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Highlights This Month

Obama's Hollow "Judgment" and Empty Record

Obama's gyrations on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are not the actions of one imbued with superior intuitive judgment, but rather the machinations of a political opportunist.

Joseph C. Wilson, Huffington Post

Barack Obama argues that he deserves the Democratic nomination and Hillary Clinton doesn't because he possesses superior "judgment," as he calls it, on the key issues we face as a nation. As definitive proof he offers one speech he made in 2002 during a reelection campaign for an Illinois senate seat in the most liberal district in the state, so liberal that no other position would have been viable. When he made that speech, Obama was not privy to the briefings by, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of the Authorization of Use of Military Force as a diplomatic tool to push the international community to impose intrusive inspections on Saddam Hussein.

Would Obama have acted differently had he been in Washington or had he had the benefit of the arguments and the intelligence that the administration was offering to the Congress debating that resolution? During the 2002-2003 timeframe, he was a minor local official uninvolved in the national debate on the war so we can only judge from his own statements prior to the 2008 campaign. Obama repeated these points in a whole host of interviews prior to announcing his candidacy. On July 27, 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune on Iraq: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, "...on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." And, in 2006, he clearly said, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of US intelligence. And for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices."

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Pat Oliphant

'Yes, We Can’… Do What?

Toss out some bite-size chucks and the public will eat them up, sweet hopeful sentiments that play lightly but powerfully in our ears--prose that make us feel like we know what a candidate stands for, why we should pledge our support.

Cassandra West, In These Times

By now, we’re used to the static that accompanies the election season.

It’s a streaming wave of wordplay, phrases, slogans, sound bites, jargon, half-truths, half lies, polished prose and prosaic parsing—a kind of low-register noise we tolerate, half listening, half tuning out because it’s not going away. Kind of like living near an airport.

What we mostly hear aren’t the complete sentences spelling out specifics, visions and appealing ideas. (Who really has time to digest whole paragraphs of policy and wonkery anyway, and still make time for all the other stuff coming at them?)

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The Election That Might Not Happen

In 2000 Bush and Cheney stole the election in Florida. In 2004 they played dirty tricks in Ohio. In 2008 could they go one step further — and suspend the election altogether?

by Betsy Hartmann, CommonDreams.org

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Ken Mitchell

It’s springtime in American politics. It’s only early March, but there’s a giddy, hopeful feeling to this election season, a sense that new leadership is blossoming. We could have a Democrat in the White House next year. But winter isn’t over yet and we need to balance our hope with a little fear. In 2000 Bush and Cheney stole the election in Florida. In 2004 they played dirty tricks in Ohio. In 2008 could they go one step further — and suspend the election altogether?

The necessary architecture may already be in place. On May 4 last year, the White House issued the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, key parts of which remain classified and hence shrouded from public view. The directive outlines procedures to respond to a “catastrophic emergency,” defined broadly as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.” Of course previous administrations also had emergency plans. But the Bush directive transfers power from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the White House, where the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism is assigned the job of “National Continuity Coordinator”.

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The Torture President

Nat Hentoff, CommonDreams

Immediately after 9/11, Colin Powell said the terrorists were clearly engaged in a war on civilization itself. Soon after, as secretary of State, he prophetically warned the president — and the lawyers drafting and justifying “torture memos” in the Justice Department — that this country’s rejecting the Geneva Conventions and our own laws on the treatment of terrorism-related prisoners would “undermine public support among critical allies, making military cooperation more difficult to sustain.” Increasingly, as Powell predicted, while the president strongly insists that the CIA be allowed to continue practicing what Bush calls “its specialized interrogations” in its secret prisons, and “renditions” (kidnapping Europeans to be tortured elsewhere), we have lost the trust and respect of many our allies’ citizens.

Significant, moreover, is the refusal of FBI Director Robert Mueller to permit his agents to engage in such “coercive” CIA-style interrogations that often involve torture.

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Mike Luckovich

Hillary Sinks with the 'Kitchen Sink'

Ever since George H.W. Bush went into “campaign mode” in 1988 and exploited black convict Willie Horton to dirty up Michael Dukakis, it’s been a staple of modern politics that you can negate your own high negatives by driving up those of your opponent.

Robert Parry, consortiumnews.com

Except in 1992, when the “Passportgate” scheme for demeaning Bill Clinton’s patriotism blew up in Poppy Bush’s face, some effective smear has been associated with every Bush national campaign. Think of John McCain’s “black child,” Al Gore’s “delusions” and the Swift Boat lies about John Kerry’s heroism.

Indeed, dirty politics has been a hallmark of the Bush Family Dynasty – and Bill and Hillary Clinton clearly were taking notes. [For details on the Bush schemes, see Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep.]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/032708.html

Series: Citizen K Street

The Life and Career of Gerald S. J. Cassidy: How Lobbying Became Washington's Biggest Business

By Robert G. Kaiser, Washington Post

Chapter 10: Two front-page articles in The Washington Post lay out the Cassidy method in detail, creating problems for Gerry Cassidy and angering a powerful senator. The result: A new law on lobbying, and ultimately a lot of new business for Cassidy & Associates.

On June 13, 1988, The Washington Post published a front-page story explaining in detail how a lobbying firm called Cassidy & Associates had helped the Pirelli Corp., the Italian maker of tires, cables and many other products, win $15 million in congressional appropriations for two projects in Hawaii and South Carolina. The story recounted how Pirelli organized a Political Action Committee to make substantial campaign contributions, paid honoraria to members to appear at events in posh locations and donated $25,000 to help create a chair at the University of Massachusetts named for Rep. Silvio Conte, who had supported Pirelli's earmarks.

According to a former aide to Conte, on the morning after the story appeared, Gerald S. J. Cassidy showed up in the Congressman's office, apparently hoping to apologize personally for the unexpected publicity in The Post. Conte was furious, said the former aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He let Cassidy sit in his outer office from early morning until early evening without ever agreeing to see him. When the office closed at the end of the day, Cassidy stood up, formally thanked the staff in the outer office for their hospitality and departed.

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