Inspired by the valiant primary challenge of Shirley Golub, now
getting real traction against the Speaker of the House herself, other
candidates are rising up all over the country to issue impeachment
based congressional primary challenges of their own.
In Oregon in particular, which has a relatively early primary on May
22, Mark Welyczko OR-01, Joe Walsh OR-03 and Nancy Moran OR-05, are
teaming together to run joint radio spots on multiple radio stations
in Portland covering all three districts. You can listen to the radio
spot on this page.
Impeach Team Radio Spot: http://www.impeachteam.com
The beautiful thing about these three districts is that they are
arranged around Portland like a pinwheel, and so each of these
candidates is sure of reaching the constituents of their own
district, plus demonstrating solidarity on the impeachment issue.
Won't you make a contribution from the page above to these brave
candidates today, to join with them in their solidarity?
With the forced retirement of Admiral Fallon, who famously said that
an attack on Iran would not happen on his watch, there is a real
threat the the White House could do something utterly insane if left
unconfronted by a cowardly and docile Congress just trying to tread
water through to the next election. But those in the Middle East know
how imminent and real the danger is. After Cheney visited the Saudis
last week, the next day they were warning their own people about how
to protect themselves from nuclear fallout, as from a nuclear first
strike on Iran.
And the only thing that will get Congress to even remotely pay
attention to we the people is to actually mount serious challenges to
their own seats in the primaries, which is what Shirley Golub is
doing in San Francisco, and what Mark Welyczko, Joe Walsh, and Nancy
Moran are now also doing in their own districts. On this same page
below are links to all their individual sites if you want to know
more about what they stand for on other issues.
Impeach Team Radio Spot: http://www.impeachteam.com
But unless Congress acts on impeachment before the end of this term,
not only is there a threat of an even wider war, you can take it to
the bank that Bush will not only blanket pardon every one of his
cronies, he will also pardon himself. Those of you who might hold out
some hope of accountability after Jan 2009, remember we warned you
this was coming. Indeed, we believe starting an even bigger war is
their PLAN to elect another war president, on a wave of resurrected
war fever.
We have one and only one chance to save the Constitution, by forcing
Congress to stand up for itself, and for us, now. And only viable
primary challenges will do it. Otherwise the damage will be complete.
If Bush and Cheney are not guilty of the highest of high
Constitutional crimes then no president need ever fear being held to
account ever again. If we do not act now, whether there are 7 months
left or 7 minutes, then any future president will take that as a free
pass to do whatever the hell they want the last year or so of their
elected term.
And remember, if you can contribute $100 or more to this urgent
initiative, the Impeach Team will send you one of the new bright
orange "IMPEACH BOTH!!" caps, to proudly proclaim your membership on
the Impeach Team.
Paid for equally by The Committee to Elect Mark Welyczko, Joe Walsh
for Congress, and Nancy Moran for Congress
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.shirley08.com/in.htm
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Impeach Team Scoring Points in Oregon Congressional Primaries
Parsing McCain on the Democrats’ Health Plans
Senator John McCain has been repeatedly suggesting that his Democratic rivals are proposing a single-payer, or even a nationalized health care system along the lines of those in countries like Canada and Britain.
The suggestion is incorrect. While both Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York are calling for universal health care and an expanded role for government, they stop well short of calling for a single-payer plan.
Mr. McCain has made the assertion several times in recent days, even as he and the Republicans have made repeated calls for accuracy on the campaign trail. They have been complaining indignantly that the Democrats were grossly distorting his position by suggesting that he favors a “100-year war” in Iraq, when he has simply said that he would be fine with stationing troops there for 100 years as long as there were no more American casualties.
Yet on repeated occasions, Mr. McCain, of Arizona, has inaccurately described the Democrats’ health care proposals, using language that evokes the specter of socialized medicine.
“There are those that want a massive government takeover of the health care system in America,” Mr. McCain warned Thursday in Des Moines, as he made the case for his more market-based approach. “Senator Clinton wants to make it mandatory, and, as I understand, they might even garnish somebody’s wages if they didn’t comply. I mean, a remarkable statement. And Senator Obama has basically the same kind of government massive intervention and takeover of health care in America.”
“But before you decide to sign on to that kind of a program, go to Canada, or go to European countries that have government-run health care systems,” he continued. “My friends, they don’t work, they’re inefficient, and they end up in a two-tiered system where the wealthiest can afford to pay for their own health care and those with low income sometimes wait six or eight months for a routine kind of treatment. And that’s what I’m not going to let happen to the United States of America.”
Earlier in the campaign Mr. McCain made the accusation more explicitly. “There will be efforts to have a single-payer big government solution by the Democrats,” he said at a debate in Orlando, Fla., in October. “They’ve already espoused those causes. If you believe them, please take a trip to Canada or England before you decide to support such a thing.”
And in August when he was interviewed by Charlie Rose on PBS, Mr. McCain said: “Look at what the Democrats’ proposal is. It’s a government-run, single-payer system like they have in Canada and like they have in England.”
Mr. Rose interrupted: “But I beg to differ. They will say that it is not that at all.”
Language, of course, is a potent weapon in the battle to shape policy. And Mr. McCain’s effort to cast the Democrats’ plans as a government takeover is just the latest example in a long tradition of using similar language to characterize proposals to change the health care system, said Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard.
“In the campaign, what Senator McCain tries to appeal to is a general antigovernment feeling, a sense that we shouldn’t be doing things too big,” Professor Blendon said. “In a sense he’s appealing to a value that may or may not relate to the policies being discussed by either of the candidates.”
The only Democratic presidential candidate to propose a true single-payer, Medicare-for-all type of health plan in this election cycle was Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio. Mr. Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton’s plans do not call for a single-payer system like Canadians have, or a government-run national health system like the British have.
Both candidates have called for universal health coverage, with Mrs. Clinton saying she would require everyone to have insurance and Mr. Obama saying he would mandate coverage for children. Both would maintain the existing private insurance system, providing government subsidies or tax credits to help the low-income uninsured afford premiums. And they would give consumers a new option to buy insurance from the federal government, with policies along the lines of Medicare.
Some opponents — and even some supporters — of such universal health care proposals believe that they could eventually lead to something like a single-payer system.
Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, noted that Mr. Obama had called himself “a proponent of a single-payer health care program” in 2003. And he noted that just this week, Mr. Obama had spoken favorably of systems in Canada and Europe and said, “If I were designing a system from scratch, if I were just starting from zero , I would probably set up a similar system, just a Medicare-for-all plan.”
But Mr. Obama has even stopped short of mandating health insurance for everyone.
Mr. Bounds said that Mr. McCain’s characterization of the Democrats’ plans was completely reasonable. “While their proposals may not outline one to the finite extent, they clearly suggest that the movement toward a single-payer system is in their overall interests,” he said.
Democrats and Republicans view health care differently, polls suggest. Surveys have found that the most significant health concern voiced by Democrats is expanding coverage for the uninsured, while Republicans and independents are more focused on bringing down health care’s cost.
Even the phrase “socialized medicine” means different things to members of each party. A telephone survey conducted earlier this year by the Harvard School of Public Health and Harris Interactive found that 70 percent of Republicans thought that “socialized medicine” would be worse than the current system, while 70 percent of Democrats thought that it would be better.
John McCain: The Clarification Express
by BarbinMD
Sat May 03, 2008 at 10:04:54 AM PDT
We often hear about news outlets slashing their budgets and downsizing their operations in an effort to save money, but there's one thing that the traditional media really needs to invest in and that's a dictionary, because it doesn't seem like they know what the word "clarify" means.
Twice in the past two days, the media has reported on outrageous or downright disturbing claims made by John McCain on the campaign trail to whip up the faithful, and then have described his backpedaling as "clarifications," rather than the flip-flopping, damage control that they are. On Wednesday, McCain said:
The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money. The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects.
That's pretty clear, right? A definitive statement that the bridge collapsed because of pork barrel spending. But after the national co-chairman of his campaign, who also happens to be the Governor of Minnesota, objected, McCain was allowed to clarify and say what he really meant was:
...only that earmarks divert money from necessary projects toward unneeded pork-barrel ones.
Obviously we all misunderstood when he said "the bridge collapsed because..." And then yesterday McCain said:
My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.
My friends, that's a straightforward statement. But damn, it does sound bad. So the media allowed him to clarify it:
No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons.
Oh, he meant that other war...the one we fought 17 years ago. Well, sure. It's a shame that "the word 'again' was misconstrued." Because he certainly never meant that it's happening today...or that it's ever happened before.
"Again" doesn't mean again, "the bridge collapsed because," doesn't mean the bridge collapsed because, black is white, up is down, move along, there's nothing to see here...and the straight talking, moderate, maverick express rolls on.
And of course there are other issues that have popped up during this campaign that McCain hasn't had to clarify, but that's only because the media chooses to ignore them. But if they ever finish writing that novel and get back to doing their day jobs, perhaps they could get McCain to explain:
- What he meant when he said, on three occasions, that Iran was training Sunni extremists to fight in Iraq? Since he is the self and media appointed foreign policy candidate, it would be nice to know if he's aware of the difference between Sunnis, Shiites, and their respective relationship with Iran.
- Which of Reverend John Hagee's positions does he endorse? That the Catholic Church is a cult that conspired with Hitler, that Hurricane Katrina was a just punishment for the people of New Orleans, that America is cursed and doomed, or that abortions are available in public schools?
- Why he is now saying that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was a mistake when in 2003 he cited it as proof that the conflict was over?
Friday, May 2, 2008
You Have Been Challenged
Remember the Pepsi-Coke Challenge? Here's a new twist: Try the Bush-McCain Challenge—our new online quiz—and see if you can tell the difference between Bush and McCain!
We challenge you to tell them apart—it's harder than you'd think.
Ready to get started? Just click a button below to start this new 3-minute challenge:
Q: After Saddam Hussein was captured in 2003, who said "Mission Accomplished"?
 Bush |  McCain |  Bush & McCain |
Play a round, then send it to your friends.
The Bush-McCain Challenge is a great way to show that voting for McCain is basically like voting for a third term of Bush. On every important issue facing our country, they stand together.
John McCain has built a moderate image (much like George W. Bush, who first ran for president as a "compassionate conservative" promising a "humble" foreign policy).
This email is just the start. Next week, ads will go up on CNN.com and other top news websites. MoveOn members will set up tables outside of McCain events and do the Challenge. And we may even take it to TV.
It starts with you. Will you take the Bush-McCain Challenge right now, then send it to your friends? If you get five friends to play, we'll send you a new bumper sticker. Click here to play:
Thank you for all you do.
–Noah, Karin, Lenore, Daniel, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at:
PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Operation Chaos-a Rush Limbaugh plot
by Hunter
Fri May 02, 2008 at 06:50:20 AM PDT
Rush Limbaugh's wistful hopes for violence at the Democratic National Convention are already been much-noted, though to absolutely no effect...
We need the American left -- and this is another great thing about Operation Chaos; nothing to do with my ego. We need as many ignorant Americans to wake up and find out exactly who the modern-day Democrat Party is as dominated by the far left in this country. We need that to be seen. Now, I am not inspiring or inciting riots. I'm dreaming. (singing to the tune of White Christmas) "I'm dreaming of riots in Denver."
"Operation Chaos" is Rush's name for his continued urging of callers to create "chaos" in the Democratic party by pretending to be Democrats and doing things to hurt the Democrats, so every single thinking human in America, even Rush's own dim-as-a-candle-in-an-oxygen-deprived-room callers who called to chastise him, took his remarks to be inspiring or suggesting riots.
Rush is, of course, known for such speech, so it barely makes news. But he counts even the Vice President of the United States among his frequent guests, and not one of them has been asked to denounce the corpulent, hoping-for-violence blowhard. Why should they?
Nothing's quite as impressive as having a nationwide multiweek media pants-crapping over some guy's ex-minister saying mean things, then demonstrating vividly to the world that hoping for violence, accusing the other party of treason, or suggesting organized ethnic murder are all firmly in the realm of reasonable Republican discourse. So firmly in the realm of reasonable discourse, in fact, that they hardly bear remarking upon... except by those devious liberals with their possibly treasonous ability to hold multiple things in their minds at one time.
McCain, Hezbollah, Arab-Americans and Bigots
by DHinMI
Thu May 01, 2008 at 08:55:46 PM PDT
From Jake Tapper:
The campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., removed a man from his Michigan Finance Committee today.
It started after conservative writer Debbie Schussel called Michigan businessman Ali Jawad not only a supporter of Hezbollah -- a group the US State Department labels a "terrorist organization" -- but also claimed he was a "key agent of the terrorist group in the Detroit area."
After Schussel started asking questions the McCain campaign removed him from the finance committee for a May fundraiser.
"Apparently he is a well known member of the Arab-American community in Dearborn," a McCain staffer tells ABC News. "He is also a known Republican donor and former Bush finance committee member. When these rumors surfaced he notified the campaign and we removed him from the finance committee. The guy never raised a dime for us and he isn’t even a contributor."
Tapper directed people to Schussel's site—if you want to look for yourself you can get there via the link to Tapper—and then wondered if this wasn't some preemptive move by McCain to deny Obama a shot at McCain for being weak on terrorism.
It's both more complicated and simpler. The Arab community, its place in Michigan, and its ties to the Middle East are complicated. However, what's simple is that Debbie Schussel hates Arabs. The McCain campaign is afraid to offend the far right. So they ditched Ali Jawad rather than deal with Debbie Schussel.
A disclosure. I haven't seen him in about 5 years or so, but I once knew Ali Jawad. That may sound extraordinary, but it's nothing special for someone who's run campaigns in Michigan, especially for one who's worked with the Detroit Area's huge Arab community. I've brought candidates to meet with him and his political circle, and I've worked with him to elect Democrats, just as my Republican counterparts have worked with him to elect Republicans.
To fully understand what's happening here, one must understand the Detroit area and its Arab community. There are several million Arabs across the country, most of whom are Christian, with many tracing their families back to Christian Lebanese and Syrians who immigrated to the US in the early 20th Century. What's different about the Arab population in the Detroit area is the size, diversity and power of the Arab community.
Lebanese Shiites have lived in the Detroit area since the early 20th century. In the shadows of the Ford Rouge Complex—one of the biggest factories in the world, which once employed 80,000 men—is the "South End" of Dearborn. This neighborhood was a mix of Shiite Lebanese, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Maltese, Greeks and Armenians. In the 1970's, as the other ethnic groups moved away from the neighborhood, the Lebanese Civil War exploded. Soon the neighborhoods of southern and eastern Dearborn—which borders Detroit—became home to many thousands of Arabs. These immigrants were mostly Shiite Lebanese, but eventually Dearborn also became home to large numbers of immigrants from Yemen. Around the same time many Chaldeans—Roman Catholics from Iraq whose traditional language is Aramaic, the language that dominated the region at the time of Jesus—moved in large numbers to other neighborhoods in the Detroit area.
Today, the Arab population of the Detroit area is somewhere between a quarter and a half million. The largest groups are the Lebanese Shiites and the Chaldeans, although there are also large numbers of Yemeni, Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians and, since the end of the first Gulf War, Iraqi Shiite Arabs. Many Detroit area Arabs are Christian, but immigrants in the last 20 years are more likely to be Muslim.
Like almost every immigrant group, Arabs have moved beyond their original neighborhoods and can be found throughout the area. And everyone in Detroit has a lot of contact with Arab-Americans. In secular Baathist Iraq, Chaldeans were a semi-protected group that were permitted to sell liquor. When they began moving to Detroit, they took up the same business. Today, Chaldeans own almost all the convenience and liquor stores in the area; everyone in the Detroit area interacts with Chaldeans because almost all the corner stores are family run. And when you stop for gas, you'll be dealing with a Lebanese Shiite, because they own and/or operate almost all the gas stations in the area.
Arab-Americans lean Democratic but are a key bloc of ticket-splitters. Because of their rapidly increasing wealth, they have also become an important source of campaign contributions, especially in the $250 to $1,000 range. This is where Ali Jawad comes in. He is the head guy in the gas stations owners association. He also runs the Lebanese Heritage Club, which hosts just about every candidate forum for Arab-Americans, and which regularly attracts every major politician in the area. He's a major collector of checks, and he's one of the leaders of his community.
As Tapper points out, Jawad has said things about Hezbollah that make it sound less sinister than one would think a group would be to make the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Well, he's not the only person in the area to not condemn Hezbollah; the range of attitudes of Lebanese in Dearborn is probably centered somewhere between ambivalent to fairly supportive. Many of the Dearborn Lebanese come from a handful of villages in Southern Lebanon, within a few miles of the Israeli border. Thus, they come from the heartland of Hezbollah. Their home villages were used by the PLO to stage raids in Israel during the early 1970's—there is often animosity between Lebanese Shiites and Palestinians, for many Lebanese blame Palestinians for destabilizing Lebanon—the area was occupied by Israel for many years, and it was only after years of fierce attacks by Hezbollah that Israel abandoned Southern Lebanon. In the eyes of many Lebanese, Hezbollah liberated their home villages from Israeli occuption.
Hezbollah is now the de facto government of Southern Lebanon, and provides social services as well fights Israel. Many people in Dearborn have family ties to major players in Lebanese Shiite politics. And Lebanese in Dearborn view Hezbollah with much the same mix of distrust mixed with nationalist pride and identity that Catholic residents or former residents of IRA-controlled neighborhoods in Belfast or Derry view the IRA. Most Lebanese in Dearborn came here to escape war, but that doesn't mean they don't identify with one faction more than the others. In Dearborn, many identify with Hezbollah.
But whatever their views about their home country, most Arabs in Southeast Michigan view themselves as Arab-Americans, and that's how they're viewed by most of their non-Arab neighbors. In the Middle East, most would be viewed hostilely by the Sunni terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, because most Arabs around Detroit are Shiite or Christian. They moved to the US to escape problems back home, and have settled in. They often hate the foreign policy of their adopted country, but they love being Americans. And in Michigan, they are political players.
Back in the 1980's, Democratic governor Jim Blanchard was accused of returning contributions from Arab-Americans. When he ran for Governor in 1990, Republican John Engler—with the help of his Republican party chair Spencer Abraham—did the opposite, and enthusiastically reached out to Arab-Americans. For each of his three elections he was rewarded for his outreach with votes and contributions from Arab-Americans. Abraham himself even slid in to the Senate in the 1994 Republican landslide (before losing to Debbie Stabenow in 2000). But many Arab-American voters still strongly supported Democrats, especially members of Congress David Bonior (then the second-ranking Democrat in Congress), John Dingell (who represented all of Dearborn for several decades) and John Conyers (who now splits Dearborn with Dingell). Jawad's personal political contributions mirror these community-wide patterns.
I don't know enough about Ali Jawad's background or business practices to vouch for him, but I doubt the McCain campaign does either. But I do know that just about everyone in Michigan politics, Republican and Democrat, has sought his support, and John McCain's campaign just dumped him because viciously anti-Arab reactionary Debbie Schlussel called him a terrorist (which for her is practically a synonym for "Arab").
Once again we have a case where a politician has no problem with dumping on Arab-Americans because of ethnic stereotyping. It's like accusing Italians in the 1940's of all being tied to the Mafia, or thinking that every Salvadoran that comes in to the US today is connected to a violent drug gang.
Tapper wondered if the Obama campaign might eventually throw the Jawad association back in McCain's face. I would hope not, because that would just be validating the claims of one of the most hateful people on right. She's claimed Media Matters is Nazi-funded. She claimed the shooter at Virginia Tech was a "Paki." And she's used the same scare tactics against Obama himself, pushing the bullshit that he was once a Muslim, and that "once a Muslim, always a Muslim," and that his comments are heavily lifted from the film Malcolm X. In short, this woman hates Arabs and hates Muslims. Hell, she just hates. And anyone or anything she hates she depicts as part of a scary conspiracy of all Arabs and all Muslims (with the occasional Nazi thrown in to give her predictable hatred a bit of retro zing).
There are legitimate criticisms to make against McCain and the Republican party in general about being soft on terrorism. However, in the absence of anything other than the hate-filled rantings of that lunatic Debbie Schlussel, attacking McCain for once having Ali Jawad on his finance committee would not be a legitimate criticism. The legitimate criticism of McCain is for being soft on hatred and bigotry, and caving to Debbie Schlussel. It would be wrong for Obama's camapign to dignify her hate. Furthermore, it would be dumb politics, because it would needlessly alienate tens of thousands of good Americans who also happen to be of Lebanese descent and swing voters in what could be one of the most competitive states in the November election.
Now Begins Month 61 Since 'Mission Accomplished'
by Meteor Blades
Thu May 01, 2008 at 10:06:59 PM PDT
Fifty-two American military personnel deployed to the Iraq occupation went to premature graves in April. Male, female, black, white, Latino. The oldest was Colonel Stephen K. Scott, 54. The youngest was Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter, 19.
Those 52 came from Ardmore, Oklahoma. From St. Paul, Minnesota. From Mesquite and Hull and Fresno and Buchanan Dam and College Station and El Paso and Magnolia and San Antonio and Hempstead and Cedar Park, Texas. From San Juan, Puerto Rico. From Littleton and Colorado Springs, Colorado. From Springfield and Perryville, Missouri. From Dover, Delaware. From Bakersfield and Culver City and Fort Irwin and Hanford and Lake Tahoe and San Diego, California. From Oakmont, Pennsylvania. From Boise, Idaho. From Zephyrhills and Clearwater and Jacksonville and Miami Lakes and Coral Springs, Florida. From Sauk Village, Illinois. From New Market, Alabama. From Cudahy and Waukesha and Racine, Wisconsin. From Lafayette, Louisiana. From Mount Airy and Apex and Teachey, North Carolina. From Commerce, Georgia. From Gaylord, Michigan. From Morris Plains, New Jersey. From Sag Harbor, New York. From Burkeville and Dublin and Norfolk, Virginia. For each of these departed, a candle.
If the past is any guide, for each of the Americans who died in April because of the war and occupation, between 50 and 350 Iraqis died. We can't be any more exact than that because every attempted count is called into question. The constraints of the software template for this site won't allow me to post enough candles to mark the passing of those Iraqis even using the lowest probable tally.
Whatever the number, it is horrendous. All the more so because the deaths of the Americans, of the Iraqis, of the other members of the coalition, have all resulted from a war of choice, an unnecessary war, a war of the new imperialism. A war founded and continued to this day on exaggerations, distortions, fabrications, concoctions and lies. A war which a smirking, strutting, absurdity of a president told us 60 months ago was Mission Accomplished.
Progressives should never declare our mission accomplished until justice is delivered to those who lied us into this war. Justice for the 52 Americans who died last month, for the 4065 who have died since March 2003, for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have also died. Without justice, they truly will have died in vain.
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