Pick Your Poison - Part 3

It was actually worse than I thought.

The Democrat is expected to reveal his plans for assisting religious groups’ service programs during a speech in Zanesville, Ohio, later today. Before the speech, he will tour the Eastside Community Ministry, an antipoverty program that provides food, clothes and religious services to the area’s poor.

“We know that faith and values can be a source of strength in our own lives. That’s what it’s been to me. And that’s what it is to so many Americans. But it can also be something more. It can be the foundation of a new project of American renewal. And that’s the kind of effort I intend to lead as president of the United States,” Obama said in a statement.

  WSJ

Pick Your Poison - Part 2

Glenn Greenwald summarizes the post-primary Obama.

The choices Obama makes about how he campaigns and the positions he takes are extremely consequential in how political issues in this country are perceived. In the last two weeks alone, Obama has done the following:

*intervened in a Democratic Congressional primary to support one of the worst Bush-enabling Blue Dogs over a credible, progressive challenger;

* announced his support for Bush's FISA bill, reversing himself completely on this issue;

* sided with the Scalia/Thomas faction in two highly charged Supreme Court decisions;

* repudiated Wesley Clark and embraced the patently false media narrative that Clark had "dishonored McCain's service" (and for the best commentary I've seen, by far, on the Clark matter, see this appropriately indignant piece by Iraq veteran Brandon Friedman);

* condemned MoveOn.org for its newspaper advertisement criticizing Gen. Petraeus;

* defended his own patriotism by impugning the patriotism of others, specifically those in what he described as the "the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties" for "attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself" and -- echoing Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 1984 RNC speech -- "blaming America for all that was wrong with the world";

* unveiled plans "to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy . . . letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions," a move that could "invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination" -- something not even the Bush faith programs allowed.

[...]

There is no question, at least to me, that having Obama beat McCain is vitally important. But so, too, is the way that victory is achieved and what Obama advocates and espouses along the way. Feeding distortions against someone like Wesley Clark in order to please Joe Klein and his fact-free media friends, or legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and protecting joint Bush/telecom lawbreaking, or basing his campaign on demonizing MoveOn.org and 1960s anti-war hippies, is quite harmful in many long-lasting ways. Electing Barack Obama is a very important political priority but it isn't the only one there is, and his election is less likely, not more likely, the more homage he pays to these these tired, status-quo-perpetuating Beltway pieties.

[...]

The ways in which Obama is superior to the Bush-following McCain are both numerous and substantial (unless you're excited to have Joe Lieberman and Bill Kristol running U.S. foreign policy and Ted Olson appointing more executive-power-worshiping, privacy-eroding Justices to the Supreme Court -- and if that's not enough, see this), and that's true no matter how many justifiable criticisms are voiced towards Obama. What Obama has done over the last two weeks will drain the enthusiasm away from many of his most intense supporters (as it has even with the intensely pro-Obama Markos Moulitsas), but that isn't the same -- not even close to the same -- as deciding that it's irrelevant if he wins.

  Salon

Keith Olbermann Changes His Tune

Now challenging Obama to stand up to that "loophole" Olbermann wants us to believe Obama will be thinking about while signing the FISA "compromise".

And John Dean, whom Olbermann quoted in his earlier comments, clarifies what he was really saying about the bill.

General Clark

I was going to bypass this "story", because I think it's all a crock of blowhard shit - more distraction, but then I realized that pretty much all we are doing these days is distracting ourselves from the nightmare mess we have created of this world. So...

Sign our petition, thanking General Wesley Clark for his clarity and honesty on what it takes to lead this nation’s military and veterans.

  Do that here at VoteVets

And here’s a nice post on the issue from Robert at Brilliant at Breakfast.

You Can Have the Arsenic, Or You Can Have the Cyaninde

Pick your poison.

LaBelle sends a link to this Brilliant at Breakfast post.

In 2000, enough people voted for Ralph Nader, believing that there was no difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore, despite all evidence to the contrary, that it put us on the path to the mess in which we find ourselves today.

In 2006, Democrats won a razor-thin majority in Congress, and its approval ratings are below that of George W. Bush -- not because the Democrats aren't conservative enough, but because they are still capitulating to the Bush Administration.

And now, between Barack Obama's capitulation on FISA (which is likely to persist, Keith Olbermann's hopes notwithstanding), his jettisoning of Wesley Clark as if questioning whether being shot down was a sufficient condition by itself to warrant a free pass to the White House, and now a pledge to continue George W. Bush's program of Tax Dollars for Jeebus, I'm starting to wonder just how much daylight there is between Obama and John McCain -- and just what the hell happened.

Truth happened.

From time to time, I still like to think that Al Gore really was different. But I keep wanting to think the same thing about Obama, when in the back of my mind, that knowing little voice keeps saying: “Not where it really counts.”

I just don’t get it – who thinks it’s a good strategy for Democratic candidates to keep going to the right? They’ll never get the die-hard Republican vote, no matter how far they go, because Democrat is a dirty word to those GOPers – it means liberal, and that means evil.

But what they are doing is driving away the progressive arm of the Democratic party. And then they cry about Ralph Nader “spoiling” the election. It’s not Ralph who’s losing them votes – it’s themselves.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he would spend at least $500 million a year to promote community aid programs run by faith-based groups.

The proposal would expand an initiative put in place by President George W. Bush to aid religious organizations performing social service work, which Obama said “never fully completed its mission or fulfilled its promise.''

[...]

Obama, a former community organizer in Chicago, would create a new White House office for the President's Council for Faith- Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Among other things, the council would help train faith-based groups on how to apply for federal grants.

[...]

Obama, 46, an Illinois senator, called for rules to ensure that the council wouldn't breach the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Federal money could only be spent on non-religious activities and groups couldn't discriminate when deciding who will get their aid.

  Bloomberg

So tell me then, why is this a Council for Faith-Based programs? Sounds like bogus hocus pocus to me. Why don’t faith-based folks just organize into secular organizations that help the poor? Why can’t they do their thing under a Neighborhood Partnership? Why do they need the faith-based coverage if they’re not going to be able to have anything religious in their activities?

And since Bush organized this affront on the separation of church and state without Congressional approval, is Obama taking advantage of a program so initiated?

I smell fish.

As today's Daily Twain (sidebar) reminds us:

History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn't be wise. --Mark Twain

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

P.S.

And from the comments on that post:

FranIAm said...

Obama is really upsetting me. As a practicing Christian the last thing that I want is more faith based crap.

This is not a Christian nation (I already believe this but I am also quoting my parish priest from a class he taught at church last night...)- it is a nation founded on religious freedom.

A.
Big.
Difference.

As he said - and I agree, if we want to be a Christian nation then fine. That would mean being compassionate to all, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, bringing justice to the oppressed, you know... Shit like that.

All the posturing is many things - it is not Christian.

Quite.

Shaking Off the Bush Legacy

[In] crucial respects, the Bush era will not end Jan. 20, 2009. The administration's many failures, especially those related to Iraq, mask a considerable legacy. Among other things, the Bush team has accomplished the following:

• Defined the contemporary era as an "age of terror" with an open-ended "global war" as the necessary, indeed the only logical, response;
• Promulgated and implemented a doctrine of preventive war, thereby creating a far more permissive rationale for employing armed force;
• Affirmed - despite the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001 - that the primary role of the Department of Defense is not defense, but power projection;
• Removed constraints on military spending so that once more, as Ronald Reagan used to declare, "defense is not a budget item";
• Enhanced the prerogatives of the imperial presidency on all matters pertaining to national security, effectively eviscerating the system of checks and balances;
• Preserved and even expanded the national security state, despite the manifest shortcomings of institutions such as the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
• Preempted any inclination to question the wisdom of the post-Cold War foreign policy consensus, founded on expectations of a sole superpower exercising "global leadership";
• Completed the shift of US strategic priorities away from Europe and toward the Greater Middle East, the defense of Israel having now supplanted the defense of Berlin as the cause to which presidents and would-be presidents ritually declare their fealty.

By almost any measure, this constitutes a record of substantial, if almost entirely malignant, achievement.

[...]

Throughout the long primary season, even as various contenders in both parties argued endlessly about Iraq, they seemed oblivious to the more fundamental questions raised by the Bush years: whether global war makes sense as an antidote to terror, whether preventive war works, whether the costs of "global leadership" are sustainable, and whether events in Asia rather than the Middle East just might determine the course of the 21st century.

  Boston.com

Have you ever watched first-graders play soccer? We can only focus our attention on the ball. Not the game.

Keepin' Us Healthy

The Defense Department, the nation's biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose "imminent and substantial" dangers to public health and the environment.

The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country.

  Truthout

Actually, I’m surprised the EPA under Bush is ordering clean-ups. Maybe they know it doesn’t matter if you don’t enforce the orders.

Pentagon officials say they are voluntarily cleaning up the three sites named in the EPA's "final orders" - Fort Meade in Maryland, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey.

But they don’t want anyone checking to make sure.

At all three sites, the military has released toxic chemicals - some known to cause cancer and other serious health problems - into the soil and groundwater.

[...]

EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith said final orders were issued because the agency is worried about drinking water and soil contamination at Fort Meade, Tyndall and McGuire. "Under DOD's management, some of these sites have languished for years, with limited or no cleanup underway," she said.

[...]

Congress established the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up the country's most contaminated places, and of the 1,255 sites on the list the Pentagon owns 129 - the most of any entity. Other federal agencies with properties on the list include NASA and the Energy Department, but they have signed EPA cleanup agreements without protest.

But Superfund sites are only one aspect of the Pentagon's environmental problems. It has about 25,000 contaminated properties in all 50 states, and it will cost billions and take decades to clean them up.

The Pentagon poisons American citizens, and its own troops. I assume the brass drink bottled water.

Keepin' Us Safe

Intelligence reports for more than a year had been streaming in about Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network rebuilding in the Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that had been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles between American counterterrorism agencies.

[A] new plan, outlined in a highly classified Pentagon order, was intended to eliminate some of those battles. And it was meant to pave a smoother path into the tribal areas for American commandos, who for years have bristled at what they see as Washington’s risk-averse attitude toward Special Operations missions inside Pakistan.

[...]

But more than six months later, the Special Operations forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was meant to eliminate. A senior Defense Department official said there was “mounting frustration” in the Pentagon at the continued delay.

[...]

American intelligence officials say that the Qaeda hunt in Pakistan, code-named Operation Cannonball by the C.I.A. in 2006, was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A.

[...]

Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas.

[...]

[It] is increasingly clear that the Bush administration will leave office with Al Qaeda having successfully relocated its base from Afghanistan to Pakistan’s tribal areas, where it has rebuilt much of its ability to attack from the region and broadcast its messages to militants across the world.

[...]

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

  More – much more – at the NYT

Nice goin’ BushCo. And thanks.

The Same Failed Disastrous Recipe?

A former CIA operative who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb.

The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by the CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time.

  WaPo

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Going Down

When I joined the army and when I reenlisted five times, I did something that every member of Congress does. I took an oath to defend the Constitution as the core commitment of my service. Then the army sent me to eight different conflict areas to attack, or assist others in attacking, people who were not even remotely the enemies of the Constitution. Oddly enough, that oath said I was obliged to “defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.

I’m retired now; and since I got out of the army I’ve had more opportunities to oppose the domestic enemies of the Constitution, because they are mostly those who were or worked for my former Commanders-in-Chief.

[...]

[U]ntil now there has been no attack on Iran because it makes no sense to do so. Such an attack will cost the US a broad tactical defeat in Iraq and the consolidation of nascent counter-US blocs around the globe… but if the numbers come in by September-October that show McCain to be the dangerous dolt that he is — the “hero” whose heroic act was being shot down while he rained bombs on Vietnamese — that McCain doesn’t have a snowball’s chance, then the absurd fantasy that the Bush administration will attack Iran — with all its profound consequences for the US’s malignant but profitable position and influence on the world stage — then… the administration could commit the last spiteful act. They could broaden their little, lost war to include Iran, and leave the new Democratic administration and freshly minted, bloody-handed, instrumental, oath-breaking, Democrat-controlled Congress with a swarming hornets nest of unpredictable and inextricable relations.

And some of us will say, you had opportunity after opportunity to stop this; but you enabled George W. Bush. You protected him and his coterie, because your elections were more important to you than either your oaths or the lives of countless human beings.

Shame on you all.

  Stan Goff

Indeed. Unfortunately, 1) they have no shame, and 2) it will provide us – and the rest of the world - little comfort to be able to lay blame on them.

Those Who Don't Learn from the Past

Are doomed to repeat it.

U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush's funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine's July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

"The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," the article cited a person familiar with its contents as saying, and involved "working with opposition groups and passing money."

[...]

Funding for the covert escalation, for which Bush requested up to $400 million, was approved by congressional leaders, according to the article, citing current and former military, intelligence and congressional sources.

[...]

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. U.S. Special Operations Forces have been conducting crossborder operations from southern Iraq since last year, the article said.

[...]

But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which include the Central Intelligence Agency, have now been significantly expanded, the article said, citing current and former officials.

[...]

Among groups inside Iran benefiting from U.S. support is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People's Resistance Movement, according to former CIA officer Robert Baer. Council on Foreign Relations analyst Vali Nasr described it to Hersh as a vicious organization suspected of links to al Qaeda.

[...]

None of the Democratic leaders in Congress would comment on the finding, the article said. The White House, which has repeatedly denied preparing for military action against Iran, and the CIA also declined comment.

  Raw Story

Recipe for disaster. Let’s use it again.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Audio Treat

From Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me - Bill Gates leaves Microsoft. Plus: Clippy Must Die!

Clicky

This week's full show is here.

West Point Summer Leadership Seminar

Send your teenager to summer camp.

Climbing ropes and crawling in the mud under barbed wire, dozens of American high school kids at an unusual summer camp vied to see who could get most dirty as they tackled an Army obstacle course.

And as they ran between obstacles in the woods, the kids shouted Army chants. Asked by a cadet if they were motivated, they shouted back in unison: "Motivated, motivated, downright motivated. Ooh, aah, ooh, aah, I want to kill somebody."

  Raw Story

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Meanwhile in Iraq

Outraged Iraqi officials demanded an investigation into an early morning U.S. military raid Friday near the birthplace of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, saying the operation violated the terms of the handover of Karbala province to Iraqi security forces.

  McClatchy

So naïve, so naïve.

Karbala Gov. Oqeil al Khazaali said U.S. forces killed an unarmed civilian and arrested at least one person in the raid in the southern town of Janaja. The governor's brother, Hassanein al Khazaali, said late Friday that the Iraqi killed in the operation was a relative of the U.S.-backed prime minister.

[...]

Raed Shakir Jowdet, the Iraqi military commander of Karbala operations, said that four Apache helicopters and a jet fighter soared over the area. About 60 U.S. soldiers then stormed the town, "terrifying the families," he said.

Jowdet said that an unarmed civilian named Ali Abdulhussein was killed in his home

[...]

"Not one Iraqi soldier took part in the airdrop, and the operation was not coordinated with any Iraqi authority," he said. "We are still looking for an answer as to why this has taken place, and we still have no logical explanation from the American forces."

[...]

The U.S. military command in Baghdad had no comment.

They rarely do.

Has anyone asked George why he isn’t “taking out” Mugabe?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.