’s caucuses to his superior organization, despite Mrs. Clinton’s apparent advantages with the state’s demographics of older, blue-collar, lower-income voters.
“A lot of the credit for what happened here goes to the Obama campaign, a grass-roots campaign, that was very well organized, with precinct captains and precinct leaders getting people out,” Mr. Manning said.
In addition, the Obama campaign was more adept at using the Internet.
“I got very little from the Clinton side,” said Amy Fried, a political scientist at the University of Maine, who signed up on both campaigns’ Web sites to compare them. “But I got a lot from Obama, urging me to come in and work and telling me about events, just giving me lots more.”
Can her campaign, called (no joke) "Hillaryland", recover from its disastrous start (sound familiar? sound familiar?) where it blew through trainloads of cash ($175 million) and didn't tell each other internally that they had bled the place dry:
Even after grasping the magnitude of the threat, the Clinton campaign didn’t react quickly and stuck to the strategy of trying to project an aura of inevitability. Here, too, Solis Doyle was disastrous; her lack of skill in areas other than playing the loyal heavy began to show. The first public sign of this came just after Clinton’s reelection to the Senate. Even though Clinton had faced no serious opponent, it turned out that Solis Doyle, as campaign manager, had burned through more than $30 million. As this New York Times story makes clear, the donor base was incensed. Toward the end of the Senate campaign, Solis Doyle did her best to bolster the impression of the inevitability of Hillary’s nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate, spreading word that Clinton’s Senate reelection fund-raising had gone so exceptionally well that $40 million to $50 million would be left after Election Day to transfer to the incipient presidential campaign. But this turned out to be a wild exaggeration—and Solis Doyle must have known it was. Disclosure filings revealed a paltry $10 million in cash on hand; far from conveying Hillary’s inevitability, this had precisely the opposite effect, encouraging, rather than frightening off, potential challengers.
From the nakedly corrupt assumption of a coronation:
Such arrogance led directly to the idea that Clinton could simply project an air of inevitability and be assured her party’s nomination. If she wins—as she very well might—it will be in spite of her original approach. As one former Clinton staffer put it to me last spring: “There was an assumption that if you were a major donor and wanted to be an ambassador, go to state dinners with the queen—unless you were an outright fool, you were going to go with Hillary, whether you liked her or not. The attitude was ‘Where else are they going to go?’”
And then there's this just emerging, a potential scandal simmering to blow -- the Clintons selling her campaign mailing lists to a brokerage house part of the large Info U.S.A. corporation. Sold at what appears to be a 99% discount. Sold to an old Clinton friend:
Info U.S.A.'s CEO is Vinod Gupta, a close ally of both Clintons. Gupta's empire also includes the Opinion Research Corporation, which conducts the political polling for the television network CNN.
Vin Gupta has a long history of giving and raising campaign money for the Clintons, and gave $1 million for the 2000 Millennium Celebration, a New Year's Party thrown by the Clintons.
When he was president, Bill Clinton named Gupta to the Kennedy Center board of directors. Gupta also got to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom. He gave another million to the Clinton Presidential Library.
The library is run by the National Archives, but Bill Clinton raised the money for its construction and always refused to identify his major donors.
Last fall, ABC News reported that the library rented out a portion of its donor list to a list broker — the same one that rented Hillary Clinton's campaign lists.
Now that's Presidential...sharing personal data for political profit. That's what'll make citizens vote for her in the fall.
What's worse, here's her answer to the user-generated Obama video(s):
And she's test-posting nasty, weak-sauce, unpertinent attack ad like his with astroturf comments from her staff filling up the YouTube page.
Meanwhile:
And he's already proving to have coattails, another core element of his argument, with newcomer Donna Edwards winning a Congressional Primary over corrupt incumbent Al Wynn:
The difference this time around was the enthusiastic and broad support that Barack Obama’s candidacy brought about, driving younger and more informed voters to the polls simply by appearing on the ballot. This new support was the key to Donna Edwards’ victory against what had become an entrenched establishment candidate.
Again, nine months before the general election is held, and there is already clear evidence of the effect that having Obama on the ballot will have on down-ticket elections come November.
It's possible that at this point it wouldn't be Hillary that beats Barack, it'd have to be himself. dloewe on Open Left lays out the now uncharacteristic missteps that would have to happen for Obama to lose (click for full description version):
1. He has to lose Ohio and Texas by significant margins 2. He has to lose Pennsylvania by significant margins 3. He has to lose the Edwards Endorsement 4. He has to lose Wisconsin 5. He has to lose the Florida/Michigan PR battle 6. He has to have a "Macaca" moment 7. He has to lose the super delegate PR fight 8. He has to lose the debate about debates
Any of this could conceivably happen, and it's a good warning for the contender to keep him and his supporters on their toes. Many or most of these would have to happen for him to lose -- the worst being a "Macaca" moment since it's the only one that can set all the others in motion.
So what is the Obama campaign doing right now? Resting on their laurels? Taking it easy, assuming it's all in the bag, meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
Check out his team's upcoming day's 18 participatory events for Texas, listed on his website.
Oh, and read to the bottom to find out about the one for hers.
