Richard Nixon on The Huffington Post

Emma Ruby-Sachs: Obama Won't Push Equal Rights Law in the Right Direction

2009-12-22T08:14:24Z

American Presidents are famous for stretching the letter of the law: Nixon's attempt to sabotage the Democratic Party, Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, George Bush's extraordinary rendition. When the political climate demands, the Executive is often willing to push the edges of legal behavior in order to achieve a political end.

But when it comes to gay rights, Obama doesn't want to breathe on the boundaries of the law, let alone give them the shove they need.

On Friday, the Office of Personnel Management -- a Federal agency controlled by the Obama administration -- refused to comply with a court order to extend family health benefits to a Federal staff attorney who has a same-sex partner. In an apologetically worded memo, the OPM stated that the Defense of Marriage Act barred the agency from recognizing same-sex partners as family members -- even for the purposes of the health plan. DOMA meant that the court order must be ignored.

This is one logical approach to the situation.

Justice Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, has a different perspective: He states in his order that the Federal Employee Health Benefit Act creates general guidelines for minimum health coverage. For example, the health plan must cover an employee's children, but the upper age limit for the definition of "children" can be extended far beyond the common understanding of that term (age 25 perhaps) and still comply with the Act. Or, while the Act requires spouses be covered under the health plan, it says nothing about the ability of the Federal government to extend health coverage to same-sex partners in addition to spouses. There is no legally mandated upper limit when it comes to health insurance provision.

Justice Kozinski uses sound legal reasoning to grant the Obama administration permission to widen the umbrella. He points out, this broader health insurance provision would harmonize state and federal law on a touchy subject while still complying with the dictates of the Federal Employee Health Benefits Act and DOMA.

Perhaps another Judge would see things differently. But as long as there is a plausible opportunity to provide equal rights, shouldn't an administration committed to equal rights jump at the chance to do the right thing?

The Obama administration would rather hide behind apologies and Department of Justice memos: "The decision in this matter was not reached lightly -- after we learned of this development, we examined our options and consulted with the DOJ. ...DOJ advised us that the order issued by Judge Kozinski does not supersede our obligation to comply with existing law."

While they pretend that the law is a concrete inflexible animal incapable of multiple interpretations, LGBT rights in this country continue to languish without the benefit of strong political leadership. This is a missed opportunity, and indicative of a dangerous tendency to avoid and ignore opportunities to fulfill election obligations put forward by Obama not so many months ago.

Matthew DeBord: Tiger Woods Is So, So, So Much Bigger Than Golf

2009-12-17T20:17:00Z

I will not talk about Tiger Woods' mistresses, some of who actually seem like pretty nice women whose feelings were genuinely hurt by the Striped One and his randy ways. I will not talk about Tiger's perhaps soon-to-be-ex-wife, Elin Nordegren, who has apparently taken off the gloves along with her wedding band in preparation for an epic assault on Woods' bank account. I will not talk about Nike, which is in the unenviable position of having to stick by Woods no matter what, given that Phil Knight has built a major golf brand from scratch entirely on Tiger's back. I will not talk about Phil Mickelson, who has to be somewhat bewildered after finishing the official 2009 golf season toe-to-toe with Woods, with many predicting that all of 2010 would be a replay of their final round duel at the Masters.

I will not talk about Woods' 155-foot oceangoing yacht, with its many bedrooms and its 4,000 nautical-mile range, because that's just the sort of mighty pleasure craft-slash-getaway barge you want when it all goes to hell and you need to head for blue water (that's why you shell out millions for the sucker and unsubtly christen her "Privacy"). I will not talk about The Golf Channel, which through gritted teeth has been forced to treat the Woods' scandal as if it were the Kennedy assassination, all the while recognizing that his absence from competition will crush their much-touted early-round tournament coverage next year. I will not talk about the legions of golf journalists who are currently, sheepishly, defiantly playing dumb, as if the reputations they lucratively crafted as "insiders" didn't meant that they should maybe, just maybe, re-read Charles Pierce's 1997 GQ story about a libidinous Tiger and conjecture that a young cat does not so easily abandon his old tricks as he ages. I especially will not talk about Tim Rosaforte, the alleged insider's insider, a veteran of decades of golf coverage, a man who cannot begin a televised sentence without mentioning a "highly placed source," who nevertheless didn't see this one coming.

I will not talk about Dr. Tony Galea, Woods' (and many others') Dr. Feelgood, a physician of questionable ethics who appears to have found his trough with well-agented jocks under pressure to live up to salary negotiations, sponsor contracts, and fan expectations. I will not talk about the assorted celebrity lawyers who will now descend on this whole appalling mess to perform their black sorcery and cart off their wheelbarrows of cash. I will not talk about the tabloid media, which...well, the National Enquirer is rarely wrong. I will not talk about Dubai, a fantastically once-rich but now broke country that may be just the place for a fantastically still-rich Woods to hide out. I will not talk about Jack Nicklaus, by all accounts a levitating mentor to Tiger, but also a staunch family man, who certainly wasn't looking forward to having his record of 18 professional majors eclipsed, but whose heart must now be broken, for Jack loved the game and surely loved what Tiger had done for it. I will not talk about these disturbing nightclubs in New York and Vegas, where a degenerate sport-celeb-worshipping parody of human manhood routinely gathered to swill overpriced vodka and encourage the pimping of young women by members of their own sex. I will not talk about Accenture, Tag Heurer, AT&T, or any of Woods' other corporate sponsors, who were right to commit millions to the idea that Woods was a model of discipline, yet were hustled like bumpkin-in-the-big-city tourists in front of a three card monty table by IMG.

I will not talk about IMG, because any day now I expect the Earth to open and swallow it whole. I will not talk about the crisis PR and law firms that have reportedly hushed Woods' behavior over the years. I will not talk about sexting. I will not talk about that Ambien haze. I will not talk about whether you should be using your golf course design company to employ fixers from your childhood, or to serve as a front for what is essentially your own private sex-tourism agency. I will not talk about the private jet. I will not talk about Charles or Michael, whom you aren't talking to. I will not talk about Jesper Parnevik and quaint Nordic chivalry. I will not talk about how Tiger can't save Christmas.

I will not talk about the legacy of the game. I will not talk about the Tiger Woods Foundation. I will not talk about Earl. I will not talk about Tiger's mom. I will not talk about the immense respect for sheer, unvarnished achievement that Woods' fellow players have bestowed on the man.

But I will talk about golf. Specifically, the delusional notion, put forward by many pros, commentators, experts, and pundits, that the game is bigger than Tiger and will survive, recover, thrive. Um, no. The game is in no way bigger than Tiger. In fact, Tiger is so immensely, hugely, ginormously larger than mere golf that golf may never recover from this monumental fall from grace. You could go nuts and say that Tiger is golf, except that he's even bigger than that. Tiger, truth be told, is bigger than Tiger. He is, or was, so mega, so money, that he transcended even himself. The complexity of this scandal, the depth of psychological and emotional trauma that must have been and may still be present to enable it, is of Hegelian dimensions. More than a decade of intricately orchestrated deception. Nixon wasn't this good. The Oswald-acted-alone coverup-istas weren't this good. The cleaners who secreted away the dead aliens and their crashed spaceship in Roswell in the late 1940s weren't this good.

We were serially informed pretty much from Woods' victory at the 1997 Masters, his first major, that he transcended the game, and that that was good. Until now, when he doesn't, and it isn't. There is dismay in witnessing Woods laid low, reminiscent of lines uttered by Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, upon seeing the defeat of confederate demons, heroic rebel angels like shimmering Beelzebub, dispatched by an angry God:

But O how fall'n! how chang'd/ From him, who in the happy Realms of Light/ Cloth'd with transcendent brightness didst outshine/ Myriads though bright.

I've seen Tiger Woods stride a golf course and strike golf balls several times, and it was a special thing. He did outshine the myriads though bright. A frightening yet seductive luminosity emanated from the guy. Professionals athletes are often glistening and grand; yet Tiger glowed as if fueled by a solar blaze within. Has he now been cast from a kind of paradise? He has. Was his paradise a prison? So it would seem. Hubris is tragic, but it does move the plot forward. So let's talk about golf. But let's not pretend that golf is somehow a vast and majestic thing. It's a game. And what has happened to Tiger Woods is real life.

Paul Raeburn: How Two Teenagers Beat the Secret Service

2009-12-14T14:04:24Z

By Paul Raeburn and Jim Novak

Tareq and Michaele Salahi are not the first gate-crashers to discover that the Secret Service isn't so tough.

We know, because at the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests, when 400 protestors shouted "Off the pigs!" outside a dinner for then-Vice President Spiro T. Agnew--we snuck in. Getting past the Secret Service and sitting down with Agnew and several hundred Michigan Republicans turned out to be easier than sneaking into bars underage. At Agnew's dinner, we didn't need fake IDs.

It was the evening of June 15, 1970, at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit. We were college students home for the summer, and we'd been to dozens of antiwar protests. But neither of us had ever laid eyes on a president or a vice-president. Were Nixon and Agnew as bad as we thought? Rather than join the protestors outside, we figured we'd give Agnew his due: we'd hear what he had to say. It seemed fair. And it seemed like a great scam.

That summer was a tense time. News of Nixon's "incursion" into Cambodia had angered protestors in the spring. Across the country, students went on strike, leaving college before the end of the semester to protest this escalation of the war. (We were among them.) Agnew was a particular target of the protestors who, he said, "take their tactics from Fidel Castro and their money from daddy." I guess that included us, although we can't claim to know what Fidel's tactics were. Instead, on this particular night, we took our tactics from our experience as busboys for the Friday night fish fry at a local Moose lodge.

We put on black pants, white shirts, and black bowties--our Friday night uniforms. We concocted a story about Jim's Aunt Mae, who had once worked in the mayor's office in Detroit. We'd say that she had arranged for us to help bus tables so we could hear Agnew's speech.

Our spycraft was instinctual and flawless. We were so deep undercover even the protestors in the streets didn't recognize us as allies when we passed them.

We walked into Cobo Hall in a crowd of two or three dozen workers, all dressed as waiters. Just inside the door, two Secret Service agents intercepted us. "My aunt works in the mayor's office, and she arranged for us to come and help bus tables so we could hear Vice President Agnew," Jim said politely. "They need to see Mary," one of them said to the other. Aha! We had a name!

They walked us into the hall where the tables were being set for dinner and handed us off to another agent. He took us to a table where "Mary," apparently the captain of the staff, was making assignments to the real waiters and busboys, and checking off names on a list. This could be trouble; we knew we were not on that list.

But Mary was overwhelmed. She was turning over papers, searching for names, shouting orders to the staff, and clearly falling behind. We waited. Mary fell further behind. And then--the agent was gone.

We pocketed the bow ties and drifted into the crowd of guests now arriving. We did our best to mimic young Republican idealists, putting on wide-eyed, innocent smiles.

"What are you guys doing here?" one friendly Republican asked us.

"We're looking for our fathers, who brought us," we said.

He invited us to sit with him, just a couple of tables away from the Vice President.

Neither of us now remembers what Agnew said, except that the speech was disappointingly free of any nattering nabobs or other Safire-crafted rhetorical flourishes.

We meant Agnew no harm, and maybe the Secret Service agent who abandoned us did so because he could see that. Or maybe he was careless. We got in through the kitchen. Two years earlier, Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in a hotel kitchen.

But we didn't think about that then. We had tried, on a lark, to beat the Secret Service--and we succeeded. That's why we now feel a special bond with Tareq and Michaele. We were impressed with their spycraft, too.

Harry Benson: RFK's Assassination, The Reagans Dancing, The Clintons Kissing: The Photographs Of Harry Benson (PHOTOS)

2009-12-10T13:58:55Z

On one hand, to decide which pictures to use for my new book, "Harry Benson: Photographs", was a hell of a task. On the other hand, it was quite easy. Basically it comes down to your eye: that's a good picture or that's a bad picture. Either you like it or you don't. My wife, Gigi, and I went over hundreds of photographs to narrow it down. Actually it was Gigi who talked me into doing this book as I was hesitant about it. In retrospect, I'm glad she did. People ask me if I am still working and, yes, I'm still working. After all, people retire to do what I do -- take pictures. (Scroll down for photos.)

Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale, Grey Gardens, Southampton, New York, 1971
The Bouvier Beales were photographed in 1971, almost four years before the documentary was made. I had to weave my way through bramble to reach the house. Finally a 'yoo hoo' came wafting down from the second floor. I was invited into the house when Edith and her daughter Edie learned I was from Scotland. Edith had not been downstairs in almost a year, and when she saw the state of the house -- debris everywhere, cat food cans piled up to the window sill, the stench of cat urine permeating the house -- she scolded her daughter, "Edie, you haven't been doing the dusting."

Edith wore a diamond bracelet and a housecoat for the photograph. She mentioned that Jackie (Kennedy) was still very upset over the death of the Senator. When I said, "You mean her husband, John?'" Mrs. Beale replied, "No, Robert." Before I left Edie sang a song for me and pointed out that when they were teens, she was considered more beautiful than her cousins, Jackie and Lee.

It was frightening to see the way they lived with no electricity or telephone and in total squalor. What was interesting is the fact that there was no interest in the story from the national press and only Newsday would print the story at the time.

President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan, The White House, Washington DC, 1985
Tina Brown asked me to photograph the Reagans for the cover of Vanity Fair. The White House staff said we could have five minutes before the Reagans hosted a state dinner.

While waiting in the Map Room, I turned it into a studio. The White House staff were taken by surprise but couldn't do anything about it when they walked in with the Reagans. I put on a tape of Sinatra singing "Nancy with the Laughing Face". The Reagans laughed and started dancing as I snapped their photo. The cover sold off the stands, and Vanity Fair, which was on the verge of being closed by Si Newhouse, was given a reprieve.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, June 5,1968
I don't know why I covered Bobby's speech that evening as everyone knew he would win the California Democratic Primary. But something told me not to miss it. "And on the Chicago" brought a roar from the crowd. I followed Bobby out through the kitchen. I heard the scream and it told me everything I needed to know. I knew this was it. We had walked out of happiness into hell. I kept telling myself 'this is for history, pull yourself together, fail tomorrow, not today'.

Someone placed a rosary in his hand as he lay on the floor.

Ethel Kennedy, Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, June 5, 1968
I was standing on the warming table in the center of the room. Ethel was brought to Bobby's side. She turned and put her hand up and said, "Give him air." I was stuffing the exposed film into my sock in case a policeman demanded my film. One of the last to leave the kitchen that night, I saw a campaign worker put her straw boater on the pool of blood on the floor. That was all that was left.

The Clintons' Kiss, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1992.
Governor Clinton was campaigning for the presidency when I flew to Little Rock to photograph him. I like this photograph because their lips don't quite meet. I think it is more sensuous. Having photographed the Clintons many times since, this is my favorite photograph of the couple.

President Richard Nixon, The Knesset, Jerusalem, Israel, 1974
Nixon was giving a speech in the Israeli legislature at the invitation of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Behind him loomed the massive Chagall mural of Moses with the ten commandments. What struck me was Nixon without knowing it held his hands exactly like those in the painting.

R. Crumb, New York City, 1968
Underground cartoonist and cult figure R. Crumb was an early subject for one of my early stories for Life Magazine. The assigning editor didn't realize how raunchy his drawings were and the story never ran. He was quite amusing, slightly outrageous, and I had a lot of fun photographing him.

Truman Capote, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1980
The diminutive writer with the high-pitched voice was the most melancholic person I have ever met, yet he was surprisingly tough, a quality people didn't expect at first meeting. Back in his hometown for a visit, we were having dinner at the hotel when he began to cry as he started talking about the two convicted murderers he wrote about in 'In Cold Blood.'

Nixon-Masked Robber Holds Up 2 L.A. Banks

2009-12-05T18:06:17Z

LOS ANGELES -- The FBI says it's looking for a man who robbed a pair of Los Angeles banks wearing a rubber mask of former president Richard Nixon.

FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said Friday that the man police have dubbed the "Ex-President Bandit" is responsible for the armed robbery of Santa Barbara Bank & Trust on Wednesday and a U.S. Bank branch on Nov. 25. Both banks are in the Encino area of the San Fernando Valley.

William Bradley: Barack Obama's War: 10 Key Things To Know

2009-12-04T10:38:17Z

It's Barack Obama's war now. Here are some key things to know about this curious, complex war -- in which the newest Nobel Peace Prize-winner has placed himself at the helm of the largest military force ever sent to Afghanistan, the historic graveyard of empire -- along with the likely road ahead.

** Along with NATO, we already have as many troops in Afghanistan as the Soviets did in the 1980s. With Obama's newest escalation, we will have more troops than the Soviets had in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama outlined his new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan in this speech from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

** The Soviets were winning their war in Afghanistan. Before we intervened with massive covert funding and weapons. Of course, they were pursuing brutal scorched earth tactics, like those they used so notoriously to put down the persistent revolt in Chechnya. Even if Obama, who receives the Nobel Peace Prize next week, weren't horrified by such tactics, and I have no doubt he would be, they would ruin his big effort for a rapprochement with the Islamic world, launched successfully with his address six months ago in Cairo.

** The Soviet Afghan War was won with only a handful of Americans in Afghanistan. Defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan -- in effect, making Afghanistan the Soviet Vietnam -- was key to ending the Cold War and bringing down the Soviet Union. There were virtually no Americans on the ground in Afghanistan. Instead, we worked through cutouts, principally the Pakistanis. The goal wasn't to control Afghanistan, a country with no intrinsic strategic significance for America. The goal was to deliver a stinging defeat to America's enemy, the Soviet Union.

Of course, totally ignoring Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets and the end of the Cold War created a vacuum which, after years of infighting, was finally filled by a new and even more radical group, the Taliban (fundamentalist religious students). A case of penny-wise, pound-foolish, typical of America's lack of historical perspective.

"The Forgotten War" no more.

** The post-9/11 Afghan War was won with only a few hundred Americans in Afghanistan. A relative handful of Intelligence agents and special forces operators utilized air power and worked with Afghan forces opposed to the ruling Taliban to chase Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and to bring down the Taliban government when it would not serve up Osama bin Laden, who had finally established his base there after being chased out elsewhere. (Bin Laden, incidentally, was not created by the CIA and was completely tangential in the Afghan war against the Soviets, barely setting foot in the country.) The goal was to defeat the enemy which attacked America on 9/11, the cadre of Al Qaeda. The Bush/Cheney Administration didn't want to risk the potential backlash from having large numbers of American troops on foreign soil. Certainly not something they worried much about any time after that.

** The epic fail of Tora Bora echoes very loudly today. We might not be talking much about Al Qaeda, a diminished force, were it not for the incredible failure to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. After 9/11, President Bush vowed to get him, dead or alive. But when it came time to take him, almost exactly eight years ago, in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan where he was trying to make his way to a new safe haven in Pakistan, it didn't happen. Read the new Senate report on this, and weep. The Bush/Cheney Administration turned down repeated reqests, saying it didn't want a heavy foreign presence on the ground, so he was allowed to slip away.

** Bill Clinton was criticized for failing to destroy the Al Qaeda training and operational bases in Afghanistan with cruise missiles in the late 1990s. Instead, it was said that he should have used special operations forces to wreck the Al Qaeda operation. Notice that no one seriously suggested that he launch a full-scale invasion to accomplish this. It wasn't necessary for the mission. Why we have to control Afghanistan now to stop Al Qaeda from using it as its base of operations is a bit of a mystery, as we can readily smash any such bases in Afghanistan.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says President Obama's new surge-and-endgame strategy in Afghanistan will help military forces find a better focus for their mission.

** Barack Obama ran for president on a program of escalating the war in Afghanistan. He was very clear about this. The fact that he is now doing what he said he would do when he ran for president should be no surprise to people who supported him. Or to those who did not.

** The Pakistan quandary looms very large. Of course, being president is more complicated than being candidate for president. Perhaps the biggest complication with regard to Afghanistan is Pakistan. It's the only Islamic nuclear power, knock on wood with regard to Iran. So allowing it to fall into the hands of jihadists would be, as the saying goes, bad. Fortunately, Pakistan has pushed back successfully this year against what had been major Taliban gains around the country, gains which happened as a result of inaction during the Bush/Cheney Administration. But its more remote provinces still provide a safe haven for Afghan Taliban -- in some ways invented by Pakistani intelligence -- and for Al Qaeda.

American escalation in Afghanistan may push more jihadists into Pakistan, risking destabilization, as Pakistan's leaders have pointed out. They are noncommittal so far about the new Obama strategy in Afghanistan. And, though they've pushed back hard against local Taliban threatening their own rule, they haven't been so supportive of efforts against other jihadists. With at least some sort of American exit strategy now in place for Afghanistan, it may occur to the Pakistanis that the Taliban will outlast America in Afghanistan, and end up controlling much if not most of the country. Yet Pakistan can be very helpful with intelligence about the Afghan Taliban, who are likely to infiltrate the Afghan army and police we say we are trying to build up while the present surge lasts.

** Is defeat in Afghanistan inevitable? No. Remember that the Soviets were winning before America lanched its massive covert intervention in Afghanistan. Not that we could pursue the same sort of ruthless tactics.

Here's one early window on the reaction of the Afghan people to Obama's new strategy.

The answer really depends on how you define success. Is it likely that Afghanistan is going to be built into a truly functioning nation-state any time soon? No. Are we going to stick around for decades to make that happen? No. Is it likely we can train large numbers of illiterate recruits (Afghanistan's literacy rate is 10%) into professional security forces? It's very difficult. Can we deny Afghanistan as a base for "The Base," Al Qaeda? Yes. But we've been able to do that for the past eight years, with no escalation necessary. What seems most likely is that friendly forces can continue to control northern Afghanistan, providing basing to chase down Al Qaeda concentrations in Taliban-friendly southern Afghanistan and along the Pakistan border if need be.

** So what happens next in what may well be an extended exercise on the politico/military equivalent of a stairmaster?

Obama gave his big speech at West Point. Which was not one of his best, as he seemed rather nervous and didn't establish a rhetorical rapport with the crowd of cadets and the long military tradition with which he was there to resonate. Still, he got the message across. He will send 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan. When it's all said and done, there will be about 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan. There are over 40,000 troops there from American allies, principally NATO nations. Nearly 10,000 of those troops are British.

He's ordered the generals to have most of the new troops in place in six months, much faster than previously assumed possible.

He wants NATO to provide another 5000 troops. NATO leadership says it will provide 7000 new troops. But that decision won't be taken in terms of actual commitments from NATO nations till an international conference on Afghanistan at the end of next month in London.

Obama plans to protect big population areas while heavily degrading Taliban forces and spinning up the training of Afghan forces.

And Obama wants to withdraw most American troops in three years, reiterating that he'll start withdrawing troops in the middle of 2011. But how quickly those troops are withdrawn is up in the air.

The plan is predicated on pushing back the Taliban, which the military says presently control a third of the provinces, to provide a space for a rapid build-up of Afghan security forces.

A lot of things have to go right for this very ambitious plan, which sounds a great deal like Vietnamization, which worked wonders for Richard Nixon, to work. But you can bet that Obama wants most American troops out of Afghanistan by the time of his re-election.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Joseph A. Palermo: Afghanistan, "So It Goes"

2009-12-01T22:52:39Z

Fanciful prescriptions for "success." Voters who value peace demoralized. Siding with war hawks to triangulate against progressives. Another $30 billion the American people will have nothing to show for.

As Kurt Vonnegut used to say, "So it goes."

President Barack Obama has decided to prolong the debilitating American military commitment to Afghanistan. He is sending another thirty thousand American soldiers into "the graveyard of empires" to fight a counterinsurgency war.

Decades of relentless warfare in a decentralized, rural and fragmented society has plagued the Afghan population with a collective PTSD. History has shown that when foreign soldiers try to police their territory Afghanistan's tribal, religious, and ethnic identities solidify in resistance. The American troop presence is an irritant that fuels nationalism, tribalism and insurgency. Most Afghans might not have gotten the "memo" that went out in the late-18th Century announcing the Enlightenment, but they are keenly aware of the mischief and intrigue colonial occupiers bring.

Why should Afghans who live in widely dispersed village-states with their own mechanisms for choosing organic local leaders recognize the legitimacy of any hand-picked "leader" from the distant U.S.-backed government in Kabul?

On FOX News the other day John McCain said he's "confident" that with the "right strategy" the United States will "succeed" in Afghanistan in "about eighteen months." But when the inevitable failure comes you can be sure that McCain will denounce President Obama for not following the "right" strategy.

We're told the U.S. is going to "train Afghan security forces," which raises the question: Train them to do what exactly? Kill their countrymen in behalf of foreigners? And how can the U.S. stop insurgent elements from infiltrating this new and improved Afghan security service? How can the CIA bribe warlords and buy off opium smugglers while haranguing the Karzai government to crack down on "corruption?"

President Obama cannot win the narrative on "national security." Harry Truman "lost" China and it took a Republican to clean up Korea. Lyndon Johnson, fearful of suffering the same accusations Truman faced from Republicans, launched what still stands as the most savage and intense aerial bombing campaign in the history of warfare. And it still took a Republican, Richard Nixon, to extricate U.S. military forces from Vietnam (albeit slowly). The best-case scenario is Obama is really smart and he's planning to follow the Nixon strategy in Vietnam: trickle out the troops just in time for your re-election. But our recent history shows that a Democratic president cannot "cut and run" from any military engagement no matter how futile lest he (or she) suffer the full-throated wrath of the Republican assault. LBJ's "Great Society" died in Vietnam and so goes Obama's domestic agenda in the foreboding mountains of Afghanistan.

"Vietnamization" failed and so will "Afghanization." False premise number one is that the Afghan people want the United States to "succeed" in propping up a Western-oriented government in Kabul. False premise number two is that Afghans will be willing to kill their fellow Muslims and fellow Pashtuns in the name of imposing a neo-colonial relationship with the U.S.A.

Afghans have about a 90 percent illiteracy rate and are largely a rural people. The Americans appear as if from the planet Mars carrying gear on their bodies worth the amount of money most Afghans will earn in their lifetimes. False premise number three: Who, exactly, is the U.S. going to "recruit" to man this sizeable Afghan security force? Young illiterate men who've witnessed beheadings from the age of six? Children right now are freezing to death in refugee camps in Afghanistan and the Karzai government won't lift a finger to help them -- yet these people are going to fight and die for Karzai?

As with Vietnam, the problem in Afghanistan is political, not military. The United States can stay there forever if we want to -- But is it worth it?

So it goes.

The Obama people are brilliant tacticians but I don't think they truly understand how utterly demoralizing escalating a futile war is to core Obama voters. Some issues warrant reasonable compromise -- health care, the stimulus bill, etc. -- but others are more categorical. And war is among them. Whether the U.S. is in Afghanistan for eighteen months, eighteen years, or eighteen centuries, it doesn't really matter. Like Vietnam, the U.S. can stay in Afghanistan forever given its technological and material advantages. They could never really throw us out just as the Vietnamese couldn't (we only had about 25,000 military personnel in Vietnam in April 1975). Nixon declared victory and (slowly) withdrew (with about 20,000 Americans needlessly killed). Obama's 30,000 troop "surge" is an admission that over 60,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of NATO soldiers and others cannot even realistically protect enclaves. The 1968 Tet Offensive showed that in Vietnam the U.S. couldn't secure enclaves even with 500,000 soldiers.

So it goes.

The 2010 midterms will thin the ranks of the Democratic majority in Congress. The 2012 presidential election campaign (unfortunately) begins the day after the 2010 midterms. Obama will be forced to further water down his agenda given the political realities. We will then witness the "Clintonization" of the Obama presidency, i.e. triangulation and a hundred "Sista Souljah" moments. Obama has chosen LBJ's "Goldilocks" option. I know that behind all the hawkish rhetoric Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are celebrating right now.

So it goes.

Chris Weigant: White House Gate Crashing, From Andrew Jackson To Grace Slick

2009-11-30T20:04:32Z

The White House has always been a magnet for all kinds of lunatics, so it's not surprising that a pair of wannabe reality show stars attempted to crash a party last week. What surprised everyone, of course, is that they got in. This shocked the media and politicians alike, because together they compromise the "inside the Beltway" set -- who become more than a little bit afraid when the "common folk" intrude on their shindigs. Hence the widespread and breathless coverage of this story for nigh on a week now. But, I repeat, the White House has always been a giant magnet for lunatics and other invaders throughout America's history.

The first of these, defined very loosely, were British soldiers. During the War of 1812, Washington fell to the enemy. Dolley Madison personally grabbed a few paintings off the walls of the White House and fled before the advancing British. When the Brits got to the White House, they found it previously vacated, but with a hot meal just having been cooked and readied. So they did what any civilized soldier would do, they sat down at the tables, ate the meal; and then burned down the White House.

No other gate crashers through history would have quite the same impact, although a few have come close. But the Red Coats weren't exactly "gate crashers," since the White House was a valid military target in the middle of a war. Also not true gate crashers are the subset known as "fence jumpers," who are indeed the crazies. A quick walk around the White House grounds shows why these folks are so tempted -- the fence is a very basic iron fence, and looks eminently "jumpable." Anyone decently agile could swarm over it in a matter of seconds. Inside the fence are lots of inviting trees and bushes, as well as large stretches of lawn which beckon to those already receiving radio waves from outer space. The Washington Post recently ran an article with an incomplete list of these sad individuals, back to the early 1900s. They are indeed sad, because many of these folks who jump the fence and go running across the lawn come to tragic ends as they find out the security is a lot better than a cursory glance would reveal. Because anyone running towards the White House who refuses orders to stop is shot down. As they should be.

But, invaders and fence jumpers aside, there are two amusing stories which are much closer to the gate crashing which just occurred at Obama's first state dinner. The earlier of the two probably couldn't accurately be called "gate crashing," because I don't believe a fence or gate around the White House even existed at the time. And the later of the two isn't really gate crashing at all, since Grace Slick had an actual invitation.

Because Grace, before she became the lead singer of the Jefferson Starship (née Airplane), actually came from an upper-middle-crust society girl background. And she attended (although not at the same time) the same college Tricia Nixon would also later attend. From Slick's biography "Somebody To Love? A Rock-and-Roll Memoir," specifically from the chapter entitled Dosing Tricky Dick, Slick explains in her own words:

Tricky Dick Nixon, as he was fondly referred to by people not part of his inane circle, had a daughter, Tricia, who had attended Finch College about ten years after my stay at the "bow and curtsey" academy. Which led to Yours Truly, of all people, getting an invitation to tea at the White House.

Slick was sent the invitation by a former Finch "suite mate" of Slick's (who was "in charge of passing judgment on each alumna's character -- or lack thereof"), over protestations from "other Finchettes." When asked, Slick responded she would be bringing, as her escort, "Mr. Leonard Haufman." This turned out to be none other than that notorious Yippie Abbie Hoffman. The big day came, they tried to spruce up Abbie by slicking his hair down and putting him in a suit and tie, since "we didn't want to look like a couple of screaming hippies." Unfortunately, Grace herself didn't get her own memo, and wore a "black fishnet top with three-by-three-inch patch pockets just covering my nipples, a short black miniskirt that went all the way up to the beaver, and long black boots that reached up to my thighs."

But Abbie and Grace weren't just there for the fun of a White House tea party. Again, as Slick explains:

The plan was for me to reach my overly long pinky fingernail, grown especially for easy cocaine snorting, into my pocket, fill it with six hundred mics of pure powdered LSD, and with a large entertainer's gesture, drop the acid into Tricky Dick's teacup. ... We knew we wouldn't have the pleasure of seeing Nixon tripping (LSD takes a while to kick in), but the idea that he might be stumbling through the White House a little later, talking to paintings, watching walls melt, and thinking he was turning into a bulldog, was irresistible.

Alas, security was apparently a bit tighter back in those days, even if you did have an invitation. They were stopped at the gate, and refused entry. But Grace persisted and got the guards to at least agree to let her in (without Abbie). She refused, saying she required her own security guard, to which Abbie piped up: "I wouldn't let Miss Slick go in there alone, because I understand they lose a president every three years. It's a dangerous place."

The irony of the story is that the social secretary, upon being informed Grace and Abbie had left, responded, "Go back and find them. Mrs. Nixon and Tricia really want to meet her." Seriously, if your daddy got powerful and famous and you got to invite all your college's alumnae to an event, wouldn't you want to meet any stars among them?

Anyway, for better or for worse, this particular gate crashing did not happen. Slick ends the story by saying (italics in original):

Of course, from what we later learned about Nixon, he walked around the White House talking to pictures anyway, so maybe nobody would have noticed much of a change ... ultimately, we didn't have to dose him. He overdosed himself on love of power, driving himself out of office without any outside help.

But for the real granddaddy of a White House gate crashing story, we have to reach deep into the past, to the 1829 inauguration of President Andrew Jackson. Jackson was the defining politician not just "of his day," but also of a lot of American politics from that point on. He defined not only the way we've run our campaigns ever since (with mudslinging galore -- accusations of bigamy and adultery going back and forth between Jackson and the incumbent John Quincy Adams, for instance), but also several recurring themes in American politics. Jackson, not Lincoln, was the original "born in a log cabin" president. He was also the first-ever "man of the people" president. He was the original anti-elitist politician.

His election, much as Barack Obama's, was seen as a victory of "The People" over entrenched Washington politics-as-usual. And, much as with Obama, when Jackson was inaugurated, The People showed up in droves. The crowd was so thick, they momentarily prevented Jackson from riding his horse back from the Capitol to the White House. When he got there, he found what can only be described as absolute chaos. Either that, or a frat house kegger. From a contemporary first-person account of the scene:

After a while a passage was opened, and he mounted his horse which had been provided for his return (for he had walked to the Capitol) then such a cortege as followed him! Country men, farmers, gentlemen, mounted and dismounted, boys, women and children, black and white. Carriages, wagons and carts all pursuing him to the President's house. ... [W]e set off to the President's House, but on a nearer approach found an entrance impossible, the yard and avenue was compact with living matter.

But what a scene did we witness! The Majesty of the People had disappeared, and a rabble, a mob, of boys, negros [sic], women, children, scrambling fighting, romping. What a pity what a pity! No arrangements had been made no police officers placed on duty and the whole house had been inundated by the rabble mob. We came too late.

The President, after having been literally nearly pressed to death and almost suffocated and torn to pieces by the people in their eagerness to shake hands with Old Hickory, had retreated through the back way or south front and had escaped to his lodgings at Gadsby's.

Cut glass and china to the amount of several thousand dollars had been broken in the struggle to get the refreshments, punch and other articles had been carried out in tubs and buckets, but had it been in hogsheads it would have been insufficient, ice-creams, and cake and lemonade, for 20,000 people, for it is said that number were there, tho' I think the number exaggerated.

Ladies fainted, men were seen with bloody noses and such a scene of confusion took place as is impossible to describe, -- those who got in could not get out by the door again, but had to scramble out of windows. At one time, the President who had retreated and retreated until he was pressed against the wall, could only be secured by a number of gentleman forming around him and making a kind of barrier of their own bodies, and the pressure was so great that Col. Bomford who was one said that at one time he was afraid they should have been pushed down, or on the President. It was then the windows were thrown open, and the torrent found an outlet, which otherwise might have proved fatal.

This concourse had not been anticipated and therefore not provided against. Ladies and gentlemen, only had been expected at this Levee, not the people en masse. But it was the People's day, and the People's President and the People would rule.

Others present said they feared the building would collapse because of the pressure of people inside it. A genius whose name is lost to history finally figured out how to solve the dangerous situation, by throwing open the windows and serving punch and alcohol out on the front lawn. As any attendee of a keg party knows, people tend to congregate where the keg is, which is why you put it outside in the first place.

So, while Washington is all a-twitter over two society climbers crashing the gates at an Obama soirée, rest assured that in the grand sweep of history, it was a fairly minor event. They passed through the metal detectors just like everyone else, no one was in danger, and no real harm was done. Nobody got dosed with LSD. And nobody was in fear of the building collapsing under the sheer volume of the gate crashers. Things, in other words, could have been a lot worse.

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com

Mark Green: Palin Is Nixon, Minus The Smarts

2009-11-24T09:15:13Z

Sarah Palin's rhetoric against the East and West Coast elites -- and liberal media -- appeals to aggrieved "ordinary Americans", in her phrase. Sounds like "middle Americans" and "the silent majority." Sarah Palin meet Richard Nixon. So alike. But.

As Palin selectively tours the country with her talking points and book -- one and the same -- she's anything but subtle. Taking off from her famous campaign references to "real Americans" and Obama "paling around with terrorists", she's an exemplar of the politics of resentment, of attempting the political math of addition by division:

-"I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the kind of spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fat resume that's based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles." (Palin on The O'Reilly Factor, 11/20/09).

-"The enlightened elites want to tell you to sit down and shut up. But the way forward is to stand and fight." (Palin in Going Rogue).

This is little more than Nixon Redux. He started it in the 1950s, when he famously went after Gov. Adlai Stevenson for his "Ph.D. from Dean Acheson's College of Cowardly Communist Containment" Then in his years in the wilderness from '63-'68 and as president in '69-'73, Nixon stuck closely to the "postitive polarization" strategy honed by young speechwriter Pat Buchanan. He again and again slyly salted the wound of us-them opened up by Vietnam and the Sixties culture wars. "It is my belief that the seeds of civil anarchy would never have taken root in this country had they not been nurtured by scores of respectable Americans: public officials, educators, clergymen, and civil rights leaders as well."

But Palin is, ultimately, no Nixon.

First, RN was vastly more experienced and sophisticated. Her two years as governor of Alaska can't compare to Nixon's two decades-plus of legislative and executive experience by the time of his presidential win, not to mention travels around the world and country at the highest levels. And corrupt antisemite that he was, his worst enemies never questioned his intelligence or skill. Should he have been asked what he reads, he'd have a convincing answer.

Second, RN could feint or go left to appear more mainstream -- see his creation of EPA, OSHA, and advocacy (for a time) of a guaranteed income and affirmative action. When has Palin ever shown such a moderating inclination?

And third, 2008-09 isn't 1968-69. Starting with the Watts riots in 1965 and then continuing with the generational divide of a war with ten times the casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan combined, America was then deeply divided by cavernous cultural and military and racial differences, not Beck's and Limbaugh's faux populist rants in pursuit of ratings. Richard Perlstein's brilliant "Nixonland" last year had chapter and verse about what a different time that was, with all due respect to today's tea-partiers and birthers and budget balancers.

So Palin may have 100% recognition and a devoted base, but she lacks the skill and era to become a serious presidential contender. Sure other conservative Republicans will try to straddle the Right and the Center to win a conservative nomination and then an non-conservative general election, but she's too light and unpopular to pull that off. When a national politician is, say, a little known Jimmy Carter at 3% in national polls, s/he has the potential to grow into a serious candidate with both the right theme and an early primary win. But when you start nationally with a 53%-28% favorable-unfavorable ratio in the September, 2008 Gallup Poll, yet now you're down to 34%-55% (Bloomberg), you're in Gingrich territory, always able to get on Fox but not dig out of a deep hole dug by the shovel of a polarizing personality.

Palin therefore could theoretically win a plurality of Iowa Republicans (where her favorables among only Republicans are at Huckabee/Romney levels) but, unlike Nixon at the height of LBJ's Vietnam War, not an electoral college majority. She's a bona fide celebrity, not a bona fide general election candidate. She can sell 2 million books but not win 60 million votes. And if she is lured by the adoring crowds of 2009 into running in 2012, she'll only spark a bonfire to her vanity.

Leon T. Hadar: Obama, the Teabaggers and Foreign Policy

2009-11-23T13:57:48Z

If you have been following what America's right-wing bloggers and radio talk-show hosts have been saying about President Barack Obama's just-concluded trip to the Asia-Pacific, you would be under the impression that Obama was not treated by officials in that region as the leader of the world's only remaining superpower and the largest and most advanced economy.

The neo and ultra-conservative pundits recalled the good-old-days when former American presidents were supposedly treated with so much respect in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing as they used American economic and military might to compel leaders there to bow to Washington's dictates. But as the right-wingers see it, Obama acted as though he was the leader of just another normal nation and not that of the great power that had won the Cold War not so long ago, projecting a certain level of timidity during his East Asian tour which might explain why he was cold shouldered by the East Asians. And that was such a humiliating experience for proud Americans like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

Indeed, according to these and other nutty loud-mouths, Obama had disgraced his country by having taken a deep bow at the waist while meeting Japan's Emperor Akihito. Hey, remember how former US vice president Dick Cheney, greeted the emperor in 2007 with a firm handshake -- but no bow - just the way a real American Man would conduct himself.

American historians were quick to note that Obama was not the first U.S. President to take a bow, following the rules of diplomatic etiquette when meeting with foreign kings, queens, and other heads of state. In fact, former President Richard Nixon - you know, that lefty peacenik --- bowed to Akihito's father in Japan in 1971. And he was the same Japanese emperor who had led his country to war with the U.S. in 1941.

The notion that Obama didn't get any R-E-S-P-E-C-T in the Asia-Pacific during his visit and that his "wow bow" in Tokyo reflected a supposedly spineless diplomacy of kowtowing to China and capitulating to other rising powers in the region over security and trade issues is probably just another example of the kind of hysterical Obama bashing that has engulfed America's flagging political right since last November.

In the right-wing alternate universe Obama is seen as being responsible for the Great Recession, the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now also for the economic and military rise of China, the changing Japanese attitudes towards America and the other challenges facing American power in East Asia. According to the members of the non-reality-based community the suggestion that the China may be less willing to play ball with Obama has nothing to do with America's real weakened economic and military position in the aftermath of the financial meltdown in Wall Street and the War in Iraq. Nope. It all has to do with the perception of American weakness that has been produced by Obama's more conciliatory approach towards China (dubbed by officials in Washington dubbed as "strategic reassurance"), his willingness continue negotiations with the Japanese over the status of U.S. military bases Okinawa and his engagement with the military regime in Myanmar.

But in reality, this kind of more conciliatory approach that have been embraced by Obama in his dealing with China, Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is part of an effort to adjust American position in the Asia-Pacific in response to the very real changing geo-strategic and geo-economic balance of power, and in particular to the shifting balance of power between America and China.

Indeed, the transformation of the post-Cold War unipolar U.S.-dominated international system into a looser multi-polar system was inevitable. From that perspective it is quite possible that historians in the future would contend that the most important event that had taken in place in 2001 was not the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington but what happened exactly two months later - the accession of China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) which marked the start of its full integration into the global economy.

That this process of diminishing unipolarism and increasing multipolarism has accelerated under Obama's predecessor has to do with the costly policies at home (irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies) and abroad (military unilateralism and the war in Iraq) that have weakened U.S. status around the world, including in East Asia, and provided the Chinese with even more opportunity to exert their economic and diplomatic influence while America continued sinking into the many military quagmires in the Greater Middle East.

Taking into consideration that what Obama has been trying to begin reversing the trend towards American retreat from Asia that took place under President George W. Bush, one could argue his East Asia tour was certainly a good start. America and China are not about to form a permanent "Group of 2" forum. But during the talks in Beijing that covered currency, climate change, tariffs, Iran and Afghanistan - the American and Chinese leaders took the first steps in a long road in which each side will have to provide strategic reassurances to other. It would a process involving reciprocity under which the Americans will not be anymore in a position to deliver sermons and dictate outcomes to the Chinese.

That could be certainly a humbling experience for the right-wing critics and the neoconservatives who seem to operate under the illusion that America is still Number One and that it can still continue cutting taxes, expanding the deficit, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, while defeating terrorism, containing China and Russia, punishing "rogue regimes" and spreading democracy and human rights around the world.

But one of the main reasons why America has less leverage in its dealing with China is fact that the Chinese are playing now the role of America's banker as they continue financing the growing U.S. deficits. And in order to reduce these deficits, Americans will have to cut spending, which should include reductions the same U.S. military commitments abroad that right-wing critics would actually like to see increased.

Indeed, the same teabaggers who in the name of conservative values of limited government and fiscal restraint have been clobbering Obama and the Democrats for expanding the power of the federal government to promote a domestic liberal agenda, including $787 billion economic stimulus and his health-care reform proposals, seemed to have become born-again government interventionists, progressive internationalists and social engineers when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan and to millions of foreigners and other distant societies whose values are alien to most Americans. Many of our irate anti-statist conservatives want to see the same U.S. government whose power they decry when tries to manage the school system in, say, Lebanon, Ohio, managing lots of stuff in, say, Lebanon. Help build the health care system in Afghanistan -- but not in America.

In fact, according to most public opinion polls the majority of American conservatives support increasing U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. The same teabaggers who are bashing Obama Administration as "socialistic" and "fascistic" seem to be quite enthusiastic about an Obama doing more national building in Afghanistan, which is bound to help raise the U.S. deficit into the stratosphere and expand the power of the federal government.

As Obama and the Democrats contemplate a new strategy for Afghanistan they should consider integrating the conservative values of fiscal discipline and limited government into their decision-making on this central foreign policy issue. After all, reducing and not expanding U.S. military in Afghanistan (and Iraq, and Korea, and Japan, and...) would help control the spending by the federal government and reduce the ballooning deficit. And that, after all, is exactly what our teabaggers are demanding.

Nixon Tape Gap: Watergate Mystery Under Review

2009-11-18T17:49:31Z

WASHINGTON — The National Archives is bringing together investigators to search for scribbled secrets from the first days of the Watergate scandal that destroyed Richard Nixon's presidency.

The elusive goal is to find out what Nixon and an aide discussed during the infamous 18 1/2-minute gap in a White House tape recording of a meeting held three days after burglars linked to the president's re-election committee broke into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex.

Judith M. Bardwick: That Something Is Published Does Not Make It True

2009-11-17T16:23:10Z

I'm not on anyone's list to receive emails or blogs or even solicitations for money from extremely right wing, politically conservative organizations or their counterparts, organizations whose members hold equally passionate liberal views. But a few of my friends are very partisan and actively involved in politics. Lately several of these friends have sent me extremely conservative blogs.

It's important to acknowledge that (1) I would expect the same aggressive tone that I found in the very conservative blogs to be in extremely liberal ones and (2) the kinds of unsubstantiated assertions seen in these blogs are probably most often online where factual validation is not required for publication and publication is usually free.

In the political blogs I've been sent, I've seen inference, innuendo and exaggeration used for character assassination. That's not only distasteful, in my opinion it's downright irresponsible and dangerous. This blog is a call for rational analytic reading. That something is published does not make it true -- especially online.

As an example of the kind of writing that appalls me I'm going to extract passages from a blog which was forwarded to me by my friend Len, a doctor who is politically aware and involved. He sent the article because he wanted to know what I thought of it. The blog is "Obama's Revenge -- Can YOU Handle the Truth," posted by Joan Swirsky on February 15, 2009. http://www.redcounty.com/sarasota/2009/02/obamas-revenge

Excerpts from "Obama's Revenge"
The following paragraphs are excerpts from this blog.
"Once upon a time, a white teenager from Kansas got pregnant by her black Kenyan boyfriend, Barack Obama Sr.., or was it her husband? Whatever. (I say whatever because we've never seen either marriage or divorce certificates).
... we've never seen an authentic birth certificate).
"It didn't take long for Barry's mother to meet and marry an Indonesian native named Lolo Soetoro. They moved to Indonesia, where her child became Barry Soetoro, took on Indonesian citizenship, and was presumably schooled in public, Christian, and Muslim schools. (I say presumably because we've never seen those school records).
"Yet the abandoned and rejected child was lucky. His white-devil grandparents gave him a comfortable life in Hawaii, and an education that apparently qualified him to attend several prestigious schools - Occidental College in CA, Columbia Univ. in NY City, and Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA.(I say apparently qualified because we've never seen any of his college transcripts).
"When given the opportunity to join one of dozens of churches in Chicago, Barry - who had morphed into Barack - opted for the Trinity United Church of Christ, which was led by the fire-breathing Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose decades-long anti-American and anti-Semitic rants apparently resonated in Obama's rejected and abandoned heart and soul. (I say apparently resonated because in over 20 years of regular attendance, Obama said he heard nothing inflammatory or anti-American, ...).
"Journalist Jack Cashill has credibly speculated that Obama's two memoirs were actually written by his pal Bill Ayers, who was and is a University of Illinois at Chicago English professor, having escaped life in prison on a technicality.
"Or he could be a malignant narcissist, which psychiatrist Dr. Otto Kernberg, a legendary leader in thought disorders, compares to a narcissist on steroids. This variety involves paranoid traits ... and ego-syntonic aggression ...
"Obama's father was a self-aggrandizing narcissist who thought nothing of throwing his son away to fulfill his own ambitions and his mother also threw him away for the same reason. Talk about DNA, ...
"Obama thus signals his intent to bring financial ruin on those who won't accept his cover-up of the circumstances of his birth is a tactical escalation.
"You can be sure that the sad-lonely-angry two-year-old, the jealous-confused-resentful 10-year-old, the self-conscious- cheated-victimized adolescent, and the man who found solace in and identified with his hate-America mentors is now determined to redeem all of his demons.
This is Obama's revenge!"

Here is my response to my friend:Dear Len,
"Obama's Revenge - Can YOU handle the truth?" is Joan Swirsky's challenge to any reader. But my brief review of the material causes me to ask the author, "Can YOU recognize the truth?"

Since I am not politically involved except for knowing the issues, having an opinion and always voting, my answer to your question, "What do you think of this article?" will be confined to a politically neutral position and an analysis of the data-deficient allegations and conclusions.

The observations about how his mother and father treated him and how that impacted Obama's personality, motives and priorities, are based only on inference. While it is true that one can predict outcomes or behaviors of groups of people based on large-scale group statistics, one cannot use data from groups to predict or explain the outcomes of experiences for an individual. For example, confidence and especially resilience are qualities that develop as a result of positive outcomes of negative experiences.

It is, therefore, possible to reconstruct Obama's younger years as constructive -- or destructive. Therefore the damning conclusions about Obama's personality and values are based only on unsupported inferences and gross interpretations by the author and are not supported in any way by data.

Note that I am not able to conclude whether she is right or wrong in her assertions. Rather, the point is she is drawing conclusions where she has inadequate information. She is, for that reason, out of order and out of line.

Len, many of the author's assertions and conclusions are based on the absence of data. Something that is absent cannot be tested and therefore corroborated or dismissed. It is best, therefore, to either see that as the impetus to find the information -- or ignore the assertion. What you cannot do is treat the assertion as a fact. Just look, for example, at the manipulation of the reader in the sentence that begins, "Journalist Jack Cashill has credibly speculated..." and the author then continues the sentence as though speculation means proved.

Even more flagrant, the sentence continues "that Obama's two memoirs were actually written by his pal Bill Ayers, who was and is a University of Illinois at Chicago English professor, having escaped life in prison on a technicality". All the author actually knows is Bill Ayers is an English Professor at a well known university. That's it. But Obama is damned by the author's speculation that someone else wrote his memoirs and that person should be in jail. Talk about damning by imagination... "Gee, if Obama didn't actually write his memoirs, I wonder who did..."

Like the previous paper you sent me, this is an example of conspiracy theory. In my lifetime, beginning with Kennedy's assassination and, with the exception of Nixon and Watergate, (and 9/11) conspiracy theorists have not been able to prove their assertions. It is critical to remember that with a free press - including the internet -- no one person, organization or viewpoint controls the media. At the same time, breaking a really big story is the one certain route to success in every form of media. It is, therefore, far more logical to start from the premise that the absent but inferred devastating information does not exist than it is to assume it is invisible because it has been hidden.

Similarly, the author reaches major political and personal conclusions based on Obama's choices of associates, friends and spouse. While I personally found the choice of Wright as pastor very difficult to understand, I know that if this were a real biography we would have the context of the period of time in which something happened. That is often crucial to having things in an appropriate perspective.

Jackson Williams: Obama Bows, Conservatives Bitch, Reality Bites

2009-11-17T15:10:26Z

In the 1980's, billionaire conservative gadfly Ross Perot received the prestigious Winston Churchill Award at a lavish Dallas dinner. Prince Charles himself came across the pond for the event, and local high society, Republican to a fault, rushed around town in the two weeks beforehand booking lessons on how to curtsy in front of royalty.

Never mind that America fought a war to escape British tyranny. The social set is big on ceremony, and this was as big as it gets.

Fast forward a quarter-century. President Obama bowed this week when greeting Japanese Emperor Akihito, and the conservative media and blogosphere went positively apoplectic. The co-host of the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends, Steve Doocy, prattled on about how Americans haven't bowed in over 200 years. Yeah, right.

Doocy is dim-witted, but reprehensible best describes Wesley Pruden, editor emeritus of the far-right Washington Times (owned by the religious Moonies.). He writes in his November 17 column that the president's predilection for bowing is because "he was sired by a Kenyan father" and "born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World," and thus "has no natural instinct or blood impulse" for what this nation represents.

Does he mean "sired" as in the breeding term for animals? Little doubt.

As we see from the images below, however, Eisenhower bowed before De Gaulle (a Frenchman, sacré bleu!), Nixon bowed before Emperor Hirohito (who'd ordered the bombing of Pearl Harbor), and George W. Bush actually kissed the Saudi Arabian King, something his former press secretary Dana Perino admitted to Wolf Blitzer on CNN was "the customary thing to do."

I'd say damn near making out with a foreign leader beats a ceremonial bow any day, wouldn't you?

Even Bob Dylan, arguably the world's most famous Jewish artist, knelt before a seated and throned Pope John Paul ll after performing in his Holy presence. The Bard was not expressing subservience to the Catholic faith and its leading acolyte.

Yet when Obama engages in these same kinds of traditional acts, right-wing heads explode. What blithering, racist fools these mortals be.

Mark Green: Holder's Terror Decision Was His -- the De-Politicization of Justice

2009-11-17T09:34:48Z

Beyond the merits of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in federal criminal court in Manhattan is the fact that it was his decision. When I asked him about this last night at an event for the Brennan Center for Legal Justice, he candidly said, "that happens to be true. We informed the president while he was on Air Force One enroute to Asia."

Which is what the Founders expected but not the way Nixon and Bush 43 operated.

The 1789 Federal Judiciary Act created the position of Attorney General, who would be appointed by the president and be "a meet [fitting] person learned in the law." The idea was that he (at that time) would not be a crony or pure partisan but a person who would objectively advise on and enforce the laws. The next two centuries saw AGs in the political mold like Mitchell Palmer in the Twenties and Robert F. Kennedy in the early Sixties, as well as Edward Levi, Gerald Ford's Attorney General, a former president of the University of Chicago and its law school dean.

Then came John Mitchell, Richard Nixon's law partner and campaign counsel. It was under instructions from the Nixon White House that the antitrust case against ITT was dropped after the conglomerate made a $400,000 contribution to the 1972 Republican National Convention. (Tapes caught Nixon saying, "I want something clearly understood, and, if it's not understood, McLaren's ass [head of the Antirust Division] is to be out of there within one hour. The ITT thing -- stay the hell out of it. Is that clear? That's an order...I do not want McLaren to run around prosecuting people, raising hell about conglomerates.")

And, of course, Archibald Cox was fired as Watergate special prosecutor when he appeared to be doing his job too well.

Bush 43 adhered more to the Nixon than the Ford model. Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez grossly politicized Justice by weakly settling a major tobacco case leading to resignations, by refusing to enforce the environmental and civil rights laws, by rejecting qualified lawyers to civil service jobs because they were Democrats (remember Monica Goodling's admission that they had "crossed the line" and broken the law), and by ordering the firing of U. S. Attorneys who wouldn't toe the White House line on suing people for "voter fraud."

The decision whether to try KSM in a civilian court or a military tribunal, with more secrecy and fewer due process protections, was not an easy one. When announced, the Anti-Terrorist Trio of Rudy Giuliani and Representatives Peter King and Peter Hoekstra predictably said that the sky was falling. Giuliani sarcastically noted that KSM wanted the trial in NYC and "since when are we in the business of granting the wishes of terrorists?" Of course, when the so-called 20th hijacker was previously tried and convicted in federal court, he had lauded that case and result; and since KSM has said that wants to be executed so he could martyr himself to his Islamic war on America, would Giuliani apply his own logic and agree that he shouldn't be "granted his wish" and therefore not be executed after a guilty verdict? (Of course, we should all be grateful that America's Mayor didn't charge a royalty because Holder had referred to "9/11".)

There were indeed difficult and competing arguments about the likelihood of convictions, added risks to New York City, the sentiments of victims' families, the use of evidence after waterboarding, and allowing KSM to exploit his case in open court to propagandize to the world. On the other side, there was the message to the world that America was bigger and better than any murdering terrorist and would adhere to the rule of law rather than a regime of torture and Gitmo.

But even though the choice of trial venue clearly had national and international political and security implications, The Decider ended up being precisely who it should be -- the Attorney General of the United States based on his judgment of law and evidence.

A prosecutor made the decision and took the heat. Unlike Nixon and Bush 43, the person upholding the "original intent" of our Founders -- the de-politicization of law enforcement -- was Eric Holder.

Mike Elk: Liberal Elitism Will Make Sarah Palin President - How Only Union Organizing Can Stop It

2009-11-12T10:29:14Z

Conservatives win many votes saying that liberals are elitist. I am here to
tell you that the liberal movement is indeed very elitist. Its organization's
staffs are composed mainly of Ivy leaguers whose life experiences are dramatically
different than the 70 percent of Americans that never graduate from college.
Very few of them have any actual experience living with or knowing working-class
people. As a graduate of Bucknell, I still feel out of a place and most glaringly
underdressed when I get in a room with the Ivy Leaguers running our movement.

As garbageman turned United Electrical Workers (UE) in Political Action Director
Chris Townsend put it to me:

When I am in meetings in Washington, DC, with organizations
that presume to speak for workers or on behalf of workers - I ironically find
myself the only worker in the room. As a worker with a GED - and 30-plus years
of labor union experience - opinions like mine are rarely sought and universally
dismissed as being too extremist when most workers feel the way I do about things.
This is why it is so common for liberal and left-wing staff and activists to
completely misunderstand workers.

The experiences of liberal elites are so outside of the mainstream that, very
often, they just don't understand the working class. They fail to communicate
to workers because most of them have never talked to a worker in real life,
except to ask for fries at McDonald's. Instead, when they fail to understand
the misdirected anger of the working class at its economic anxiety, they tend
to engage in intellectual snobbery and narrow-mindedness that only serve to
alienate the white working class further.

Such snobbery was expressed to me in an email recently sent to me from a Democratic
media strategist who said the message of the day was, "Conservatives face
a choice about the future of their movement: Will they come to the table to
get things done or 'stick with the angry people'?"

Well, let me think about that for a second. If I am a poor white guy, do I
want to go with the polite people (Democrats) who are going to beg for change
with their sophisticated intellectual arguments that I don't understand? Or
do I want to be with the party (Republicans) that embraces my anger and wants
to get out in the streets to yell about how awful this economy is?

Americans are screaming now about the economic hell we are in. Republicans
are screaming about how awful the economy is and winning many of them over.
Although, they're winning them with the wrong solutions, but they are trying to
win Joe the Plumber, not Joe Stiglitz, so the details don't really matter.

On the economy, the Democratic message is, "Sit tight, don't get out in
the street and protest, everything will be alright."

White working-class guys would choose the angry people who are willing to stand
up and say how frustrated they feel. The progressives who are telling me to
be cool and not get upset with things are just merely talking down to me. They
have the privilege of telling me not to get upset, when I have every right to
be upset.

Sarah Palin indeed represents all the rage of the working class that liberals
of this country are trying to quiet down. Many liberal elites engaged in revisionist
history say that McCain's defeat was caused by Palin. However, anybody who actually
worked on the Obama campaign like I did knew that McCain's defeat was caused
by the financial crisis and McCain's baffling response and coddling of Wall
Street.

As an organizer for the Obama campaign on the ground in Western Pennsylvania
during the election, I remember how white, working-class, swing voters couldn't
stop talking about Sarah Palin for weeks on end. For the three weeks between
Palin's selection as VP candidate and the financial crash, we were scared shitless
the Republicans were going to win as Palin led to McCain surging in the polls.

Many white, working-class people loved her because here was a politician who
finally was working class and ready for a fight. They loved her even more as
Ivy League liberals denounced her as basically "white trash." It felt
to white, working-class people like liberal elites were calling them "white
trash" too.

Liberals still treat Palin and the right-wing populist Tea Party Movement that
she leads as "white trash." They spend more time attacking them as
"stupid racists" than actually trying to win them over and address
their concerns. Its as if liberals are saying we know better than you stupid
working-class people.

To understand how easily Sarah Palin could be the next president, we need only
look to another vice presidential candidate widely denounced by the liberal
elite when he was announced in 1952 - Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nixon became president
by mobilizing resentment of the working class against elites. By framing elites
as talking down to the poor and working class, Sarah Palin, with the right slick
ad men, could mobilize that same type of sentiment against the elitist "eggheads"
of the Democratic Party.

From Rick Perlstein's classic, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and
the Fracturing of America:

To cosmopolitan liberals, hating Richard Nixon, congratulating
yourself for seeing through Richard Nixon and the elaborate political poker
bluff with which he hooked the sentimental rubes, was becoming part and parcel
of a political identity.

And to a new suburban mass middle class that was tempting itself into
Republicanism, admiring Richard Nixon was becoming part and parcel of a political
identity based on seeing through the pretensions of the cosmopolitan liberals
who claimed to know so much better than you (and Richard Nixon) what was best
for your country. This side saw everything most genuine in Nixon, everything
that was most brave, - who saw the Checkers speech for what it also actually
was, not just a hustle but also an act of existential heroism: a brave refusal
to let haughty 'betters' have their way with him.

It's like deja vu all over again.

Republicans are rallying the troops against the educated elites of society.
As a result of their political jujitsu, Republicans are making it look like
they are engaged in a class war on behalf of the working class against the liberal
elite.

Liberals instead are playing into the class war trap by talking down to the
uneducated masses of America via TV talk shows and blogs. They can't understand
why they aren't winning over the working class because they are too busy attacking
them.

Such intellectual foolishness was dramatized in the way I heard liberal DC
political operatives talk about the widely read focus group study by The
Very Separate Worlds of Conservatives
by Stan Greenberg, James Carville and others. They took the memo as evidence
that working class people lived in a world so far outside of their own (socioeconomically
speaking, they do) that they couldn't possibly be reasoned with using their
methods). They reckoned that surely these people must be "crazy, brain
dead racists" who believe Obama is a socialist out to get them.

What they failed to read is one of the main conclusions of the study that shows
that their efforts to paint working class conservatives as "racist idiots"
is backfiring big time:

They readily identify themselves as a minority in this
country - a minority whose values are mocked and attacked by a liberal media
and class of elites.

I wonder why they feel under attack? Maybe it's all the liberal elites calling
white, working class people "stupid racists."

Indeed, the focus groups found that race was not an important factor affecting
the political opposition of white, working class conservatives. Indeed, the
study found that mocking these people as racists, as I argued in my article,
"Martin Luther King Would Have Loved the Teabaggers, Not Called Them Racists,"
only serves to stigmatize them more against liberal elites.

Talking down to working class people engaged in a class war against the elites
isn't going to win them over.

What liberals have to do is unite with the teabaggers and engage in a class
war against Wall Street. Organized labor has succeeded in doing this by using
constant, year-round, on-the-job political engagement to compel people to come
over. As a result, Obama won by 23 points among white, non-college graduates
who belong to a union, even as he lost by 18 points among all white, non-college
voters.

We need to "Organize the Unorganized" in massive organizing drives
like we did in 1930's - the heydays for the progressive reform. Union organizing
is the best way to engage people one-on-one on a constant year-round basis.
We need be constantly sitting down with working class white conservatives one-on-one,
listen to their concerns, and engage them in honest dialogue. Only real community
organizing can do this, not the slick TV ad buys that DC liberals tend to prefer.

Part of the reason the Obama movement was so successful was that they invested
so heavily in community organizing. We would treat them like human beings and
engage in friendly conversation. We would find out what issues they cared about and get them to critically look at issues in friendly, non-threatening communications.
Much like Howard Dean's fifty-state strategy, we took no voter for granted.
Our movement should do the same when it comes to voters if it expects to be
sustainable over the long run.

Sure, we might not get them the first time or the second time or the third
time; it might take 20, 30, 40 or 50 long, deep conversations in order to win over
these working white guys, but it's worth it. However, when you get a union on
your job every day eight hours day, a good, well-trained union leader or shop
stewards have plenty of time to get to that 20th or 30th conversation you need
to win a guy. Furthermore, you have a common bond which you guys can unite behind
- fighting economic injustice in your workplace.

As a union organizer in West Virginia, I remember some of our most active members
showing up with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers on their pickups. A lot of them
would complain against liberals ruining society and then in the next breath
argue passionately for a strike. Over time through constant dialogue and popular
education, our union was able to win these members over to the liberal side.
They realized that voting based on slick TV personalities made up to appear
folksy was merely putting folks out of jobs.

Sure, not all of them came over, but enough that it was worth the effort. If
we can just bring over one-third of white, working class conservatives, we can
dramatically change the political landscape of this country. That's what the
Employee Free Choice Act would be able to do.

Many liberal political operatives in DC dismiss the Employee Free Choice Act
as merely political payback to the unions for their help in the election. They
fail to see the larger political implications - increased unionization would
dramatically change the political dynamics of this country and prevent 30,000
workers from getting fired from their jobs every year for trying to join a union.

Many lament the loss of marriage equality last week in Maine. There have been
a thousand analyses of why we lost this important fight for a fundamental civil
right. However, what none of them pointed out is that if we had increased unionization,
the fight for marriage equality would be dramatically easier.

Its no coincidence that ranks of the Christian Coalition began to swell as
the ranks of unions declined dramatically in the 1980's. Unions are organizations
that bring people from different parts of society and unite them in a common
cause. Union members know that their true enemy is Wall Street and not a couple
of people trying to get married.

We as progressives can win only when we get all the teabaggers into our movement
through getting them into unions. As Lincoln said, "United We Stand, Divided
We Fall." Only organized labor can achieve that type of unity. Failure
to bring working people into the Employee Free Choice Act could easily lead
to the election of a Sarah Palin.

Sure, liberals laugh off the idea of Sarah Palin being elected president. However,
elitist, out-of-touch liberals laughed off Nixon, Reagan and Bush as unelectable.
Well, guess what, they all won.

If we don't stop laughing at white, working class people, we are going to lose
too.

Joseph A. Palermo: The "Goldilocks Principle" and Afghan War Options

2009-11-09T10:01:27Z

A piece in yesterday's New York Times by Peter Baker and Helene Cooper reported that all of the U.S. military options for Afghanistan that President Barack Obama is currently contemplating include some kind of troop escalation. "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appears to be supportive of the middle option," they write. This search for a military option that nestles agreeably between too much force and too little has a familiar ring to it.

During the debates among President Lyndon Johnson's top advisers about whether to escalate the U.S. military commitment in Vietnam, Undersecretary of State George Ball famously invoked the Goldilocks principle: One military option would be too hard, one too soft, and one just right, yet all of them increased the United States role in the war. The Goldilocks principle seems to have infected the current discussions now going on between Obama and his advisers regarding Afghanistan.

Option A: Give General Stanley McChrystal everything he wants including 40,000 to 80,000 more ground troops -- Too Hard.
Option B: Listen to William Polk and other experts and begin extricating U.S. forces to end what most Afghans view as a foreign occupation -- Too Soft.
Option C: Pour in 25,000 to 30,000 more U.S. troops while emphasizing "political" and "economic" development, "anti-corruption" measures, and the possibility of negotiations -- Just Right.

George Ball later reflected on this period when escalating U.S. military power in Vietnam seemed like a good idea:

"I have always marveled at the way ingenious men can, when they wish, turn logic upside down, and I was not surprised when my colleagues interpreted the crumbling of the South Vietnamese government, the Viet Cong's increasing success, and a series of defeats of South Vietnamese units not as proving that we should cut our losses and get out, but rather that we must promptly begin bombing to stiffen the resolve of the corrupt South Vietnamese government. It was classic bureaucratic casuistry. A faulty rationalization was improvised to obscure the painful reality that America could arrest the galloping deterioration of its position only by the surgery of extrication." (Quoted in George McT. Kahin, Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam, 1986, p. 275)

Maybe the Iraq debacle has dulled our senses but there should be something stunning about a general at this late date requesting 40,000 to 80,000 more American soldiers to be sent to Afghanistan. General McChrystal's recommendation for more troops and material has a distinctly Westmorelandian flavor to it. If approved, it could create an additional $40 to$80 billion per annum in war costs relating to the American effort in Afghanistan. The Congress has not only bequeathed to the Executive Branch its war powers but has apparently handed over its purse powers as well. If President Obama approves McChrystal's maximal request, as John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman, and other war hawks demand, it will be an enormous drain of resources in a time of great economic hardship. And it will be rammed through without any significant public debate even though polls show the American people soured on the Afghanistan project long ago.

Any argument that states that American military "success" in Afghanistan is dependent upon some type of action taken by the "Afghan government," such as "weeding out corruption" or "taking responsibility for its own internal security," etc. should not be taken seriously.

What we call "corruption" they understand as normal operating procedures. Training an Afghan security force to serve as a proxy for American and NATO troops, like Nixon's "Vietnamization," is not only expensive and time-consuming but it is destined to fail because among the recruits will be people who are opposed to the foreign military presence. They'll work hand in glove with "the enemy." It's already happening. According to Juan Cole the Pashtun majority in Afghanistan is already put off by the Tajik minority's strong presence inside the security forces.

Last month, Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Rand corporation that recruiting security personnel from the ethnic regions to police their own people is desirable but he didn't say whether this arming of various ethnic groups could produce clashes between them. William Polk, in his "open letter" to President Obama, compared Afghanistan to "a rocky hill sliced by gullies and covered by 20,000 Ping-Pong balls" each representing an "autonomous village-state," and urged him not to escalate the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. A recent forum in The Nation magazine presented pragmatic ideas about where U.S. policy should go if we wish to avoid getting bogged down in a debilitating conflict that could last for decades. Among the panelists Robert Dreyfuss advised Obama to enlist the diplomatic help of "Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to bring key elements of the three interlinked insurgency movements -- the Taliban, the Hezb-i-Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani network -- to the bargaining table."

(In the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's group received more CIA cash than any other mujahideen outfit fighting against the Soviet occupation. Today, his paramilitary guerrillas are killing Americans. If we could arm him then we can negotiate with him now.)

Along side the "options" calling for varying degrees of military escalation there must be at least one that calls for withdrawal. The public and the Congress must become more actively involved in the Afghanistan debate and demand that the Obama administration formulate an exit strategy that can be implemented quickly after the current "surge" inevitably fails. The Vietnam years demonstrated that Goldilocks options will go on for as long as the public tolerates them. At some point we must demand that Congress use its power over the purse to apply the breaks to this runaway train.

Russ Baker: What Obama Is Up Against

2009-11-04T13:45:57Z

The first anniversary of Barack Obama's historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government?

We Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new president takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next command. Like an orchestra conductor or perhaps a football coach, he can inspire or bludgeon and get what he wants. But that's not how things work at the top, especially where "national security" is concerned. The Pentagon and CIA are powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. They are full of lifers, who see an elected president largely as an annoyance, and have ways of dealing with those who won't come to heel.

Compound that with the Bush-Cheney administration's aggressive seeding of its staunch loyalists throughout the bureaucracy, and you have a pretty tough situation. Obama, then, has to contend not only with the big donors and corporate lobbies. His biggest problem resides right inside his "team."

The internal battles between American presidents and their national security establishments are not much reported. But if it is an invisible game, it is also a devious and even deadly one. Our civilian leaders end up mirroring the chronically nervous chiefs of state of the fragile democracies to our south.

Those who do not kowtow to the spies and generals have had a bumpy ride. FDR and Truman both faced insubordination. Dwight Eisenhower, who had served as chief of staff of the US Army, left the White House warning darkly about the "military industrial complex." (He of all presidents had reasons to know.) John Kennedy was repeatedly countermanded and double-crossed by his own supposed subordinates. The Joint Chiefs baited him; Allen Dulles despised him (more so after JFK fired him over the Bay of Pigs fiasco), and Henry Cabot Lodge, his ambassador to South Vietnam, deliberately undermined Kennedy's agenda. Kennedy called the trigger-happy generals "mad" and spoke angrily to aides of "scattering the CIA to the wind." The evidence is growing that he suffered the consequences.

In the 1950s, the late Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, a high-ranking Pentagon official, was assigned by CIA Director Allen Dulles to help place Dulles's officers under military cover throughout the federal government. As a result, Dulles not only knew what was happening before the president did, but had essentially infiltrated every corner of the president's domain. One Nixon-era Republican Party official told me that in the early 1970s, there were intelligence officers everywhere, including the White House. Nixon was unaware of the true background of many of his trusted aides, particularly those who helped drive him from office. Remember Alexander Butterfield, the so-called "military liaison," who told Congress about the White House taping system? Years later, Butterfield admitted to CIA connections.

In December 1971, Nixon learned of a military spy ring, the so-called Moorer-Radford operation, that was piping White House documents back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chiefs were wary of secret negotiations the president and Henry Kissinger were conducting with America's enemies, including North Vietnam, China and the USSR, and decided to keep tabs on this intrusion upon their domain. Jimmy Carter came into office as revelations of CIA abuses made headlines. He tried to dismantle the agency's dirty tricks office, but wound up instead a victim of it -- and a one-term president.

Those who avoided problems -- Johnson, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Jr. -- were chief executives that made no problems for the Pentagon and intelligence chiefs. All embraced military and covert operations, expanded wars or launched their own. The agile Bill Clinton was a special case -- no babe in the woods, he focused on domestic gains and pretty much steered clear of the hornets' nest.

As for the Bushes, their ascension represented a seizure of power by the national security state itself. Their family had profited from arms manufacturing for decades. The patriarch, Prescott Bush, monitored US assassination plots against foreign leaders as a senator; and records indicate that the elder George Bush had been a secret agency operative for decades before he became CIA director -- and then, 12 years later, president.

Obama seems to understand his narrow range of movement, and to be carefully picking his fights. He retained many of Bush's top military brass, and even Bush's Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who himself had served as a CIA director for Bush's father. He has trod very carefully with the spy agency and has declined to aggressively investigate Bush administration wrongdoing on torture and wiretapping. Obama's campaign rhetoric about disengaging from Iraq seems a long time ago, and the war in Afghanistan is taking on the hues of permanency.

The old boys' network is very much in place, and it is hard at work to force Obama's hand, a la Vietnam. Witness the leaking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's supposedly "confidential report" calling for escalation in Afghanistan. The leak was, not surprisingly, to the reliable Bob Woodward. The reporter was himself in Naval Intelligence shortly before he went to work at the Washington Post, where he soon built a career around leaks from the military and spy establishment. The White House was furious at the McChrystal release. But what could it do? Presidents come and go, and the security folks have ways to hasten the latter.

Covert alliances and payments to corrupt foreign allies continue, making creative diplomacy more difficult. In late October came a front-page story that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, suspected of being a major figure in that country's opium trade, has been on the CIA's payroll for eight years. Anyone who finds this shocking should go back and read about the CIA and the drug trade in Southeast Asia.

Throughout its six-decade history, the CIA has resisted accountability, with even some of its own nonspook directors kept in the dark about the agency's most troubling activities. As for the public's elected representatives, Nancy Pelosi is the most recent in a long line of legislators to accuse the CIA of deliberately misleading Congressional overseers.

None of this is likely to change soon, and not without a huge fight. Half a century after Ike's famous admonition, conflict and intrigue remain the engine of our economy, and everyone from private equity firms to missile makers to car and truck manufacturers count on that to continue. The homeland security industry, the most recent head to grow on this hydra, is now seeking permanency.

So Barack Obama is boxed in. But so are the American people, and so, really, is democracy itself. Bringing this inconvenient truth out in the open is the essential first step toward taking back control of our government -- and our future. For all the reasons laid out here, Obama will need help. He may, in the rote formulation, hold "the most powerful office in the world." However, the extent to which he controls the government he heads, is another matter.

This originally appeared on Truthout

Russ Baker is an investigative journalist and founder of the nonprofit reporting web site whowhatwhy.com. His book, Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, now available in hardcover, will be published in paperback November 10. Gore Vidal calls it "one of the most important books of the past ten years."

Thomas Frank: Obama Is Right About Fox News

2009-10-28T13:11:27Z

Journalism has a special, hallowed place for stories of its practitioners' persecution. There is no higher claim to journalistic integrity than going to jail to protect a source. And the Newseum in Washington, D.C., establishes the profession's legitimacy with a memorial to fallen scribes, thus drawing an implicit connection between the murdered abolitionist editors of long ago and the struggling outfit that gave you this morning's page-one story about cute pets in Halloween costumes.

But no journalistic operation is better prepared to sing the tragedy of its own martyrdom than Fox News. To all the usual journalistic instincts it adds its grand narrative of Middle America's disrespectful treatment by the liberal elite. Persecution fantasy is Fox News's lifeblood; give it the faintest whiff of the real thing and look out for a gale-force hissy fit.

As the Obama administration has discovered by now. A few weeks ago, after Fox had scored a number of points against administration figures and policies, administration spokesmen decided it was time to start fighting back. Communications Director Anita Dunn called the network "a wing of the Republican Party," while Obama himself reportedly dismissed it for following "a talk radio format."

The network's moaners swung instantly into self-pitying action, likening the administration's combative attitude to Richard Nixon's famous "enemies list."

They should remember that it wasn't just the keeping of a list that made Nixon's hostility to the media remarkable. Nearly every president--and probably just about every politician--has criticized the press at some point or other. What made the Nixon administration stand out is that it also sued the New York Times to keep that paper from publishing the Pentagon Papers. It schemed to ruin the Washington Post financially by challenging the broadcast licenses for the TV stations it owned. It bugged the office of Joseph Kraft, a prominent newspaper columnist. One of its most notorious henchmen was G. Gordon Liddy, who tells us in his autobiography that under certain conditions he was "willing to obey an order to kill [columnist] Jack Anderson."

It is interesting to note that Mr. Liddy, that friend of the First Amendment, appeared frequently in 2006 on none other than the Fox News network. In fact, the network sometimes seems like a grand electronic homage to the Nixonian spirit: Its constant attacks on the "elite media," for example, might well have been inspired by the famous pronouncements on TV news's liberal bias made by Mr. Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew.

And, of course, the network's chairman, Roger Ailes, was an adviser to Mr. Nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign; his signature innovation back then was TV commercials in which Mr. Nixon answered questions from hand-picked citizens in a town-hall style setting.

Although they cry persecution today, the network and its leading lights have not really distinguished themselves on the issues surrounding clashes between the government and the press. When Mr. Ailes was on the other side of the politician/press divide, making ads for the presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush, the Washington Post once found out in advance where one of the commercials was going to be filmed. According to an article that appeared in that paper in 1988, Mr. Ailes was moved to comment thusly on the situation: "'These leakers!' he told an inquiring reporter the night before the planned event. 'I think they should all be executed and tortured.'"

Mr. Ailes was joking on that occasion. But faced with one of the biggest First Amendment cases of our own time--the New York Times's 2005 story on the George W. Bush administration's domestic wiretapping program--how did Fox News react? By impugning the motives of the Times, of course, with different Fox personalities speculating that the Times deliberately published the story when it did in order to dissuade the U. S. Senate from reauthorizing the Patriot Act.

To point out that this network is different, that it is intensely politicized, that it inhabits an alternate reality defined by an imaginary conflict between noble heartland patriots and devious liberals--to be aware of these things is not the act of a scheming dictatorial personality. It is the obvious conclusion drawn by anybody with eyes and ears.

Still, one wishes that the Obama administration had taken on Fox News with a little more skill. As cultural criticism goes, this was clumsy, plodding stuff. What the situation required was sarcasm, irony, a little humor. Simply feeding Fox a slice of raw denunciation was like dumping gasoline into a fire. It did nothing but furnish the network with a real-world validation of its long-running conspiracy theories--and a nice bump in its ratings.

Read other OpinionJournal articles:
Holman Jenkins: Washington's Suicide Mission
Scott Gottlieb: Why You Can't Get the Swine Flu Vaccine

Chris Weigant: Friday Talking Points [99] -- Misdirection

2009-10-23T21:10:44Z

When a stage magician makes a flourish, causing a puff of smoke and a flash of light to appear, there's a reason for it. It is called "misdirection." It is meant to dazzle the audience with a shiny object, so that they don't notice what is going on elsewhere on the stage, or perhaps even in the magician's other hand. It is an effective technique, so effective that it is the basis for most stage magic tricks. And there's a huge story that's sucking up a lot of oxygen from the inside-the-Beltway media scene right now that seems to be tailor-made misdirection which has been tossed into the media shark tank in order to stir up a feeding frenzy.

I speak, of course, of whether NBC's Chuck Todd will (or will not) shave off his goatee.

No, of course, I'm kidding. The real head-scratcher for serious media-watchers right now is what the "war" between the White House and Fox News was meant to distract us from this week. The "war" itself is laughable, for a number of reasons. The first is that all presidents do this to one extent or another. Press access is not a constitutional right or anything, meaning that the White House is free to invite anyone it wants into the press room, and exclude anyone it wants. Secondly, it's not "unprecedented" in any way, shape, or form. White Houses criticize the press all the time, and sometimes kick them off official planes, or completely deny them access in retaliation for stories they've run. It happens all the time, from both Republican and Democratic presidents. Anyone who thinks differently just doesn't have all that good a memory.

But the final reason why the whole thing is so ludicrous is calling Obama's White House "Nixonian" in its dealings with Fox News. This is laugh-out-loud funny, because Roger Ailes, the man who runs Fox News was Richard Nixon's media advisor during his first successful campaign for the White House, in 1968. So you've got the man who designed Nixon's press policies now being held up as the victim of (as conservative critics say) the same exact press policies being used against him. The irony's so thick the only way to escape it is with a big old belly laugh.

BWAH Hah hah hah!

There, feel better? It almost makes you nostalgic for the time (not so long ago) when Republicans used to sneer at liberals for "playing the victim." This constant sneering at such "victim card" tactics was actually so successful that the Left has mostly abandoned the tactic at this point. But the Republicans, being out of power, seem bent on resurrecting it in many ways. And, true to form, they have hit upon a new version of their tried-and-true tactic of accusing their opposition of doing what they do on a regular basis. Ailes and Lee Atwater were the authors of so many dirty-tricks campaigns for Republicans, it's hard to count them all up.

But even I'm getting distracted by this non-story. Which brings me back to the real point I'm trying to make here -- why did the White House choose this moment to pick a fight with Fox News? This wasn't a slip of the tongue by one person up there, it seems more like a concerted effort. So what are they trying to distract the media's attention from this particular week? Or, more ominously, why is the White House throwing such political red meat to their base at this particular time? Is it to distract progressives from something the White House is doing behind its back?

My guess (which could ultimately prove to be wrong, of course) is that this whole fake (but shiny... oh, so shiny!) distraction was waved in front of the media in order to give some elbow room to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as they are doing the toughest work yet on healthcare reform legislation. That has been the real story of the week, even though it is mostly dueling rumors and leaks (so far). Obama showed a masterful ability to distract Republicans earlier this year, by pushing so many issues simultaneously that the Republicans couldn't react to all of them with sufficiently indignant rage, because there were just too many things for them to focus on. Rage diluted is rage denied, in other words.

You could even call it a variation on Ailes' "orchestra pit theory." In Roger Ailes' own words:

If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, "I have a solution to the Middle East problem," and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?

Providing a center-ring tiger fight for everyone in the Washington media circus to focus on has taken the spotlight off the closed-door negotiations which will ultimately decide what the healthcare reform bills from the House and Senate will look like. This is serious, serious horse-trading, and the last thing Pelosi and Reid need right now is screaming Republicans with nothing better to talk about. Hence, the Fox News tempest in a teapot was served up instead.

As I said, I could be wrong about that, but it seems like the most logical answer at this point. We'll see... we'll see. Maybe it's all just Ailes contemplating a run for president, who knows?

For those following healthcare reform news closely, it has been a week of wading through rumors. I picked my favorite rumor and ran with it in yesterday's article, just because it seemed like a fun thing to do, so I'm no better than the rest.

The week has consisted of Pelosi and Reid actually cranking the handle on the congressional sausage grinder. They've been busy nailing down exactly what will appear in the bills they send to the floor of both the House and Senate for debate. There is no hard schedule as to when this will happen, but (it is rumored) next week may see a bill in the House. Or one in the Senate. Or both. Or neither.

Kidding aside, the process does appear to be moving forward. There are so many rumors at this point it's almost impossible to keep track of them, but if you're interested in catching up on a few, here's a story about House rumors and about Senate rumors for you to peruse.

The way things stand (it is rumored) is that Nancy Pelosi is very, very close to having enough House Democrats to pass what is being called a "robust" public option in the House. She may fall short of the 218 votes needed, or she may be able to corral them. The problem, for House Blue Dogs, is that the most "robust" public option saves more money than the more watered-down public options. So they don't have the convenient excuse of "fiscal responsibility," since the fiscally responsible thing to do is, obviously, to back the lowest-cost plan: the most-robust public option. There is also (it is rumored) a struggle going on over abortion among House Democrats, as well, to complicate things.

But even if Pelosi doesn't get the most robust public option, her "fallback" position is still a much stronger public option than the Senate is likely to produce. Meaning she is doing her job well -- using the House bill to stake out a bargaining position that is as progressive as possible, so she'll have a strong hand to play in the inevitable conference committee between the two houses (which will write the final text of healthcare reform legislation).

Harry Reid is also moving leftward (it is rumored) from the position Max Baucus staked out. This column is pleased to say that (it is rumored) Reid appears to have settled on Chuck Schumer's compromise idea of the "opt out" plan -- because this column came out for the idea almost immediately when Schumer brought it up two weeks ago. It really does seem, to us, like a brilliant political solution to an almost intractable squaring off between the two camps. Have a nationwide public option, but allow states to opt out if they want. Not only does this allow Democrats from both camps to claim "victory" for their position, it also punts the political decision back to the state level, and throws an enormous gauntlet down to Republicans everywhere -- "Put up or shut up. Don't like the public option? Opt out. See what your voters think about that."

Schumer's opt out plan isn't perfect, but what is in politics? It seems like the best way to get the strongest possible public option actually passed and put on President Obama's desk, and (it is rumored) it seems like Harry Reid is now pushing it as his most-favored option. This is because it appears to be acceptable to (it is rumored) all but two Senate Democrats at this point -- a higher vote count than I've heard for anything else proposed.

The problem may be (it is rumored) with the Obama White House. Depending on which rumor you believe, this is due to Rahm Emanuel pushing for Olympia Snowe's "trigger" option (he has publicly stated previously what a wonderful plan he thought the trigger was, so this is pretty believable); or it could be President Obama himself pushing for Snowe's trigger, and using his chief of staff to convey his position (also fairly believable). But the trigger doesn't seem to have many Democratic fans on Capitol Hill, so the trigger idea may get put on the back burner, at least until the all-important conference committee.

Like I said, it's all tea-leaf-reading and which particular rumor you give credit to, at this point. But enough rumor-mongering, let's get on to the awards!

I'm not sure they're all Democrats, so I can't honestly give them this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award, but the musicians who have joined the "Close Gitmo Now" effort certainly deserve an Honorable Mention for their efforts. This group includes: Tom Morello, Billy Bragg, Michelle Branch, Jackson Browne, T-Bone Burnett, David Byrne, Rosanne Cash, Marc Cohn, Steve Earle, the Entrance Band, Joe Henry, Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt, R.E.M., Trent Reznor, Rise Against, and The Roots.

Tom Morello, from the band Rage Against The Machine, after learning that his music was used at Guantanamo Bay in such a fashion, had this to say:

Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured -- from water boarding, to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts -- playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums. Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney's idea of America, but it's not mine. The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me -- we need to end torture and close Guantanamo now.

You can read the whole story, including statements from other musicians, on the CloseGitmoNow website.

But the real winner of the MIDOTW award this week was the 300,000-plus people who called up Congress to urge them to pass strong healthcare reform. This effort was driven by Barack Obama's old campaign organization, which has now been rebranded as Organizing For America.

They set a target of 100,000 calls to Congress in a single day, and they shattered this goal by a factor of three. So while the real MIDOTW award goes to the people who called in, we simply don't have the funds to strike up 300,000 statuettes, so we're sending the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award to the organizers instead.

Getting 100,000 people to call Congress is impressive. Getting over a quarter million is astounding. Of course, just because the one-day drive is over, this doesn't mean that you can't still pick up the phone and call your representatives as well, just to remind everyone. Grassroots pressure works.

[Congratulate Organizing For America on their web page to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]

The Obama White House, in a move sure to arouse some controversy (ahem) earned a (Dis-)Honorable Mention this week, for picking a fight with Fox News. Washington protocol in such situations is to ignore such detractors instead of giving them the limelight. Doing so, we are sorry to say, makes the White House look petty.

There's a reason for the old saying: "Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton." [Note: I couldn't find a believable source for who actually originated this quote, sorry. Please post one as a comment, if you've got one.] Whoever said it first, the idea is simple -- picking fights with the media does nothing, in the end, but diminish you and sell more papers for your opponent.

Unless, of course, this is a grand scheme to misdirect everyone, as I discussed earlier. If true, the effectiveness of such a tactic won't be able to be judged for a while to come. Which is why the White House didn't sink to the level of earning the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

But until the key question is answered -- is Fox News "playing" the White House, or "getting played" by the White House? -- I have to say that the Obama team is running a risk of having this tactic blow up in their face. Which is disappointing. Maybe -- we'll see... we'll see.

But the real winner of the MDDOTW is also not going to win us any friends among hardcore Democrats, because Representative Alan Grayson has become such a darling of the Left. We certainly applauded Grayson when he used strong language against Republicans on healthcare, but Grayson apparently has problems knowing where "the line" is in acceptable political debate. This week, on MSNBC, Grayson joined in the Fox fracas by saying (Huffington Post has the video): "Fox News and their Republican collaborators are the enemy of America."

Now, his other comments, such as the fact that Republicans are the enemy of anyone who wants "anything good for this country," or that 99 percent of Americans "have the good sense to ignore" Fox News should all be seen as fine and good.

But it wasn't that long ago that such language was being used by Republicans to question the patriotism of Democrats on a wide range of issues (supporting George Bush on Iraq, for instance). Remember? The Left howled with indignation over such scurrilous remarks, and rightly so. There are "lines" you are not supposed to cross in acceptable political discourse, and calling into question your opponents' patriotism is supposed to be one of them. But this must apply equally to all, or else it is nothing but hypocrisy for Democrats to complain when such language is used against them.

So calling a cable television news channel and your opposing party "the enemy of America" is no better, Representative Grayson, than Republicans saying Democrats "hate America" for not wearing the silly flag pins. We'd do well to remember this.

Which was why Grayson's remarks were so disappointing. So, while the decision will no doubt be unpopular among Democrats, we simply must award the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to Alan Grayson.

[Contact Representative Alan Grayson at (202) 225-2176 (his House contact page seems to be for constituents only), to let him know what you think of his actions.]

Volume 99 (10/23/09)

A story was floated this week that it would be a good idea to "rebrand" the Democrats' public plan option as "Medicare for everyone" or "Medicare for all." Thankfully, it sank quickly, and made barely a ripple on the media's pool of consciousness.

I say thankfully, because although the merits of the attempt at framing are pretty good on the face of it (this idea, incidentally, has been being kicked around the blogosphere for months now), it is simply too late in the game for such rebranding. This may have worked wonders back in March or April, when the subject was first being discussed, and the "public option" language was first being widely used. If Democrats had unanimously started talking about "Medicare for all" it may indeed have done wonders for the whole concept, and built some strong public support.

But at this stage, it's not going to work. I hate to say it, because the idea itself does have some merit. But timing is important, too, and I just think it's too close to the finish line to change your team's uniform (how's that for a mixed-up metaphor?).

Of course, others may disagree, and I fully admit it's a worthy subject for debate, but I'd rather put forth some other framing here instead. So without further ado, here is this week's list of talking points, for Democrats everywhere (but especially those interviewed on the news this weekend) to consider using.

The hypocrisy of Medicare Republicans Against Medicare

Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner of New York put out a great press release this week, which pointed out the fact that 55 Republicans "currently receive government-funded; government-administered single-payer health care -- Medicare."

This tactic also would have been a lot more welcome a few months back, but it still has power in the whole debate, I feel, so it's worth pointing out here in the hopes that it can still do some good. In Weiner's own words:

"Even in a town known for hypocrisy, this list of 55 Members of Congress deserve some sort of prize. They apparently think the public option is OK for them, but not anyone else."

Republicans just voted against supporting the troops

While this is dangerously similar to what we just awarded Grayson a MDDOTW award for, it's been used so often by Republicans that it might also do some good. A large number of Senate Republicans just voted against this year's Pentagon budget, because they didn't like the expansion of hate crimes which was stuck to it at the last minute. Put in the position of either voting for the Pentagon (but seeming to support gay rights) and voting against gay rights (but voting against the Pentagon), many Republicans chose the latter. Because this is such perennial fodder in election campaigns as a bludgeon against Democrats, we think that this one skates up to the line of acceptable political rhetoric without crossing over it.

So, even though we still have a few reservations about the tactic in general, here is what Harry Reid had to say after the vote:

"I'm disappointed that Senate Republicans have decided that defeating hate crimes legislation takes precedent over supporting our troops. It is outrageous and unacceptable that Senate Republicans would vote against pay raises for our troops, battlefield equipment upgrades and increased funding for veterans' health care as we continue to fight two wars. And they decided to do this all for the sake of stopping passage of landmark legislation that will bring justice to those who commit violent crimes based on bigotry and prejudice. What message does that send to our country and, more importantly, to our troops?"

It's not a "war," folks

This one is just a personal pet peeve of mine. I do not like using "war" terminology for political debates (or for sports announcing, for that matter). I know -- it is so easy to do so, because literally everything in politics is presented these days in such "us against them" terminology by the mainstream media. Meaning that, at times, I'm just as guilty of this as others. But I do try to keep it to a minimum, and in this particular case it just seems way overblown.

"You know, I find it interesting that everyone is talking about Fox News and the White House being 'at war' with each other, or 'going to war' with each other, when nothing could be further from the truth. Fox News, and all other media outlets, would do well to remember the fact that America is currently fighting two very real wars right now. We have hundreds of thousands of troops in harm's way even as we speak. I think it does a grave disservice to members of our military in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else in the world when we are in two wars, to call a minor dispute between a news organization and the president a 'war.' Has anyone died in this Fox/White House 'war'? No? Then please, let's stop using such language in respect for our troops who are bravely facing death each and every day."

Trust-busting Democrats

This seems like the story everyone swept under the rug this week, but it could have an enormous effect on our entire healthcare system, no matter what the final bill looks like.

"Little attention has been paid this week to the Democrats' efforts in Congress to repeal a loophole in monopoly law which exempts health insurers. Repealing this loophole will allow the monopoly laws to be enforced against the industry for the first time since World War II. This seems like a very important piece of what Democrats are going to accomplish, but it hasn't gotten much attention. So I'd just like to applaud the trust-busting that Democrats are currently attempting in Congress."

Cut Wall Street pay!

The announcement that the companies which taxpayers bailed out will have some limits on what they can pay their top executives really needs some attention as well. While the rules announced don't go nearly as far as legislation which died earlier this year would have, the rules are also a lot better than what many were expecting. So it should be seen as at least half a loaf. And since this idea is so wildly popular with the public, Democrats need to beat their own drum on it a little.

"I don't know how any executive at any company which, quite simply, would not exist today if it weren't for taxpayer money propping them up can complain about the limits to pay recently announced by the Obama administration. Quite simply, if you wreck your company, and by doing so, risk wrecking the entire American economy -- you do not deserve a bonus. It's that simple, really. Most Americans would agree with that sentiment, as well, I think."

The victim card

See, I set out to ignore the whole Fox fracas, and yet I keep coming back to it again and again. Those "shiny, shiny" news stories are really too irresistible at times, I guess. Last word on the subject this week, I promise.

"You know, I find it highly amusing that Republicans -- from Rush Limbaugh to Sarah Palin to Fox News -- seem to be rediscovering a political tactic which has been all but discarded by the Democrats, mostly because it proved to be so ineffective and generated so much backlash from those in the political center. I speak, of course, of 'playing the victim card.' Republicans used to sneer and denigrate Democrats for always whining about being a victim, for this reason or that. Now, it appears, it's about the only tool left in their political toolbox, other than saying 'no' to everything under the sun, of course. So, to Republican 'victims' everywhere, I have one thing to say -- politics ain't beanbag. Grow up, and stop crying in your beer."

GOP's record: 1000 hours wasted so far!

This one comes from the creative shop over at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (the Democrats who are charged with electing more Democrats to the Senate next year). They put out a new web ad which is highly amusing. It parodies the "Mac v. PC" ads Apple has been running, with the stiff-necked Republican as someone who "just kind of wants to see [Democrats] fail," and goes on to say that Republicans have wasted "1,000 hours" in the Senate so far. This reinforces the whole "Party of No" image the Republicans have embraced, and is very effective in doing so.

From the ad, and a good way to wrap up a week of misdirection:

"Ideas are hard, blocking them is easy, especially in the Senate ... We won't get caught as long as [Americans are] confused by all the noise and misinformation we throw out there."

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com

Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground

Murray Fromson: Remembering Jack Nelson

2009-10-22T16:42:52Z

Ironically, Jack Nelson died in the week that a documentary depicting the history of the Los Angeles Times began making the rounds in theaters across the country. The film is about the Chandler family and how one newspaper had an impact on greater Los Angeles. It also is the story of how one Chandler named Otis was determined to make the Times one of the best newspapers in the country. The nation was caught up by the civil rights movement, but the Times had virtually ignored the story until Nelson was hired to run the southern bureau in Atlanta and increase its coverage dramatically.

On March 7, 1965, Jack and I met for the first time, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, Alabama, he reporting for the Times and I for CBS News.

State troopers on horseback, camouflaged with gas masks and armed with clubs and tear gas were determined to halt civil rights marchers from walking from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery some 50 miles away. Nelson and I were shoulder to shoulder, watching the cops beat down, almost kill, civil rights workers like John Lewis, who later would become and still is one of the most distinguished members of the U.S. Congress. After the dramatic march was attempted again a few weeks later, this time with the protection of National Guardsmen activated by President Johnson, we reached Montgomery safely. Shortly thereafter I learned of the Ku Klux Klan's murder of a volunteer worker from Detroit named Viola Liuzzo. I doubled back down the highway to find her bullet-ridden car. Her body had been removed before a number of reporters, including Nelson and I could catch up to the story. At the Selma City Hall, we waited for a statement by the FBI and the Selma sheriff, a redneck named Jimmy Clark. We found his explanation of Liuzzo's slaying to be outrageous when he declared, "the niggahs did it." Clark's reaction was found to be even more offensive to reporters from the south, like Nelson.

We could not imagine then that what happened in Selma and on a lonely highway leading to it would set the stage for passage of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Soon after, Otis Chandler sensed the quality of Jack Nelson's reporting and had him transferred to Washington where he eventually was named to run the revitalized bureau of the Times. Its numbers were doubled along with its budget, and before long, quality journalists flocked to the Times' doorstep. Nelson's own investigative skills, his tenacity and determination to dig up the facts led to his discovery of major aspects of what would become known as the Watergate scandal.

Nelson and I did not see each other for several years when I returned to Southeast Asia, covering the Vietnam war and other stories in the region. In December 1968, I transferred back to the United States to cover the anti-war movement and the Conspiracy Trial in Chicago. It also was a time when the Nixon Administration pursued the press with a vengeance. It attacked journalists for their critical coverage of events that eventually would lead to the Watergate scandal, significantly reported by Nelson. Moreover, the Justice Department under Attorney General John Mitchell hinted that it would pursue steps which hitherto were unprecedented. It would require reporters to divulge their confidential sources, provide notes from their notebooks and outtakes of the film recorded by network cameramen and even testify in court.

As one of the CBS News correspondents based in Chicago, I found the Nixon Administration's actions to be outrageous and unconstitutional. I proposed to Anthony Lukas, the New York Times correspondent, also based in Chicago, that we organize reporters across the country to seek legal counsel and oppose any attempt to infringe on our First Amendment rights. We gathered 30 reporters, including Jack Nelson, to join us in the struggle. On numerous occasions, supported by pro bono lawyers, Jack and I met privately with judges across the country to defend individual reporters threatened with legal action by overzealous prosecutors and both federal, state and local officials.

With great respect and affection I always will remember Nelson was one of our strongest advocates in forming The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press based in Washington that will be in its 50th year next March. He was one of the great figures in the history of journalism. Most of all, I always will remember him as a friend.

Pat Buchanan's Disagrees With 'Obama Is The New Nixon' Comparisons

2009-10-22T16:31:31Z

Via ThinkProgress, here's video of Pat Buchanan reacting to the comparisons made by Senators Lamar Alexander and Judd Gregg between the Obama White House and the Nixon White House. Pat Buchanan, who was a close confidant of Nixon, scoffed at the idea, calling it "idiotic," because, duh, Nixon was a historically unlovable bastard-creature, who left trails of foul-smelling ichor all over the Oval Office, like a slug. And no one liked Nixon, except for the "Perotistas, and what you might call the tea-party folk" who loved him immensely. Irony!

That's sort of the short version, anyway, of Pat Buchanan. Here's the clip:

WATCH:

In other news: Do you remember when Judd Gregg almost became Obama's Commerce Secretary, for some reason? Why not pause, and reflect on that, for a moment. What a bizarre time in which to live!

RELATED:
Buchanan on GOP and Fox linking Obama to Nixon: 'It is the most idiotic comparison I've ever seen.' [ThinkProgress]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Ben Berkon: Obama Attempts Escape in Presidential Helium Balloon

2009-10-20T16:54:29Z

In White House news, upon hearing about the six-year old boy from Colorado who flew away in his parent's helium balloon, President Obama decided to escape the mounting pressures of being president by setting off in the Presidential helium balloon. Sources say that Obama departed the White House at 4 PM to "get some gum," but was then seen floating away in the large balloon.

"The man was getting a little overwhelmed," said White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs. "Between the economy, Afghanistan, and his recent Nobel Piece Prize, President Obama felt the burden of his job. Was it right to take off in a helium balloon - probably not. But we've sat the President down, and given him a lecture about 'when' and 'when not' to use the Presidential helium balloon."

The Presidential helium balloon has an interesting and diverse history. President Andrew Jackson, back in 1830, was the first president to use the helium balloon. He felt it was "the best way to oversee the removal of damn Indians from out great country." The balloon sat in storage until 1974, when Richard Nixon used it to flee America, bringing only Scotch, various important papers, and a shredder on board. Ronald Reagan last used the balloon in 1989; however, he thought that the balloon was an elevator to the roof of the White House. President Reagan was found hours later, 300 miles West of D.C., laughing wildly.

President Obama has vowed never to use the helium balloon again, and is back in the White House, trying to calmly fix the million contentious problems plaguing America. When confronted by reporters, former President George Bush claimed, "Geez, if I knew we a heliocentric whatever-a-thing, I would have fled the country right after I deployed that first soldier in Iraq."

(For more articles and segments of this kind, visit www.SomethingYouShouldRead.com.)

Joan E. Dowlin: The Vicious Cycle of Partisanship

2009-10-16T15:46:45Z

Some have said that the two party system is what makes us strong. They say it helps create a balance of power with one side keeping tabs on the other. I say it creates a never ending cycle of revenge. And that is a bad thing for our society.

It has been that way for as long as I can remember. When one party gains power in the Presidential election the other one starts attacking the U.S. leader right away even if they have no ammunition against him. They make it up. The first goal is to gain power back in the off year election and then try to force him (or in the possible future, her) to be a one term President.

If that doesn't work they try to force him out with some kind of scandal or impeachment (or both). The Democrats did that with the Watergate scandal which caused President Richard Nixon to resign in 1975. The Republicans never forgot that. They then painted President Carter as a weak leader (he helped them with that and also was a victim of a bad economy which he inherited from Nixon and Ford) and he lost re-election.

The Democrats tried to discredit President Ronald Reagan with hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal, but he was a popular leader who was dubbed "the Teflon man." Nothing stuck to him.

President George Bush the first was limited to one term by a bad economy even though he ran a successful war against Iraq (the First Gulf War). He was also tied to President Reagan's scandal as he was his VP.

Then along came the anomaly President Bill Clinton. The GOP jumped all over him from the beginning (mostly personal stuff) and in the process managed to regain both Houses of Congress in his second year of office in 1994.

Everyone assumed Clinton would be a one termer but he beat the odds by listening to the American people and working with Congress to enact a primarily conservative agenda: welfare reform, a lower crime rate with more police on the streets, reduced government spending, a balanced budget, and an actual surplus (how often has that happened?) You would think the GOP would be ecstatic to have so many of their goals accomplished. But what did he get from the Republicans for his efforts? Impeached. Seems they didn't want him to get the credit for their ideas. After all, he is a Democrat.

For years the GOP lawmakers went after President Clinton with investigations that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. White Water, Travelgate, Paula Jones, but nothing stuck until Monica Lewinski. Clinton's affair with a White House intern discredited him and his office and may have cost the Democrats and his VP Al Gore the 2000 Presidential election.

Which brings us to President George Bush the Second. The Democratic party was bullied for eight years by Bush who used the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks and two wars he started to retain power for his re-election in 2004. There may have been plenty of reasons for investigations in his second term: lying about weapons of mass destruction to justify the Iraq War, wire tapping American citizens, torturing prisoners in Gitmo, FEMA failing Hurricane Katrina victims, and a Justice Department scandal about firing personnel for political reasons. But the Dems were the minority party until 2006 and two years is too short to begin that process. Besides, they knew they would reap rewards in the next election with Bush's unpopularity.

Which brings us to the present administration, the first elected African American, President Barack Obama. He inherited an economic mess, two wars, and a battered American global image. He needs support from both sides of the aisle to try to clean all of this up and get us back on track. But does he get it?

What he gets are tea baggers protesting DC with chants of "socialist" and signs of him portrayed as Hitler, a conservative talk show host whom some have proclaimed as the ideological head of the GOP saying he hopes the President fails, and no co-operation from any Congressional Republicans for his recovery package and health care reform. It hasn't been a year yet and already we hear talk of a coup and threats of violence against him.

Partisan politics have gotten nastier than ever. The recent rejection by the Olympic Committee in Copenhagen, Denmark of President Obama's bid to have the 2016 Games come to Chicago, Illinois is an example of the vicious cycle of partisanship. Members of the GOP and tea party organizations are caught on tape cheering when they heard the news that the President's efforts had failed. Is this what we have become? American citizens rejoicing over failure to bring home an event that would have bolstered our country and economy?

This vicious cycle works both ways. The supposedly unbiased cable news channel CNN interrupted a discussion recently with Arianna Huffington on the War in Afghanistan to bring "Breaking News" about Rush Limbaugh losing his bid to become part owner of the St. Louis Rams football team. This is "Breaking News"? Who cares? I later watched Ed Schultz of MSNBC delight in Limbaugh's rejection. Can't we support our President without gloating at the opposition's misfortunes?

I witnessed a similar phenomenon during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Hurricane Gustav was headed towards New Orleans on the first day of the Republican National Convention causing them to have to cancel the opening events. Some Democrats including movie producer Michael Moore couldn't contain their glee, declaring "there is a God in Heaven."

This is despicable behavior. Is your need for revenge greater than your desire for safety of the American people? Since when is a deadly hurricane a cause for joy?

It is no wonder that the American public is fed up with both parties. We citizens get caught in the cross hairs. Millions are spent to gain or retain power only to have that power used for exacting revenge on the opposing party. What gets lost is climate change, health care reform, immigration reform, economic reform, regulation of greedy bankers and mortgage lenders, ending the wars and all of the issues that affect the American taxpayer who foots the bill for these witch hunts and investigations.

You may say, well, if someone, no matter how high up in the government, breaks the law they should be investigated and prosecuted. Fair enough. But too often these inquiries become fishing expeditions. Just ask former Governor Sarah Palin. The Democrats sent a bus load of lawyers to invade Alaska once she was picked as the Republican VP nominee in 2008. She later cited these constant, expensive litigations as a reason to resign this past year.

Right now our country is in crisis, domestically and globally. We are fighting a recession and two wars. Let's put aside the partisan nonsense for now. Remember how we all came together after 9/11 if only for a brief period of time? These problems we face are as potentially damaging as the terrorist attacks were. We need to work together to solve them. President Obama has called for civility both here and abroad. Let us answer his call. It is still true that "united we stand, divided we fall." And we have been divided as a nation for far too long.

Jonathan Kim: ReThink Interview: Daniel Ellsberg -- the Most Dangerous Man in America Speaks, Part Two

2009-10-14T17:10:51Z

Here is the second part of my interview with Daniel Ellsberg, the true American hero who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, which later led to Nixon's resignation and the end of the Vietnam War several months after that. Ellsberg is the subject of a new documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. You can see part one of my interview with him here.)

On Ellsberg's disappointment that so many Americans support torture, that so few in the media and the democratic party have opposed it more forcefully and logically, and why so many people have Machiavelli's most famous quote wrong.

On the dangers of intelligent men (like Obama) being overly influenced by those who Ellsberg calls "smart dumb people."

On why America seems to think it has the right to overthrow regimes, occupy countries, etc., and why it would help if the US were better at listening.

On advice for potential whistleblowers who have privileged information about the war in Afghanistan. As the patron saint of whistlblowers, this is a subject Ellsberg knows probably better than anyone. If you know anyone who works in government/military, I'd strongly suggest that you send this to them. Ellsberg is living proof that one man can truly change the course of history. When you consider the vast number of lives at stake in the Afghan war (or any other war) and how many soldiers are willing to put their lives on the line every day, it puts the possibility of sacrificing one's career in perspective.

After the interview, Ellsberg complimented me on my questions and the research I had done to prepare for the interview. He asked how old I was and was shocked to learn that I was much older than I looked (I get that a lot). "I guess I gave you too much credit," he said. Maybe I should start lying about my age like everyone else does in LA.

As I packed up my gear, I mentioned to Ellsberg that I had recently watched The Battle of Algiers for the first time (see my review here). A film enthusiast himself (The Most Dangerous Man in America mentions that Ellsberg had seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid over seven times), Ellsberg was very familiar with the film and the real-life events it was based on. He told me that the film underplays how the brutal torture of Algerian prisoners by the French made the task of winning their hearts and minds impossible and shared my surprise that the Pentagon thought the movie could provide any lessons other than that occupying foreign countries is exceedingly unwise.

After having a picture taken, Ellsberg and I parted ways. Still buzzing from the interview, I decided to go inside the art center to check out the exhibit. As I looked at the artwork, a man came up to me and asked if I had just interviewed Ellsberg. I told him I had, and he gave me a hearty congratulation on my achievement. He recounted his memories of being a young man during the Vietnam War and how much Ellsberg had meant to himself and his other friends who were against the war. We talked for a few minutes more, and it was amazing to feel how excited this stranger was for me that I had been able to talk to a living legend. "He was so brave. He really changed history. He did so much for this country," he told me.

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