Strongest Statement Yet: US Military Opposes
Israeli Attack on Iran

post from TPMCafe on 16 March 2009 09:38:00 AM. © TPMCafe

The neocons should not let their victory in the Chas Freeman matter go to their heads.

On their number one issue -- the issue over which they struggled successfully to defeat Freeman -- they are batting zero.

Last week, just prior to Freeman's stand down, Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, told the Senate that he did not believe Iran was on the brink of going nuclear. And now, Admiral Michael Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs, says that the US opposes Israeli military action against Iran.

Mullen could not be more emphatic. The United States is against Israeli military action. Period.

I wrote last week that the neocons' apparent victory over Freeman was an empty one. This proves it. Why? Because the main issue the neocons care about is not settlements, not Gaza, not Israel, itself, in fact. It is Iran. They want the Iran nuclear question resolved militarily not diplomatically. And they want the regime brought down.

I guess they will have to wait for the Palin/Wurzelbacher administration. Obama will focus on diplomacy.

****
By popular request, here is my letter on Chas Freeman that led off the New York Times' letters column.

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SAVE THE NEWSPAPERS, SAVE THE WORLD

post from Ezra Klein on 16 March 2009 09:30:00 AM. © Ezra Klein

Clay Shirky has a brilliant essay that thinks the unthinkable. "The people committed to saving newspapers," he writes, "[demand] to know 'If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?' To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There[...]

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=society_doesnt_need_newspapers

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Obama's pissed

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 16 March 2009 09:29:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

He's going after AIG. Good.

President Obama publicly fumed today over plans by the bailed-out insurance giant AIG to reward it executives with $165 million worth of bonuses and asked his treasury secretary to "pursue every single legal avenue" to block them.

The insurance giant is paying out $165 million in retention bonuses to execs.

"This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," the president said.

"Under these circumstances, it's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay," Obama said today during a news conference announcing an aid program for small businesses. "How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?"

As my other friend Chris noted last night, if we just let AIG go bankrupt, then they won't have any of those pesky legal commitments to pay their staff hundreds of millions in bonuses. I'm not saying we dissolve the company - I'll leave it to wiser economic minds to determine whether that's safe for the rest of us. I'm talking put the company into bankruptcy and get rid of all of those pesky employee benefits contracts that Republicans love to rail against.

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TPMtv: Sunday Show Roundup: Whatcha Gonna Do

post from Talking Points Memo on 16 March 2009 09:26:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer, and Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) all feel the same anger and outrage over the fact that insurance giant AIG has payed out hundreds of[...]

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ow_roundup_whatcha_gonna_do.php

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True, I Couldnt Watch ALL of Cheney on CNN

post from Ratbang Diary on 16 March 2009 09:23:00 AM. © Ratbang Diary

I could stand only about half of John King?s interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday. But I have read the entire transcript of Cheney?s exercise in revising history (even in the face of John King?s pointed questions).

And Cheney has his post-Bush-regime delivery down pat. He acts like he?s thought about his answers and he has a considered and reasonable air. He doesn?t go off on tangents or fuss, fume or rant. He doesn?t need to. The GOP has Rush Limbaugh. Cheney said, ?Rush is a good friend. I love him. I think Rush is a good man.?

Dick Cheney simply continued to tell lies about the past eight years. He appeared to assume that he, his sect and his devotees had been the only ones who witnessed history as it played out. The rest of us don?t matter.

1) King asked if the Bush administration left a mess for President Obama to clean up. Cheney said: ?I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances. It's a global financial problem.?

And by the way, all through the interview, Cheney deferred to George W. Bush, saying that Bush had made the decisions, some of which Cheney did not agree with. Okay, if that?s the way the GOP wants to play it, that?s the way it will be played. However, it would be interesting to know who actually was making the decisions that Cheney disagreed with because of this we may be sure, the decider was not the overmedicated, underachieving, out-of-the-loop, mumbling, babbling, incoherent George W. Bush

2) King asked: ?Is the Obama administration going to be successful in restoring confidence in the markets?? Cheney said he ?hoped the Obama administration would be successful". He added, ?I noted when the markets were going down, they didn't want to talk about it.?

I have no idea what Cheney meant by that. The Dems have always been willing and eager to talk about the markets beginning to plummet?it was during the Bush years.

3) King asked: ?If you were in Rahm Emanuel?s place (Chief of Staff) would you tell Obama he?s trying to do too much too fast?

Cheney said Obama?s situation is like the first Bush term. People are giving Obama a lot of advice to change his program and the Bush administration rejected the idea to change. ?We did not allow the critics to diminish what we were trying to accomplish,? Cheney said. Um so...I guess we are to infer Cheney would not tell Obama he's moving too fast.

It was kind of John King not to say that the Bush administration had been perfectly capable of diminishing their accomplishments themselves.

4) King asked why people should listen to Cheney now in view of the fact that unemployment numbers, poverty numbers and the budget deficit were at record levels during the Bush administration.

Cheney said, ?Eight months after we arrived, we had 9/11. We had 3,000 Americans killed one morning by al Qaeda terrorists here in the United States. We immediately had to go into the wartime mode. We ended up with two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of that is still very active. We had major problems with respect to things like Katrina, for example. All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend, or weren't originally part of the budget. Stuff happens. And the administration has to be able to respond to that, and we did.?

In addition, Cheney again equated the Iraq war to World War II, which it never has been on a par with. Cheney said, ?We always said -- I always said that wartime scenario is cause for an exception in terms of spending. It was appropriate in World War II, certainly, and I think it's appropriate now.?

Cheney probably didn?t mean that ?now? to mean now. But that?s what he said.

King asked Cheney, given that Cheney was an MBA, a Washington insider and a CEO, how come he and the people in the administration couldn?t see the financial meltdown coming? Were they all so caught up in the boom times that they couldn?t see the warning signs?

Cheney said, ?I think so. I don't recall, you know, sort of a general warning of concern until things started to turn -- turn south on us.?

Oh my! He doesn?t recall.

About the Iraq war, Cheney said, ?we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do.? John King asked if Cheney would go so far as to say, ?Mission Accomplished?? Cheney said he wouldn?t use that term, but only because it would trigger reactions the GOP doesn?t need.

So. Yeah, Cheney is still defending invading Iraq, still saying it was the right thing to do and still saying the Bush administration kept Americans safe. He even said that Obama?s decision not to use torture would endanger America. Cheney was very clear that he believed Obama would not keep the USA safe.

Here?s an interesting and telling note. Cheney claimed that the Bush administration had kept the US safe in myriad ways. He said there had been many, many, many planned attacks on the United States that Bush and Crew had intercepted, and most of these planned attacks had been kept secret. But he said one serious plan to attack the US was made public. This was, Cheney said, ?the potential attack coming out of Heathrow, when they were going to have several American planes with terrorists on board, with liquid explosives, and they were going to blow those planes up over the United States. That attack was intercepted and stopped, partly because of the programs we had put in place.?

To recap that incident in the here and now and to take it out of Cheney's fantasy realm: On August 10th, 2006, the British police arrested 25 suspects in a plot supposedly using liquid explosives to blow a plane up over the United States. Eventually, only 8 men (Ahmed Abdullah Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Oliver Savant, Arafat Khan, Waheed Zaman, Umar Islam, Mohammed Gulzar) were charged in connection with the plot. The trial began in England in April 2008. On September 8th 2008, after more than 50 hours of deliberations, the jury did not find any of the defendants guilty of conspiring to target aircraft.

Why should we listen to Dick Cheney?

There is absolutely no rational reason under the sun.

Read The Full Article:
http://ratbangdiary.blogspot.com/2009/03/true-i-couldnt-watch-all-of-cheney-on.ht
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40 good bloggers over 40 (updated)

post from MyDD on 16 March 2009 09:21:36 AM. © MyDD

I'm turning 40 today, and to mark the occasion I have compiled a list of 40 bloggers I like to read who have hit the same milestone. They are alphabetized by name or handle after the jump. You'll recognize many of the names, but probably not all of[...]

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40 good bloggers over 40

post from MyDD on 16 March 2009 09:21:36 AM. © MyDD

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Iraq TV: Militias Back (Look at the Wording)

On Sunday night and into Monday afternoon, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani was shown on more than one channel, saying that there was "evidence to prove the re-grouping of 'the militias' in Baghdad, and some southern provinces." Maysan and Basra were named, but not many details were given.

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http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/7341

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The Daily Muck

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a 2007 report that the Bush administration used torture to question al-Qaeda suspects. The report, obtained by journalism professor Mark Danner, says that captives were taken "to the verge of death and back" in secret CIA prisons. The Washington Post reports that the ICRC's account is the most authoritative to date that shows the Bush administration repeatedly violated international law. (Washington Post)

Fearing she will flee the country, federal investigators plan to freeze $93 million of Ruth Madoff's assets, the New York Post reported Sunday. According to a source close to the investigation, the SEC will ask to freeze Madoff's funds because they were likely acquired dishonestly. Mrs. Madoff has denied any wrongdoing associated with her husband's $50 billion Ponzi scheme. But she was implicated because she withdrew $15.5 million immediately before her husband was arrested in December and recently purchased $1 million of jewelry in defiance of a court order. Though Mrs. Madoff has agreed to a voluntary asset freeze, the deal is not legally binding. (Reuters)

The government of Switzerland announced Friday that it would reform its definition of tax evasion to help other nations pursue citizens who dodge taxes with the help of Swiss banks. Since Switzerland did not define tax evasion as a crime until this announcement, it has become a haven for one third of the world's $7 trillion in hidden offshore funds. This is a blow to the Swiss bank UBS, which is accused of helping international investors avoid taxes from their home countries and has hidden behind Swiss law to justify its refusal to disclose the names of approximately 33,000 U.S. tax evaders. (New York Times)

Federal investigators indicted a U.S. border patrol agent Friday for allegedly assaulting a detainee at a federal detention facility. Eduardo Moreno is also accused of making false statements in a U.S. Customs and Boarder Patrol memorandum about the incident. If convicted of both counts, Moreno could serve 15 years in prison and pay a fine of $500,000. (U.S. Department of Justice)

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick hired a lawyer this weekend to sue the communications company SkyTel for leaking approximately 6,000 sexually explicit text messages to the media. Kilpatrick's lawyer, Willie E. Gary - known as the "giant killer" - specializes in big-budget cases for big-name clients. The suit claims that SkyTel violated federal law by releasing the private text messages. According to Gary, the $100 million claim against SkyTel "could go up." (Associated Press)

In other Kilpatrick news, the former Detroit mayor's top aide and lover was released from prison this weekend. Christine Beatty pleaded guilty along with Kilpatrick last year to two counts of obstructing justice and lying under oath at a whistle-blower trial. Both Kilpatrick and Beatty claimed that they did not have a sexual relationship, which was later refuted by explicit text messages uncovered and published by the Detroit Free Press. (Detroit Free Press)

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TPMDC Morning Roundup

Obama set to tap his campaign's ginormous email list to mobilize support for his budget. That and the day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.[...]

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oundup_38.php

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