Pick-a-Gate

December 11th, 2007

A sudden heat wave [it's 33 now, closer to 40 this morning] has melted off the ice and left us a sodden mess, with many still without electricity. My son was up most of the night here [we got electric back mid-afternoon yesterday] helping a friend with a new baby fix his generator. News reports 22 deaths in the Midwest and snow expected by Friday.

This is the Big Day, with Jup and Pluto hugging or grappling, depending on how we see it — I liked this post on our present astrology; see what you think.

Rather than post a few articles, thought I’d give you a “day” from our current energy — a collection of “gates” and their updates, a rundown of scandal and misappropriation of funds and power, a clear picture of the chaos we face.

The public IS aware, not of nuance but of what is glaring — and the government doesn’t give two hoots that they are. That, itself, is an indictment of our times. We can take some comfort that the public isn’t just swallowing it whole, anymore … and that will lead to the next steps — the beginning of the end of the Bush Bubble and on to the next thing…

Too late by our reckoning, but not too late to come back to square zero, battered and bruised and willing to rebuild … and we’d better get to it. The American baby at the bottom of Dubby’s bathtub is breathing through a straw!

I think we’re on our way to a new motto, if nothing else:

Reality — it’s what’s for dinner

Here’s a collection of links covering everything including Dennis K’s kitchen sink — open at will.

Jude

White House Threatens Budget Veto
Andrew Taylor, from The Associated Press, reports: “The White House on Saturday threatened to veto a massive spending bill being assembled by congressional Democrats, saying it’s unacceptable to add billions of dollars to domestic programs.”

House Democrats Pull War Funding From Budget Deal
Jonathan Weisman reports for The Washington Post, “A Democratic deal to give President Bush some war funding in exchange for additional domestic spending appeared to collapse last night after House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) accused Republicans of bargaining in bad faith.”

Only Few Saw the Key FISA Court Rulings
Helen Fessenden reports for The Hill, “Only a handful of lawmakers have seen a set of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rulings on eavesdropping that have been cited by the Bush administration and Republicans as one of the principle reasons to transfer authority away from the court to the attorney general and director of national intelligence (DNI).”

AWOL Military Justice
Morris D. Davis writes for the Los Angeles Times: “I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly.”

US reversal on Iran intel reflects breaking of the ranks: analysts
Raw Story
Friday December 7, 2007
“This is ours,” a senior intelligence official said this week, telling reporters that policymakers had no input in the conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate, as the assessment is called. The US military also increasingly has taken its own tack since the ouster of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, quietly but firmly distancing itself from White House saber rattling on Iran.

Libby Drops His Appeal in Leak Case
Philip Shenon reports for The New York Times, “I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, announced Monday that he was dropping the appeal of his conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case.”

Moment of Reckoning
Dan Froomkin, Washington Post
President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their mouthpieces promised that once former vice presidential aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s legal options were exhausted, they would answer questions about the CIA leak case. With the announcement this morning that Libby is dropping his appeal, that time has come.

The CIA’s Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection
Gerald Posner, HuffPo
December 7, 2007
There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called “fake flag” operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

Instead, when confronted by his “Saudi” interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. “He will tell you what to do,” Zubaydah assured them.

Hayden to Testify About CIA Videotapes
The Associated Press reports, “CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden faces two days of testimony behind closed doors at the Senate and House intelligence committees to answer questions about his agency’s destruction of videotaped interrogations of terrorist suspects.”

CIA Agent: Waterboarding Was OK’d
PAMELA HESS, Time
(WASHINGTON) — The CIA’s waterboarding of a top al-Qaida figure was approved at the top levels of the U.S. government, a former CIA agent said Tuesday as agency director Gen. Michael Hayden prepared for questioning by congressional panels about the destruction of videotapes of terror suspect interrogations.

CIA Tapegate Just Doesn’t Add Up
OpEdNews
What precisely did the CIA tell the White House and Justice Department about the agency’s intentions to destroy the interrogation materials? Who is this attorney who purportedly gave Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., a high-ranking CIA official, the go-ahead to destroy the tapes? What was the legal rationale for such a conclusion? Did someone write a “tape memo” justifying the decision, the way someone wrote a “torture memo”?

Have Pelosi and Dem Leaders Been Complicit in Bush’s Torture Policy Since 2002?
Jeremy Brecher and Brendan L. Smith, AlterNet
December 11, 2007
What did Congressional Democrats know about Bush’s waterboarding and rendition policies, and when did they know it? The only way for Congressional Democrats to clear themselves from the suspicion of complicity in Bush administration crimes is to appoint a special prosecutor, empowered to investigate not only the destruction of the torture tapes, but also other government crimes and efforts to conceal those crimes. Otherwise, their “investigations” may appear to be little more than another layer of cover-up.

Harman: CIA brushed off warnings on interrogation tapes
David Edwards and Nick Juliano, Raw Story
Monday December 10, 2007
Whether the former ranking member of the Intelligence Committee pushed for more information on the interrorgation methods that sparked her initial concern remains an open question. Democrats are accusing the CIA of keeping them in the dark about plans to destroy videotapes, and Harman acknowledges that her memory is fuzzy regarding a classified briefing she participated in just after taking over for Nancy Pelosi as top Democrat on the committee. “I can’t really reconstruct the meeting — again, which was highly classified — because I took no notes. It was five years ago and this feeble grandma just ain’t that good,” Harman told NPR’s Robert Siegel Monday.

Kucinich Readies 50-page Articles of Impeachment Against Bush
“On the way over here, I was reading a 50-page document that relates to Articles of Impeachment for the President of the United States,” Kucinich said to a standing ovation. “And I want you to know that I’m actually preparing this document for submission to the House.” “This is a moment when we’re called upon to reclaim our country,” he said. “You give me your vote, I’ll give you back your country.”

Karzai Discredits Democracy in Afghanistan
Bahlol Lohdi, AntiWar
In a recent speech given at the American-Afghan business conference, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy to the UN, and one of the enthusiastic proponents of using American “hard power” to reorder the Muslim world, finally admitted to the myriad problems facing the international community in its efforts to resolve the Afghan conflict. That these pronouncements were now trite, since they were well-known facts to all who had the misfortune to deal with the gangs of Afghanistan these past six years, didn’t faze the speaker a jot.

Iraq rejects permanent U.S. bases: adviser
Peter Graff, Reuters
Tue Dec 11
BAGHDAD - Iraq will never allow the United States to have permanent military bases on its soil, the government’s national security adviser said, calling the issue a “red line” that cannot be crossed. “We need the United States in our war against terrorism, we need them to guard our border sometimes, we need them for economic support and we need them for diplomatic and political support,” Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said.

Sadr Uses Lull to Rebuild Army
Christian Science Monitor
Many analysts say what may reemerge is an Iraqi version of Lebanon’s Hizbullah – a state within a state that embraces politics while maintaining a separate military and social structure that holds powerful sway at home and in the region.

Iraqi Policewomen Are Told to Surrender Their Weapons
Tina Susman of the Los Angeles Times reports, “The Iraqi government has ordered all policewomen to hand in their guns for redistribution to men or face having their pay withheld, thwarting a US initiative to bring women into the nation’s police force.”

U.S. Eyes ‘Pain Beam’ for Home Security, Law Enforcement
David Hambling, Wired
Burglars break into an apartment, hoping to pick up some expensive electronics or jewelry. But they’re out again, empty-handed, within seconds, howling with pain and surprise. They’ve been driven back by waves of intolerable heat: Entering the apartment is like stepping into a furnace. It’s the Active Denial System, or ADS, at work, the ultimate in home protection … among other uses.

Spare Me the “Shock” About Credit Card Rates
Rowan Wolf
Usurious credit card fees are back in the news with feigned shock and outrage about interest rate increases that consumers are getting hit with….It gripes me no end that both the Senate and the corporate media act as if this is a new issue that came out of nowhere. It is not new, it is intentional

Eight Senior Republican Appointees Challenge Official Account of 9/11 - “Not Possible”, “a Whitewash”, “False”
Alan Miller
As the statements of these eight senior Republican Administration appointees show, the need for a new thorough, and independent investigation of 9/11 is not a matter of partisan politics, nor the demand of irresponsible, mentally ill, or disloyal Americans. It is instead a matter of the utmost importance for America’s security and the future of the entire world.

Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
Al Gore, CommonDreams

CNN Compares Al Gore to Jerry Lewis
Informed Comment (cross-posted at Daily Kos)
I don’t know if it is on line somewhere, but someone should check Miles O’Brien’s segment on American Morning about Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize for Peace. What is the theme? Al Gore is more popular in Europe than in the U.S., just like Jerry Lewis! CNN then illustrates this profound point by showing a particularly moronic segment of The Nutty Professor.

Beyond the Point of No Return
It’s too late to stop climate change — so what do we do now?
Ross Gelbspan, Grist Magazine via CommonDreams
Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Cupboards Are Bare at Food Banks
Drops in Donations and Farm Surplus Cause Area Charities to Run Short
Philip Rucker, Washington Post front page
December 8, 2007
Area food banks are experiencing a critical shortage of supplies as donations drop dramatically and as demand for free and discounted food continues to soar. [...] The short supplies, which are hitting food banks and soup kitchens across the nation, stem from a combination of factors: Federal supplies of excess farm goods have dropped, in part because of the summer drought and because farmers are selling more of their products internationally. Donations from grocery stores, a major source for food banks, have fallen as supermarket chains consolidate, increase efficiency and tighten inventory controls.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves