Obama feels the heat, changes the play

AP – President Barack Obama greets Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong in the Oval Office of the White House …

Ben Smith

Finally, we’re starting to see him sweat.

President Barack Obama made his personal icy cool the trademark of his campaign, the tenor of his White House and the hallmark of an early run of successes at home and abroad. But as the glamour wears off and a long, frustrating summer wears on, he is being forced to improvise — stooping to respond to political foes and adjusting his tactics and demeanor for the trench warfare of a legislative agenda.

The root of the change is one that faces every president: Economic and international realities that resist political charm. Iran and North Korea have shown no interest in the president’s outstretched hand. The economy has delivered a double-whammy, with rising unemployment stirring voters’ concerns while sluggish growth deprives the government of tax revenues Obama would like to spend on new programs.
Health care reform, which once appeared flush with momentum from earlier congressional victories, is now on a slog through no less than five committees, which include Democrats who either aren’t sold on Obama’s expansive vision or can’t figure out how to convince voters to pay for it.

“This is when it gets harder,” the president told supporters June 30.

And so it has.

In turn, Obama has adjusted, deviating from the playbook on every front.

The cool president has turned hot on the stump, stripping to shirtsleeves to lambaste doubters in New Jersey Thursday. He departed from his prepared remarks last week to accept a Republican challenge to take personal ownership of the economy: “That’s fine. Give it to me,” he said.

Even Obama's scripted speeches are deliberately more forceful, aggressive and direct in taking on critics, aides say. Friday remarks at the White House had a trash-talk edge – count me out and you’ll be sorry.

Obama’s political operation has dispensed with its post-inauguration cocktails for Republicans – or more often, ignoring them outright — in favor of the old politics of engage, attack and cajole. Obama’s even engaging in a little Democrat-on-Democrat politics, as his ex-campaign arm is beaming TV ads into the home states of moderate fence-sitters on health care.

The tightly programmed White House also is champing at the bit, kicking off what officials say will be a relentless three-week push on health care, starting with the hastily scheduled Friday address. But its first event might have backfired a bit. Its main consequence was proving that the magnetism of Obama’s personal appearances has worn off, as it drew little media attention and a dismissive tweet from the key Senate Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa: “Waste of time.”

The sum has been a new sense of uncertainty and strain, and a growing murmur among Democrats in Washington nervous about the White House’s tactics, and a rising tide of concern in the states as local Democratic parties eye midterm elections that are traditionally a challenge for a new president.
“That honeymoon period is over, “ said Chris Redfern, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. “Now they’re having to push back, and push back hard.”

White House officials and allies brush off any notion that this new sense of unease is meaningful. The only true test, they say, will be results. Obama still might win major health care reform legislation this year that could be the most important new government program in decades. He has a fighting chance to pass regulations on greenhouse gases, in the form of a “cap and trade” mechanism, through the Senate. And Obama continues to press hard, if with no clear progress, for a breakthrough in the Middle East.

“It’s the third quarter, he’s down by a point, and he’s got his best player on the bench – what really is going to be important is the fall,” said James Carville, the veteran Democratic observer.

“If he gets what’s perceived to be some kind of a major health care thing, gets the climate bill through, if the economy recovers, then we’ll all say he had a hell of a summer. Conversely, if the thing falls apart, we’ll say that by July the 19th we could tell the thing was going bad.”

White House Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer dismissed the suggestion that Obama should be expected to succeed effortlessly – or that he’s on a path toward failure on any of these varied fronts.

“Obama and his team have been down this road dozens of times and been declared dead many times and always succeeded,” he said. “No one gets rich betting against Barack Obama.”

The most visible aspect of the White House’s new feistiness is an increasing willingness to engage Republican legislators whose criticisms Obama earlier had been happier to overlook. Relentless criticism of the stimulus package from a House Republican leader, Eric Cantor of Virginia, drew a furious barrage from the Democratic National Committee and a visit from no smaller figure than the Vice President of the United States. Rank and file Republicans who criticize the stimulus have also suddenly found themselves under a concerted DNC assault that asks if they’d prefer the federal funding left their districts out. And criticism from Sen Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) drew letters from no fewer than four Cabinet secretaries to his state’s governor, asking if she would prefer they withheld stimulus money.

That pushback has been urged, and welcomed, by state leaders like Redfern and Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer.

“The DNC has been and we were quickly able to rebut and demonstrate all the money that is being spent in their respective districts,” said Brewer of two GOP congressmen attacking the stimulus. “They’ve backed off.”

Still, many Democrats say the Republican attacks on spending are taking their toll.

"The rhetoric is so empty, but it is fairly consistent and I think it’s had an impact on those in middle," said Ohio's Redfern.

But when the White House pushback focused not on Republicans but Democrats on health-care – in the form of Organizing for America ads running in the home states of moderate senators -- some in the party called foul, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

The vote last month in the House on the American Clean Energy Security Act showed a willingness to get White House hands dirty in a different way.

Wrangling votes for the “cap and trade” legislation in the House, Obama backed off a campaign promise to auction off all “allowances” – permits to release a set amount of greenhouse gases. Instead of selling them to raise money for other environmental initiatives, the White House allowed congressional Democratic leaders to trade them for votes, assigning allowances to the refinery-heavy district of, for instance, Texas Rep. Gene Green in exchange for his support.

The battle over health care, the centerpiece of the President’s summer, has also hardened into a fairly conventional Washington fight, a new president’s sweeping agenda colliding with congressional caution. Obscure Washington figures like Congressional Budget Office chief Doug Elmendorf and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) have shown the ability to pose a real threat to the White House juggernaut. And some of the White House’s close allies have grown jittery about what they say is a strategy to spend the three weeks leading up to the Senate’s August recess – the insecure deadline for health care votes in both houses – with a series of events aimed at building public pressure on Congress.

“They’re great at campaigns, but legislative battles are different,” said a senior Democrat close to the White House. “It’s not about persuading 51 percent of the American people – it’s about seven senators.”

In another mark of Obama's constant adjustments, his latest remarks didn't mention the August deadline.

White House allies acknowledge the new strains, but say the hard work will pay off.

“A lot of the hard stuff he’s doing now will pay dividends,” said John Del Cecato, a former Obama campaign aide.

Meanwhile, admiration of Obama’s personal qualities has been tempered, even among sympathetic observers, with anxiety for where his agenda will stand at summer’s end.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart noted recently that Obama told a Pakistani interviewer that he is an accomplished chef of Pakistani cuisines and reads the great Urdu poets.

“Mr. President,” Stewart said, “while I am impressed with your Renaissance Man-level of knowledge in a plethora of subjects, may I humbly say: That’s great. Just fix the economy!”

Original here

Hope Fading For Political Reform In Illinois

by David Schaper

Enlarge

Seth Perlman

Ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. AP

All Things Considered, July 18, 2009 · This was supposed to be the year for political reform in Illinois. But six months after Pat Quinn took over for ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich, some political reform advocates aren't satisfied with the results.

"We're gonna start to fumigate state government from top to bottom to make sure it has no corruption," Quinn said in January. He made the statement on his first full day after replacing fellow Democrat Blagojevich, who was impeached following his arrest on corruption charges. State lawmakers in both parties joined Quinn in vowing to clean up Illinois' notoriously dirty politics.

Patrick Collins knows a thing or two about corruption in Illinois. He was the lead federal prosecutor of George Ryan, the former Republican governor now serving a six-year prison term. He has prosecuted corrupt Chicago aldermen, city, state and county workers, as well as government contractors.

Collins says every case has one thing in common. "Each major public corruption investigation I was involved in had, at its core, a campaign finance problem."

So when Collins, now in private practice, was appointed by Quinn to lead a commission to suggest reforms for Illinois' wayward politics, he and other commissioners zeroed in on the state's almost regulation-free system of campaign finance. They proposed contribution limits to mirror federal regulations and several other restrictions.

"Suffice it to say, what came out of the legislative process did not reflect our core proposals," Collins says.

And that's putting it mildly.

Strong Words, Weak Actions

The Illinois General Assembly did approve contribution limits in its campaign finance bill, but set them thousands of dollars higher than Collins' commission recommended. Plus, Collins and other reform advocates say, the limits are riddled with gaping loopholes.

For example, candidates can set up several campaign committees for themselves, which some fear could become slush funds. Also, in-kind contributions are unlimited. The list goes on and on — and none of the new regulations would take effect until 2011, after next year's elections.

Even though Quinn initially called the bill a landmark for imposing the first-ever contribution limits in Illinois, he has not yet signed it.

His spokesman says the longtime political outsider, considered a reformer himself, is aware of the criticism surrounding the bill.

"The way that it's set up is going to invite challenge," says David Morrison with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. "It's going to be tied up in court. Since it doesn't take effect for so long, it's going to take that much longer to get through the courts. In that sense, it's a huge step backward."

Many other Illinois reform proposals were put off, including stronger corruption investigative and enforcement provisions, term limits for powerful legislative leaders and the creation of a less political redistricting system.

An Opportunity Lost?

In a state that continues to be the butt of the nation's jokes, Collins says, this was a rare chance for real reform in Illinois. "You know, the world was watching, and to have answered the bell in a relatively meek way is a huge missed opportunity."

Collins says the Illinois legislature did pass a few good reforms, such as a stronger Freedom of Information Act and improved procurement laws to reduce the chances of contracting abuses.

Lawmakers cleaned up the state pension and hospital construction boards that Blagojevich appointees were convicted of using in extortion and kickback schemes.

Some observers say that's a good start for Illinois.

"A loophole is better than nothing," says Paul Green, a political scientist at Roosevelt University in Chicago. "It's a step. And the next time, you take another step and another step."

Green says bringing law and order to the wild west of Illinois politics has to be done gradually.

"Illinois government now, with Blagojevich gone, is cleaner than it's been in decades," he says.

Some reform advocates hope Quinn makes changes to the campaign finance bill and sends it back to the legislature. Some hope he vetoes it outright. Otherwise, they fear there won't be another chance for significant reform — until the next big scandal.

Original here

Republicans embrace Ron Paul on domestic policy

By DANIEL LIBIT

'He hasn't bombed Iran yet,' says Ron Paul, when asked to assess the best and worst characteristics of President Barack Obama. Photo: AP

“He hasn’t bombed Iran yet,” says Ron Paul, when asked to assess the best and worst characteristics of President Barack Obama’s six months in office.

“The worst thing is he is probably still thinking about it.”

No sooner does the representative from Texas’ 14th Congressional District, nicknamed “Dr. No” by his detractors, find himself embraced by mainstream Republicans (and even some Democrats) on domestic policy issues, then he pivots his focus to foreign affairs.

Obama, Paul told POLITICO during a sit-down in his office this week, “has talked a little better than his action, but he has already expanded [the number of troops] in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He became the peace candidate: ‘Yeah, we’re going to end that war in Iraq.’ But it’s not sincere. I don't think they had any intention, never did.”

It’s a unique time for Paul. With the economy in the tank, the same cable news shows that spurned him during the election now keep asking him on to talk monetary policy. Republican House members are finally voting with him on spending measures.

But following his exhilarant, if quixotic, quest for the presidency, Paul finds himself simultaneously gratified and frustrated by his return to the friendlier-than-before confines of the House of Representatives. He thinks he’s well situated in Congress to push for his libertarian causes, but then claims he doesn't "pay a whole lot of attention" to the activity on the House floor these days, adding, "I don't think it's relevant to the big picture.”

“A lot of this is just tinkering, bailing out, more money, more spending, no shift of direction and it's a little bit frustrating," he says.

Asked if he feels more embraced by the Republican Party establishment, Paul shrugs and says, "half and half.”

"I think there's respect. But they don't call me in and say, ‘What we need to find out from you is how you reach the young people.’"

As for another presidential run in 2012, “I don’t think that’s likely,” Paul says.

But in the next breath, he admits that he would have made the same prediction three years before his last run for the party’s banner. And he questions whether the names being bandied about as possible Republican nominees will connect to his supporters.

“The one thing that is characteristic about anybody who joins us is that they are energized and everybody recognizes that," Paul says. "We also know that it is the energy in a small group of people that really leads nations.”

"Let's say I have 15 percent of Republicans and [Mitt] Romney has 30 percent. If his people aren't energized, our guys might stand for three of his."

As for soon-to-be departing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Paul dismisses her supporters as "more establishment, conventional Country-Club type of Republicans.”

"I wonder whether she's energizing the 15-20 year olds," Paul muses. "That would be a question I would have. Because she doesn't talk about the Federal Reserve and some of these issues. She doesn't talk too much about personal liberties, civil liberties, getting rid of drug laws, attacking the war on drugs, punishing people who torture."

Worse still, he adds, Palinites are partisans: “If Obama was the only one who was guilty, they would be on his case all the time, but there is a lot of partisanship and I am probably less partisan and therefore she is going to appeal to partisan Republicans better.”

As Paul sees it, such partisanship is the rough equivalent of an old Onion headline, “"Our local area sports team is superior to your local area sports team," Or as he puts it, “I think when it comes to foreign policy and monetary policy on big spending and watching out for the big corporations, Republicans are Democrats.”

And then he reverses again crediting Obama for restoring, however unintentionally, Republican principles.

“Republicans now are conservatives again” since the election, he says. “They are more consistent in voting against all these spending [measures]. And I kid them, I say, ‘are you guys voting with me now or am I voting with you?’

“Of course, they would always complain when I voted against Republican spending.“

Looking back at his presidential run, Paul seems sincerely surprised: He’s stayed the same, but suddenly the young folk who were whistling past him for years stopped to listen, even as the party’s other candidates did their best to ignore him.

“Some people say, ‘Oh, that was a good strategy,’” Paul says. “It was no more strategy than a man on the moon. It was just that I knew what I believed in, I kept talking about it, knew the problems were coming. I really assumed I would probably be back in medicine or something when the crisis hit.”

The Campaign for Liberty, the grass-roots organization that grew out of Paul's presidential campaign, has raised over $3 million since last June, attracting some 200,000 members.

“It just sort of baffles me," says Paul, shrinking, as he tends to do, when the notion of his star quality is raised.

And as of last week, 271 members of the House – about one-third of them Democrats – have signed onto HR-1207; a measure Paul introduced last February to audit the Federal Reserve.

When the Campaign for Liberty had a petition drop in support of the measure some six weeks ago, members were informed the night before that there would be a photo-op with Paul. Even with such late notice, 11 showed up to have their picture taken with "Dr. No," including Tom Cole, the former chair of the NRCC.

At the same time, Paul shrugs off his role in the House. “So I don’t work here so much. I didn’t get many signatures, because I have sort of twisted arms or put on pressure. Plus, I have nothing to trade, I am not a committee chairman and don’t have any clout, but because we have grassroots support, they got energized, and that’s how we have [271 members]…on the bill.”

Original here

Jimmy Carter leaves Southern Baptist church in protest to treatment of women

by Mata H

Editor's note: Jimmy Carter officially departed the Southern Baptist church in 2000, but still stayed on at Maranatha Baptist in Plains, Georgia, teaching Sunday School. He held on to a Baptist affiliation through many conflicts, including the denomination's anti-gay positions. This week, he issued a position paper severing all ties to the church.

"Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God." -- Jimmy Carter, Former US president, Nobel Prize Winner

This week, Jimmy Carter left the Southern Baptist Church, where he has been a member for over 60 years. He and Roselyn distanced themselves from full participation a few years ago, but he remained a deacon and still taught Sunday School. He held on to his denominational affiliation through many conflicts - including the denomination's anti-gay positions. This document says nothing about LGBT issues, and that is a tragic shortcoming. But it does say something about women, and in that it only came part way, that part is very strong indeed. It isn't enough, but it is something.

Carter has been active for some time with the New Baptist Covenant which seeks to join various branches of the Baptist church with a social agenda. The primary action there has been to bring races together.

Here are excerpts from Carter's position paper.

At their most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.
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The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met...
.
The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

Not a lot of room for interpretation there. This straightforward document had me in tears. How many women have yearned for how many years to hear these words spoken by men of influence with the religions of the world. Carter isn't the first, to be sure. But he is among the most visible and respected men to do so. And he even left a group that was dear to him. It was a move he described as "painful".

Women speaking about change can only take us so far. Men's voices joined to ours -- i.e. voices from the hierarchy -- strengthen the position by making it harder for other men to dismiss, and by waking up women who think all men hold the same position in their church.

Hannah, in her blog about faith and abuse, says:

If we can open this door, and speak of the injustice that is done in the realm of women? What is to stop the conversation from continuing on to Sexual abuse among other things. You won't have to worry about people accusing you of 'slandering a man of God' when you dare speak a word. WOW maybe common sense can be used, and uglies can be faced instead of hidden...
Carter Speaks out about Treatment of women of faith, and how it encourages domestic violence! What a man of GOD!

Wisewebwoman who is over 60, and has followed Carter for along time says:

I've always admired the man. Sure, he had his faults. But his work for Habitat for Humanity, his humility and his downright civility have endeared him to many.
And today, in his 85th year, he completely blows me over with this:

This shouldn't blow us away. It should be routinely heard. In hearing Carter's words, and experiencing my emotional reaction, I am aware how much I needed to hear a churchman say this. To say it straight out with no excuses. His comment highlights the lack of other comments.

Carter is part of a group called "The Elders" -- retired statesmen who can be activists without worrying about re-election. (Now there is a commentary in itself, eh?) Here he is speaking about The Elder's position. It is stunning in its directness.

Sarah is also moved by the statement.

I know, right?! My heart swelled as I read Carter’s recent statement condemning “discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition.”...Women’s rights are human rights. It’s amazing to read this in a mainstream publication, along with a denouncement of “tradition” as justification for oppression.

Diana wonders if he could not have made more changes by staying within the SB framework, but says:

The R.E.M. hit song which made the expression of “Losing My Religion” an internationally recognized phrase, was written about unrequited love – and the expression itself comes from the American South meaning that a person has run out of patience. I think President Carter is suffering a broken heart after so many decades of having faith that the teachings he worshiped as a Southern Baptist could help make the world a better place, especially for women. As Carter notes in his essay, every religion suffers corruption at the hands of selfish people, and he has decided that the change needed in the religious tradition he called home cannot be realized form the inside. I appreciate that in the process Carter is demonstrating a way to examine sexism in our faith communities.

Charlotte talks about her long-standing admiration for Carter and adds:

Thank you, Jimmy Carter, for standing by your principles and your faith (as opposed to the religion you left) that sees us all equally as children of God. And thank you for being someone still worthy of the admiration that began when I was a little girl.

Blog after blog by women just reprints the whole essay by Carter. as if to say, "It speaks for itself."

I am so glad he wrote it, but sad that it feels so surprising. And sad that there are not more echoes. And sad that it took so long. And sad that we feel we have to say thank you, because so few religious male leaders have taken this position. And sad that all of our GLBT brothers and sisters can't enjoy the same mention.

But even as I wait for the other voices that should come, I can also feel pleased that Jimmy, at age 85, came this far through. At least and at last.

Mata H, CE for Religion & Spirituality, blogs about darned near everything at Time's Fool

Original here

WhatТs That Got to Do With Mr. Murtha?

One of the most favored insiders in Representative John Murtha’s rich churn of defense earmarks has pleaded guilty to criminal charges, shedding light on a twisting, pay-to-play money trail. The contractor, Richard Ianieri, admitted taking $200,000 in bribes from another big defense contractor in the Murtha orbit, and is cooperating with investigators.

“What’s that got to do with me?” commented Mr. Murtha, who previously lavished praise and tens of millions of dollars in contracts on the two companies caught up in the criminal investigation.

He asks an ever more urgent question. Investigators have not identified him as a target. But the inquiry is backtracking a trail of hundreds of millions awarded to Pentagon contractors who gratefully requited with tens of millions in political donations to Democrats on the appropriations subcommittee headed by Mr. Murtha.

In just one tangent of the complex inquiry, Mr. Ianieri’s company hired the lobbying firm of Mr. Murtha’s brother Kit. The company soon was blessed with money from an $8.2 million defense earmark. The Capitol newspaper Roll Call reported last month that Representative Murtha, using a 2005 tsunami relief bill, took the $8.2 million from another contractor that had severed ties with his brother’s lobbying firm. The Department of Justice alleges that Mr. Ianieri’s company then illicitly distributed $1.8 million of the money to other companies, some of them represented by Kit Murtha’s firm.

The Murtha money trail is far from fully explored but already features a second tangent of Congressional appropriations staff members’ exiting through the golden door to defense lobbying and scoring big contracts from their old bosses. Taxpayers should press the question of what all this has to do with Mr. Murtha (who has also used his gavel to create a luxury supermart of defense contractors in his Pennsylvania district).

Beyond the criminal investigation, a full-scale ethics inquiry should be pressed by House Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. If not, the Murtha money trail could lead them back to the minority.

Original here

Obama - The Fact Checker In Chief

FACT-CHECKER IN CHIEF.... President Obama had a few interesting things to say about health care reform in his weekly multi-media address today, his fifth in the last seven weeks to emphasize the importance of reforming the system.

The president noted, for example, the importance of "seizing this opportunity," and ignoring "the same special interests and their agents in Congress" who make "the same old arguments, and use the same scare tactics that have stopped reform before because they profit from this relentless escalation in health care costs." Obama did not, however, reference the pre-recess August deadline, which now appears practically impossible.

But it was more important to see the president play the role of fact-checker. He noted that Americans are bound to hear a lot of talk and see a lot of ads attacking reform, and realized that some "might begin to wonder whether there's a grain of truth to what they're saying." So, Obama highlighted some of the more common talking points, only to knock them down.

"First, the same folks who controlled the White House and Congress for the past eight years as we ran up record deficits will argue -- believe it or not -- that health reform will lead to record deficits," he said. "That's simply not true. Our proposals cut hundreds of billions of dollars in unnecessary spending and unwarranted giveaways to insurance companies in Medicare and Medicaid. They change incentives so providers will give patients the best care, not just the most expensive care, which will mean big savings over time. And we have urged Congress to include a proposal for a standing commission of doctors and medical experts to oversee cost-saving measures. [...]

"Those who oppose reform will also tell you that under our plan, you won't get to choose your doctor -- that some bureaucrat will choose for you. That's also not true. Michelle and I don't want anyone telling us who our family's doctor should be -- and no one should decide that for you either. Under our proposals, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story.

"Finally, opponents of health reform warn that this is all some big plot for socialized medicine or government-run health care with long lines and rationed care. That's not true either. I don't believe that government can or should run health care. But I also don't think insurance companies should have free reign to do as they please. That's why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans - including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest - and choose what's best for your family."

Now, that last point is of particular interest, because it might be new. The president said reform has to include an insurance exchange, which shouldn't face too much resistance on the Hill. But he also said the exchange should feature a public option.

Is this a new line in the sand, saying that reform must feature a public option in order to get his signature? I'm honestly not sure. An insurance exchange could, in theory, include nothing but private plans. Maybe the two points -- an exchange and a public plan -- were meant to be connected in a new way, maybe not.

I'm working on getting clarification on the issue. Either way, the weekly address sounded just about all of the right notes.

Original here

Could Dick Cheney Go to Prison?

By Ray McGovern, Consortium News.

So far, the summer has been mild in the Washington area. But for former Vice President Dick Cheney, the temperature is well over 100 degrees. He is sweating profusely, and it is becoming increasingly clear why.

Cheney has broken openly with former President George W. Bush on one issue of transcendent importance -- to Cheney. For whatever reason, Bush decided not to hand out blanket pardons before they both rode off into the sunset.

Cheney has complained bitterly that his former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby should have been pardoned, rather than simply having his jail sentence commuted.

Cheney told the media that Bush left Libby "sort of hanging in the wind" by refusing to issue a pardon before leaving office. Libby had been convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents investigating the leak of a former CIA operations officer's identity.

"I believe firmly that Scooter was unjustly accused and prosecuted and deserved a pardon, and the president disagreed with that," Cheney said. He would disclose no details of his efforts to lobby Bush on Libby's behalf, saying they would be "best left to history."

It is getting close to history time. You do not need to be a crackerjack analyst to understand that Cheney is feeling betrayed -- that he is thinking not of Libby, but of himself, and fearing that, if our system of justice works, he could be in for some serious, uncommuted jail time.

His situation has grown pathetic. Aside from the man himself, it has fallen almost solely to faithful daughter, Liz, to defend her dad and to start a political backfire to keep him out of prison. She is to be admired for her faithfulness. In the process, though, she has unwittingly given much away.

Liz Cheney on the Offensive

On Washington Times' "America's Morning News" radio program Monday, Liz Cheney acted again as designated hitter, responding to the recent New York Times report that her father had given "direct orders" to the CIA to withhold "information about a secret counterterrorism program for eight years."

Not for the first time, Liz Cheney disclosed what has her father so worried and agitated. She said he is "very angry" over recent press reports that Attorney General Eric Holder may be about to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate "the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices."

She branded this "shameful" -- worse still, "un-American." Not the interrogation practices, mind you, but the notion that her father should be held to account for them.

Typically, she did well in sticking closely to her talking points, arguing that the issue is "somebody taking office and then starting to prosecute people who carried out policies that they disagreed with, you know, in the previous administration."

As if unprecedented decisions to torture, in violation of international law and the War Crimes Act of 1996, can be accurately described as "policies" over which there can be honest disagreement. This is about crimes, not "policies."

Pulling out all the stops, Liz Cheney worried aloud about what this does to "morale at the CIA," where the practitioners of what Bush called "an alternative set of procedures" for interrogation believed they were acting with the blessing of the Justice Department. (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity addressed that bromide frontally on April 29, 2009, in a memorandum to our new president.)

Liz Cheney went on to argue that this could, in the future, inhibit CIA functionaries from various actions out of fear of criminal liability. (To me, that sounds like a distinct plus.)

The Decider

What has pretty much escaped notice in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) is that the former vice president has also reminded us all that President Bush was the "decider."

That unusual word sounded quite macho as Bush strutted about reminding us often that he was also commander in chief. But now, it could be the kiss of death -- for Bush, as well as for Dick Cheney.

Here's what Cheney allowed himself to tell Face the Nation's Bob Schieffer on May 10 about "enhanced interrogation techniques":

Schieffer: How much did President Bush know specifically about the methods that were being used? We know that you -- and you have said -- that you approved this …

Cheney: Right.

Schieffer: … somewhere down the line. Did President Bush know everything you knew?

Cheney: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.

Small wonder that Republicans are wincing, although the winces have been largely suppressed. The Washington Post reported recently that many Republicans now consider Cheney a major problem, but cannot say so. The Post quoted one Republican strategist on the Cheney dilemma:

"He continues to be a force among many members of our base, and while he is entirely unhelpful, no one has the standing to show him the door."

During a four-day visit to Dallas last week, I learned that Bush continues to be a lofty hero among many folks there -- with the notable exception of the hardy activists of the Dallas Peace Center and Code Pink.

Hefty donations keep pouring in for his library and institute, and any "mistakes" that may have been made during the Bush/Cheney administration are laid at the door of the former vice president.

Leading Republicans are passionate about this. And the phenomenon is not limited to Dallas. Cheney is smart enough to know that he too may soon be "sort of hanging in the wind," along with his former subordinate, Libby.

It's Also About "Fixing" Intelligence

Approval of torture, assassination, warrantless eavesdropping -- hey, there is quite enough to go on, and increasing signs that Cheney will be called on the carpet.

What we have been focusing on, however, glosses over Cheney's key role in purveying lies to get our representatives in Congress to approve a war that qualifies for what the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal called the "supreme international crime" -- a war of aggression.

We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity were on to Cheney very early. Six years ago today, we took the unusual step of sending a formal recommendation to President Bush that he "ask for Cheney's immediate resignation."

Our unprecedented appeal even caught the eye of the FCM, since our "Memorandum for the President" reviewed some of the deceit engineered by the vice president in conjuring up a rationale for war on Iraq and directing the cheerleading for it.

We noted that Cheney, skilled at pre-emption, had stolen a march on his vacationing colleagues by launching, in a major speech on Aug. 26, 2002, a meretricious campaign to persuade Congress and the American people that Iraq was about to acquire nuclear weapons.

That campaign mushroomed, literally, in early October, with Bush and senior advisers raising the specter of a "mushroom cloud" threatening our cities. On the inside of the synthetic clouds one could almost read the label -- "manufactured out of thin air in the Office of the Vice President."

In his memoir, the pitiable former CIA Director George Tenet complains that Cheney's assertion that Iraq would acquire nuclear weapons "fairly soon" did not square with the intelligence community's assessment.

Tenet adds, "I was surprised when I read about Cheney's assertion that, ‘Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.' "

Tenet whines that the vice president did not send him a copy of the speech for clearance. But the malleable CIA director quickly got over it, and told CIA analysts to compose the kind of National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that would provide ex post facto support for Cheney's bogus assertions. Just what Cheney (and Bush) ordered.

Tenet explains lamely, "I should have told the vice president privately that, in my view, his speech had gone too far ... and not let [my] silence imply agreement."

Yes, George; and you should have resisted White House pressure for a dishonest NIE to grease the skids to unnecessary war.

In fact Cheney, as well as Tenet, knew very well that Cheney's assertions were lies.

How? Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, whom Saddam had put in charge of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as missile development, told the United States when he defected in mid-1995 that all (that's right, all) such weapons had been destroyed at his order by the summer of 1991.

In mid-2002, the Iraqi foreign minister, whom CIA operatives had recruited and persuaded to remain in place, was telling us the same thing.

Unwelcome Intelligence

When they briefed the president and his senior advisers on this, CIA operations officers were astonished to learn firsthand that this intelligence was unwelcome.

These officers, who had used every trick in the book to "turn" the foreign minister and get him working for us, were told that further reporting from this source was not needed: "This isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change," they were told.

Tenet was hardly astonished at reports of the nonexistence of WMD. From documentary evidence in the "Downing Street Minutes" we know that Tenet, on July 20, 2002, told the chief of British intelligence that the intelligence was being "fixed" around the policy.

And former U.N. inspectors, like Scott Ritter, could verify that 90 percent of the WMD Iraq earlier possessed had been destroyed -- some during the Gulf War in 1991, but most as a result of the inspections conducted by the United Nations.

The reporting from Kamel and the Iraqi foreign minister, sources with excellent access, was suppressed in favor of "evidence" -- from forgeries, for example, like the infamous Iraq-Niger yellowcake report.

When finally U.S. officials were forced to concede that the Iraq-Niger information was based on a forgery, lawmakers such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., protested loudly -- but too late.

Three days before Bush let slip the dogs of war, NBC's Tim Russert braced Cheney with the assertion by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency that Saddam did not have a nuclear program.

Cheney strongly disagreed and cited support for his view from the CIA and other parts of the intelligence community. He even ratcheted up his bogus assessment of Iraq's nuclear capability: "We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

We? Maybe his wife, Lynne, and Liz were on board for that judgment; few others believed it.

Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, retired CENTCOM commander but still enjoying access to the most sensitive information on Iraq, was sitting in the audience on Aug. 26, 2002, and later described himself as astonished at the Iraqi threat as described by Cheney.

The most knowledgeable analysts -- those who knew Iraq and nuclear weapons -- scoffed at Cheney's faith-based intelligence.

In our July 14, 2003, appeal to Bush to ask for Cheney's resignation, we warned of the likelihood that intelligence analysts would conclude that the best way to climb the ladder of success is to acquiesce in the cooking or "fixing" of their judgments, since neither senior nor junior officials would ever be held accountable.

This remains as acute a concern as the tolerance for torture and the like.

We shall have to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder do his duty and move quickly to start the process to hold accountable those responsible for dragging our country down into a moral abyss.

Original here

Sarah Palin should just go home

The Alaska governor embodies America's obsession with made-up facts, self-pity and celebrity

By Gene Lyons

AP Photo/Lynne Sladkyt

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Miami in November.

"The rise of Idiot America ... is essentially a war on expertise ... In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a scientist, or a preacher, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert."

-- Charles P. Pierce, from "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free"

Pity the poor "real Americans," because they sure feel sorry for themselves. Self-pity appears to be the latest national craze. Not that we haven't got real troubles, but everywhere you look and listen these days, some big crybaby's blubbering about how people like him or her get no respect from (take your pick) "Ivy League elitists," the "scientific establishment," "so-called sophisticates," the "mainstream media" and so on.

But hey, Americans don't come any realer than me. I learned that recently from MSNBC news-chat personality Mika Brzezinski. Discussing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's supporters on "Morning Joe," Brzezinski allowed as how us country folks (I live in a rural county with a lot more cows than people) constitute the nation's moral backbone. "God, I hate to say it," Brzezinski allowed, "but in the cities where there are a little bit more liberal elite populations, you are not going to find what is representative of America."

Sigh. We already tried that. It brought us George W. Bush, a synthetic cowboy who dropped the "rancher" pose the minute he left the White House. Back in 2001, metropolitan pundits -- seemingly unfamiliar with the oeuvre of Hank Williams and Garth Brooks -- kept telling us about the superior moral instincts of us "red state" voters.

Brzezinski's the daughter of former Carter administration national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and attended several fancy private schools. So I'm guessing she doesn't know a lot of drinkin' and cheatin' songs either.

The occasion of the MSNBC pundit's comments was Palin's poor-pitiful-me resignation speech, the one that sounded like an audition for the Lucille Ball part in an "I Love Lucy" revival.

"Life is too short to compromise time and resources," Palin said. "It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along and appease those who demand: 'Sit down and shut up,' but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and 'go with the flow.' Nah, only dead fish 'go with the flow.'"

No dead-fish quitter she, Palin quit.

Having spent much of her tenure as Alaska's governor scheming to fire her ex-brother-in-law from the state police and having her press secretary issue statements contradicting her daughter's 18-year-old former boyfriend, Palin evidently mistook national politics for one long Miss Congeniality contest.

That is, until she started picking fights with TV comics and whining that nobody before her had been so victimized by "the politics of personal destruction" -- a phrase Bill Clinton coined after Republican operatives accused him and his wife of murder.

Chances are Palin doesn't know that, as she appears to know precious little else. Even many conservatives who supported Bush almost to the end fear that the Republicans have finally touched bottom.

"In television interviews," Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity."

Palin's authentic, all right: An authentic product of what author Charles P. Pierce calls the "Three Great Premises" of America's decayed TV celebrity culture. First, "Any theory is valid if it moves units," i..e. sells advertising. Second, "Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough." Third, "Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is measured by how fervently they believe it."

The cultural left is sometimes as prone to dimwit populism as the right. Witness the Rev. Al Sharpton moving an audience to tears by assuring Michael Jackson's children that he wasn't "strange," but his critics were. Sleepovers with other people's children? Compulsive plastic surgery? Gobbling pills? Mainlining IV drugs? Sorry, Reverend, "strange" doesn't begin to describe that poor soul.

But then nobody ever proposed running Michael Jackson for national office.

President? Get real. Sarah Palin couldn't manage a Wal-Mart. She has neither the management skills nor the capacity for detail.

Anybody who imagines otherwise probably believes she resigned to spend more time with her (very entertaining) family. If she had any sense, she'd drop politics and market them as a reality-TV program.

Alas, there's no sign of that.

© 2009 Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association

Original here

Cap and trade or Smoot-Hawley?

Emblematic of the problems buried in the flawed "cap and trade" bill is a provision that only came to light in the final moments of the House debate.

A last-minute amendment, inserted in the early morning hours on the day of the vote, would tax goods that we import from countries that are unwilling to adopt carbon-reducing measures. So, the question becomes: Should our nation really levy trade penalties on countries that don't agree to limit their carbon emissions?

The provision is fraught with potential negative consequences. Some fear it's the return of the Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised tariffs on imported goods to record levels in the 1930s. Others, however, argue the provision is absolutely necessary should the bill, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Edward Markey, D-Mass., become law.

President Barack Obama, who pushed hard for the Waxman-Markey legislation, has rejected the trade penalty measure. "At a time when the economy worldwide is still deep in recession and we've seen a significant drop in global trade, I think we have to be very careful about sending any protectionist signals out there," Obama said.

We are inclined to agree with the president on this issue.

But if Obama thinks the provision could harm global trade, he also ought to realize the competitive disadvantage that Waxman-Markey creates at home. Because if it does become law, the U.S. may have no choice but to levy a carbon tariff.

Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Krugman argues that Obama is making a mistake by rejecting what he calls "the border adjustment."

The economist, a fierce advocate for "cap and trade," says that without the tax, the environmental benefits of the bill will be undermined.

Companies, he argues, would stop buying U.S.-made goods, which would cost more due to the demands to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the production process. Instead, they would buy goods produced by countries that are not saddled with the extra expense and regulation.

"The truth is that there's perfectly sound economics behind border adjustments," Krugman argues, claiming that imposing tariffs for non-economic reasons, such as cutting carbon dioxide emissions, isn't protectionism, but is simply leveling the playing field.

The argument, added to fears from industry that overseas competition would benefit at America's expense as a result of cap and trade, should be a key part of the upcoming Senate debate on this bill.

Waxman-Markey's tariff provision, as written, would begin imposing the tax in 2020. The president can waive the tariffs, but only if Congress approves the waivers.

Observers say the House bill wouldn't have passed without the tariff, because industrial state lawmakers feared job losses.

Now that it's out in the open, we hope the Senate can evaluate it carefully.

We oppose the bill because it relies far too much on theoretical clean-energy technology break-throughs to achieve the desired drops in greenhouse gas emissions. It also creates a new, complicated market for trading emissions that is susceptible to abuse.

It's a hugely transformative measure — which would lower global CO2 emissions by only a few percentage points — that risks crippling our economy.

Palin’s Threats To The Press Puts To Question Her Judgement

Opinion by Dolores M. Bernal, NEWS JUNKIE POST

There is something to be said of Sarah Palin’s threat to sue reporters and bloggers who write about the reasons she may have unexpectedly stepped down as Governor of Alaska. And that something is: poor judgement. No public official in their right mind should ever even think of picking a fight with the press, unless, they’re asking for their careers to be over.

Just in case you may not know about what’s transpired since Palin’s press conference Friday, let me bring you up to date. Several bloggers and some mainstream media reporters wrote that Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska because she may be facing a criminal investigation over materials used to build her home in Wasilla, Alaska and those used to build the Wasilla Sports Complex. Palin’s lawyer Thoman Van Flein issued a letter over the weekend to media and bloggers that were talking about this, and stated that the soon to be ex-Governor of Alaska “will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law.”

You see, these allegations about Palin and the building materials were brought to light to folks in the mainland by Alaskan radio host and blogger, Shannyn Moore, and there was also an article about this by Max Blumenthal of the Daily Beast about the potential criminal investigation. Many other blogs picked up these reports and MSNBC and other mainstream folks did their job by reporting about it, even if they were just “rumors.”

Word of these reports got to Palin faster than a lighting and just as she is quick to leave her job, she is also quick at making threats to people without considering the facts and the consequences of what she is about to do.

If state legislators in Alaska have been the ones talking about this potential investigation, then what Moore, bloggers, and news reporters did was NOT at all a crime and they shouldn’t be subjected to threats and intimidation by Mr. Van Flein. Freedom of the Press is alive and well in America and our rights as journalists cannot be tramped upon by some defensive third class politician like Palin.

I challenge Moore, bloggers, and all other reporters to not be sheepish about standing up and reminding Palin that the press’ job is to report information because the public has a right to know what may be going on, especially after her sudden resignation. I mean, what did Palin expect? She walks out of her job with a terrible press conference where she used a ridiculous basketball analogy and where every other sentence just didn’t seem to make any sense. And now she wants to sue reporters over defamation? Come on, give me a break!

There is something terribly wrong about Palin’s view of the media if she thinks she can make us just shut up. No self-respecting reporter should feel like they need to retract anything they said this weekend. I’m not going to. Moore shouldn’t either. There was no defamation of character in any of this. If Palin feels like the press is ruining her “reputation,” she’s got it wrong. The only one ruining anything is her own self by her actions and the puzzling things that come out of her mouth.

China says dollar to remain leading world currency

* Vice minister sees dollar pre-eminence for years to come

* Idea of new reserve currency is 'academic discussion'

* China appreciates U.S. govt efforts for stable dollar

(Adds details, quotes, background)

ROME, July 5 (Reuters) - Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said on Sunday the U.S. dollar would continue to be the world's leading reserve currency for years to come.

"The U.S. dollar is still the most important and major reserve currency of the day, and we believe that that situation will continue for many years to come," He told a news briefing in Rome before this week's Group of Eight summit.

Beijing has floated the idea of an alternative to the dollar as global reserve currency and wants the topic broached at the summit starting in Italy on Wednesday.

The vice minister said Chinese officials had voiced concern about the safety of the country's dollar-denominated assets. "That is natural," he said.

He said many other countries over the years had been calling for the stability of the U.S. dollar. "We appreciate the efforts made by the U.S. government in that direction," he said, adding that it was the responsibility of the government issuing the reserve currency to maintain its stability.

He said discussion about reserve currencies had intensified since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, which he said had revealed "many shortcomings in the international monetary system".

However, he described this as an intellectual debate.

"You may have heard comments, opinions from academic circles about the idea of establishing a super sovereign currency. This is all, I believe, now a discussion among academics. It is not the position of the Chinese government."

Zhou Xiaochuan, head of the Chinese central bank, launched the reserve currency debate last March when he said the SDR, the International Monetary Fund's unit of account, might one day displace the dollar.

Some diplomats and bankers suggest Zhou's primary aim was to highlight attention on concern expressed by Premier Wen Jiabao about the safety of China's huge dollar holdings -- at risk if U.S. policy turns to greater tolerance of inflation.

Bankers reckon China holds perhaps 70 percent of its $1.95 trillion in official currency reserves in the dollar. (Reporting by Silvia Aloisi, editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Robert S. McNamara Dies

McNamara died at 5:30 a.m. at his home, his wife Diana told The Associated Press. She said he had been in failing health for some time.

McNamara was fundamentally associated with the Vietnam War, ``McNamara's war,'' the country's most disastrous foreign venture, the only American war to end in abject withdrawal.

Known as a policymaker with a fixation for statistical analysis, McNamara was recruited to run the Pentagon by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 from the presidency of the Ford Motor Co. - where he and a group of colleagues had been known as the ``whiz kids.'' He stayed in the defense post for seven years, longer than anyone since the job's creation in 1947.

His association with Vietnam became intensely personal. Even his son, as a Stanford University student, protested against the war while his father was running it. At Harvard, McNamara once had to flee a student mob through underground utility tunnels. Critics mocked McNamara mercilessly; they made much of the fact that his middle name was ``Strange.''

After leaving the Pentagon on the verge of a nervous breakdown, McNamara became president of the World Bank and devoted evangelical energies to the belief that improving life in rural communities in developing countries was a more promising path to peace than the buildup of arms and armies.

A private person, McNamara for many years declined to write his memoirs, to lay out his view of the war and his side in his quarrels with his generals. In the early 1990s he began to open up. He told Time magazine in 1991 that he did not think the bombing of North Vietnam - the biggest bombing campaign in history up to that time - would work but he went along with it ``because we had to try to prove it would not work, number one, and (because) other people thought it would work.''

Finally, in 1993, after the Cold War ended, he undertook to write his memoirs because some of the lessons of Vietnam were applicable to the post-Cold War period ``odd as though it may seem."

``In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam'' appeared in 1995. McNamara disclosed that by 1967 he had deep misgivings about Vietnam - by then he had lost faith in America's capacity to prevail over a guerrilla insurgency that had driven the French from the same jungled countryside.

Despite those doubts, he had continued to express public confidence that the application of enough American firepower would cause the Communists to make peace. In that period, the number of U.S. casualties - dead, missing and wounded - went from 7,466 to over 100,000.

``We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of our country. But we were wrong. We were terribly wrong,'' McNamara, then 78, told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of the book's release.

The best-selling mea culpa renewed the national debate about the war and prompted bitter criticism against its author. ``Where was he when we needed him?'' a Boston Globe editorial asked. A New York Times editorial referred to McNamara as offering the war's dead only a ``prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late.''

McNamara wrote that he and others had not asked the five most basic questions: ``Was it true that the fall of South Vietnam would trigger the fall of all Southeast Asia? Would that constitute a grave threat to the West's security? What kind of war - conventional or guerrilla - might develop? Could we win it with U.S. troops fighting alongside the South Vietnamese? Should we not know the answers to all these questions before deciding whether to commit troops?

He discussed similar themes in the 2003 documentary ``The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.'' With the U.S. in the first year of the war in Iraq, it became a popular and timely art-house attraction and won the Oscar for best documentary feature.

The Iraq war, with its similarities to Vietnam, at times brought up McNamara's name, in many cases in comparison with another unpopular defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld. McNamara was among former secretaries of defense and state who met twice with President Bush in 2006 to discuss Iraq war policies.

In the Kennedy administration, McNamara was a key figure in both the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis 18 months later. The crisis was the closest the world came to a nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.

McNamara served as the World Bank president for 12 years. He tripled its loans to developing countries and changed its emphasis from grandiose industrial projects to rural development.

After retiring in 1981, he championed the causes of nuclear disarmament and aid by the richest nation for the world's poorest. He became a global elder statesman.

McNamara's trademarks were his rimless glasses and slicked down hair and his reliance on quantitative analysis to reach conclusions, calmly promulgated in a husky voice.

He was born June 9, 1916, in San Francisco, son of the sales manager for a wholesale shoe company. At the University of California at Berkeley, he majored in mathematics, economics and philosophy.

As a professor at the Harvard Business School when World War II started, he helped train Army Air Corps officers in cost-effective statistical control. In 1943, he was commissioned an Army officer and joined a team of young officers who developed a new field of statistical control of supplies.

McNamara and his colleagues sold themselves to the Ford organization as a package and revitalized the company. The group became known as the ``whiz kids'' and McNamara was named the first Ford president who was not a descendant of Henry Ford.

A month later, the newly elected Kennedy invited McNamara, a registered Republican, to join his Cabinet. Taking the $25,000-a-year job cost McNamara $3 million in profit from Ford stocks and options.

As defense chief, McNamara reshaped America's armed forces for ``flexible response'' and away from the nuclear ``massive retaliation'' doctrine espoused by former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. He asserted civilian control of the Pentagon and applied cost-accounting techniques and computerized systems analysis to defense spending.

Early on, Kennedy regarded South Vietnam as an area threatened by Communist aggression and a providing ground for his new emphasis on counterinsurgency forces. A believer in the domino theory - that countries could fall to communism like a row of dominoes - Kennedy dispatched U.S. ``advisers'' to bolster the Saigon government. Their numbers surpassed 16,000 by the time of his assassination.

Following Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson retained McNamara as ``the best in the lot'' of Kennedy Cabinet members and the man to keep Vietnam from falling to the Communists.

When U.S. naval vessels were allegedly attacked off the North Vietnamese coast in 1964, McNamara lobbied Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which Johnson used as the equivalent of a congressional declaration of war.

McNamara visited Vietnam - the first of many trips - and returned predicting that American intervention would enable the South Vietnamese, despite internal feuds, to stand by themselves ``by the end of 1965.''

That was an early forerunner of a seemingly endless string of official ``light at the end of the tunnel'' predictions of American success. Each was followed by more warfare, more American troops, more American casualties, more American bombing, more North Vietnamese infiltration - and more predictions of an early end to America's commitment.

McNamara's first wife, Margaret, whom he met in college, died of cancer in 1981; they had two daughters and a son. In 2004, at age 88, he married Italian-born widow Diana Masieri Byfield.

The Real Story Behind Palin's Bombshell

Anyone who is in any way surprised by Sarah Palin's announcement today that she will not be seeking re-election, and, even more significantly, is stepping down as Governor of Alaska, has not been paying close attention. The signs have been everywhere.

Palin has absolutely zero interest in running the State of Alaska. She steadfastly refused to live in Juneau after her first year there, had the gall to charge the state for residing at her home in Wasilla 600 miles away, and she basically mailed in her performance as the state's top administrator during Alaska's most recent legislative session. She has alienated virtually all the key legislators in her own party -- that's right, Republicans -- and had failed to move any key legislation forward since her return to Alaska from the national campaign trail last November.

In fact, her bizarre appointment for Attorney General, Wayne Anthony Ross, was rejected nearly unanimously by the state legislature -- a first in Alaskan history. Even in respect to energy policy, her supposed bailiwick, she has been categorically ineffective. When I asked those in-the-know what role Palin had played in putting together the recent pipeline deal between TransCanada and Exxon, their response was simple: "None."

None. That about sums up Palin's accomplishments as Governor of the Last Frontier.

The evangelical right can wallow in denial all they want about Palin being victimized by liberals or Democrats or even George Soros (some illiterate wingnut recently tried to link me to him), but the fact is that most of the people with really bad things to say about Palin -- from John McCain's staff to conservatives in Alaska -- come from the Republican Party. The charges of a left-wing conspiracy are so ridiculous as to be absolutely absurd.

But then what coming from the Palin camp isn't?

Moreover, Palin was facing what would have been a hugely embarrassing veto override by the Alaska legislature at the beginning of the next session in January over her politically postured refusal to accept Federal stimulus funds. If this past legislative session was a setback for Palin, the upcoming session would have been an absolute public relations disaster -- hardly the proper entree for her presidential campaign.

My sources in Wasilla tell me that Palin's father, Chuck Heath, has spoken repeatedly about the "liberal press" and dreaded "bloggers" taking their toll on his daughter. I recently discovered an early, telling email by Palin complaining to her pal Meg Stapleton about something a blogger had written in the Anchorage Daily News and how significantly it bothered her -- "kind of makes my stomach turn over," she wrote. Palin can dish, but she can't take it. She's got a terribly thin skin. When I reported here less than a month ago that Palin had clearly lifted passages from an article by Newt Gingrich and Craig Shirley (whose name she didn't even bother to mention) she and her entourage went apoplectic. What she had done was blatantly obvious and she would have been tossed from any reputable college or university for such slipshod citation. Palin, and the sycophants with whom she surrounds herself, simply have no moral compass.

Some pundits have said that Palin's resignation is out of character. Hardly. Don't forget that she resigned from her last statewide office -- that as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Sarah Palin is a quitter. She fancies herself something else. But, in the end, she quit her position at AOGCC and she has now quit her governorship. That's two-for-two at the statewide level. In Wasilla, there was nearly a recall launched against her as mayor. Trouble and turbulence have followed her everywhere.

More importantly, there are rumors in Alaska that more Ethics Act charges are in the works and that there is also a more serious Federal investigation focusing on Palin during her tenure as mayor in Wasilla and the building of her home and a sports complex in Wasilla, long speculated to have been linked. It's the one very touchy subject whenever you bring it up in the MatSu Valley. As someone who is writing a book on Palin, I can attest to the fact that there are always rumors flying about her, not all of them true, but this seems like a real possibility, especially given the timing of her announcement today.

Palin also has a multi-million dollar book project for Rupert Murdoch that she needs to complete in time for a spring release. That's some serious cabbage, and there were grumblings in Alaska about the book deal as well. There will be other lucrative, high-visibility media options for her shortly down the road. Don't be surprised to hear of one of those popping up soon. This frees her up to reach for the gold ring without her minions being able to register any complaints. In that respect, it's a logical move.

A longtime Republican in Alaska who has known Palin since she ran for lieutenant governor in 2002 told me that Palin "enthusiastically embraced" her trip to Georgia last year in which she campaigned for Senator Saxby Chambliss. She sees herself doing that around the country in 2010, raising money for conservative Republicans and, by so doing, building support for a presidential candidacy in 2012. "She was absolutely adored in Georgia," said the GOP operative, "and she loved her role there --preaching her particular brand of conservatism to the already converted." And make no mistake about it: Sarah Palin is by far the biggest ticket item that GOP has in its dwindling catalog of candidates.

All of the recent public donnybrooks have taken their toll: First the article by Todd Purdum in Vanity Fair and then the even nastier revelations of emails leaked by the McCain campaign which showed her to be an utter liar regarding her husband Todd's membership in the Alaska Independent Party. Even the seemingly innocuous interview in Runner's World, with its bizarre, braggadocio boast of her having more endurance than Obama, revealed her penchant for duplicity at every turn: the assertion that an injury she had sustained while jogging in Arizona had been kept top-secret, a contention thoroughly disputed by the inimitable Mudflats.

One of my favorite lies spewed by Palin today in yet another poorly scripted speech was that she campaigned for governor "four years ago...," when she, in fact, ran for governor three years ago and held her position for little more than two-and-half years. It's the little lies she always tells, the twists of truth, the distortions. Four years sounds like nearly a full term; three feels incomplete. So why not just call it four?

For all her projected toughness, Palin loves to play the victim. "Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt," she whined, implying that her problems are from out-of-state (yet another big lie). "Over the past nine months I've been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations..." It wasn't quite Richard Nixon's "Checker's Speech," but it was close. In her own awkward vernacular, the Governor was essentially saying to Alaska, "You won't have Sarah Palin to kick around any more."

Here's a little bit of Alaska inside talk for you. Those close to the governor have consistently indicated to me that they privately blame Mitt Romney & Co. as the source of a lot of the media hits on Palin. It may even be true. But with today's announcement, Palin will soon be on equal footing with Romney -- no longer saddled by statewide office and free to travel and maneuver however and wherever she damn well pleases. Today's statement was a great equalizer for 2012.

By being a lame duck, Palin would have exposed herself to more negative coverage, more public failure. By stepping down she allows herself to regroup, get out from under the microscope and re-emerge as a national figure without the constant strain of serving as governor.

Some news sources are claiming that Palin is stepping away from politics permanently; perhaps. But I didn't hear that today. What I heard were typical Palin code words that she has her ambitions set for higher office, for a national stage. Her shots at Obama's stimulus package were just one of many signals aimed directly at Washington.

So do not think for a moment that this is the last we will be hearing from Sarah Palin. The Federal Election Commission will soon be reporting how much money Palin's SarahPAC has raised over the past four months. You can bet that Palin has a lot of gas left in her tank. She is the gift that John McCain gave us that will not go away.

Award-winning investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn is at work on a book about Sarah Palin and her role in American politics, to be published by Macmillan/St. Martin's in 2010.

Insane Sarah Palin, Late At Night On July 4, Threatens To Sue Entire Internet, Via Twitter

How did you spend the Fourth of July? Maybe having a BBQ with friends and family, watching a fireworks show, and generally enjoying a happy patriotic holiday? Batshit-insane American Quitter Sarah Palin ended her own special “Independence Day” by posting a series of desperate grammar-challenged nonsense and vicious threats on her Facebook and Twitter pages. Really.

(Also: Sarah, you idiot, when do you plan to give up your Twitter name AKGovSarahPalin? Because, you know, you just quit being governor ….)

It is unwise to dwell on the past or be obsessed with an unknown future, but we should all appreciate the wonderful present — a present in which Sarah Palin is nothing more than a punchline. Because, had things gone very differently in November, this dangerous delusional numbskull would’ve been just an Ambien overdose away from the presidency.

Thank you, America, for steering clear of the Sarah Palin disaster.

So, after crazily quitting her elected position as governor of Alaska, via an alarming backyard last-minute press conference void of any explanation , at the classic 4 p.m. hour of the Friday-Holiday news dump, Sarah Palin is now twatting on the twitter about how her Anchorage attorneys are going to SUE THE AMERICAN MEDIA, for saying “WTF?”

Honestly, this is what Sarah Palin twatted on Saturday Night, July 4th, Independence Day, in America.

Her link goes to (of course) Scientologist nut and sub-literate weirdo Greta Van Susteren’s blog on FoxNews.com, where Greta has helpfully (?) posted seven pages of legal threats from Palin’s lawyers, although you can’t actually read beyond the first vague page of whining bullshit, because Greta/Fox can’t figure out how to operate the Internet.

But, from other websites, we gather Palin’s lawyers plan lawsuits against MSNBC, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, individual bloggers in Alaska, and other such anti-Palin forces such as “rain on your wedding day” and static cling.

Just go read this entire Anchorage Daily News article, which is hilarious.

Sarah Palin, a snowbilly grifter who spent her entire adult life desperately trying to become a Public Figure, apparently wants her attorneys to stupidly and pointlessly threaten American practitioners of free speech regarding our public figures and elected officials.

Happy fourth of July, you daft racist moron!

French Broadcaster Sued for Firing Employee Based on HADOPI Stance

It was the story of an e-mail heard around the world. You may remember Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim who expressed opposition in an e-mail to his member of parliament. That e-mail went back to his employer, TF1, who then promptly fired him because of his political views back in May. Now, Bourreau-Guggenheim is suing TF1 for discrimination.

His journey throughout all of this probably started off as a humble employee, working at Frances broadcaster, TF1. He probably had no idea that one day, he’d be the centre of a major political debate that the whole world is watching at the time.

Then, the HADOPI law debate came up. Three strikes and you’re out for copyright infringement online. At the time, the proposal would have no judicial oversight whatsoever – not to mention being forced to pay your subscription fee even though you have been, well, banned from the internet. Your name would be added to a blacklist so you can’t subscribe with another provider and the amount of time you were disconnected, at the time, was still being determined.

Not surprisingly, the law was just about as controversial then as it is now. For Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim at the time, he wasn’t exactly too keen on the law either. So, while at work, he sent an e-mail to his member of parliament to express his personal opposition to the “three strikes” law. His member of parliament’s office, who also happened to be part of the governing party, UMP, then forwarded the e-mail to the minister of culture who then forwarded the e-mail to his employer, TF1. Bourreau-Guggenheim boss then hauled him into his office where he was showed a copy of his e-mail before he was fired for “strategic differences”

His story hit several major French newspapers. He went from just a side-line employee to a front-line borderline celebrity who is against the French three strikes law. The story has since caused political waves.

Now, it seems, a new development has happened in this case. French newspaper, Le Monde, is reporting (Google Translation) that Bourreau-Guggenheim is suing his former employer, TF1, for discrimination. His lawsuit is based on article 225-2 of the penal code which addresses “violations of human dignity”.

The punishment for such a violation is up to three years in prison and a 45,000 euro fine. That article specifically deals with an employment dismissal based on a political viewpoint.

Le Monde makes an additional interesting point:

By revealing the affair in its issue of May 7, Libération had quoted from the letter explicitly refers to mail sent to Ms. de Panafieu. Including this clarification: “This correspondence was received through the office of the Minister of Culture, which has posed address the same day the company TF1. A path to strong symbolic resonance, given the suspicions about the relationship between power and sarkozyste audiovisual group, whose main shareholder, Martin Bouygues, is the near the head of state.

Another part of the article says:

It is true that the case has already made much noise but it has needed to add: wrangling in the Assembly, where the former Minister of Culture, Christine Albanel, has been strongly implicated by the opposition; sanction against the member of his Cabinet who had transferred to the TF1 mail received from Ms. de Panafieu (Le Monde, 12 May).

Now committed criminal in a long process, Mr. Bourreau Guggenheim-must adapt to circumstances. To live this matter without further destroying his career. Say they have had “some contact with elected representatives of the opposition, which (l ‘) were invited to participate in debates on Hadopi”, the former part of TF1 should also “reassure (the) future employers” when is invited to an interview. TF1 who denounced “positions (…) radical expressed publicly,” he defends himself on these two points: “I am loyal, I have nothing being published at TF1. And I am not an extremist free download.”

At this point in time, it’s not hard to see this as a no win situation for the UMP of France, not to mention TF1 who is neck deep in this political fiasco as well. It would appear that Bourreau-Guggenheim has a number of additional options should things go sour for him including referring to the European Court of Human Rights. Though one can only imagine how much additional political damage that would cause for the government who is not only intending on pushing through the three strikes law at all cost, but also changing around the French court system and giving judges only approximately 5 minutes to rule on each disconnection.

This case about a French employee fired for opposing the three strikes law, unfortunately for TF1 and the UMP, isn’t going to go away any time soon.