Mark Penn is on a mission to destroy Obama. Will Hillary follow his strategy?

Mark Penn's firm has made millions from the Clinton campaign. Yes, millions to lead the Clinton campaign to where it is today. Anyone who has watched any cable news or read any political articles over the past couple days knows Penn wants the campaign to get very, very ugly. He's been telling that to anyone who will listen -- and obviously telegraphing that message to any entities preparing to spend money "independently" on Clinton's behalf. (Penn couldn't tell them directly because coordination isn't allowed, but if they read it in the paper or hear Howard Fineman say it on MSNBC, well, that just happens.) He's also trying to get the Clinton campaign itself to attack Obama more aggressively. Penn sounds obsessed with destroying Obama and stated his case again to the Politico:

“In the coming week,” Penn told Politico, “Sen. Clinton will show that she is the one ready to be commander in chief, manage the economy and defeat John McCain. She will both present her plans on [the] direction to take the country, in settings like an economic summit, and show how Sen. Obama has said one thing in his speeches and another in his negative mailers.”

Mark Penn has already done enormous damage to the Clinton campaign -- making millions in the process. Now, he wants to destroy Obama. Doubtful that Penn will succeed. Nothing else he has tried this cycle has worked. And, Obama has already shown he can take anything Penn and company throw at him.

But, it's Penn's drive to go totally negative that deserves a look. It's almost like it doesn't matter to him who wins in November -- as if the consequences don't matter.

Maybe to Penn, they don't. Read or re-read Ari Berman's seminal piece about Penn, which appeared last May in The Nation. Don't forget, Penn has a day job running one of the biggest public relations firms in the world, Burson-Marsteller. There's an excerpt after the break about Penn's work there. After you read it, ask yourself whose side Penn is really on.

The whole article is worth a read, but this gives a good picture of the guy who desperately wants to go negative against Obama:

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of colluding with the Nigerian government in committing major human rights violations. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer groups. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was a partner with Lee Atwater, the consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign for George H.W. Bush in 1988. In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets.

Black is only one cannon in B-M's Republican arsenal. Its "grassroots" lobbying branch, Direct Impact--which specializes in corporate-funded astroturfing--is run by Dennis Whitfield, a former Reagan Cabinet official, and Dave DenHerder, the political director of the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign in Ohio. That's not all. B-M recently partnered with lobbyist Ed Gillespie, the former head of the Republican National Committee, in creating the new ad firm 360Advantage, run by two admen for the Bush/Cheney campaigns. Its first project was a campaign against "liberal bias" in the media for the neoconservative Weekly Standard magazine.

As expected with such a lineup, B-M has a highly confrontational relationship with organized labor. "Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns," read the "Labor Relations" section of its website, describing that branch of the company (the section was altered after The American Prospect quoted it in March).

Read More......

The subprime primer

Thanks to AMERICAblog readers John W. and Meredith H. for sending this over. It's a long slide show and parts are NSFW due to language but this is an excellent summary of everything that's wrong about the subprime fiasco. There were obvious conflicts of interest at each and every step along the way and people heard what they wanted to hear. Deep commissions helped pave the way and our traditional oversight and regulations were MIA, because they didn't want to get in the way of the money train.

Think about that as we see Bernanke and the Fed recklessly throw more money at the banks at the expense of everyone else. It's shocking that Democrats had stood by and not challenged these actions. Unless everyone is happy with windfall profits (and then losses followed by bailouts) on Wall Street, we need a radical change in oversight policies. The Federal Reserve in it's current form has failed and continues to fail the American public. Read More......

Obama was right. Where was McCain when our soldiers in Iraq needed him?

From tomorrow's paper:

[American troops in Afghanistan] felt eclipsed by Iraq. As Sgt. Erick Gallardo put it: “We don’t get supplies, assets. We scrounge for everything and live a lot more rugged. But we know the war is here. We got unfinished business.”

How many more stories do we need about our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq being ignored by George Bush and his buddy on the Armed Services Committee, John McCain?

Heroes don't leave our soldiers "scrounging for everything." Heroes don't let hundreds of Marines be killed and injured because no one in the government wanted to the give them the armor they begged for. Heroes don't let the VA abuse our injured troops under his watch. John McCain may have been a hero 40 years ago in Vietnam. But over the past 6 years he oversaw the wholesale abandonment of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq simply because he didn't want to embarrass George Bush by doing anything to shed light on the problem in his oversight role. When our troops needed him most, John McCain played politics. The man is no hero. Read More......

GM exec repeats, global warming 'total crock of sh**'

Actually, it's the cars that he designs that are total crocks of shit.

In a posting on his GM blog on Thursday, Lutz said those "spewing virtual vitriol" at him for minimizing the threat of climate change were "missing the big picture."

"What they should be doing in earnest is forming opinions, not about me but about GM and what this company is doing that is ... hugely beneficial to the causes they so enthusiastically claim to support," he said in a posting titled, "Talk About a Crock."

Fine, let me tell you about how everyone I know hates the pieces of junk that GM has been selling for decades. The lousy gas mileage, the breaking down just after the warranty expired, the miserable resale value, the horrendous reliability and the butt ugly looks. The GM cars here in Europe (Opel) are just as lousy and it's a miracle they're still in business. Of course, let's not forget the tens of thousands of ruined households thanks to GM shutting down factory towns because people like Lutz were designing such massive pieces of junk. His designs helped millions of Americans turn away from Detroit and buy foreign cars. I mean, if that's what Lutz wants to talk about, why not? Read More......

Our units are properly equipped? Tell that to the 100s of Marines the Pentagon killed and wounded by not giving them proper body armor

Joe wrote earlier today about how Senator John Warner and the Pentagon are trying to Swift Boat Obama by claiming that the American soldier in Afghanistan, who complained about insufficient support from the Pentagon, doesn't even exist. Only problem? NBC and ABC have interviewed the guy. But don't let facts get in the way of the Pentagon's and John Warner's efforts to put another Republican in the White House. Here is what a Pentagon spokesman said about this:

NBC quoted Bush appointee/Pentagon flack Bryan Whitman:

"I find that account pretty hard to imagine," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

"Despite the stress that we readily acknowledge on the force, one of the things that we do is make sure that all of our units and service members that are going into harm's way are properly trained, equipped and with the leadership to be successful," he said.

Properly trained, equipped and with the leadership they need? Huh? On leadership, they had George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld - how did that work out for you? On equipment, we found out just this week that hundreds of Marines are dead and wounded because the Pentagon didn't give them the armor they needed. Hell of a lot of nerve to make this claim the same week the Pentagon's own study blames them for killing our own Marines.

And finally, there's John Warner. You remember him, the guy heading up the Senate Armed Service Committee, doing no oversight whatsoever, while the Pentagon was killing our Marines, and refusing to give our injured troops the medical attention they needed at places like Walter Reed. John Warner's negligence killed our troops and harmed our injured. He is the last person who should be talking about whether our troops are getting what they need.

The media needs to stop playing Republican-suck-up. This story has now been disproven. It's time to do an analysis on why the Pentagon is lying in order to influence the elections, and how John Warner is the last person who should be trusted when it comes to the safety of our troops. Read More......

More evidence of the right wing smear machine. The Pentagon and Senator John Warner are part of it.

Okay, more evidence of just how far reaching and aggressive the right wing smear machine is. Again, we have to know how this is going to operate this year if we are going to fight it. And, again, this relates to something Barack Obama said at the debate Thursday night:

You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon -- supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.

And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief. Now, that's a consequence of bad judgment.

As I wrote yesterday, ABC's Jake Tapper talked to the Army captain in question and verified it was true.

Tapper cited ten right wing blogs that were attacking Obama on this issue. But, it's worse. Two pillars of the Republican defense establishment, the Pentagon and Senator John Warner, also weighed in.

NBC, also spoke to the soldier, but gave the McCain campaign the headline it wanted "Pentagon questions Obama’s soldier story." NBC quoted Bush appointee/Pentagon flack Bryan Whitman:

"I find that account pretty hard to imagine," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

"Despite the stress that we readily acknowledge on the force, one of the things that we do is make sure that all of our units and service members that are going into harm's way are properly trained, equipped and with the leadership to be successful," he said.

Okay, that is so not true. But what else would you expect. Whitman's been flacking at the Pentagon since the Rumsfeld days. Think of all the misinformation and lies he spewed at us.

Also, today's Washington Post reports that Senator John Warner dashed off a "stern letter" to Obama challenging his assertions:

Warner -- a World War II veteran and former Navy Secretary -- has been a staunch advocate for U.S. troops. Warner's letter to Obama asks the senator to provide "essential facts" about the Army captain's story, including his personal information, so members of the committee can interview him and others to establish accountability, "depending of course, on the accuracy of the facts."

It's almost amazing how quickly the Republican machine will respond to a perceived attack on their strengths. This was clearly a concerted effort to beat back a very damaging story. What Obama said on Thursday night shines another spotlight on the failures of the Bush/Cheney/McCain record. The Republicans respond very quickly when politics are involved. It's disturbing they don't respond as quickly when soldiers' lives are on the line.

Now, we have two networks that have verified Obama's account. The right wing machine was wrong again. Not just the blogs, but the Pentagon and the "esteemed" John Warner. That should tell the media something. Don't just regurgitate the right wing spin -- and that includes the Pentagon. Verify first because none of them can be believed. Read More......

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning everyone.

Check out the poem of the week, Another Reason I Don't Keep a Gun in the House, by Billy Collins who was our poet laureate in 2001. It's a fun read. The first line is "The neighbors' dog will not stop barking." Been there. Except it was my dog. When I first got Boomer from the pound, he had some serious separation anxiety. But, he got over it and did stop barking.

Anyway, what else is going on? Read More......

FCC limits Fox TV penalty after five year review

Fair and balanced.

The Federal Communications Commission erased nearly all of a proposed $1.2 million indecency fine against a number of Fox television stations yesterday, saying the Rupert Murdoch-owned network should be fined for airing an offensive television show only in markets where viewers complained about it.

Instead of ordering all 169 stations that aired it to pay the larger fine, the FCC ordered 13 Fox-owned and -affiliated stations to pay a total of $91,000 in indecency fines for broadcasting an episode of the long-canceled reality show "Married by America" nearly five years ago.

In yesterday's order, the FCC turned down a Fox claim that said the April 7, 2003, show -- which featured digitally obscured nudity and whipped-cream-covered strippers -- was not indecent.

Read More......

Subprime loans defaulting even before rate increase

It's hard to imagine this pile of rubbish was worse than expected, but it was. McCain's health care plan, with another "let the market decide" approach, will look much like this if he gets his way.

For months, we've fretted about the Armageddon that will hit when subprime adjustable rate mortgages start resetting to much higher interest rates.

What's happening is even worse: Many of these loans are defaulting well before their rates increase.

Defaults for subprime loans issued in 2007 - none of which have reset yet - hit 11.2 percent in November. That represents perhaps 300,000 households, and is twice the default rate that 2006 loans had 10 months after being issued, according to Friedman, Billings Ramsey analyst Michael Youngblood.

Defaults are spiking well before resets come into play thanks to the lax lending environment of the past few years. Many borrowers were approved for mortgages that they had little chance of affording, even at the low-interest teaser rates.

Read More......