Speak Out Against The Planned Bush Blanket Pardons BEFORE They Can
Happen
Pay no attention to the handful of Christmas pardons granted by Bush.
This is mere political window dressing to distract from the bumper
crop of blanket absolutions, including one for himself, scheduled to
be released just before midnight on Jan 19th. Cheney would not so
arrogantly be bragging on TV about how he authorized torture if it
were not so.
But there is a resolution in Congress, H.Res. 1531, preemptively
condemning any such move if we can just get enough members of
Congress to sponsor it (already 10 so far). Many of you have
submitted a action page on this already. Please do it again,
especially if your representative did not hear you the first time.
Action Page To Stop The Bush Pardons:
http://www.usalone.com/hres1531.php
Each action page you submit is another lump of coal in Cheney's
stocking. Some have speculated on the possibility of post
inauguration impeachment, especially considering the fact that many
insiders are waiting until then to spill the beans. Maybe they don't
want to get bumped off in asuspicious plane crash like Mike Connell.
But a self pardon at the very last minute would certainly be grounds
for some kind of action, perhaps even impeachment, if and only if
Congress would react and take action immediately.
So we will still continue to distribute the impeachment message items
until the very last minute as well. If you did not get one of the
original navy blue "IMPEACH CHENEY?" caps, which was the original
"question" hat, we still have some of those which you can get from
the return page of the action page above. And of course we have the
orange "IMPEACH BOTH!!!" caps (the "answer" hat). If you wear one and
a friend wears the other that is especially effective. Or you can
request a copy of the Impeachment Play DVD, either from that same
return page, or here is the link directly for all three.
Impeachment Caps and DVDs:
http://www.usalone.com/impeach_caps_dvds.php
In any case we need to get ready to raise a renewed hue and cry when
the expected happens on January 19th. How hard could it be to get
members of Congress to simply raise their hand and declare that a
presidential self pardon, let alone pardon of his criminal
co-conspirators, is maybe not such a good idea? If we are to draw the
line anywhere, this is where is must be drawn.
And let us look forward to the day when we will have real
representatives in Washington, for a change, because we never stopped
speaking out.
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Cheney Admits To War Crimes Because His Pardon Is Already In His Christmas Stocking. Please Speak Out For Lumps Of Coal.
48 books, 48 hours
On January 20, George Bush will be gone. There are 48 copies of the book in each box, featuring chapters on Bush the Liar, Bush the Bully, Bush the Corrupt. The World Can' t Wait! P.S. this offer ends 11:59pm Wednesday December 31. | ||
| ||
Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths
by: Robert Parry, Consortium News
President Bush speaks to troops in Baghdad. (Photo: Reuters)
As George W. Bush and Dick Cheney make their case for some positive legacy from the past eight years, two arguments are playing key roles: the notion that torturing terror suspects saved American lives and the belief that Bush's Iraq troop "surge" transformed a disaster into something close to "victory."
Not only will these twin arguments be important in defining the public's future impression of where Bush should rank on the presidential list, but they could constrain how far President Barack Obama can go in reversing these policies. In other words, the perception of the past can affect the future.
Though most current thinking holds that George W. Bush might want to trademark the slogan "Worst President Ever," America's powerful right-wing media (and its many allies in the mainstream press) will surely seek to rehabilitate Bush's reputation as much as possible.
Even elevating Bush to the status of a presidential mediocrity might open the door for a revival of the Bush Dynasty with brother Jeb already eyeing one of Florida's U.S. Senate seats and possibly harboring grander ambitions.
And even if another Bush in the White House is not realistic, a kinder-gentler judgment on George W. Bush at least could help the Republican Party rebound in 2010 and 2012. So evaluating the Bush-Cheney torture policies and how successful the "surge" are not just academic exercises.
Two recent articles by people with first-hand knowledge also shed important new light on these issues: one by a lead U.S. interrogator in Iraq and the other by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The interrogator - using the pseudonym "Matthew Alexander" for an article in the Washington Post's Outlook section on Nov. 30 - wrote that the practice of humiliating and abusing prisoners had proved counterproductive, not only violating U.S. principles and failing to extract reliable intelligence but fueling the Iraqi insurgency and getting large numbers of U.S. soldiers killed.
Indeed, "Alexander," a U.S. Air Force special operations officer, argued that it was his team's abandonment of those harsh tactics that contributed to the tracking down and killing of the murderous al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006, an important turning point in reducing levels of violence in Iraq.
"Alexander" said he arrived in Iraq in March 2006, amid the bloody civil war that Sunni extremist Zarqawi had helped provoke a month earlier with the bombing of the golden-domed Askariya mosque in Samarra, a shrine revered by Iraq's majority Shiites.
"Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi," he wrote. "What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model. ... These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.
"I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information."
Breakthroughs
By getting to know the captives and negotiating with them, his team achieved breakthroughs that enabled the U.S. military to close in on Zarqawi while also gaining a deeper understanding of what drove the Iraqi insurgency, "Alexander" wrote.
"Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq.
"Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money," the interrogator wrote, noting that this understanding played a key role in the U.S. military turning many Sunnis against the hyper-violent extremism of Zarqawi's organization.
"Alexander" added that the new interrogation methods "convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders."
Despite the success in killing Zarqawi, "Alexander" said the old, harsh interrogation methods continued. "I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished," he wrote. "Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees."
"Alexander" found that the engrained support for using "rough stuff" against hardened jihadists was difficult to overcome despite the successes from more subtle approaches.
"We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques," he wrote. "A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, 'I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate.'"
From hundreds of these interrogations, "Alexander" said he learned that the images from Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were actually getting American soldiers killed by drawing angry young Arabs into the Iraq War.
"Torture and abuse cost American lives," the interrogator wrote. "I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq.
"It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.
"How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans."
Nevertheless, in a series of candid "exit interviews," Vice President Cheney - and to a lesser degree President Bush - have defended their actions that included sanctioning brutal methods of interrogation, such as the simulated drowning of "waterboarding." [See Consortiumnews.com's "Cheney Defends Waterboarding Order."]
The "Surge"
To this day, the belief that subjecting "bad guys" to physical and psychological abuse makes them crack -- and thus saves American lives -- remains a central myth that the departing Bush administration won't abandon. A parallel myth is the notion of the "successful surge."
It holds that Bush's brave decision to go against the prevailing political winds in early 2007 and escalate U.S. military involvement in Iraq - with a 30,000-troop "surge" - saved the day. News stories and opinion articles across the U.S. news media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have transformed this argument into "conventional wisdom."
However, as we have pointed out in other stories, the reality is far more complex, with several other key reasons contributing to the drop in Iraqi violence, many predating or unrelated to the "surge," including:
The decision by Sunni tribes to turn against al-Qaeda and accept U.S. financial support, the so-called "Anbar Awakening" that began in 2006. Zarqawi's extremism contributed to this shift, which in turn was a factor in his isolation and death in June 2006. Vicious ethnic cleansing had separated Sunnis and Shiites to such a degree that there were fewer targets to kill. Several million Iraqis fled as refugees either into neighboring countries or within their own. Concrete walls built between Sunni and Shiite areas made "death-squad" raids more difficult but also "cantonized" much of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, making everyday life for Iraqis even more exhausting as they sought food or traveled to work. An expanded U.S. policy of rounding up so-called "military age males" locked up tens of thousands in prison. Awesome U.S. firepower, concentrated on Iraqi insurgents and civilian bystanders for more than five years, had slaughtered countless thousands of Iraqis and intimidated many others to look simply to their own survival. With the total Iraqi death toll estimated in the hundreds of thousands and many more Iraqis horribly maimed, the society was deeply traumatized. As tyrants have learned throughout history, at some point violent repression does work.
However, in Washington political circles, it was all about the "successful surge."
There also was little concern about the 1,000 additional U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq since President Bush started the "surge" in 2007. The Americans killed during the "surge" represent roughly one-quarter of the total war dead whose numbers have now passed the 4,200 mark.
Rumsfeld's Doubts
Surprisingly to some Iraq War critics, one of the chief obstacles to Bush's "surge" was the widely despised Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who - in fall 2006 - pushed for a strategy that would have slashed the U.S. military presence in Iraq dramatically by mid-2007.
On Nov. 6, 2006, Rumsfeld sent a memo to the White House, in which he listed his preferred - or "above the line" - options as "an accelerated drawdown of U.S. bases ... to five by July 2007" and withdrawal of U.S. forces "from vulnerable positions - cities, patrolling, etc. ... so the Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."
Two days later, Rumsfeld was forced to submit his resignation and Bush announced Robert Gates as the new Defense Secretary. Not aware of Rumsfeld's memo, Washington pundits and many leading Democrats misinterpreted the personnel shift as a reaction to the Democratic congressional election victory on Nov. 7, 2006.
The consensus view was that the "realist" Gates would oversee a rapid U.S. military drawdown in Iraq. However, the opposite occurred. Gates became Bush's front man for the "surge." [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Robert Gates: As Bad as Rumsfeld?"]
The subsequent conventional wisdom about the "successful surge" catapulted Gates from the ranks of the departing Bush administration into those of the arriving Obama administration, where he will remain Defense Secretary.
On Nov. 23, 2008, less than three weeks after Obama's Nov. 4 election victory as it was becoming clear that Obama would retain Gates, Rumsfeld shed more light on his own Iraq War strategy in an op-ed for the New York Times.
While bowing to the prevailing conventional wisdom about the "successful surge," Rumsfeld defended his pre-surge thinking, explaining that a number of factors had set up the "tipping point" that enabled the "surge" to be successful.
Though using more positive language about those preconditions (than we did), Rumsfeld made essentially the same points, adding that previous increases in U.S. troop levels - to numbers comparable to the "surge" levels - had achieved minimal effect in containing the violence.
"As one who is occasionally - and incorrectly - portrayed as an opponent of the surge in Iraq, I believe that while the surge has been effective in Iraq, we must also recognize the conditions that made it successful," Rumsfeld wrote.
"By early 2007, several years of struggle had created the new conditions for a tipping point:
Al Qaeda in Iraq's campaign of terrorism and intimidation had turned its Sunni base of support against it. The result was the so-called Anbar Awakening in the late summer of 2006, followed by similar awakening movements across Iraq. From 2003 through 2006, United States military forces, under the leadership of Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey, inflicted huge losses on the Baathist and Qaeda leadership. Many thousands of insurgents, including the Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, were captured or killed and proved difficult to replace. The Iraqi Security Forces had achieved cohesion, improved operational effectiveness and critical mass. By December 2006, some 320,000 Iraqis had been trained, equipped and deployed, producing the forces necessary to help hold difficult neighborhoods against the enemy. By 2007, the surge, for most Iraqis, could have an Iraqi face. And the political scene in Iraq had shifted. Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric, declared a cease-fire in February 2007. The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, seated in May 2006, moved against militias and Iranian-backed militias and has imperfectly, but notably, rejected narrow sectarian policies.
"The best indication that timing is everything may be that there had been earlier surges without the same effect as the 2007 surge. In 2005, troop levels in Iraq were increased to numbers nearly equal to the 2007 surge - twice. But the effects were not as durable because large segments of the Sunni population were still providing sanctuary to insurgents, and Iraq's security forces were not sufficiently capable or large enough."
In other words, even Rumsfeld would agree that the simplistic conventional wisdom of Washington - that Bush's "surge" turned everything around and that everyone, including Barack Obama, must accept that "fact" - doesn't square with the more complex reality.
Still, as Americans should have learned over the past three decades of image-managing - from Ronald Reagan to Karl Rove - perceptions can be a powerful thing. Perception may not be the same as reality but it can become a very dangerous substitute both in defining the present and charting the future.
--------
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Is the Economic Recession Getting You Down?
Discover the Secret to Weathering a Recession and Walking Away with Your Bank Account, Your Retirement Fund, Your Investments and Your Pride!
Exclusive Offer!
Never Before Revealed Information!
When you’re unprepared for the impact of recession on your life and your business, the consequences can take you completely by surprise.
The economic recession brought on by over eager lenders, under-prepared borrowers, and overzealous government and an economy that cares more about its bottom line than its citizens has been pummeling Americans from coast to coast, and it doesn’t show any signs of going away any time soon.
Are you sick and tired of counting your pennies? Looking for a way to be free of the constant fear that one day you’re going to walk into your office and find a pink slip sitting there waiting for you? Would you like, just once to be the once sitting back and making a profit instead of the one worrying about whether this will be the week your business is going to have to close its doors?
Let Me Show You How...
Did you know that economic recessions aren’t anything new? The lifecycle of the business world very closely resembles the lifecycle of the average insect-it circles around, and around, and around, and…well, you get the picture. There are many stages inside that circle that keep business flowing smoothly and the wheels of progress turning the way they’re meant to.
An economic recession is only one of these stages.
Economic recessions are a vital part of the well being and health of our economy, and a study into our history will show that they actually happen on a fairly regular basis-and they usually don’t leave much damage behind. Why, then, do we panic so badly at the thought that this time might be our turn to weather an economic recession?
Because we don’t know what to do about it!
Business magnates understand that economic recession, a time when consumer spending is going to decrease for one reason or another and have a negative impact on the life and health of their company, is a necessary stage of life. From the moment they step into their corner office they’re carefully grooming and preparing the company for the moment when recession is going to rear its unattractive head and take a bite out of their profits.
Those of us who haven’t finished our MBA usually aren’t that well informed.
Without being aware of the necessity and the inevitability of an economic recession, most of us don’t realize that sooner or later recession is going to happen, and it’s going to impact all of our lives. We’ve been lulled into complacency by the constant boom and growth of the American economy, and we’re so focused on finding instant gratification for our desires that we don’t see when recession starts to creep up until it is far too late.
Everyone knows about the negative impacts of an Economic Recession. But what about the positive ones?
When you’ve walked into an unemployment office and seen hundreds of people filling out paperwork in the hope that somehow, someway, someone in that office will be able to help them find a job, it can be hard to believe that there are actually benefits to an economic recession. They are there, however, and if you’re a savvy business person you’ll be able to figure out how to take advantage of them. How do you think so many companies manage to stay in business when recessions happen at least once a decade?
Major corporations around the globe has learned how to weather an economic recession and keep making a profit, and now you can do it too! Regardless of whether you’re an entry level janitor or the CEO of a major corporation, the recession is going to have an impact on your life personally. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to let the recession bowl you over and leave you struggling for a way to keep your job and pay your bills? Or are you going to look at it as an opportunity to expand your horizons, stretch your wings and show the world what you can really do?
That was a choice I had to make for myself not too long ago
Two years ago I was sitting pretty. I had a good government job working as a contractor for the military, a good retirement plan, a salary that more than met our needs and an insurance program that kept my kids in antibiotics and vaccines.
All in all, life was looking pretty good. Then the recession hit.
I don’t know if any of you out there were unfortunate enough to be a part of this, but over the last two years military contractors have been steadily laying off hundreds of employees in an attempt to trim the fat from their bottom line and help them stay afloat as government contracts began to be canceled left, right and sideways. Because I had just accepted a new position within the company I was considered to be the new kid on the block, even though I had been working for them for years, and my job was among the first to go.
I was devastated.
Suddenly there I was, with a family to support and no income other than what I had coming in from our investments. I’m not ashamed to say I panicked at first. I couldn’t see how, at my age, I could possibly pick up and start all over again in another job. I’d invested too much time and effort to get where I had been, and the thought of having to climb that ladder all over again was enough to make me want to lock my door and hide for a year or two.
My general fondness for eating on a semi-regular basis got me out the door soon enough, however, and it wasn’t long before I was roaming the streets looking for another job. I was fortunate. I had remained in touch with many of my old college buddies, and one of them happened to work for a firm that had just lost one of its key employees and was looking for someone qualified who would be able to fill his place-quickly.
My friend’s recommendation and my own experience had me inside a new job within a month, but over the course of that month I saw hundreds of other contractors I had worked with who weren’t as lucky. They were out of work for months, many of them taking jobs that were far below their skills, their education and their experience just to have a paycheck.
And then there were a few of them that decided to start their own companies and offer their services to the private sector. A few of them started new careers in real estate. When I first heard what they were planning I thought they were out of their minds, but it wasn’t long before they started turning a profit-a big one.
I was astonished. If the U.S. government was losing money hand over fist and having to shut down its operations, how on earth were these little start-up companies managing to not only survive, but to thrive?
They were able to do it because they figured out how to take advantage of the recession!
I would never have believed that there would have been anything about an economic recession that would allow a company or a private entrepreneur to thrive, but as I talked with my old friends I realized that there was a side of the recession that we never saw-and that side could make the difference between surviving and thriving in the middle of an economic recession.
This is the ultimate guide to showing you how to thrive when everything else seems to be falling apart!
It’s really not fair that only a small percentage of the population has the knowledge they need to hang on to their jobs, increase their net worth and help their company thrive-especially when all they really need to do is change their mindset!! That’s why I decided to write Recession Suvival - How To Proft From An Economic Recession. I figured it was high time the rest of the world had the chance to learn what the major players already knew-the secrets for surviving an economic recession without going into debt!
But don’t take my word for it…
I don’t expect you to take my word for it. Hey, a recession can be scary stuff! That’s why I’m offering Recession Suvival - How To Proft From An Economic Recession complete with a 90 day money back guarantee. Buy the book. Read it. Put the strategies I’m going to show you into play in your own life!
- Give investing a try
- Grow your stock portfolio exponentially
- Make yourself so indispensable your boss will never fire you!
- Give your company the momentum it needs to get through the recession and go into the future with a bang
The secrets I’m going to show you in this book are the same business tricks and strategies that major corporations like Macy’s and J.C. Penney have been using to survive economic recessions for decades. Don’t you wonder sometimes why these companies have been in business for years? Wouldn’t you love to know what secrets are keeping their managers in the driver’s seats when hundreds of other companies are closing their doors? Let me show you!
There’s nothing in this book that requires you to throw thousands of dollars into some strange investment opportunity that’s “guaranteed to secure your future”.
Just plain, simple, easy to use tricks and strategies to help you ride out the recession and come out on top on the other side.
What are you waiting for? ORDER NOW!!!
The History of the American Economic Recession
This year, there have been murmurs that the United States is entering, again, into an economic recession. Although the National Bureau of Economic Research still has not release any formal announcement regarding this, American people are starting to experience an economic slowdown and a downturn in their financial and personal life.
This would not be the first time that the United States would experience an economic recession. According to economists, since 1854, the United States has encountered 32 cycles of expansions and contractions (boom and bust). There would be and average of 17 months of contraction an 38 months of expansion. However, since 1980 there have been only eight periods of negative economic growth over one quarter or more.
There were three period considered to recessions:
January- July 1980 and July 1981- November 1982: two years in total
July 1990- March 1991: eight months
November 2001- November 2002: twelve months
The longest record for an American economic boom was 37 quarters during 1991 until 2000.
The first economic recession happened in 1819. It greatly affected the new nation. After the War of 1812, the American economy was experiencing monetary strains. In 1814, during the term of President Madison, he allowed a replacement of a national bank. This enabled the post-war economy to boom. Although in 1817, there were some financial irregularities and irresponsibility. Americans started buying extravagant amounts of western lands- more than they can afford. The government started selling the land on credit.
On 1819, the government started to demand payment from the loans. During this time, the economy is starting to slow down. The market growth could no longer be sustained, the demands of American products are starting to wane. This led to a wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures. Land owners found themselves unable to pay their government debts and debts in the banks, leading to repossessing of lands.
After the 1817 recession, another recession in 1837 followed. With this recession, in just two months time, the economic decline accumulated to nearly $100,000,000 in value. There were reportedly 343 banks that closed (out of the 850 banks). While 62 banks reported partial failure.
There were recessions that happened in 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1907. The 1907 economic recession was a financial crisis. Nearly 50 percent of the stock market fell from its peak in 1906. It's primary cause was a retraction of loans by some banks that began in New York City and soon spread into the whole country. The 1907 recession was the fourth recession in 34 years.
The post-World War I recession hit not only the United States but much of the countries globally. Pre-war economy was showing fast economic growth. As a matter of fact, the decade before the war, the world economy was growing record high. After the war, the global economy stated to decline. The sharpest or worst decline was during 1921. the recession was a result of the end of wartime production along with the return of the troops without any employment. Global production was also affected by the war, especially those countries whose industries were shattered by the war.
What followed was known as the Great Depression that occurred from 1929 until 1939. It is the most dramatic, worldwide economic landslide. It affected not only industrialized countries b out also nations who rely in exporting their raw materials. It was the largest and most important economic depression in the world.
Five recessions in the United States followed after the Great Depression. It was the recession during 1953, 1957, early in the 1980s, early during 1990s and early 2000.
The early 2000 economic recession was not felt only in the United States, but was experienced in most Western Countries. The European Union was mostly hit during 2000 and 2001. While the United states was affected mostly during 2002 and 2003.
This would not be the first time that the United States would experience an economic recession. According to economists, since 1854, the United States has encountered 32 cycles of expansions and contractions (boom and bust). There would be and average of 17 months of contraction an 38 months of expansion. However, since 1980 there have been only eight periods of negative economic growth over one quarter or more.
There were three period considered to recessions:
January- July 1980 and July 1981- November 1982: two years in total
July 1990- March 1991: eight months
November 2001- November 2002: twelve months
The longest record for an American economic boom was 37 quarters during 1991 until 2000.
The first economic recession happened in 1819. It greatly affected the new nation. After the War of 1812, the American economy was experiencing monetary strains. In 1814, during the term of President Madison, he allowed a replacement of a national bank. This enabled the post-war economy to boom. Although in 1817, there were some financial irregularities and irresponsibility. Americans started buying extravagant amounts of western lands- more than they can afford. The government started selling the land on credit.
On 1819, the government started to demand payment from the loans. During this time, the economy is starting to slow down. The market growth could no longer be sustained, the demands of American products are starting to wane. This led to a wave of bankruptcies and foreclosures. Land owners found themselves unable to pay their government debts and debts in the banks, leading to repossessing of lands.
After the 1817 recession, another recession in 1837 followed. With this recession, in just two months time, the economic decline accumulated to nearly $100,000,000 in value. There were reportedly 343 banks that closed (out of the 850 banks). While 62 banks reported partial failure.
There were recessions that happened in 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1907. The 1907 economic recession was a financial crisis. Nearly 50 percent of the stock market fell from its peak in 1906. It's primary cause was a retraction of loans by some banks that began in New York City and soon spread into the whole country. The 1907 recession was the fourth recession in 34 years.
The post-World War I recession hit not only the United States but much of the countries globally. Pre-war economy was showing fast economic growth. As a matter of fact, the decade before the war, the world economy was growing record high. After the war, the global economy stated to decline. The sharpest or worst decline was during 1921. the recession was a result of the end of wartime production along with the return of the troops without any employment. Global production was also affected by the war, especially those countries whose industries were shattered by the war.
What followed was known as the Great Depression that occurred from 1929 until 1939. It is the most dramatic, worldwide economic landslide. It affected not only industrialized countries b out also nations who rely in exporting their raw materials. It was the largest and most important economic depression in the world.
Five recessions in the United States followed after the Great Depression. It was the recession during 1953, 1957, early in the 1980s, early during 1990s and early 2000.
The early 2000 economic recession was not felt only in the United States, but was experienced in most Western Countries. The European Union was mostly hit during 2000 and 2001. While the United states was affected mostly during 2002 and 2003.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
RFK Jr. "Votes are being stolen, now, by hundreds of thousands"
Air America Interview. Robert Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio
Votes are being stolen, now, by hundreds of thousands--and the Democrats aren't doing anything about it.
RFK, Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act, which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans, but it was passed by a Republican Congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote and then for Democrats to have their votes counted.
One of these requirements under HAVA is called 'the perfect match,' and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this--[and] just this one scam. And what it does is, they use a computer system to compare your registration application to all [your] other government records in the state. So they'll look at your Social Security records, your Motor Vehicle records, and any time you've had any interaction with the government, and if there is any information on your voter registration that is different than the information on another government record that they find, they remove you from the voting rolls.
For example, if I registered as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and yet my motor vehicle license said Robert Frances Kennedy Jr., I'd be removed from the rolls. If your initial is different, if you leave an initial out, if you leave a "Jr." out, if you leave a hyphen out in your name. And what they've done is a study in New York that said 80% of the errors are errors by state clerks taking down this information. And particularly [in] immigrant communities, [where] people tend to vote Democratic, people have namesŠspell Muhammad with an "o" instead of a "u"
Papantonio: Are the Democrats suing to stop this?
RFK, Jr.: No, the Democrats are doing nothing to stop it. In New Jersey, which is a swing state, 300,000 voters in New Jersey were just sent letters saying that they are now ineligible to vote. New Jersey is nice enough to actually notify them--most states will not even notify them. And New Jersey intends to send out 870,000 letters so that is three quarters of a million people off the voting rolls in a state that could decide this vote by 50,000 votes. And these are Democrats that are being pushed off the rolls.
Let me tell you about one of other scams people should know about. If you're a newly registered voter--and of course the Democrats have done these gigantic registration drives--12 million people on registration--if you're a new voter, you MUST include your license or some other state I.D. when you come to vote. What that means is that if you're a college kid--and college kids now, they're sending in absentee ballots, they're not going to the voting place, they do everything online or they do everything remotely. They don't dream of going to the precinct house voting on election day and waiting in a long line. So if they send in the absentee ballot, and they don't include a color copy of their [driver's] license, their vote is going to be thrown into a trash can. And none of these people know this, because you had to have to read the law in order to know it. There is no notification [of this requirement] when you fill out your registration form, so all of those 12 million people that the Democrats have registered--those ballots are going to be just thrown out.
Papantonio: And if Democrats won't talk about this, how the hell's anybody gonna know about it? I'm involved with this kind of thing every day--I didn't know that until you just told me. The media is not talking about it. How in the hell is somebody gonna find this out? It's just incredible.
RFK, Jr.: Hopefully--Obama is getting $66 million a month--hopefully somebody in the Democratic organization is going to pay some attention to this before Election Day.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Florida closes Foley investigation without charges
From Susan Candiotti
CNN
CNN
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The Florida Department of Law Enforcement closed a sex-related criminal probe of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley on Friday without filing charges, authorities said.
Former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, pictured in 2004, resigned in September 2006.
"There is insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges," said Gerald Bailey, commissioner of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Authorities were investigating whether the Florida Republican, who resigned in September 2006, might have used congressional computers to engage or solicit minors in any illegal activities.
Officials said they were hindered by refusal from Foley and the House of Representatives to allow inspection of the computers.
"FDLE conducted as thorough and comprehensive investigation as possible considering Congress and Mr. Foley denied us access to critical data," Bailey said in a written statement. "Should additional information arise which is pertinent to this case, we will ensure it is appropriately investigated."
Foley is "relieved" that no probable cause was found to charge him with a crime, his lawyer, David Roth, told reporters Friday evening. But in a statement Roth read on behalf of the former congressman, Foley added, "I however recognize that while my behavior was not illegal, it does not by any means make it proper or approriate. To the contrary, I am deeply ashamed of my conduct, which was wrong and without question inappropriate."
Foley said he takes full responsibility for his actions and apologized, particularly to the recipients of the e-mails or instant messages.
"I continue to pray for forgiveness from those I have disappointed" and emotionally harmed, Foley said in the statement.
Foley entered treatment for alcoholism on October 1, 2006, he said in his statement, and has been clean and sober since the day he resigned from Congress.
Roth has denied that his client engaged in sexual activity with minors.
"He is absolutely, positively not a pedophile," attorney David Roth said previously. "He is apologetic for the communications he made while under the influence of alcohol, which he acknowledges are totally inappropriate."
Those communications included scores of e-mails and instant messages that were given to investigators by former House pages. The exchanges -- in which Foley used the screen name MAF 54 -- were published in a House ethics committee report in December 2006.
Roth told reporters Friday that Foley has no intention of re-entering politics and is focusing on his recovery.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement put the price tag for the nearly two-year investigation at about $37,800.
Foley entered a treatment facility for alcoholism shortly after resigning, saying he is gay and was molested by a priest when he was between the ages of 13 and 15.
A Catholic priest living in Italy admitted in a TV interview that he molested Foley when he was a teenager.
"Once maybe, I touched him or so, but I didn't -- it wasn't -- because it's not something you call, I mean rape or penetration or anything like that, you know. We were just fondling," said the priest, Anthony Mercieca.
The ethics committee's probe concluded that House GOP leaders were negligent in not protecting male teenage pages from possible improper advances by Foley. But the panel said there were no violations of the House Code of Official Conduct and decided no one would be reprimanded.
A Justice Department report issued a month later said the FBI should have notified the House or other officials when members first learned of the inappropriate e-mails. The FBI acted within its "range of discretion" when it initially decided not to open a criminal investigation in the case, the Justice Department said. But the internal watchdog's investigation concluded that simply filing away the complaint from a public interest group was an inadequate response.
The FDLE's investigative summary notes that the U.S. House's clerk of courts took possession of two computer hard drives from Foley's two district offices in Florida and the computer from his Washington office, along with backup material.
The department said it did not seek a search warrant for the drives because it failed to turn up probable cause of a crime with a Florida connection.
The department report said that Foley's attorneys voluntarily worked with the Justice Department to review computer data, but the FDLE failed to work out a similar review with Foley's attorneys.
The department said it was given no indication from the FBI or the Justice Department that there was any non-congressional data in the material that would violate Florida law.Bush Bankrupts America, But You Can Still Get A Free DVD Of The Impeachment Play, And There Is Still Time To Impeach
Many were skeptical that the criminal creeps in the White House could
actually bankrupt the entire United States of America in a mere 8
years, and yet here we are, staring into the abyss of that "Mission
Accomplished" right now. And deliberately lying the American people
into a counterproductive and illegal two trillion dollar war was just
another day's treason for those occupants.
Now, even WE do not expect action on impeachment this particular
week. Congress is too preoccupied scrambling to try to salvage the
disaster that has become our economy because of 8 years of corrupt
Republicans hell bent on deregulation, and EQUALLY corrupt Democrats
too cowardly to stop them, even when they had the actual power to do
so. And unfortunately, the plan they are likely to present to us
before the end of the weekend as a fait accompli looks like it will
be the biggest theft from the American taxpayer in history.
But at the same time, there is no assurance they will not start a
full blown World War 3 on top of everything else, even before the
next election, to try to swing that election to the new Armageddon
Twins in the wings. Believe it, they are perfectly capable of
something that evil, and will do it without a second thought for
partisan political advantage. And that is why we must keep the heat
on for impeachment, and do everything we can to educate our friends
and neighbors about its constitutional imperative.
And that is why we have made the DVD of the new Impeachment Play
available for you and no donation is required.
Impeachment Play DVD and Video: http://www.impeachplay.com
So if you have not requested yours yet, please do so from the page
above. Although there is an optional donation section on the page,
that is not a requirement. Just remember, if you CAN make a donation
of amount, that is what is making it possible for us to distribute so
many thousands of free DVDs to those who cannot make a contribution
right now, to pay our valiant actors through the union (which we are
thrilled to be able to support) for their magnificent and deserving
work, for the bandwidth on the free viewing site above where you can
watch the whole production right now, and everything else.
And when you get it, throw parties for your friends to show it, put
on screenings in your community at libraries and community centers as
so many are already doing. And encourage everyone you know to get
their own copies, just as you got yours, and do the same thing.
There is a very simple solution to the mortgage-based financial
crisis. Ease the terms on the hardworking homeowners who are
struggling to make their payments, and thereby help them directly. We
remember when we fought against the hideously cruel new bankruptcy
bill a couple year ago, rammed through without a serious attempt at a
filibuster. If only we had been able to get more people to speak out
then.
But instead, Congress will probably fall over itself, in a sickly
show of staged bipartisanship, to hand hundreds of billions dollars
to the very reckless shysters who drove us off this cliff in the
first place. For the partially inflated punching bags which pass for
most members of Congress, in case of fire, pour on more gasoline.
Just remember, as long as there are 15 minutes left, even for a
president and vice president supposed to leave office anyway, there
is PLENTY of time left to impeach, for that is how long a vote in the
House takes, and any talk to the contrary is just silly, defeatist
babble. And all we have to do to make it happen is get MORE people to
speak out and DEMAND it. It may be the only thing that can deter
future presidents from doing the same and worse.
In case anybody is not paying attention, an impeachment movement
against the president of Pakistan just developed so fast, from the
talk of initially doing it until the "done deal", it was only a
matter of a couple days. So while some here are WASTING time talking
about "not enough time", Pakistan just went ahead about doing it, and
forced the instant resignation of Musharraf
Is Pakistan a better democracy that the good ole United States of
America? Does Pakistan have a better and more effective Constitution?
There is enough time to impeach ten presidents and vice presidents if
only we rally the people to speak out. And anybody who tries to tell
you different is just a right wing tool whether they know it or not.
But to actually make life imitate art, we need millions of people to
watch the impeachment play video, to really bring home the issues
involved, and to inspire them to raise their voices too. Request your
own copy of the DVD at the site below.
Impeachment Play DVD and Video: http://www.impeachplay.com
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
Alaska paper: Palin has "abdicated" her Gov. duties
Perhaps nowhere is the takeover of Sarah Palin by the McCain campaign playing out worse than in her home state of Alaska. Alaskans have not been happy at all to see the McCain camp swoop in and take control of the governor's mansion, and they are none too pleased to see Sarah and Todd Palin's stonewalling of the Troopergate investigation. And today the editors of the Anchorage Daily News have really called out Palin, under an editorial entitled "Abdication by Palin." It's pretty strong stuff.
http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/531725.html
http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/531725.html
One of the ONLY qualities about Sarah Palin that seemed to hold out any hope of appealing to moderates and independents was her alleged "reformer" image. John McCain heavily touted this quality when he first introduced Palin to the nation as his running mate, and she's tried to cultivate this image ever since. Problem is, all the examples she's used to try to prove she was a fellow "maverick" turned out to be lies: from her now infamous and laughable "Thanks But No Thanks" lie about the Bridge to Nowhere to her lies about not accepting federal earmarks. Her stonewalling of Troopergate may be the final nail in the Palin "reformer" myth, especially in Alaska:
Gov. Sarah Palin has surrendered important gubernatorial duties to the Republican presidential campaign. McCain staff are handling public and press questions about actions she has taken as governor. The governor who said, "Hold me accountable," is hiding behind the hired guns of the McCain campaign to avoid accountability.
Is it too much to ask that Alaska's governor speak for herself, directly to Alaskans, about her actions as Alaska's governor?
The use of words like "abdication" and "surrender" are startling indeed, and ones I'm sure the ADN editors chose quite carefully to lay some serious charges at Palin's feet. The editorial goes on to give several examples of how the McCain campaign has taken over Palin's governorship duties, from McCain campaign spokesman Ed O'Callaghan announcing that Todd Palin will not comply with a Troopergate investigation subpoena to McCain campaign "sidekick" Meg Stapleton defending Palin's firing of Walt Monegan (and trashing Monegan in the process).
ABC News reported that Gov. Palin's official press secretary, Bill McAllister, paid by the state of Alaska, didn't even know the McCain staffers were meeting the press to defend his boss.
Is the McCain campaign telling Alaskans that Alaska's governor can't handle her own defense in front of her own Alaska constituents?
Way back when, before John McCain chose Palin as his vice presidential running mate, Palin promised to cooperate with the investigation.
Now she won't utter a peep about it to Alaskans. Nor will her husband, Todd, who definitely needs to explain his role in Troopergate.
Instead, Alaskans have to sit back and listen to John McCain's campaign operatives handling inquiries about what Alaska's governor did while governing Alaska. Residents of any state would be offended to see their governor cede such a fundamental, day-to-day governmental responsibility to a partisan politician from another state. It's especially offensive to Alaskans.
I think the McCain campaign has mishandled Troopergate about as badly as it could have handled it. First off, knowing about Troopergate, McCain never should have chosen Palin to begin with. But now that he has, McCain's attempts to squash the investigation have only made things worse. In this case, the cover-up MAY be worse than the crime. Even if the investigation turns up nothing, Palin's stonewalling has permanently damaged her attempts to paint herself as someone who will change Washington -- because she's acting exactly like all the current Bush-Cheney cronies. The Rovian attempts to paint the investigation as a partisan witch hunt (please forgive the pun) have fallen flat, in part because the decision to investigate Troopergate was an incredibly bipartisan effort in the Alaska Legislature, in part because Palin had already promised to cooperate fully with the investigation and perhaps, most of all, because Alaskans don't like folks from DC swarming in to take over their state. It's that last point that maybe even Karl Rove underestimated.
Update:
Friday, September 19, 2008
Breaking News: Journalist Charges Dropped
Charges dropped against journalists arrested in St. Paul.
Your action made all the difference.
St. Paul City Hall announced today that they are dropping all charges against journalists arrested while covering the protests outside the Republican National Convention -- including Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!
Your action made all the difference.
You and more than 62,000 other people signed our open letter demanding that the charges be dropped. The day after the convention, we delivered your signatures in person to the mayor of St. Paul.
Today’s great news happened because together, we responded quickly and spoke out strongly. This is your victory.
But before you celebrate, I need you to do one thing. Please ask three friends to join the Free Press network, so that the next time we need to act, we will have an even greater number of allies to add to our collective voice. Our struggle for an open and democratic media system is so crucial right now. We need your help bringing more people to the cause.
Tell your friends to promote better media.
Our task now is to ensure that our press remains free to report on the events, issues and stories that matter to our country, our communities, and our democracy.
We'll stay vigilant -- I hope you’ll join us.
Onward,
Josh Silver
Executive Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net
P.S. Please click here or copy and paste the message below into an e-mail to tell your friends about this exciting victory with Free Press.
Dear Friend,
Earlier this month, I -- along with 60,000 other members of Free Press -- signed a letter calling on St. Paul City Hall to drop the charges against Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! and the other journalists who were arrested during the Republican National Convention.
Today, we found out that in response to public pressure, all of the charges were dropped!
I’m writing in hopes that you will join me and the growing media reform movement by becoming a Free Press "e-activist". It is free, and takes about 10 seconds: http://www.freepress.net/get_involved/e-activists
Free Press is a national, nonpartisan network of people like you and me who care about the future of our media. It is crucial that we increase our numbers in the fight for more hard hitting journalism, and independent media.
Please go to http://www.freepress.net/get_involved/e-activists
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Know Your Stuff, Obama Supporters
Whether convincing undecided voters or debating a McCain supporter in a public forum, it is essential to know your stuff. The Obama campaign has done a far better job fighting back against GOP messaging than I've ever seen, but there are unfortunately still too many lies not being rebutted.
This is an attempt to change all that. If you have a laptop or other portable device going into a debate or a discussion about Obama, have this open and ready to go; whatever inaccuracies you might encounter, you'll be prepared with a quick, clear, and confident answer.
The following contrast piece challenges McCain on the major issue frames of his candidacy (later organized into subgroups for easier reading and search capability):
Leadership and Experience
Ethics and Government Reform
National Security and Foreign Policy
Bipartisanship and Crossparty Appeal
Economy
First, a quick bullet point summary, then the full piece:
- ShadowSD's diary :: ::
- During the primary, McCain ditched every difference he had w/Bush to get nominated
- McCain went from voting with Bush for 90% of the last 8 years to 100% this year
- Many of McCain’s top campaign staff ran Bush’s campaign; his ‘town halls’ staged like Bush's
- The last time the GOP tried to package someone as a reformer during an election, it was Bush
- McCain never split w/Bush on Rumsfeld/Cheney, he said he would have hired them himself
- Obama bucked his party during the primary, opposing health care mandates, addressing the future Social Security solvency crisis, and advocating teacher merit pay
- Obama is endorsed by a long list of high profile conservatives and elected Republicans
- Not one high profile progressive or Democrat endorses McCain (CT Dems booted JL in 06)
- Obama bucked many of his own big donors during the primary to support the writers strike
- Obama worked across the aisle in the Senate with Republicans like Dick Lugar and Tom Coburn
- Obama pushed through strict ethics reforms against the will of many in both parties
- Obama has the strongest reform record of any candidate in modern history
- Obama pushed through the strongest ethics reform in his state for decades, The Gift Ban Act
- Obama pushed through the strongest ethics reform at the federal level in decades, The Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act, co-sponsoring and authoring numerous other reform bills
- McCain's single ethics reform accomplishment in 25 years is the McCain-Feingold bill
- McCain says he has never requested an earmark, but he asked for and received a $10 million earmark in 2006 and a $14.3 million earmark in 2003
- Obama pushed through a bipartisan bill making every earmark public knowledge
- Obama will cut taxes for 95% of Americans; his middle class tax cut is 3 - 8 times bigger than McCain’s according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center
- Obama’s budget adds up better than "we’ve seen in a Presidential candidate in a very long time"; his plan will leave 1.2 trillion dollars less debt than McCain’s (non-partisan TPC)
- McCain had to check with his staff when asked how many houses he owns and what kind of car he drives; he spends $250,000 a year on house servants alone
- US Troops overseas donated 6x more to Obama; our troops prefer his Iraq plan by 30 pts
- Obama always urged focus on Al Qaeda in Afg/Pak while McCain/Bush focused on Iraq/Iran
- Obama correctly predicted that invading Iraq would increase terrorism; Obama, alone among all candidates in urging focus on Pakistan last year, was vindicated by the recent turmoil there
- Non-partisan Disabled Veterans of America scorecard: McCain 20%, Obama 80%
- The Obama Presidential campaign is the first in living memory where average Americans own the biggest share: more than 50% of donations to Obama have been $25 or less, 80% have been $100 or less, and 93% have been $200 or less
- "You would have to go back a century and a half to name an incoming president with so few debts to repay"
- Obama and the DNC accept no federal lobbyist or PAC donations; McCain and the RNC do
- McCain has 133 lobbyists working for his campaign; his top staff is mostly DC lobbyists
- McCain got 10x more Top CEO donations than Obama in return for corporate tax breaks
- McCain's flip in favor of drilling was rewarded immediately with big donations from oil execs
- Obama has served 12 yrs at the federal and state level (4 yrs US Sen + 8 yrs IL Sen)
- Obama co-sponsored 15 bills that became federal law and co-sponsored 570 bills
- Obama sponsored 823 bills and cast over 4000 votes in the IL Senate
- Obama would be the first President with 10+ yrs experience as a Constitutional Law Professor
- Obama spent 3 years as the executive in charge of a budget that went from $70K to $400K while serving as a local community organizer in Chicago
- Obama had 80 editors under him as President of the Harvard Law Review
- Obama's runs a campaign with over 2000 employees, more than the White House staff
- Obama got an International Relations specialty in college, later served 4 yrs on Sen Foreign Rel
- Obama's combined time either in public service, studying foreign policy, or directly pertaining to Constitutional Law adds up to twenty-five years, as long as McCain has been in office
- Obama’s record of experience is more diverse and in touch with America than McCain’s, as Obama understands how things work at the local, state, and federal level; McCain has zero local or state experience, with all his experience in office taking place in Washington DC
Leadership and Experience
- Unique Strengths
Barack Obama's diverse heritage provides an inherent credibility in the world's two most explosive regions (Africa and the Middle East) that no past leader has been able to offer America; his election would consequently improve our standing and security more on the first day than McCain could in four years, as his "upbringing would serve us well if he were president, both in the understanding he would bring to issues of America's role in the world and in terms of how the world views America". Top academic experts in foreign policy say Obama's informal experience offers more insight than any conventional expertise, and top journalists on the subject of the Middle East call him "the only hope for the US in the Muslim world", as we're otherwise "facing two or three decades of problems in the Mideast, with 1.2 billion Muslims". Conservative Andrew Sullivan puts it best: "If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can." Obama's rise has the Muslim World giving America a second look, and he is already viewed with more confidence in 22 countries than McCain.
- Foreign Policy Resume
Aside from spending years of his childhood in Indonesia and earning an International Relations Major major in college, Barack Obama has spent four years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in that time, he has become the most traveled Freshman Senator, he helped negotiate a Nigeria cease fire, he has reduced loose weapons stockpiles in Russia, and he spoke out in Kenya and South Africa against the violence in Darfur. By 2007, it was noted how Obama was "shaping the foreign policy debate", and how he was "putting more substance into his pitch than candidates often do"; since then, everyone from bipartisan watchdog groups to American soldiers have noted that Obama is the candidate of substance and not McCain. Indeed, McCain's foreign policy experience is unimpressive according to his own campaign website bio and wikipedia bio, and he appears outright inept traveling abroad when compared to Obama: "[McCain] looked to Lieberman several times for reassurance on his answers and seemed a little flummoxed... but Obama, who was making only his second visit to Israel, knew precisely what he wanted to say about the most intricate issues confronting and concerning Israel, and expressed himself clearly, even stridently on key subjects."
- Domestic Resume
Every President must swear to protect and preserve our Constitution, and Obama would be the only Constitutional Law Professor to become President after having instructed in that field for over a decade; this experience will have a positive effect on everything from judicial appointments to protecting liberty to respecting the limits of executive power. Obama went on to serve for eight years in the Illinois Senate, adding state legislative experience to his local grassroots work as a community organizer; he sponsored 823 bills and cast over 4000 votes in the state senate, and as a US Senator, co-sponsored 570 bills, including 15 which became law. It is exceedingly rare in history for a Presidential candidate to understand first-hand how things work at the local, state, AND federal level; Barack Obama has that experience, while John McCain has only served at the federal level. Furthermore, Obama's time either in public service or pertaining directly to Constitutional Law adds up to twenty-five years, the same amount of time John McCain has been in elected office.
- Executive Leadership
While John McCain's only executive experience is running his campaign, Obama has a more diverse resume that began over twenty years ago; as director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago for three years, the budget Obama oversaw went from $70,000 to $400,000, and as President of the Harvard Law Review, Obama had eighty people working under him. During this year's Democratic primary, Obama had 1280 employees at a cost of 2.61 million dollars a month, which increased to over 2000 employees in the general election, more than the President's White House staff; Obama built his campaign from the ground up to the largest in history, rejecting money from political action committees and federal lobbyists, while McCain nearly ran his campaign into bankruptcy despite taking money from all comers, almost eliminating himself from the Republican primary six months before all his rivals' campaigns could collapse. Obama's leadership in running a tight campaign, described as a well-oiled machine that is devoid of internal struggle, gives us an insight into how he would lead as President; McCain's executive leadership since the primary, meanwhile, has remained dismal: "McCain's aides acknowledge frustration among fellow Republicans for the slow-to-start campaign." His missteps have brought into question his ability to lead, he has made himself appear unpresidential, and his campaign has gone so far in thwarting responsibility as to claim that McCain does not speak for McCain; his campaign website has a supporters page which is still to this day blank, despite the story being publicly mocked months ago. Questions about McCain's leadership go back much further, however, from assaulting a foreign leader in 1987 to pushing an old lady in a wheelchair in 1996 to repeatedly exploding in anger at members of his own party; as a result, even McCain's Naval Academy classmate and fellow POW refuses to vote for him. John McCain ate cake with President Bush while Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and when floods hit the Midwest earlier this summer, McCain issued a statement while Obama grabbed a shovel to fill sandbags, also organizing campaign supporters online to deploy volunteers and donations for disaster relief; by the time McCain got there for a campaign appearance one week later, he went against the explicit wishes of the Iowa Governor not to distract from relief efforts, while Obama canceled his campaign appearance that week. McCain has barely showed up for work in the Senate this year, missing 63% of the votes in 2008, and he was the sole absence on a Medicare vote for which even Ted Kennedy showed up despite his cancer; furthermore, for someone whose career in office has been an endless string of apologies for offending people, McCain hardly seems a leader with good judgment, but someone who has simply relied on The Legend of John McCain to attack others freely and without reprisal (the most chilling and disheartening irony being that by the very laws put into place by Bush and McCain, McCain's mistreatment in captivity no longer qualifies as torture).
Ethics and Government Reform
- Overspending and Corruption
Dozens of Republicans have been arrested and indicted in just the last few years for corruption and other crimes, and no less than archconservative Bob Novak points out that earmarks went up 285 percent when Republicans had control of Congress, representing the biggest increase in history. While Barack Obama does not assert that all earmarks should be done away with, he argues that the majority of them are wasteful, and he has worked to curtail them through increased transparency and accountability; Obama spearheaded and passed a bipartisan bill with Senator Tom Coburn that has tracked one trillion dollars of federal spending, making every earmark, grant, loan, and contract public knowledge, as well as the lawmakers who enabled them. John McCain rejects all earmarks universally in his rhetoric and claims to have never requested one, but asked for and received a 10 million dollar earmark in 2006 and a 14.3 million dollar earmark in 2003.
- Lobbyists and Influence
Obama has a stronger reform record than any Presidential candidate in modern history, having sponsored and passed the strongest ethics reform bill at the state level in decades, The Gift Ban Act, as well as the strongest ethics reform bill at the federal level in decades, The Lobbying and Ethics Reform Act. He has also co-sponsored public finance reform in Presidential and Senate races, he has been a leading advocate for a bill to require Senate candidates to file their disclosures electronically, and he authored the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, as well as a bill to improve voter access to polling places; John McCain's single reform accomplishment after twenty-five years in the Senate is the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. Obama, with no federal lobbyist/PAC money and over two million contributors, most of them small donors, is as a result not indebted to lobbyists and special interests; in fact, "you would have to go back a century and a half to name an incoming president with so few debts to repay". McCain's campaign staff full of lobbyists is well documented, with at least 133 lobbyists running his campaign and raising money for him, his campaign manager lobbying from aboard the Straight Talk Express, and another lobbyist advisor connected with a bribery scandal involving access to the Bush administration; McCain's change in position to support oil drilling gained him a huge spike in donations from oil executives, he has received ten times as much money from top CEO's as Obama in return for offering huge corporate tax breaks, and he has spent Congressional money on his wealthy donors, not to mention that his runningmate is a fellow faux reformer who is about to be deposed in an ethics probe. Conservative George Will says of McCain: "although his campaign is run by lobbyists; and although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances; and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer-funding system that is celebrated by reformers...he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others." McCain gripes that Obama did not accept public financing this year, but Obama only suggested that he might, given that McCain could easily go around those rules with ads from independent 527 groups; sure enough, not only is the McCain campaign relying on 527s as their principal means of attacking Obama, but they have even been caught in illegal message coordination with 527s, whereas Obama got the MoveOn 527 to shut down and changed DNC policy to no longer accept PAC or federal lobbyist money. The fact is that despite McCain's griping, Americans prefer a large base of small donors over the current broken public financing system, and the polls back that up; the Obama Presidential campaign is the first in living memory where average Americans own a majority share, as more than 50% of donations to Obama have been $25 or less, 80% of them have been $100 or less, and 93% of them have been $200 or less. This is by far the closest to true public financing in American history, a progressive milestone, and yet at the same time the conservative notion of voluntary donations only is adhered to; the McCain campaign's mix of affluent donors and taxpayer money, on the other hand, satisfies neither approach.
- Character and Credibility
Obama believes in authenticity and consistency as a necessary starting point: "I want to be saying the same thing in the primary as I'm saying in the general election as I'm saying in the Oval Office. I don't want to make promises that I cannot keep. I don't want to simplify issues or demagogue issues simply to win short-term favor. We need to be straight with the American people." The evidence shows that Obama has never backed off of any of his core promises, and as conservative David Brooks puts it: "I’ve been poring over press clippings from Obama’s past, looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops. There are virtually none." Obama has been noted for his "straight-ahead style" and "refusing to back-slap or pander", breaking with the old approach to politics: "the most striking thing to me about the Senator's performances was the scrupulous honesty of his answers, his insistence on delivering bad news when necessary"; "that's Obama's approach, and in a country where people increasingly seem to regard politicians as professional liars, no wonder people find it refreshing." In contrast, John McCain, known and respected in 2000 for being a straight shooter, is now "making diametrically opposed policy promises to different audiences at the same time" and "talking out of both sides of his mouth"; his supposedly open town halls are in fact pre-staged events by the local Republican Party with planted questions in the audience, often held at the facilities of corporations that support John McCain. With McCain's National Online Communications Director busted impersonating an undecided voter online, the campaign caught lying about being in a cone of silence at Saddleback, and McCain himself lifting his Cross in the Dirt story from one of his favorite authors, his campaign's willingness to lie in this election has severely damaged his credibility; on top of it all, after claiming for months that Obama was not ready to lead, McCain chose a runningmate with zero foreign policy experience: "It's about honesty. The question should be whether McCain -- and all the other Republicans who have been going on for months about Obama's dangerous lack of foreign policy experience -- ever meant a word of it. And the answer is apparently not."
National Security and Foreign Policy
- Terrorism
John McCain is a long time neoconservative, a philosophy based on the perceived right to occupy other countries and spread democracy by force: "Neoconservative champions of an 'American Empire'... chafe at the notion that there are, or should be, limits to American power or that the American interest should be defined as anything less than a globe-spanning, benevolent imperium." McCain continues to believe in this foreign policy perspective despite the fact that Osama Bin Laden has commended it for making Al Qaeda's job easier. Bin Laden's goal to frame the battle against terrorism as a holy war between Muslims and Christians has also been aided by John McCain's willingness to define alliances along religious lines, and by his refusal to denounce his campaign spokeperson's blanket statement that Muslims want us all to "kneel or they're going to kill us"; the fact is that America is not fighting a WWIV against terrorism, as terrorism can only ultimately be defeated in the long run by local negotiation and not outside military force. Due to being dominated by a failed neoconservative ideology, "Republicans are facing deep doubts about whether they can be capable stewards of the country’s foreign policy"; in addition to failing to see the clues leading up to 9/11, strengthening terrorists by lumping them all together, and prisons for terrorists often holding the wrong men, our government's torture of captives and mismanagement of justice has resulted in an inability to prosecute the 20th 9/11 hijacker and Bin Laden's right hand man - both of whom went free. GOP donors have been charged with aiding terrorists in Afghanistan, one of McCain's top donor firms has plead guilty to funding a terrorist group in Columbia, and McCain's campaign manager has remarked that a terrorist attack would be a big advantage for their campaign. While John McCain is pushing a schizophrenic foreign policy platform to satisfy the same old neoconservative thinking, Obama would be the first post Cold War President, giving him the ability to identify and track down terrorist cells unhindered by a dated mindset that only understands warring nation states; Obama correctly predicted in 2002 that the war in Iraq would "strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda", and was the sole Presidential candidate who insisted on talking about terrorism in Pakistan last summer, for which he was mocked at the time, but which now looks quite prescient after the assassination of their Prime Minister and resignation of their President.
- Troops
US troops overseas contributed six times as much to Barack Obama as they did to John McCain; McCain has voted against increasing veterans benefits ten times since 2003, and despite his multimillion dollar fortune, accepts a yearly $58,000 veterans disability check while opposing an Obama supported bill to give all veterans more benefits; John McCain has also said the VA should stop treating routine medical problems, has suggested bringing back the draft, and receives a score of 20 out of 100 from the Disabled Veterans of America, while Obama gets an 80 out of 100. Our troops support Barack Obama's Iraq policy over John McCain's by thirty percentage points, and 70.6% of US military donations last spring went to candidates in favor of withdrawing from Iraq.
- Iraq
Despite the recent bombshell that the White House forged a document to sell the war in Iraq, and the former top US commander in Iraq's admission that the war was really just about oil, McCain continues to believe the Iraq war was and is the right thing to do, having no problem with us staying for "a hundred" or "ten thousand years"; this is despite reports of our government using assassins, chemical weapons, and distributing religious coins to spread Christianity, validating anti-American terrorist propaganda. John McCain said just one month after 9/11 that invading Iraq was a priority over catching Bin Laden, and his supposed maverick split with the Bush administration on Rumsfeld is a fiction, as he would have chosen Rumsfeld and Cheney himself; McCain also claims to have been more restrained than Bush in not saying things like Mission Accomplished, but the facts show he was for Mission Accomplished before he was against it. McCain has recently confused Iraq with Afganistan, Sunnis with Shiites, and has contradicted himself repeatedly in the course of the same interview on the issue of timetables, at one point calling Obama's withdrawal plan a "pretty good timetable"; with Iraq Prime Minister Maliki saying that a timetable is a sign of victory and not defeat, that Obama's sixteen month plan is the right time frame, and that the surge is NOT the reason for the turnaround in Iraq, McCain has lost the national security advantage to Obama.
- Iran
The theocratic government of Iran, happy with neoconservatives for strengthening Iran's regional influence by deposing the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, endorsed George Bush in the 2004 election. Obama's position of talking to our adversaries instead of the neoconservative "ignore or invade" approach is preferred by 67% of the American public, and even the Bush Administration ended up talking to Iran in recent months for the first time. A small group of neocons, the same people who pushed for invading Iraq, go as far as to regularly compare the Iranian President to Hitler in their effort to whip up a frenzy that will result in invading Iran: "They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous." John McCain has joked about bombing Iran with laughter and song.
- Israel-Palestine
John McCain supported talks with Hamas and had a fundraiser on one of his finance committees who was an agent of Hezbollah. Obama's support for Israel's security is coupled with an equal respect for the plight of the Palestinian people, as evidenced by statements that suggest he would be the most evenhanded President regarding the conflict that we have ever had; Obama is the first candidate ever to, in the course of addressing Jewish groups, "suggest that there is any onus on the Jewish state when it comes to making peace with its neighbors". With policies of neoconservative overreach having damaged Israel's security as much as America's, such evenhandedness would be a welcome change for both sides of the conflict.
Bipartisanship and Cross Party Appeal
- Liberty
With self-identified libertarians, voters who strongly support individual freedom and non-interventionalism, the neoconservative takeover of the Republican Party has soured them on the GOP, as the Democratic Party looks like more and more of a natural ally; Obama leads by fifteen points among libertarians, and some conservatives speculate that Obama is a libertarian paternalist.
- Endorsements
Obama's crossover appeal to conservatives goes way beyond libertarian voters, however, as he has been endorsed by such unlikely figures as Contract With America co-writer Larry Hunter, conservative blogger Dorothy King, Bush biographer Steven Mansfield, Bush pastor Kirbyjohn Caldwell, former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, former neoconservative Francis Fukuyama, National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart, and Reagan Assistant Attorney General Doug Kmiec; other lifelong Republicans to endorse Obama include Susan Eisenhower, former GOP Congressman Jim Leach, Republican mayor Jim Whitaker, GOP Congressional Nominee Joel Haugen, Reagan policy advisor Bruce Bartlett, Republican mayor Lou Thieblemont, and Reagan Assistant Secretary of the Army Delbert Spurlock, along with countless individual Americans who are for the first time voting Democratic this year. When it comes to Obama, Republican women "don't see him as a partisan", and "are expressing concerns about John McCain", while even conservatives who haven't endorsed Obama have remarked that many of his policies, such as his education plan, are better than McCain's; in contrast, not one policy position of John McCain's has been described as superior to Obama's by a single moderate or progressive journalist, nor is there a single high-profile Democratic endorsement of McCain (Joe Lieberman doesn't count, having changed his registration from Democrat over two years ago after losing his primary).
- Bucking The Party Establishment
Unlike John McCain, who eventually ditched every single policy position where he had broken with his own party in order to win the Republican nomination, Barack Obama went through the entire Democratic primary insisting on positions that infuriated progressives and challenged Democratic orthodoxy, such as opposing universal health care mandates, addressing the future Social Security crisis, and advocating merit pay for teachers; he even went against many of his own major donors to support the writers' strike. The idea that Obama "moved to the middle" after winning the nomination requires ignoring all those instances, and does not hold up on closer examination, as Obama has always been consistent in his rejection of doctrinal filters. As even one Republican consultant put it during the Democratic primary, Obama is "not trying to cobble together the old Democratic coalition of interest groups"; while McCain has a record of bipartisan work with the Gang of 14 in the Senate, Obama has also worked across the aisle with Republicans such as Dick Lugar and Tom Coburn, his anti-earmark bill with the latter being met by strong resistance from many Democrats, and his ethics reform bills receiving a similar response from members of his party. Although Obama is progressive on many issues, "in his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative. There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean"; in an analysis of foreign policy positions, "Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist", and according to conservative David Brooks, Obama has "a worldview that precedes policy positions" and "a conservative temperament". Some Republicans open to Obama "see his primary advantage in prosecuting the war on Islamist terrorism... prepared to set their own ideological preferences to one side in favor of what Obama offers America in a critical moment in our dealings with the rest of the world"; for others, Obama's efforts to keep the Harvard Law Review balanced as its President, accomplished by respecting the views of its conservative minority, reveals how he will govern. It has also been argued that Obama's approach, involving the emphasis on strong families and personal responsibility in speeches delivered to inner city audiences, is actually a new path altogether which surpasses "either the liberal or conservative prescriptions".
- No Maverick
With a record of voting with George W. Bush 90% of the time and rising, John McCain's views are costing him among moderate to liberal Republican voters; McCain's allegedly moderate record on energy and the environment is a fiction, and his position against a woman's right to choose is far outside the mainstream. While McCain's phony reformer image has long been propped up, it has fallen apart under a desire to be President in the worst way, and a staff of Bush advisers who have McCain so far out of the decision making process that there is actually someone on his campaign to make sure McCain sticks to the McCain campaign's message.
Economy
- Overview
Bush and the GOP's effect on the economy has resulted in the worst severe poverty since 1975, with the number of severely poor Americans growing by 26 percent between 2000 and 2005, and the worst job creation since the Great Depression; this has left America with the worst child poverty, education, and life expectancy of all civilized countries, and resulted in 38% of Americans struggling to pay for food. In addition to the world's largest bond fund manager declaring that tax cuts for the rich and deregulation have been a failure, the evidence shows that Democratic Presidents are better for the economy, and that since 1900, Democratic Presidents have been better for growth, employment, the stock market, and reducing the deficit.
- Taxes
Obama's tax plan will cut middle class taxes three to eight times as much as McCain's plan according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, and will cut taxes for 95% of Americans; despite their other criticisms, the conservative Wall Street Journal admits "For Obama, Taxes Are About Fairness", and even the ultraconservative Weekly Standard notes that "McCain's charge that Obama is planning a massive tax increase doesn't apply", adding that, "every day that passes makes one thing clearer and clearer: Barack Obama knows precisely what he wants to do to the U.S. economy, and John McCain is intent on proving his self-confessed lack of knowledge with a charming set of homilies." Indeed, McCain has been inconsistent on tax cuts; he embraces thirty cent gas tax relief gimmicks and claims to want a level playing field, but he has no problem with the fact that Republican policies impose a hidden deficit tax of more than $1 per gallon of gas, or the fact that 2/3 of US corporations paid no annual taxes from 1998-2005.
- Solvency
Obama explains how to pay for his programs better than any Presidential candidate in recent history: "his agenda actually does come pretty close to adding up. It's really not normal for a candidate's budget numbers to be even in the near ballpark of making sense... when was the last time we had a presidential candidate who came [so] close? Hell, I think McCain's plan, if you put a number to it, would fail to add up by about ten times that amount. Obama's is the most restrained, least pandering budget plan we've seen in a presidential campaign for a very long time." John McCain said that he does not understand the issue of economics as well as he should, and his economic plan is a mess of contradictions that has several serious problems, including a substantial increase to the national debt: "according to the Tax Policy Center, over the course of a decade Obama's plan would result in a national debt over one trillion dollars smaller than you would get under McCain's plan." While Obama's plan has received endorsements from Nobel Prize economists and the SEC chairs under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, the McCain campaign had to trick 300 economists into signing a short statement later attached to an economic plan they never read.
- Out of Touch
Unlike Barack Obama - who was born to an eighteen year old single mom, who took a $13,000 a year community service job, and who was only able to pay off his student loans in the last couple of years - John McCain has had access to tens of millions of dollars for the last three decades and has never had to stress about paying a bill in that time. McCain doesn't know how many houses he owns, doesn't know what kind of car he drives, and spends $250,000 a year on house servants; when asked about what income level represents the line between middle class and rich, McCain said five million dollars a year. His chief economic adviser says we have become a nation of whiners and that the recession is all in our minds, his chief adviser on health care said that anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, and McCain himself called Social Security a disgrace.
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