A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Rep. Dennis Kucinich is the exception that proves the rules. He is opposing the healthcare "reform" because he rightly sees it as a giant subsidy for the insurance companies -- and the Patriot Act reauthorization will convince him and other committed progressives that the President is not one of their own. Yet Kucinich is an isolated figure: the Ron Paul of the left. So, unfortunately, the Dennis Kuciniches and Ron Pauls will be relegated to "gadfly" status, as the bipartisan pro-war "center" rolls over them with ease.

  Justin Raimondo at The Hill

Kuciniches and Pauls? Are they not alone?

Aside: Did you know that we use the phrase "voice crying in the wilderness" to mean something other than what its origin does?

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

In a Nutshell

America’s leaders never knew what hit them on 9/11, and they still don’t. The U.S. response was to launch a conventional war against nation-states – Afghanistan, then Iraq – when neither of these constituted the real enemy.

[...]

Now we are inching into Pakistan, which is rapidly being destabilized by our efforts.

[...]

Bin Laden has said more than once that he intends to draw us deeper and deeper into hostile territory, where, bankrupt and besieged, we’ll be caught flat-footed as al-Qaeda strikes once again deep within our own territory. Mocking us, the destroyer of the twin towers has observed that he has only to hang a scarecrow in some distant field and label it "al-Qaeda," and the Americans come running with their armies of occupation. In the meantime, however, as he put it in another message,

"As for the delay in carrying out similar operations in America, this was not due to failure to breach your security measures. Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished, God willing."

[...]

Before we jump into an abyss from which there is no extrication, we need to stop, look, and listen: stop the war, look at the damage we have already done to the societies we’ve invaded, and listen to what our enemies are saying before we undertake to engage them in battle.

[...]

Our government’s actions aren’t protecting us; instead, we are endangered as never before. Rather than defeating the enemy, our foreign policy has only empowered him. That is the record since 9/11, and if we don’t stop, look, and listen, we are headed for catastrophe sooner rather than later.

  Justin Raimondo

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

White House Counsel Switch

White House counsel Greg Craig will resign on Friday, according to a White House official.

The announcement by Craig, who fell into disfavor with other top officials over his handling of President Barack Obama’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, will come just hours after the president arrives in Japan for a weeklong trip to Asia.

Craig will be replaced by Bob Bauer, a longtime Democratic election lawyer who also has served as Obama's personal lawyer, according to the White House official.

While the departure was widely rumored for months Craig steadfastly denied that he was on his way out in an interview last month.

“I have no plans to leave whatsoever," Craig told the National Law Journal on Oct. 12.

"The rumors that I'm about to leave are false."

  Raw Story

Why do they do that? It just makes them look worse.

Read the article if you need to be reminded of the troubles Craig has had.

It remains to be seen if Bauer will make things any easier.

Though Bauer is an unquestioned Obama insider, his legal track record and issue stances haven’t always jibed with Obama’s stances.

Obama has long cast himself as an advocate for reducing the role of special interest cash in politics. But Bauer until a few years ago had been a vocal critic of certain efforts to restrict political spending. In fact, a case he brought in 2005 on behalf of EMILY’s List recently resulted in a sweeping federal court ruling that experts predict could pave the way for a flood of new 527 spending that could target Obama in his 2012 reelection campaign.

In addition, while Obama has pledged to fix the public financing system as president, Bauer in a 2005 blog post suggested such effort could be futile because public “support is needed and not forthcoming."

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

Uh-Huh

The Republican National Committee will no longer offer employees an insurance plan that covers abortion after POLITICO reported Thursday that the anti-abortion RNC's policy has covered the procedure since 1991.

"Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose," Chairman Michael Steele said in a statement. "I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled."

  Politico

Yeah, well it did until he got busted.

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

FUBAR

[A] report, by veteran investigative correspondent Aram Roston, asserts that US military contractors charged with assisting US forces in Afghanistan are actually funding the groups killing American soldiers. Roston describes a protection racket similar to that of the mafia, in which contractors pay the Taliban "protection money" not to attack them.

"In this grotesque carnival, the US military's contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes," Roston writes. "It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban.

  Raw Story

But what better way to ensure perpetual war?

Mike Hanna, a manager for Afghan American Army Services, a trucking firm, told Roston that paying off the Taliban was a necessary evil.

"We're basically being extorted," Hanna is quoted as saying. "Where you don't pay, you're going to get attacked. We just have our field guys go down there, and they pay off who they need to.

So why are we wasting lives and bombs? (A British General recently asked the same question, and the Italians have already answered.)

BTW: gasoline is expensive for us over there.

A recent estimate from the Pentagon found that the government spends some $400 a gallon for gasoline in Afghanistan when all transport costs are included.

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

Hasan Update

Military prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was formally charged Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder, according to a senior Army officer familiar with the matter.

[...]

After interviewing hundreds of witnesses and examining material, including a computer taken from his apartment, investigators believe that he acted without the knowledge or guidance of any terror groups, Army officials and others familiar with the probe said.

  WSJ

I would expect them to say that. Otherwise they have to admit to being more than stupid about Hasan. I’m sure Beck, et al., would like to see the terrorist angle win out, so they can remind us that George Bush kept us safe from terror attacks. (After 9/11, of course.)

The Senate Homeland Security Committee will be conducting its own investigation into the government's handling of Maj. Hasan in the run-up to the attacks. The first Senate hearings will take place Wednesday.

[...]

President Barack Obama ordered a governmentwide investigation into whether federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community, properly shared the information about Maj. Hasan collected before last week's shooting.

I don’t think we need to go much further than the Army’s handling of Maj. Hassan to find where things went wrong, but that’s probably a wise move.

John P. Galligan, the retired colonel hired to defend Maj. Hasan, said he believed an officer delivered a charge sheet to the major Thursday at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, where he is being held under guard. But Mr Galligan couldn't provide details, saying he wasn't there, hadn't been notified in advance and still hadn't seen the charges as of late Thursday afternoon. He learned about the charges from a news conference the Army held Thursday that was broadcast on TV.

"I feel blindsided," Mr. Galligan said. "Had I known, I certainly would have been down there."

Call me paranoid, but I suspect Mr. Galligan hasn’t seen the last of attempts to blindside him. He better stay on his toes.

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

What We Need Is A Little More Hypocrisy

Leading up to passage of the House health care reform bill last week, 176 House Republicans joined 64 Democrats in voting for the so-called Stupak amendment, a measure that prohibits federal funds from being used to buy health insurance that covers elective abortions.

[...]

Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna. Two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.

  Politico

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

FUBAR

NPR this morning, reporting on Major Hasan, the Army psychiatrist and shooter at Ft. Hood, interviewed his fellow psychiatrists and teachers in D.C. The teachers said his work was below standard, and included so much jihadist-type writing, that they worried about whether he was psychotic.

His fellow psychiatrists said they talked to each other about him. One said he asked the others if they thought he would ever commit fratricide. Another said he asked if they thought he might pass information to the jihadists if he were sent to combat zones.

They said that he was assigned to Ft. Hood because Ft. Hood has the most psychiatrists of any post and the Army figured if he didn't do his job, there would be plenty of others to pick up the slack, and in addition, there would be plenty of other psychiatrists to keep an eye on him!

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

UPDATE:

Raw Story picked it up:

Psychiatrists and medical officials who oversaw Major Nidal Hasan, accused of opening fire on fellow soldiers at the Fort Hood base in Texas last week, held a series of meetings between the spring of 2008 and the spring of this year to discuss serious concerns about his work and his behavior, NPR reported.

"Put it this way. Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your fox hole," one official was quoted as saying.

And yet, he was indeed being sent.

The officials who discussed Hasan's status were not aware -- as some top Walter Reed hospital officials were -- that intelligence agencies had been tracking Hasan's e-mails to a radical Islamic cleric since December 2008, NPR said.

[...]

Officials considered kicking Hasan out of the program but chose not to partly because sacking a doctor is a "cumbersome and lengthy" process that involves hearings and potential legal conflict, sources told NPR.

Officials also believed they lacked solid evidence that Hasan was unstable and were concerned they could be accused of discriminating against him because of his Islamic identity or views.

Incredible.

Here's the NPR report.

What George Hath Wrought

Marine reservist Jasen Bruce was getting clothes out of the trunk of his car Monday evening when a bearded man in a robe approached him.

That man, a Greek Orthodox priest named Father Alexios Marakis, speaks little English and was lost, police said. He wanted directions.

What the priest got instead, police say, was a tire iron to the head. Then he was chased for three blocks and pinned to the ground — as the Marine kept a 911 operator on the phone, saying he had captured a terrorist.

  Tampa Bay

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

Sarah Palin: Campaigning Against Rim Job

Sarah Palin's public pronouncements have now reached an amazing point -- where even Fox News is fact-checking her.

As Fox News anchor Bret Baier noted this evening, picking up on a Politico report, Palin said this past Friday that there had been a lot of "change" of late, and talked about the dollar coin -- how the phrase "In God We Trust" had been moved to the rim of the coin, rather than on the face. "Who makes a decision like that?" said Palin, seemingly pointing to the Obama administration, adding: "It's a disturbing trend."

However, the coins were in fact commissioned in 2005 by the Republican-led government of the time. And as Baier adds, Congress acted specifically to change this in 2007, and Fox displayed a James K. Polk presidential coin with the phrase on the coin's face.

  TPM

Really, I’ve been pretending this woman isn’t still out there, but this bit was too fun to pass up.

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

Ignore This Post

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.

[...]

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies.

[...]

In particular they question the prediction in the last World Economic Outlook, believed to be repeated again this year, that oil production can be raised from its current level of 83m barrels a day to 105m barrels. External critics have frequently argued that this cannot be substantiated by firm evidence and say the world has already passed its peak in oil production.

Now the "peak oil" theory is gaining support at the heart of the global energy establishment. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120m barrels a day by 2030 although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116m and then 105m last year," said the IEA source, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. "The 120m figure always was nonsense but even today's number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this.

[...]

[A]s far back as 2004 there have been people making similar warnings. Colin Campbell, a former executive with Total of France told a conference: "If the real [oil reserve] figures were to come out there would be panic on the stock markets … in the end that would suit no one."

[...]

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added.

  UK Guardian

Stop the Presses!

"Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false," James Jones, US national security adviser, said in a statement.

  Raw Story

That will happen just before Thanksgiving when he returns from China.