Eddie checks in . . .

THANKS TO WIKILEAKS, this latest from Edward Snowden. The man is pissed. To him, the Oval Office and a toilet have the same shape and function, but judge for yourself:

Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow
Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013

And so it goes . . . .

It's crap like this that validates my decision to leave the Excited States.






"They" just don't get it.









Kind of makes one crazy, eh ? ? ? ?



And so it goes, ya'll . . . .

Perspective

Some things aren't worth reading (I've written some of them) and others are.

This one... yeah. A definite read.

Tell it like it is . . .

APRIL WINCHELL is a bright young woman. Her site has a wonderful piece, "Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit". No shit, so to speak — and that's the heart of the matter. April explains:

If you’ve ever read President Obama’s Dreams From My Father, good for you. I couldn’t get past the foreword.

I wish I had. Because today I discovered that there’s a fairly juicy little subplot in the book, involving one of Obama’s high school friends.

Ray, a fellow classmate of Obama’s, was also bi-racial, and also trying to define himself. But what set him apart was his colorful manner of self-expression. Ray cursed like a motherfucker.

This would all be snickerworthy enough, but it turns out that Obama actually read the audiobook version of Dreams From My Father.

And that means he read Ray’s quotes.

Go visit April's site to listen.

Canada will still be in Afghanistan after 2011

"After 2011, the military mission will end," said Defence Minister Peter MacKay, repeating the Conservative government's well-worn line."What we will do beyond that point in the area of training, will predominantly be in the area of policing. And that is very much a key component part of security for Afghanistan."

Training the Afghan National Police. That was contracted out to DynCorp in 2003, wasn't it?They put together a program for turning illiterate recruits into a police force that was 8 weeks long, then 6 weeks, now down to 3 weeks.
How's that going so far?

Afghan Cops - A $6 Billion Fiasco - excerpted :

More than a year after Barack Obama took office, the president is still discovering how bad things are. At a March 12 briefing on Afghanistan with his senior advisers, he asked whether the police will be ready when America's scheduled drawdown begins in July 2011, according to a senior official who was in the room.
"It's inconceivable, but in fact for eight years we weren't training the police," replied Caldwell, taking part in the meeting via video link from Afghanistan. "We just never trained them before. All we did was give them a uniform."
The president looked stunned. "Eight years," he said. "And we didn't train police? It's mind-boggling." The room was silent.

Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who took over in November as chief of the U.S. program : "You constantly hear these stories about who was worse: the Afghan police that were there or the Taliban."

Since January 2007, upwards of 2,000 Afghan police have been killed in action—more than twice the figure for Afghan Army soldiers. U.S. officers say as many as half the police casualties were a result of firearms accidents and traffic collisions.

Fewer than 12% of the country's police units are capable of operating on their own. Yet of the 170,000 or so Afghans trained under the program since its inception, only about 30,000 remain on the force.

Steve Kraft, who oversees the program for the State Department : "Once they leave the training center, we currently don't know whether they stay with the force or quit," Kraft says. "The bottom line is, we just don't know."

Tracy Jeansonne, a former deputy sheriff from Louisiana who worked for DynCorp from May 2006 to June 2008. "A lot of the police officers wanted to be able to extort money from locals. If we caught them, we'd suggest they be removed. But we couldn't fire anybody. We could only make suggestions."

Ann Jones : "In many districts, the police recently supplemented their low pay and demonstrated allegiance to local warlords by stuffing ballot boxes for President Karzai in the presidential election."

The missing and unaccounted for millions of dollars in US government contracts is bad enough, but then there's the contracts we do know about :

AEY Inc., based in Florida, and described by the New York Times as "a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur," dispatched to the Afghan security forces 100 million Chinese cartridges, some 40 years old and in "decomposing packaging," under a $10 million Pentagon contract.

Currently, the Pentagon has given the Space and Missile Defense Command Contracting Office in Huntsville, Alabama, the task of deciding between DynCorp and Blackwater/Xe for the new billion-dollar police training contract. On March 12th, President Obama devoted much of the monthly video conference call between his Washington national security team and his senior commanders in Afghanistan to questions about how the police training problem should be tackled.
I guess that's where we come in.

MacKay, today :

"We will work within the parameters of the parliamentary motion, which states very clearly that the military mission will come to an end in 2011. We will then transition into some of the other important work that we’re doing. That includes a focus on police training. The prime minister has been clear in saying our commitment to Afghanistan is for the long-term."

Training the Afghan police alongside either DynCorp or Xe will be the new parliamentary "parameters" necessary to keep those trucks rolling between Windsor and Detroit .

Big Surprise. Not . . . .

Huffpo reports:

Rahm Emanuel Personally Pressed Reid To Cut Deal With Lieberman: Sources

Updated: 12-14-09 07:24 PM

Rahm Emanuel visited Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his Capitol office on Sunday evening and personally urged him to cut a deal with recalcitrant Sen. Joe Lieberman, two Democratic sources familiar with the situation told the Huffington Post.

Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, has long been identified as leading a faction of White House advisers who have been pushing the Senate simply to pass any health care bill, no matter how weak.

His direct message to Reid (D-Nev.), according to a source close to the negotiations: "Get it done. Just get it done."

Politico reported Monday morning that the White House had pressed Reid to cut the deal after Lieberman (I-Conn) insisted the Senate drop a provision, which Lieberman himself has long favored, to allow those 55-64 to buy in to Medicare. Lieberman is threatening to join a Republican filibuster of the bill if the provision isn't dropped.

The White House denied the report. "The report is inaccurate. The White House is not pushing Senator Reid in any direction. We are working hand in hand with the Senate Leadership to work through the various issues and pass health reform as soon as possible," White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer wrote in an e-mail to the Plum Line.

The report, however, according to the two sources, was entirely accurate. "We're long past time for these kinds of games," one source said.

It would be easy to put all the blame for this on the sleaze-bag emanuel, but remember who hired his a_s.

No bill would be a better than the watered-down version they're heading toward. All they have now is a forced payment to insurance companies with nothing in return.

$ win over people once again . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Believing in Change Yet ? ? ? ?

Matt Taibbi on business as usual in DC and on Wall Street:



Wall Street = 1, Main Street = 0 . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Joya to the World . . . .

Since my friend was singing in the pre-show choir for Malalai Joya's Vancouver book tour kick-off, I walked up the hill to her performance this evening.

I had previously heard Ms. Joya on a PBS program in the US, but to hear her story live in person was very moving. It is something I would recommend to anyone that has the opportunity to attend one of her appearances on this tour.

Be advised that neither bush, harper nor obama are positively portrayed. The woman knows where the real element of change for her country lies: Within it's people.

In answer to a question from an Afghani-Canadian woman in the crowd:

"What will happen to Afghanistan if all the foreign troops leave?"

was:

"The Afghani people will work it out. Slowly, they will begin to see that democracy and equal rights for all people, genders, religions is the thing to do. It won't be easy. It won't be fast. But it will happen. Having foreign troops there only more firmly entrenches the Taliban and the war lords in power. Make them leave, and the situation will slowly begin to change."

I'm thinking the military/industrial/congressional complex would not like her answer.

The Lady Alison has the details of the tour . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Gay Eternity

The Guardian UK today reveals:

Censored gay sex scenes in From Here to Eternity revealed

Daughter of author James Jones discloses details of cuts insisted upon by the novel's original publisher

* Alison Flood | * guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 November 2009

It is one of the most celebrated images in cinema, an icon of heterosexual romance: Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing as the waves crash over them in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity. But behind the Hollywood gloss is a tale of censorship and repression, with the author of the award-winning novel on which the film was based forced to remove scenes of gay sex from the manuscript before publication.

Kaylie Jones, a novelist in her own right, says her father, James Jones, was told by his publisher Scribner to eliminate both expletives and homosexual scenes in From Here to Eternity, which was based on his own experiences in Hawaii in the army on the eve of the Pearl Harbour bombing.

The original manuscript of From Here to Eternity went into "great detail" about the kinds of sexual favours soldiers like Private Angelo Maggio, played in the film by Frank Sinatra, would provide to rich gay men for money, Kaylie Jones revealed in an article written for US news website the Daily Beast.

"'I don't like to be blowed [by a man]'," the novel's hero Private Robert E Lee Prewitt tells Maggio in a section cut from the novel. "Angelo shrugged," writes James Jones. "'Oh, all right. I admit it's nothing like a woman. But it's something. Besides, old Hal treats me swell. He's always good for a touch when I'm broke. Five bucks. Ten bucks. Comes in handy the middle of the month ... Only reason I let Hal blow me is because I got a good thing there. If I turned him down I'd blow it sky high. And I want to hang onto that income, buddy.'"

________________


James Jones, she wrote, "believed that homosexuality was as old as mankind itself, and that Achilles, the bravest and most venerated fighter ever described, was gay, and to take a younger lover under your wing was a common practice among the soldiers of the time". "He also believed also that homosexuality was a natural condition of men in close quarters, and that it in no way affected a soldier's capabilities on the battlefield. What would have amazed him is that the discussion still continues to this day, cloaked in the same hypocrisy and silence as it was 60 years ago," she wrote. The US military's current "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy allows gay men and lesbians to serve only if they keep quiet about their sexuality. President Obama has previously announced his intention to revoke the rule, but for the moment it remains in force.

It's time for Eternity to be Here, Mr. President.

Let the women and men in the US military "ask" and "tell" . . . .

H/T Penelope ;-)

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

M & M . . . .

Matt and Michael are getting a bit impatient.

Is there a "movement" stirring?

One can only hope . . . .






(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Well, That's Depressing . . . .

Reuters has this depressing bit of news following Obama's health care speech last night:

Wall Street sees few surprises in Obama speech
Thu Sep 10, 2009 | By Lewis Krauskopf and Susan Heavey

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shares of U.S. health insurers climbed on Thursday after analysts saw no "game changers" from President Barack Obama's highly anticipated speech on health reform.

Following the speech, analysts predicted any changes to the system would be moderate, with Obama backing many initiatives put forth earlier this week by a leading Senate committee. The possibility a threatening public health plan would be enacted also now seemed doubtful, analysts said.

"There wasn't anything said that is drastically changing the outlook as to what might come out of Congress," said Steve Shubitz, an analyst with Edward Jones.

_______________


Shares of UnitedHealth Group (UNH.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and WellPoint Inc (WLP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the two largest health insurers, rose about 1 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Aetna Inc (AET.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) rose more than 2 percent and Cigna Corp (CI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) jumped more than 4 percent.

Obama "demonized insurers several times but didn't add anything new to the debate," Wells Fargo analyst Matt Perry said in a research note. "Overall we view the speech as neutral to insurers."

_______________


Concern remains over the possibility of a public insurance option and how alternatives that could be less threatening, such as non-profit cooperatives, would operate. But there is a growing sense that the government's role may not be as big as once feared.

Investors "are probably most concerned about how strong a government-run option to compete with commercial health insurers might be in a final bill, and ... Obama signaled yet again that he recognizes there's going to have to be compromise," said Paul Heldman, a senior healthcare policy analyst at Potomac Research Group in Washington.

Ana Gupte, a Sanford Bernstein analyst, said in a research note she was "even more confident after the Obama speech that the legislative outcomes will be moderate with no threat of a Medicare-like public plan."

So after all the tough talk to repuglicans, reassurances to "grandma," and clarifications to the USian public, it now appears Wall Street has weighed in. When it comes to padding their profit margins, they are rarely wrong. Since there are quite a few administration officials with Wall Street connections, this can't be good.

Say it ain't so, Barack . . . .

The Choice - Not That Tough . . . .

Now let's see how he does . . . .

Unfortunate video capture. Caribou Barbie is NOT the featured player in this short video . . . .

H/T BTO

(Cross-osted from Moved to Vancouver)

Matt Strikes Again . . . .

My apologies for missing the release of this a couple of days ago, but "better late than never," right?

Matt Taibbi's "Sick and Wrong" Rolling Stone article is finally available online. Check it out for his take on the USofexpensivehealthcare's fiasco in the attempt to "reform" the health care system. As usual, his writing style is perfect, and his insights/sources are a wealth of information. Too bad the rest of the MSM doesn't have the same level of journalistic quality.

Some highlights:

Without a public option, any effort at health care reform will be as meaningful as a manicure for a gunshot victim.
_____________

Leading advocates of single-payer, including doctors from the Physicians for a National Health Program, implored Baucus to allow them to testify. When he refused, a group of eight single-payer activists, including three doctors, stood up during the hearings and asked to be included in the discussion. One of the all-time classic moments in the health care reform movement came when the second protester to stand up, Katie Robbins of Health Care Now, declared, "We need single-payer health care!"

To which Baucus, who looked genuinely frightened, replied, "We need more police!"

The eight protesters were led away in handcuffs and spent about seven hours in jail.
_______________

But one of the immutable laws of politics in the U.S. Congress is that progressives will always be screwed by their own leaders, as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
_______________

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted that "private insurance will not be able to compete with a government option." This is a little like complaining that Keanu Reeves was robbed of an Oscar just because he can't act.
_______________

Even more revolting, when Pelosi was asked on July 31st if she worried that progressives in the House would yank their support of the bill because of the sellout to conservatives, she literally laughed out loud. "Are the progressives going to take down universal, quality, affordable health care for all Americans?" she said, chuckling heartily to reporters. "I don't think so."

The laugh said everything about what the mainstream Democratic Party is all about. It finds the notion that it has to pay anything more than lip service to its professed values funny.
______________

And finally:

Then again, some of the blame has to go to all of us. It's more than a little conspicuous that the same electorate that poured its heart out last year for the Hallmark-card story line of the Obama campaign has not been seen much in this health care debate. The handful of legislators — the Weiners, Kuciniches, Wydens and Sanderses — who are fighting for something real should be doing so with armies at their back. Instead, all the noise is being made on the other side. Not so stupid after all — they, at least, understand that politics is a fight that does not end with the wearing of a T-shirt in November.

Read the whole article and judge for yourself.

Send it to your friends south of the 49th. Perhaps they'll put the T-shirts away and start demanding their basic human rights . . . .

H/T BTO

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

UPDATE: Robert Reich weighs in on what Obama must demand from Congress.

"Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta"

says Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle.

PetroChina, the world's second largest oil company, is buying a 60% majority stake in two Athabasca Oil Sands Corp tar sands projects. The $1.9 billion deal will provide Chinese capital for Athabasca which controls about 1.3 million acres of oil sands properties containing as many as five billion barrels of reserves in Alberta. The deal is slated to go through on Oct 31.

"Sveinung Svarte, chief executive of Athabasca, said the company would likely ship its initial output to U.S. refiners, but would consider other export routes if they open up."

In 2005 the state-owned PetroChina signed a memorandum with Enbridge to take up to half the space on its proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to the port of Kitimat in BC.
Enbridge is applying to build the pipeline this year, so presumably PetroChina will eventually be able to ship its newly acquired share of Alberta oilsands straight home to China.

Athabasca does not foresee any "issues" from Investment Canada.
Oilweek :

"Such a takeover would be subject to a new provision recently incorporated into the Investment Canada Act, under which the federal government could block a deal from a foreign firm if it was deemed to pose a threat to national security. But Ottawa will likely wave through the deal.

Geopolitics Central economist Vince Lauerman : ""Given the environmental factor down in the states, it only makes sense to diversify our customers, especially to customers that are somewhat less concerned about the environment in general and greenhouse gas emissions in particular."

The Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta, said Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle."

Yup. Just in case this :
August 2009 : Washington approves oil sands pipeline

"The Obama administration yesterday approved [an Enbridge] pipeline to carry oil-sands fuel from Canada into the US, saying its action was designed to send "a positive economic signal in a difficult economic period".

reverts back to this :
June 2008 : Obama's fight against 'dirty oil' could hurt oil sands

"Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed he would break America's addiction to "dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive" oil if he is elected U.S. president -- and one of his first targets might well be Canada's oil sands."

Good to know the Cons' criticism of China's crappy environment record - their stated reason for blowing off the Kyoto Accord - isn't likely to stand in the way of selling China the product of our own crappy environment record.

How the US will react to this possible threat to 'North American energy security' is anybody's guess.
.
Related : Laila Yuile : Support divided for Enbridge Northern Pipeline
The Tyee : Environmental groups demand public inquiry into Enbridge Pipeline
.

Child detainee going home after four years in Gitmo

A child detained in Guantanamo Bay for seven years for allegedly throwing a hand grenade at US soldiers in Afghanistan when he was 14 years old is on his way home after a US Federal Court ruled the government was holding him illegally. His initial confession, obtained under duress, was thrown out by the judge.
.
"We are so pleased that this nightmare of abuse and injustice has finally come to an end," said his attorney. "While he can never get back the nearly seven years he was illegally detained and tortured, now he can finally return home to his family, friends and country, and begin to build a normal life."
.
The child detainee in question is Mohammed Jawad, now returned to his native Afghanistan thanks to a US Federal Court decision this month. [Yeah, mean trick, I know]
.
Gosh, another kid accused of throwing a grenade. Is the US military generally in the habit of accusing the survivors of their raids of throwing grenades, or only when there are US casualties and the possibility of friendly fire?
.
Meanwhile back in Canada, our child soldier detained in Guantanamo for seven years for allegedly throwing a grenade at US soldiers in Afghanistan when he was 15 - that's Omar Khadr pictured above in the middle the year before his father dumped him in Afghanistan - has not been so lucky because Prime Minister Stephen Harper is the last leader on the planet Earth to support the detaining and abuse of children in Gitmo.
.
On August 14, our Federal Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that Ottawa is required to press the US for Khadr's repatriation because CSIS and Department of Foreign Affairs officials had violated his Charter rights by being complicit in his mistreatment at Gitmo.
.
Yesterday Harper's federal government disgraced itself by announcing it will go to the Supreme Court in a bid to overturn that ruling.
They do not want to risk asking the US for Khadr's return, perhaps because the Obama Administration urged a federal judge to order the release of Mohammed Jawad, and even George W. Bush granted requests by other countries for the repatriation of their citizens from Gitmo.
Harper is going to the wall in hopes that a sufficient number of Canadians believe in tiered citizenship and a four-tiered passport system and will applaud his stand against so-called 'activist' judges. He's wrong about that.

The SPP is dead; long live the PPA

Last week spp.gov, the official US home of the SPP, read:

"The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) is no longer an active initiative and as such this website will act as an archive for SPP documents. There will not be any updates to this site."

This week it seems they did think of a site update after all. spp.gov :

"Going forward, we want to build on the accomplishments achieved by the SPP and further improve our cooperation."

We are then redirected to the Joint Statement by the North American Leaders (August 10, 2009) :

"Our three governments recognize that we cannot limit our efforts to North America alone, and we have agreed to instruct our respective Ministers to strive for greater cooperation and coordination as we work to promote security and institutional development with our neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean ...

We commend the progress achieved on reducing unnecessary regulatory differences and have instructed our respective Ministers to continue this work by building on the previous efforts, developing focused priorities and a specific timeline. "

So in other words - expanding some version of the SPP of North America to include Central and South America as well.
Didn't this used to be called the FTAA, the spectacularly FAIL Free Trade Area of the Americas ?
Up here this went : "We, the democratically elected Heads of State and Government of the Americas, have met in Quebec City at our Third Summit, to renew our commitment to hemispheric integration." ... followed by 100,000+ protesters, rubber bullets, and so much tear gas that the we-the-democratically-elected could smell it inside their summit.

Enter FTAA Plan B. In Sept 2008 Bush announced The Pathways to Prosperity of the Americas, from the headquarters of the corporate lobby group Council of the Americas.
Current PPA member states : US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay

Heide Bronke, U.S. State Department :

''Eleven leaders in the hemisphere met with our president and stood with him in a project aimed at expanding economic integration. This is not just free trade, it's a political vision for the hemisphere."

The rightwing Heritage Foundation : Finding Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas

"The PPA is an attempt to re-energize U.S. government and regional efforts to enlarge a free trade area in the Western Hemisphere and create positive momentum for open-market policies that will carry over into the next Administration.

Styled in part after other current efforts to improve economic relations with key trade and investment partners--such as the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (U.S., Canada, and Mexico) - the PPA would provide a forum for not only finding avenues to improve the flow of commerce but also promoting greater coherence and consistency in the rules specified under the five separate free trade agreements (FTAs) that currently define trade between PPA members. With the basic trade agreements already in place, members of the PPA can focus on dismantling remaining barriers to trade and ensuring that business is able to take advantage of new opportunities brought by lower trade and investment barriers.

On a grander scale, success under the PPA could result in new momentum for concluding a broader Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)."

So did the PPA successfully "carry over into the next Administration"?

Address of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State
Pathways to Prosperity Ministerial, May 31, 2009
US State Dept website :

"President Obama has emphasized that it's not important whether ideas come from one party or another, so long as they move us in the right direction. This meeting builds on the work of the previous U.S. administration, but the President and I are also committed to re-launching Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas and expanding its work to spread the benefits of economic recovery, growth, and open markets ..."

Elsewhere Senator Clinton has described the Pathways to Prosperity accord as "a multilateral initiative to promote shared security and prosperity throughout the Americas".
Speaking of the SPP and North America as a shared economic space last year, Thomas Shannon of the State Department told Linda Carlsen at the Center for International Policy:
"What we’re doing, in some way, in a certain respect, is armoring NAFTA."

Alliance for Responsible Trade :

"The PPA bears many of the hallmarks of the SPP. According to the Mexican Action Network on Free Trade, the PPA is "based on two similar components to the SPP: on one hand an economic, mercantile and financial agenda covered by the term ‘prosperity', and on the other a ‘security' agenda of enhancing military and police powers to combat terrorism, narcotraffic, illegal migration, etc.." The PPA, like the SPP, is little more than an attempt to justify economic deregulation and to promote an escalation of militarism in the region."

Stuart Trew from the Council of Canadians writes The SPP is dead, so where's the champagne? :

Ok, just one glass of champagne, Stuart, but then as you say : Back to work.
Because we don't care what it's called : SPP, North American Union, deep integration, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, Pathways to Prosperity of the Americas. We don't care. Really. Call it whatever you like.

Assault rifle at Obama speech a publicity stunt

for conservative talk radio show Declare Your Independence With Ernest Hancock.
Hancock and "Chris", the black man carrying the assault rifle, knew each other "through their work for presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas)".

"We know what we're up against," Hancock, also packing heat at the health care rally, told CNN. "We're up against a tyrannical government that will rob the next generation as long as they can get away with it."

Just a couple of guys conducting a radio interview while cradling an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle at a health care rally where the President of the United States was speaking.
This is not really about healthcare then, is it?
From the "interview" :

"Is it your advocacy that by having guns here we're probably all safer?" Hancock asked.
Chris "absolutely" agreed. He then went on to explain how he was always armed, even when riding his motorcycle, though not always when he showered: "Sometimes when I take a shower I set it down on the sink."

Only sometimes. Presumably other times not. Banking with an assault rifle must be interesting.

Initial news reports included the information that the Arizona police who monitored the man at the downtown protest "wanted to make sure no one decided to harm him."
Now we hear from Hancock's interview on CNN:

"It was Thursday that I called and talked to Al Ramirez, the representative from the Phoenix police department, and we were discussing -- we've been around this rhetoric that was building up around William Kostric, who did this in New Hampshire."

These stunts at health care rallies, whether with or without the guns, were never about health care.

Walking the Gay Walk . . . .

Lots of rumbling in the GLBT community of late about how President Obama may not be living up to their "hope" during the '08 political season.

His actions while in office don't exactly match the campaign rhetoric.


From McClatchy/Kansas City Star today:

To gays who supported him, Obama hasn't walked the walk

Rick Montgomery | Kansas City Star | June 26, 2009

If Diane Silver's blog reflects the sentiments of gay and lesbian Americans in the heartland, President Barack Obama is fast losing a serious fan base.

The Topeka woman's postings throughout June, which is Gay Pride Month, have railed about what she calls Obama's "awful record … token action and empty words."

She called his Justice Department's recent court filing — a 54-page defense of a federal marriage law that Obama had pledged to repeal — "hideous."

Many in the movement still speak hopefully of a president who won their overwhelming support in the 2008 elections. But the enthusiasm — and the same level of campaign contributions — may not be there for other Democrats in next year's elections.

Complaints over what many see as the administration's lack of zeal are found throughout the gay and lesbian blogosphere.

Stampp Corbin, a gay San Diego city commissioner who rallied supporters to Obama's presidential bid, wrote online: "When I wake up each morning, I feel a …' It's bit schizophrenic myself. 'I love Obama, I hate Obama, I am ambivalent maddening."

Corbin was among several leaders of gay and lesbian communities who Thursday boycotted a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Washington. He suggested the White House had better start delivering results "or the coffers of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community will be slammed shut on the fingers of your administration."

Nationally, gay-rights groups continue to count the president as a friend, at least in public. Given persistent pledges to end the military's ban on openly gay service members, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and to repeal discriminatory elements of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, the White House hopes for a strong showing next week when Obama hosts a Gay Pride reception.

______________


Much of the anger centers on a June 11 Justice Department brief seeking to dismiss a constitutional challenge of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA.

The law, limiting federal marriage benefits to opposite-sex couples, is the target of a federal lawsuit in California. Justice spokesman Charles Miller said that as attorneys for the government "we have to defend that law" when it's taken to court. "It's Congress' job" to change or chuck it if Congress sees fit.

The government's brief outlined a defense seen by gay-rights advocates as unnecessarily vigorous. "DOMA does not restrict any rights that have been recognized as fundamental," it stated.

"That just went too far," said Missouri Sen. Jolie Justus, a Democrat who recently seized upon Iowa's same-sex marriage law to wed her partner in Iowa City.

The brief went on to point out that incestuous relationships, too, were outside states' legal purview of marriage — as if to lump uncle-niece pairings with same-sex couples.

"The government could have defended DOMA without using the red herrings and insulting arguments that once were used to stop interracial marriages," Justus said. "We've been talking about this constantly … a slap in the face," though she said she expected Obama to press his pledge to undo the law in time.

_______________


The president's hesitation to push for an end to the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy has widened the divide, especially after the handling of Pietrangelo v. Gates.

The case, brought by James Pietrangelo, an infantry officer who was preparing for his third tour in Iraq when he was discharged for being gay, reached the U.S. Supreme Court — where the Obama administration urged that it not be heard.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the administration's lawyer before the court, said in her filing that the ban is "rationally related to the government's legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion."

Days earlier, however, in the wake of Rep. John McHugh's nomination to be secretary of the Army, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said McHugh shares Obama's commitment to repealing the ban, which isn't "working for this country right now."

After his lawsuit was disposed of, Pietrangelo called the president "a coward, a bigot and a pathological liar … who spent more time picking out his dog, Bo … than he has working for equality for gay people."

More than 250 lesbian and gay members of the military have been booted out since Obama took office.

_______________


Silver, in a telephone interview, said she and the families of same-sex couples have waited long enough.

Their options? One is to "just shut your wallets" when Democratic fundraisers come calling, she said.

"The GAY-TM is closed."

Should we be surprised? Disappointed, maybe, thinking he would actually be a different kind of politician.

"Fool me once, shame on you."

And all that . . . .


(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

"'Ya Want Change With That Legal Brief, Sir ? ? ? ? "

If the Obama administration's stance on legal matters is any indication, the "change" they're offering is mainly pocket change.

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know what you're thinking: "But if you consider the alternative, he's head and shoulders above. They would have been disastrous!"

Consider these quotes from the article below, however:

President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush;
Obama's legal arguments repeatedly mirror Bush's;
this administration's legal arguments have blended into the other;
Obama has come to emulate Bush;
he's following Bush's lead in defending in court the federal marriage law;
The Obama White House has followed suit;
The Obama White House, so far, takes the same view;
The Obama administration now agrees;
as Obama follows the Bush lead;
The Obama administration now says the same.

From McClatchy yesterday:

In stark legal turnaround, Obama now resembles Bush
Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers | June 19, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is morphing into George W. Bush, as administration attorneys repeatedly adopt the executive-authority and national-security rationales that their Republican predecessors preferred.

In courtroom battles and freedom-of-information fights from Washington, D.C., to California, Obama's legal arguments repeatedly mirror Bush's: White House turf is to be protected, secrets must be retained and dire warnings are wielded as weapons.

"It's putting up a veritable wall around the White House, and it's so at odds with Obama's campaign commitment to more open government," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal watchdog group.

_______________


Whatever the reasons, policy persists.

The Bush White House sought to keep e-mails secret. The Obama White House has followed suit. The Bush White House sought to keep visitor logs secret. The Obama White House, so far, takes the same view.

Petaluma, Calif., resident Carolyn Jewel and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a legal activist group, sued the Bush administration over warrantless wiretaps. The Bush administration said that the lawsuit endangered national security. The Obama administration now agrees.

_______________


An ACLU lawsuit, initially filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., contends that the Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan knowingly supported a CIA operation that flew terrorism suspects to brutal overseas prisons. The Bush administration invoked the "state secrets" privilege in an effort to stop the suit.

"Further litigation of this case would pose an unacceptable risk of disclosure of information that the nation's security requires not be disclosed," the Bush administration declared in a legal filing on Oct. 18, 2007.

The Obama administration now says the same, after a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled April 21 that the case could proceed.

"Permitting this suit to proceed would pose an unacceptable risk to national security," the Obama administration declared in a legal filing June 12.

For both arguments, the two administrations relied on the attestations of the same man: former Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden.

You need to count your "change" the next time a vote is cast.

I seem to be missing some of mine . . . .

(Cross-posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Straws connected to nothing but more straws...

Only around the fires of American Republican encampments and at weekly meetings of the Michigan militia would this conversation by Michael Goldfarb be considered to have more merit than where a bear took a dump.

It seems there is some legitimate confusion on just what languages Obama speaks, and as far as Arabic, the only real hint has came from Nick Kristof, who heard Obama recite the Muslim call to prayer in Arabic and with a "first-rate accent" back in 2007.

Legitimate?!

Obama, as a kid in Jakarta, attended school with muslims. The Adhan to which Goldfarb refers but does not know the name, happens several times a day in places like Jakarta... in Arabic, even though the native language of the place is Bahasa.

I don't believe in any god but I can recite both The Adhan and The Lord's Prayer equally well in the language ambient in the classrooms during the periods they were rammed into my head as daily memory work.

Interesting that Goldfarb spends time gazing at his genitals worrying about the language skills of the current president when the immediate past president, somebody he held up in messianic glory, usually left basic English in a smoking heap of bad grammar.

Sadly, No! offers more.