Month: August 2005

9/11 FBI Whistleblower Coleen Rowley Is Running for Congress (MN-02)

Jon Ponder

FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley is running for the congressional seat in Minnesota’s Second District that is currently held by Rep. John Kline, a Republican. The district encompasses suburbs to the south of Minneapolis-St. Paul, and was reconfigured in the 2000 redistricting, but has elected Democrats in the past.

While hundreds of government officials dropped the ball prior to the 9/11 attacks, Rowley stands nearly alone as one who sounded the warning that terrorists were on the move within our borders:

In May of 2002, Coleen brought some of the pre 9/11 lapses in the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui to light. The 9/11 Commission subsequently described Moussaoui as an “Al Qaeda mistake and missed opportunity,” the investigation of whom may have led to the center of the Al Qaeda plot if it had been pursued in a timely and effective manner.

In June of 2002, Coleen testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about some of the endemic problems faced by the FBI and the intelligence community.

In April 2003, following an unsuccessful attempt to warn the Director and other administration officials about the dangers of launching the invasion of Iraq, she “stepped down” from her legal position and returned to being an FBI Special Agent.

Official campaign website: MN-02 – Coleen Rowley for Congress .

Target Targeted for Its Donations to Gov. Gropenator

Buck Banks

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article today about a consumer group that has mounted an advertising campaign against retailer Target for its nearly $300,000 in donations to groups supporting California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political initiatives. The group, California Consumers United, has spent $50,000 for a Bay Area radio campaign aimed at seniors to counteract Target’s recent ads intended to lure seniors and families to new pharmacies in its larger stores.

Oh, irony, thy name is Arnold!

The ad slams Schwarzenegger for taking money from drug companies and vetoing a bill that would have made it easier to bring lower-priced drugs into the state from Canada.

It also suggests that Schwarzenegger’s Proposition 76, which would give the governor more control over the state budget, would allow him to slash health care spending.

Since 2004, Target has given $100,000 to Citizens to Save California, which worked to qualify the governor’s initiatives for the special election ballot, and $210,000 to the governor’s California Recovery Team, which supports Schwarzenegger’s political aims.

Target also spent $250,000 to back a referendum that erased a law that would have required many California businesses to provide health care for their workers, $100,000 to the California Business Properties Association, another of Schwarzenegger’s backers, and tens of thousands of dollars to the state Republican and Democratic parties and legislators on both sides of the political aisle.

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O’Reilly Says the Los Angeles Times Won’t Understand Terrorism Until Terrorists Cut off Michael Kinsley’s Head

Jon Ponder

“How can anyone think this way? You know, ‘Shutting down Guantánamo and giving suspected terrorists legal protections would help restore our reputation abroad.’ No, it wouldn’t. I mean that’s like saying, well, if we’re nicer to the people who want to KILL US, then the other people who want to KILL US will like us more. Does that make any sense to you? Do you think Osama [bin Laden] is gonna be more favorably disposed to the U.S. if we give the Guantánamo people lawyers? … I mean, but this is what they’re saying. It is just — you just sit there, you go, ‘They’ll never get it until they grab Michael Kinsley out of his little house and they cut his head off.’ And maybe when the blade sinks in, he’ll go, ‘Perhaps O’Reilly was right.‘

– Bill O’Reilly

Trent Lott Corroborates Downing Street Memos

Jon Ponder

“In the summer of 2002…the president began lobbying for an open-ended resolution empowering him to wage war on Iraq…. Bush had made clear his intentions to wage war on Iraq in several of our private meetings.”

– Sen. Trent Lott, in his book “Herding Cats,” corroborating statements in the Downing Street Memos proving that President Bush had decided to go to war in Iraq in 2002, while making misleading public statements to the contrary.

Jeb Throws Honor to the Wind and Florida to the Wolves

Trish

Floridians can rest easy, knowing that growth, resource protection, and the environment is in the hands of a Bush family lackey who is up on state ethics violation charges. I know I feel better.

Palm Beach Post:

Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Palm Beach County Commissioner Mary McCarty to a panel charged with creating a master plan for how the state should handle growth, even as she faces charges of violating state ethics laws…

McCarty is under investigation by the Florida Commission on Ethics, which last week tanked a proposed settlement in which she was to admit to illegally accepting $3,750 in contributions to her legal defense fund.

The ethics panel is looking into thousands of dollars of contributions from employees of developer Kenco Communities, which may have violated the state cap of $100.

Even fellow Republicans are appalled by Jeb’s hubris and ability to pick the lowest hanging fruit.

McCarty joined a list of appointees with close ties to the Bush administration, including former chief of staff Kathleen Shanahan and lobbyist Steve Uhlfelder, who stepped down from the Board of Governors this year amid criticism from Senate President Tom Lee.

Lee, R-Brandon, had sought to remove lobbyists from state boards that make decisions on contracts, spending and rules…

Shanahan, who served briefly as chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, joined Tampa-based WRS Infrastructure and Environment Inc., as chief executive officer in July.

But McCarty has nothing to worry about. Looks like Jeb took care of her little “ethics problem” while he was at it.

Bush also chose four new ethics commissioners, including Norman Ostrau, a former lawmaker who said Monday he had resigned as a registered lobbyist earlier in the day at Bush’s request.

I think Florida has much more of this in store during the dying days of the Jeb administration. Not that he’s ever made much of a pretense of acting honorably or fairly, but all bets are off now.

Mitchell: Newspapers Should Condemn War, Call for Iraq Pullout

Buck Banks

Greg Mitchell, an editor at Editor & Publisher, has taken a lot of heat for his expressed views on the Iraq War and his use of the V(ietnam)-word to describe the conflict. He now says we have reached the “tipping point” for Iraq, equivalent to Vietnam’s tipping point — the Tet Offensive.

Mitchell makes some excellent points, especially that the very newspapers who were trumpeting the now-discredited WMD rationale that propelled the U.S. into the war should be among the first to call for withdrawal. He also notes that if a couple of the biggies break the ice, many more will follow.

As the dog days of August wind down, the editorial pages of American newspapers face a moment of truth on the Iraq war. Over the next few weeks, with vacationers heading home, the president’s popularity sinking, hearings planned in Congress, and major protests set, the case for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq — sooner rather than later, as Al Neuharth has repeatedly put it — will finally become a center of public and political debate.

Or, as Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska (who once favored the war) said on Sunday, “We should start figuring out how we get out of there. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur.”

It’s time for newspapers, many of which helped get us into this war, to consider using their editorial pages as platforms to help get us out of it. So far, few have done much more than wring their hands, or simply criticize the conduct of the war, or the lack of body armor. Not many months ago, in fact, some papers, including The New York Times, were calling for more U.S. troops for Iraq.

Now it’s literally do-or-die time.
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White House: Opponents of Iraq War Favor Losing ‘War on Terror’

Jon Ponder
President Bush needs all Americans to be afraid. He uses our fear as a lever to control us. This technique is many things – evil, for one – but what it is not is leadership.

More damnable lies from a White House flying monkey speaking for President Bush:

Meeting briefly with reporters Monday aboard Air Force One, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman subbing for Scott McClellan, said that President Bush believes that those who want the U.S. to begin to change course in Iraq do not want America to win the overall “war on terror”… Speaking to reporters, Duffy said that Bush “can understand that people don’t share his view that we must win the war on terror…”

History teaches us that violence never resolves terrorism. No terrorist group (or its equivalent) in recorded history has ever been put down by force. We can retaliate when we are attacked by terrorists, and we can try to root them out before they hit us, but if we use force as our only tool in this struggle, the violence against us will only escalate.

Violence did not resolve the IRA’s terror campaign against the British. New prosperity in Ireland, generated largely by technology (borne of improved educational resources) was largely responsible for the quelling of hostilities.

And look at Israel. Their democratically elected, religion-based government is locked in continuously escalating violence with the Palestinians that has been going on for 50 years and could go on for centuries to come.

President Bush needs all Americans to be afraid. He uses our fear as a lever to control us. This technique is many things – evil, for one – but what it is not is leadership.

Perpetual War Portfolio Charts Defense Contractors’ Profits

Buck Banks

War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely profits! Say it again ….

Life during war time is good for the economy. Or at least part of the economy — the defense contractor part. While the war in Iraq notches up in cost toward the trillion-dollar mark, some of the biggest names in defense spending are logging record profits.

You don’t believe me? Visit the Perpetual War Porfolio. This Web site tracks a portfolio of five stocks publicly traded on the Dow Jones Stock Exchange: Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Alliant Techsystems. According to the site’s creator, Dack Ragus, “The stocks were selected on the basis of popular product lines, strong political connections and lobbying efforts, and paid-for access to key Congressional decision-makers.”

The site lists influential political supporters as well as how much these patriotic companies pay their lobbyists. Since the site’s inception Dec. 2, 2002, the value of the PWP has increased 35.84%. By contrast, the Dow has increased only 18.08% over the same period.

Lord, Call Pat Home Before He Kills

Buck Banks

Lord, please call Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network’s The 700 Club and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, home to you before he kills Hugo Chavez because of creeping Communism, the potential of Venezuela becoming a launchpad for Muslim extremists and — the Monroe Doctrine!

On a lighter note, Ezra Klein actually found Bibical justification for Pat’s fatwa against Hugo:

Think he’s ever masturbated? If so, Genesis 38:8 says he’s finished. Exodus 12:12 lets us off him if he’s ever struck another man with a deadly blow, a particularly helpful passage if we let Robertson do the deed himself with a blunt object — they can exit stage left together. I don’t know if Chavez ever hit his parents, but Exodus 21:15 finishes him if he did. Better yet, he sure seems like he was stubborn and rebellious as a kid, a juvenile heritage that we can stone him for (Deuteronomy 21:18). If Hugo’s got any friends who pray to a God other than the fearsome overlord of the Bible, we can take him down for letting them live (Deuteronomy 13:6). But screw it, we can basically throw all this out and follow Titus 1:10 which says, in essence, that there are tons of talkers and deceivers, many though not all of them Jews, who we can silence for the good of the community. I’m sure Hugo fits in that category fairly neatly.