Translating Way Off-year Election Results

In the run up to yesterday's off-year elections, conservatives sought to cast the high-profile contests as a referendum on President Obama's first year in office. "These are bellwether races -- not just as a referendum on this administration, but on our party as well," said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. "

And it just gets worse from there....

So is this really a referendum on Obama, or is this just the political tide changing?" Fox News' Sean Hannity asked former Bush adviser Karl Rove. "Well, I think it's both," replied Rove.

However:

Despite the fact that Obama's party lost control of the governor's mansions in both Virginia and New Jersey, claims of a referendum do not pan out. While the two governorships have gone to the party not in control of the White House in every election since 1989, the results have not correlated with presidential approval, indicating that they are not a referendum on presidential leadership. "The Democratic losses of these two governorships should not be interpreted as a significant blow to President Obama," writes CNN Political Editor Mark Preston, noting that 56 percent of Virginians said in exit polls that the President was not a factor in their vote, while 60 percent of New Jersey voters said the same. In fact, "just under half the voters in Virginia, 48 percent, approved of the way Obama is handling his job, rising to 57 percent in New Jersey."

And Then There Is This:

Additionally, Democrat Bill Owens' victory over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in New York's 23rd district -- where Hoffman's third-party candidacy became the vessel for a Republican Party civil war -- dealt "a major setback to conservative organizations."

Note from the Pelican Editor of the day: I don't see this as a set back for real conservatives. It may be yet another blow for the citizens of Wingnuttia, whose queen Winkidink swooped in by Face book and backed Hoffman, who, from what I can tell, is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun. Nevertheless, one can never right off the wing-nuts. Apparently they never grow weary of being used and abused by the other GOPers, like the real true believers; Capitalists-on-steroids or people who think they have enough money to be republican, until they are disabused of that notion by foreclosure, collapse of business or one of several hundred really bad nightmares caused by the really bad, but practically, unchallenged policies of the last administration, the Neocons, who can make some of the more hilarious jokes about the Zionist Christians and other religious whack-jobs, but remain no laughing matter, themselves. They haven't gone anywhere and, yes, they are ideologically dangerous.

What remains to be seen is if the results of this little congressional race in nowhere N.Y. will be enough to stop the republican civil war in its tracks. It may well do just that, making the demise of the GOP and all of its constituents greatly exaggerated by a number of commentators.

Still, while yesterday's election was not a referendum on the President, the tea leaves do highlight challenges for the administration going forward as "a vast 89 percent in New Jersey and 85 percent in Virginia said they were worried about the direction of the nation's economy in the next year."


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Let The Sun Shine In......

Obama Using Bush's States Secrets B.S. (WTF?)

What was once depicted as a grave act of lawlessness -- Bush's NSA program -- is now deemed a vital state secret.

 

By Glenn Greenwald

The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state 
secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) -- to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government's domestic surveillance activities.  Obama did so again this past Friday -- just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege.  Instead -- as predicted -- the DOJ continues to embrace the very same "state secrets" theories of the Bush administration -- which Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned -- and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the law.

The case of Shubert v. Bush is one of several litigations challenging the legality of the NSA program, of which the Electronic Frontier Foundation is lead coordinating counsel. The Shubert plaintiffs are numerous American citizens suing individual Bush officials, alleging that the Bush administration instituted a massive "dragnet" surveillance program whereby "the NSA intercepted (and continues to intercept) millions of phone calls and emails of ordinary Americans, with no connection to Al Qaeda, terrorism, or any foreign government" and that "the program monitors millions of calls and emails . . . entirely in the United States . . . without a warrant" (page 4).  The lawsuit's central allegation is that the officials responsible for this program violated the Fourth Amendment and FISA and can be held accountable under the law for those illegal actions.

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Rather than respond to the substance of the allegations, the Obama DOJ is instead insisting that courts are barred from considering the claims at all.  Why?  Because -- it asserted in a Motion to Dismiss it filed on Friday -- to allow the lawsuit to proceed under any circumstances -- no matter the safeguards imposed or specific documents excluded -- "would require the disclosure of highly classified NSA sources and methods about the TSP [Terrorist Surveillance Program] and other NSA activities" (page 8).  According to the Obama administration, what were once leading examples of Bush's lawlessness and contempt for the Constitution -- namely, his illegal, warrantless domestic spying programs -- are now vital "state secrets" in America's War on Terror, such that courts are prohibited even from considering whether the Government was engaging in crimes when spying on Americans.
That was the principal authoritarian instrument used by Bush/Cheney to shield itself from judicial accountability, and it is now the instrument used by the Obama DOJ to do the same.  Initially, consider this:  if Obama's argument is true -- that national security would be severely damaged from any disclosures about the government's surveillance activities, even when criminal -- doesn't that mean that the Bush administration and its right-wing followers were correct all along when they insisted that The New York Times had damaged American national security by revealing the existence of the illegal NSA program?  Isn't that the logical conclusion from Obama's claim that no court can adjudicate the legality of the program without making us Unsafe?
Beyond that, just consider the broader implications of what is going on here.   Even after they announced their new internal guidelines with great fanfare, the Obama administration is explicitly arguing that the President can break the law with impunity -- can commit crimes -- when it comes to domestic surveillance because our surveillance programs are so secret that national security will be harmed if courts are permitted to adjudicate their legality.  As the plaintiffs' lawyers put it last July (emphasis in original), government officials:

seek to transform a limited, common law evidentiaryprivilege  into sweeping immunity for their own unlawful conduct. . . . [They] would sweep away these vital constitutional principles with the stroke of a declaration, arrogating to themselves the right to immunize any criminal or unconstitutional conduct in the name of national security. . . .

For that reason, as they pointedly noted the last time the Obama DOJ sought to compel dismissal based on this claim:  "defendants' motion is even more frightening than the conduct alleged in the Amended Complaint."  Think about that argument:  the Obama DOJ's secrecy and immunity theories are even more threatening than the illegal domestic spying programs they seek to protect.  Why?  As the plaintiffs explains (click image to enlarge)


Can anyone deny that's true?  If the President can simply use "secrecy" claims to block courts from ruling on whether he broke the law, then what checks or limits exist on the President's power to spy illegally on Americans or commit other crimes in a classified setting?  By definition, there are none.  That's what made this distortion of the "state secrets" privilege so dangerous when Bush used it, and it's what makes it so dangerous now.  Back in April, 2006 -- a mere four months after the illegal NSA program was first revealed, and right after Bush had asserted "state secrets" to block any judicial inquiry into the NSA program -- here is what I wrote about the Bush administration's use of the "state secrets" privilege as a means of blocking entire lawsuits rather than limiting the use of specific classified documents:

[Q]uite unsurprisingly, the Bush administration loves this doctrine, as it is so consistent with its monarchical view of presidential infallibility, and the administration has become the most aggressive and enthusiastic user of this doctrine . . . . As the Chicago Tribune detailed last year, the administration has also used this doctrine repeatedly to obstruct any judicial proceedings designed to investigate its torture and rendition policies, among others . . . . This administration endlessly searches out obscure legal doctrines or new legal theories which have one purpose -- to eradicate limits on presidential power and to increase the President's ability to prevent disclosure of all but the most innocuous and meaningless information.

That was the prevailing, consensus view at the time among Democrats, progressives and civil libertarians regarding Bush's use of the state secrets privilege:  that the privilege was being used to exclude the President from the rule of law by seeking to preclude judicial examination of his conduct.  Plainly, Obama is now doing the same exact thing -- not just to shield domestic surveillance programs from judicial review but also torture and renditions.  Is there any conceivable, rational reason to view this differently?  None that I can see.
Note, too, how this latest episode eviscerates many of the excuses made earlier this year by Obama supporters to justify this conduct.  It was frequently claimed that these arguments were likely asserted by holdover Bush DOJ lawyers without the involvement of Obama officials -- but under the new DOJ guidelines, the Attorney General must personally approve of any state secrets assertions, and Eric Holder himself confirmed in a Press Release on Friday that he did so here.  Alternatively, it was often claimed that Obama was only asserting these Bush-replicating theories because he secretly hoped to lose in court and thus magnanimously gift us with good precedent -- but the Obama administration has repeatedly lost in court on these theories and then engaged in extraordinary efforts to destroy those good precedents, including by inducing the full appellate court to vacate the decisions or even threatening to defy the court orders compelling disclosure.  In light of this behavior, no rational person can continue to maintain those excuses.
Is there any doubt at this point that, as TalkingPointsMemo put it in a headline:  "Obama Mimics Bush on State Secrets"?  Or can anyone dispute what EFF's Kevin Bankston told ABC News after the latest filing from the Obama DOJ:

The Obama administration has essentially adopted the position of the Bush administration in these cases, even though candidate Obama was incredibly critical of both the warrantless wiretapping program and the Bush administration's abuse of the state secrets privilege.

Extreme secrecy wasn't an ancillary aspect of the progressive critique of Bush/Cheney; it was central, as it was secrecy that enabled all the other abuses.  More to the point, the secrecy claims being asserted here are not merely about hiding illegal government conduct; worse, they are designed to shield executive officials from accountability for lawbreaking.  As the ACLU's Ben Wizner put it about the Obama DOJ's attempt to use the doctrine to bar torture victims from having a day in court:  "This case is not about secrecy. It's about immunity from accountability."  That's what Obama is supporting:  "immunity from accountability."

What makes this most recent episode particularly appalling is that the program which Obama is seeking to protect here -- the illegal Bush/Cheney NSA surveillance scheme -- was once depicted as a grave threat to the Constitution and the ultimate expression of lawlessness.  Yet now, Obama insists that the very same program is such an important "state secret" that no court can even adjudicate whether the law was broken.  When Democrats voted to immunize lawbreaking telecoms last year, they repeatedly justified that by stressing that Bush officials themselves were not immunized and would therefore remain accountable under the law.  Obama himself, when trying to placate angry supporters over his vote for telecom immunity, said this about the bill he supported:

I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses.

Yet here is Obama doing exactly the opposite of those claims and assurances:  namely, he's now (a) seeking to immunize not only telecoms, but also Bush officials, from judicial review; (b) demanding that courts be barred from considering the legality of NSA surveillance programs under any circumstances; and (c) attempting to institutionalize the broadest claims of presidential immunity imaginable via radically broad secrecy claims.   To do so, he's violating virtually everything he ever said about such matters when he was Senator Obama and Candidate Obama.  And he's relying on the very same theories of executive immunity and secrecy that -- under a Republican President -- sparked so much purported outrage.  If nothing else, this latest episode underscores the ongoing need for Congressional Democrats to proceed with proposed legislation to impose meaningful limits and oversight on the President's ability to use this power, as this President, just like the last one, has left no doubt about his willingness to abuse it for ignoble ends.

 

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Fox News Ignores Tea Party protest of MSM

Media Matters has the whole story on this silly business.

What I want to know is where were the protests of the MSM when they helped the Bush White House lie us into the Iraq war, an illegal war by anyone's definition, a war which in large part led us into the economic nightmare in which we find ourselves.

No president can run two wars off a credit card, never allowing the people to see how much these ill-advised, if not criminal, wars were costing. The Bush administration even had a policy of not allowing the caskets of the fallen to be seen on television, let alone the dollar amount in the cost of the wars.

The only thing that was obvious was the cost to Americas reputation and credibility.

Following criticism of being an "arm" of the GOP, Fox News aired no live coverage of Oct. 17 media "malpractice" tea party

http://mediamatters.org/items/200910190001

Following White House communications director Anita Dunn's recent critique of Fox News serving as an "arm" of the Republican Party, Fox News did not devote any live coverage to what it had previously referred to as the October 17 "tea part[y]" protests by Operation: Can You Hear Us Now?, an organization that planned "to show the MSM [mainstream media] that we as the American Public are absolutely fed up with their journalistic malpractice." By contrast, Fox News devoted significant promotion and live coverage of the April 15 tax day tea party and the September 12 "March on Washington."

On October 17, Fox News aired no live coverage of media protests

Operation: Can You Hear Us Now? organized October 17 protests against "journalistic malpractice." According to the Frequently Asked Questions page of the Operation: Can You Hear Us Now? website, the protests were a "nationwide event meant to show the MSM that we as the American Public are absolutely fed up with their journalistic malpractice."


Fox News did not cover "Tea Parties Marching on Media Outlets" live on October 17. According to a Media Matters for America review of Fox News' programming on October 17, the network did not report live on the media protests that day. While Fox News devoted no on-air coverage to the protests that day, FoxNews.com ran an October 17 article headlined, "Tea Partiers Take Aim at Major Media Outlets." The article stated that the "[t]he 'tea party' movement is back" and reported that "[t]he 'Can You Hear Us Now' rallies are planned for Saturday in front of NBC studios in Burbank, CNN in Atlanta and affiliate stations of NBC, ABC and CBS across the nation."

Fox News had previously promoted October 17 "tea parties" protesting "journalistic malpractice"

:

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Nearly 1 in 6 Americans Lives In Poverty

"The level of poverty in America is even worse than first believed," the AP reports. The National Academy of Science finds that "approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government's official figure." The new calculations put the poverty rate at 15.8 percent, or nearly one in six Americans.

Exceedingly shocking that the number is this high. But I can't say that I'm surprised about the economic disaster which is still unfolding. Like quite a few others, I saw this coming as far back as '04.

The Bush administration ran two wars off of a credit card, allowed war profiteering like no one has ever seen, gutted the SEC and other financial regulatory agencies; all aided by a republican congress dating back to 1994. Hedge funds and the derivative market have never been regulated, thanks to Phil Graham and company in 1998 when they refused all reasoned demand to regulate these these outlaw funds and economic tactics designed, it seems, to rob from the middle class and give to the wealthy. I won't even say what this has done to the poor.


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Let The Sun Shine In......

Rightwing Declares War On Everybody

Nothing new about the war, just more examples of it everyday; uglier examples, like this one. 


I mean, can one imagine the chilling effect this will have on college professors. Me thinks that is the reason for this new right-wing tactic. 


It might, however, have another kind of effect. College campuses could explode again, like they did in the '60s, but instead of an anti-authoritarian tilt, it could have the effect of turning campuses into hotbeds of civil war.




RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST LAUNCHES COLLEGE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE TO COUNTER 'LEFTIST ABUSE' AND 'SMASH LEFT-WING SCUM': Campus Progress reports that Morton Blackwell, founder of the right-wing young adult organization the Leadership Institute (LI), has launched a new social-networking site for young conservatives, called CampusReform. The site is dedicated to exposing supposed "bias" in universities that are "completely dominated by the left" and giving students a forum to report and organize against liberal professors. The site allows students struggling to meet the rising cost of tuition during the economic recession the opportunity to make money by reporting examples of "leftist abuse" by professors. Blackwell claims the site was born out of his "long-term awareness of how the campuses have become left-wing indoctrination centers." Even as LI spent $4.6 million last year to "conduct training seminars for college students and to assist with launching right-leaning newspapers on campus," Blackwell claims that CampusReform is "largest program ever created" in his organization's history. CampusReform's staff consists of 11 regional organizers, all providing services and resources to campuses across the country. LI has already bred conservative leaders like GOP strategist Karl Rove, Rep. Joe "You Lie" Wilson (R-SC), and Grover Norquist, head of Americans For Tax Reform. CampusReform also proudly points out that James O'Keefe, the filmmaker who posed as the pimp that led to the ACORN scandal, attended 10 different LI schools in addition to receiving funding from the Institute.
 


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Let The Sun Shine In......

9/11 Commission Report Is Almost Completely Deceptive

In case you missed it:

Wonder why I haven't seen this on the News. Did I miss it? 

This is the author of the report and senior counsel to the Commission, hardly a known conspiracy theorist.

9/11 Happened Due to the Bush Administration's Negligence

BuzzFlash.com's Review (excerpt)

From Mark Crispin Miller:

 

Hang onto your hats:

John Farmer, Dean of the Law School at Rutgers University and former Attorney General of New Jersey, was legal counsel to the 9/11 Commission, and in charge of drafting its report.

 

And now, having read through lots of further evidence, he's come to the conclusion that the official version of the story is almost entirely untrue, based on false testimony by the White House, CIA, FBI and NORAD.

 

His new book, The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America's Defense on 9/11, makes this case with loads of documentary evidence--and his colleagues on the commission are on board, as the article below makes clear.

So are John Farmer and those other members of that very commission all "conspiracy theorists"?

 

“At some level of government,” says Dean Farmer, “at some point in time, a decision was made not to tell the truth about the national response to the attacks on the morning of 9/11. We owe the truth to the families of the victims of 9/11. We owe it to the American public as well, because only by understanding what has gone wrong in the past can we assure our nation’s safety in the future.”

 

Here's the press release re: Farmer's book from Rutgers University:

 

The Ground Truth narrates the government’s growing awareness of and reaction to the al Qaeda terrorist threat in units of time as it was lived – from years down to the final minutes and seconds to intervene and respond, vividly portraying key moments. The final section considers the nature of government in crisis. Dean Farmer offers seven lessons to be learned from the responses to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, with perhaps the most important: “A government reshaped by the lessons of its prior experiences requires candor.”

And the “ground truth”? It’s that the fault for failing to detect or interdict the attacks lay in the nature of modern government itself. “Unless we change government, unless we plan to respond to crises the way we now know they are experienced,” says Dean Farmer, “we will fail to protect ourselves, with horrifying consequences.”

***

This is not a book in suppport of 9/11 theorists because it doesn't propose an alternative conspiracy theory; but rather it makes the bold and accurate claim that the so-called 9/11 Commission was a Whitewash meant to conceal rather than reveal the truth. 

But when avenues of investigation are intentionally ignored, we are left speculating as to what the truth really is. Farmer, former legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission, offers some startling theories and information that is a truthful alternative to the Comission's politically positioned "findings."

"In revisiting the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks that still haunt America, John Farmer provides a devastating account of how what government and military officials told Congress, the 9/11 Commission on which he served, the media, and the public 'was almost entirely, and inexplicably, untrue.' The result is a major, carefully documented and deeply disturbing book, one that deserves the most serious attention of every American concerned about our future." --Haynes Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author.

"Physics teaches us that waves of the same frequency amplify each other. That's what brought down the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The Ground Truth reveals 9/11 as a manifestation of that same phenomenon, with waves of history cresting together. It does so with perfect clarity, thanks to the brilliance of finding, in the examples of two "minor" national security agencies, the dysfunctionality that plagued the mightiest-seeming arms of the government. I made the mistake of not writing down the first two or three times I felt goosebumps. The Ground Truth is superbly conceived and carried out. What a great book."
--Jim Dwyer, author of 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers


And Farmer concludes that a government that conceals the truth puts the nation at great risk.

 

While it won't please the diehard conspiracy theorists, this is an enormously important refutation of the 9/11 Commission from its legal counsel! That's stunning!

Whenever the federal government wants to hide the truth, rather than reveal it, they set up a politically appointed and guided "commission."

Such was the case, as many of us speculated, with the betrayal of the "9/11 Commission."

It's a worthwhile read to have it confirmed in such a bold book by the Dean of Rutgers University School of Law and former Attorney General of New Jersey.

 

This is an elite insider who was supposed to keep his mouth shut, but who decided to expose the deceit of the "9/11 Commission" instead.

READ THE COMPLETE REVIEW >>>

 

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About the Author: John Farmer became Dean of Rutgers School of Law–Newark on July 1, 2009. In addition to his work for the 9/11 Commission, he has served as Attorney General of New Jersey, Chief Counsel to Governor Christine Todd Whitman, as a federal prosecutor, a law enforcement expert to the special envoy for Middle East regional security, and a founding partner of a New Jersey law firm.

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Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover (September 8, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594488940
ISBN-13: 978-1594488948
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.4 inches

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Rush Limbaugh Farts Out Loud, Again.......

Old Rush sure is bouncing to the surface a lot these days. I've heard much more about him. I doubt I have ever listened to him. I haven't listened to the radio since C.D.s came out. The radio is never a place I choose to receive any but emergency news and weather reports  when driving and I know that Rush makes racial remarks all the time. People I know often tell me things he says. Usually these are people who are actually shocked and a little concerned about something he has said. I used to hear more about something funny he said.

I guess my style is too pay attention to anything that flies above the 'dar so to speak, unless the subject is     

How can anyone defend this man? He has shown, over and over again, that he either is a racist or, even worse,  he makes big bucks off the racist leanings of others. Don't tell me that racism doesn't exist. I know it does. It exists all over the country.

O'Reilly has every bit as much a crack team of researchers as Media Matters does. Yet, he and his staff could find only one example of Rush having anything to say about blacks on Teevee or Radio or anywhere else he influences masses of Americans, according to his own polls.

I do not believe Mr. Limbaugh's civil rights have been violated here. Certainly they are not being violated  anymore than the Dixie Chicks' were. The commentators on the Rght were saying that the The Dixie Chicks could well be hurt by the outrage of the people, because no one was saying that they could not have free speech. The markets would fix their uppity little butts. Did it? I don't remember. I don't believe it did over the long haul, because they are still very much around.

Limbaugh has not been fired. He is still free to spew his venom on the radio. The rest of us have a right of association. If we do not wish to associate ourselves with him, we don't have to. If the men bidding on the L.A. Rams do not wish to associate with him, they should not have to. If the players find him offensive they have a right to say that they will not play for a team owned, even in part, by him.

We make our choices in life. Limbaugh made his choice to get rich off hate speech. If the broader society finds that choice as disgusting as I do and refuses to openly associate with him or support him in any way, he has to live with that.




"The only thing we can find about Rush Limbaugh [saying racist remarks] is that he thinks quarterback Donovan McNabb is overrated by some people who want black quarterbacks to succeed."-- Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, 10/15/09

VERSUS

"Media Matters has documented at least 28 examples of Limbaugh making racially charged remarks."
-- Media Matters, 10/16/09
 


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Let The Sun Shine In......

Author Of 9/11 Commission Report: Almost All Lies

Well, finally, someone is doing what should have been done a very long time ago, though I can certainly understand why Mr. Farmer waited until the criminals of the last administration were out of power before he published this book. 

This book is a must read, Pelican Indies. I'm well aware that we have disagreed, often contentiously, about the truth regarding the events of 9/11 and the ensuing anthrax attacks. I guess the only thing we have all agreed upon is that the official story could not possibly be true. If Farmer is telling it straight, and I can see no reason why he would not be given what a pariah he may well become for having written about this topic at all, let alone advising the American people that their government has tried to deceived them, almost completely,; an event that has led to an even worse disaster for our nation than the actual attacks of 9/11. about the most important event in this country since Pearl Harbor

I know that Daniel Elsberg has been calling for whistle-blowers with documentation of any and all crimes to come forward, as patriots of this country, and tell whatever truth they know and can reasonably prove about the Bush/Cheney administration. He and I both know, for similar reasons, that until the people are informed by highly credible people, there will be no accountability for the very serious, appalling crimes most of us agree were committed during the last administration.



I have said, many times, that until the path of truth-seekers and credible truth-tellers leads us back to the events of 9/11, there is really no lasting hope for this nation. Without the truth about 9/11, no matter what it is, we will remain split as a nation, leading, I am afraid, to irreconcilable differences. Every disaster, both foreign and domestic, in the last 8 years is a result of the events of that day and the terrifying anthrax attacks that followed.




If ever there was a time for the light of truth to shine into dark corners and strength and courage of all Americans to face it, no matter how horrifying, sickening and embarrassing we might find that truth, it is now. We have, for too many decades, allowed whitewash commissions and the results of limited hang-out investigations/confessions to stand unchallenged, even when it became obvious we were being sold a bill of goods.



We have allowed duly elected presidents and congresses to "move on," forgive and forget serious crimes of their predecessors, more often than not crimes against the American people and our constitution. Many of the events since the election of 2000 may well be the greatest crimes ever committed by a supposedly "democratically" elected government upon it's own people, not to mention innocent people around the world.

 

The 9/11 Commission Rejects own Report as Based on Government Lies

Gordon Duff Salem-News.com

How long have we watered the Tree of Deceit with the blood of patriots? 

John Farmer’s book: “The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11″

(CINCINNATI, Ohio) - In John Farmer’s book:  

“The Ground Truth: The Story Behind

America’s Defense on 9/11″, the author builds 

the inescapably convincing case that the official version... is almost entirely untrue...

The 9/11 Commission now tells us that the official version of 9/11 was based on false testimony and documents and is almost entirely untrue. The details of this massive cover-up are carefully outlined in a book 

by John Farmer, who was the Senior Counsel for 

the 9/11 Commission.

Farmer, Dean of Rutger Universities' School of Law

and former Attorney General of New Jersey, was responsible for drafting the original flawed 9/11 report.

Does Farmer have cooperation and agreement from other members of the Commission? Yes. Did they say Bush ordered 9/11? No. Do they say that the 9/11 Commission was lied to by the FBI, CIA, White House and NORAD? Yes. Is there full documentary proof of this? Yes.

Farmer states...“at some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened... I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The [Norad air defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years. This is not spin.”

The 9/11 Commission head, Thomas Kean, was the Republican governor of New Jersey. He had the following to say... “We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth. . . " When Bush's own handpicked commission failed to go along with the cover up and requested a criminal investigation, why was nothing done?

9/11 Commission member and former US Senator, Bob Kerrey, says, "No one is more qualified to write the definitive book about the tragedy of 9/11 than John Farmer. Fortunately, he has done so. Even more fortunately the language is clear, alive and instructive for anyone who wants to make certain this never happens again."

Here's my never answered question regarding the last sentence of the of the above paragraph: What, pray tell, can we, the people, do to make sure this never happens again? I mean, exactly, what can we do? 

What lengths, short of violence, must we be willing to go to in order to assure that no official in administrations to come, people within political parties in coming congresses, corporate officers in major international corporations and in the military-industrial-security-fossil fuel complex or in financial institutions will think not only twice but several dozen times before any of them would even entertain more than a very fleeting thought of conspiring against the American people through deceit, especially deceit involving fear-mongering?

With the only "official" 9/11 report now totally false, where do we go from here? Who is hurt by these lies? The families of the victims of 9/11 have fought, for years, to get to the truth. For years, our government has hidden behind lies and secrecy to deny them closure.

However, in my mind, not only the families of the victims who died on 9/11, but all Americans who have been hurt be the lies of the Bush administration and, God only knows,  how many co-conspirators outside of government. Neocons holding no official positions come to mind as well as some corporate pals of Bush and/or Cheney all of whom had something big to gain if the dreams of the Neocons of PNAC fame were realized. Many of us were completely deceived for various periods of time. Some of us still are. The nation has suffered in countless ways not the least of which is our loss of blood and treasure. Our country's reputation and credibility have been devastated way beyond what Vietnam did.  Two wars and the most un-freakin-believable war profiteering in modern history have left our nation on the brink of another great depression, while GOP foreign nor domestic policies have done nothing to make Americans more secure at home. As a matter of fact, their policies have, as usual, been more about corporate welfare than the welfare of the people.

It is past time for Americans to, for once, see the whole truth, no matter how ugly and embarrassing it is. Until we face the truth about ourselves and our government, our nation will continue on the road to wrack and ruin. Honesty with ourselves, transparency, confession of our transgressions, citizen demand for accountability for the "deciders" in our own government, as well as their own illegal combatant allies and, finally, recognize that we, the people, have become much too tolerant of deceit, whether the lies are by corporations, politicians or the corporate owned media.

In 2006, The Washington Post reported..."Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission..."

What does Farmer's book tell us? Farmer offers no solutions, only a total and full rejection of what was told and his own his own ideas concerning the total failure of honesty on the part of the government, a government with something to hide.

Farmer never tells us what. Nobody could keep a job in the public sector speaking out more than Farmer has. What were Farmer's omissions? There are some. Now that we know that intelligence given the 9/11 Commission wasn't just lies from our own government but based on testimony coerced through torture from informants forced to back up a cover story now proven false, a pattern emerges.

We know that, immediately after 9/11, many more potential suspects and informants were flown directly to

Saudi Arabia by Presidential order than were ever detained and questioned. We will never know what they could have said. Their testimony would have been vital to any real investigation were they not put beyond the reach of even Congress and the FBI.

Putting aside all other questions of recent evidence of CIA involvement with bin Laden prior to 9/11 or altered physical evidence involving the Pentagon attack, any failure to call to account the systematic perjury committed by dozens of top government officials, now exposed as a certainty is an offense to every American.

What do we know? We know the conjecture about 9/11 still stands but for certain, we know we were lied to, not in a minor way, but systematically as part of a plot covering up government involvement at nearly every level, perhaps gross negligence, perhaps something with darker intent.

If all we find is negligence, it is not merely gross, but criminal negligence.

Are we willing to live with another lie to go with the Warren Report, Iran Contra and so many others? Has the sacrifice of thousands more Americans, killed, wounded or irreparably damaged by a war knowingly built on the same lies from the same liars who misled the 9/11 Commission pushed us beyond willingness to confront the truth?

Have we yet found where the lies have begun and ended? There is no evidence of this, only evidence to the contrary. The lies live on and the truth will never be sought. The courage for that task has not been found.

Can anyone call themselves an American if they don't demand, even with the last drop of their blood, that the truth be found?

How long have we watered the Tree of Deceit with the blood of patriots?

Just guessing, of course,  I'd say around 60 years, at least. "The blood of patriots" may have been spilled for deceit before in our history, but for the last 60 years, the blood letting has been intense, even when it did not seem so, and pretty much continuous, even though, until the attacks on the WTC and Washington, D.C., war has not been declared by our Congress, the only part of our government who has the power to do so, since WWII.

Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial-complex in his farewell address to the nation. I imagine that were he resurrected into today's America, he would be horrified by corporate control of America, way beyond just the old military-industrial complex.

================================================

 

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and a regular contributor to Veterans 

Today. He specializes in political and social issues. You can see a large collection of Gordon's published articles at this link: VeteransToday.com.

He is an outspoken advocate for veterans and his powerful words have brought about change. Gordon is a lifelong PTSD sufferer from his war experiences and he is empathetic to the plight of today's veterans also suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to feature Gordon's timely and critical reports on Salem-News.com, a news organization staffed by a number of veterans, particularly former U.S. Marines.

You can send Gordon Duff an email at this address: Gpduf@aol.com

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Investement Banker Quits Lehman, Exposes Wall Street

Leaving Lehman, exposing Wall Street
September 20, 2009:

Leaving Lehman, exposing Wall St Pt.5 Kapoor: The financial reforms on the table are not enough  September 20, 2009

Derivatives and tax havens Kapoor Pt4: One-third of all global economic activity passes through tax havens, with little difficulty  September 18, 09

More volatility equals more profit Sony Kapoor PT3: The more volatile the financial environment is, the more profit investment banks make  September 17, 2009

Wall street musical chairs continues Sony Kapoor: Leaving Lehman, exposing Wall Street Pt.2  September 16, 2009

Leaving Lehman, exposing Wall Street Sony Kapoor left life as an investment banker to reveal the "dark magic" of finance capital  September 14, 200

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How Can A Diseased, Dysfunctional Congress Be Expected To Do Anything About Broken Healthcare

So, what do we do about it? 

P.M. Carpenter


I try my best to avoid writing apocalyptic pieces, since, according to the blogosphere, the sky has been falling with almost daily regularity since roughly the blogosphere's creation. Still, it's time to look around and acknowledge that, to seize on just the latest example, Sen. Max Baucus' wasted days and wasted nights of fraudulent bipartisanship were but the tip of a representative democracy on the major skids. And recovery is questionable.


Yesterday I noted the Politico's characterization of contemporary bipartisanship as "The Great Myth" -- every Washington pol knows, observed the paper, "that the political incentives driving them toward conflict are vastly stronger than any impulses they may personally harbor for conciliation and compromise" -- yet failed bipartisanship is but a symptom, it seems to me and many others, of that far uglier disease mentioned above, which we'll return to momentarily.


First a rapid survey, as outlined by the Politico, of the reasons why modern bipartisanship nearly always crashes. And there's no better place to begin than at the Politico's beginning: the stain of redistricting, a corruption of democracy "that allows the two parties to conspire to make a big chunk of House seats virtual locks for one party or the other, meaning the typical member has scant reason to gravitate to the ideological center."


Then the gauntlet of primaries does its damage. In any ideologically extreme district, or at a minimum, within any ideologically extreme primary base, there's no safety in the middle; this has been especially true in redder districts, where races to the bottom of Reason have dominated the candidate-selection process. The results: "The past three elections have basically clipped off the moderate wing of the GOP.... [M]ost of the Republicans left don’t consider the Democratic criticism -- that the GOP has become 'the party of no' -- to be much of an insult."

(Actually, moderate Republicans are now Democrats, making everything more confusing. Right now, the GOP is purely ideological and constantly courting the crusading crackpots and other wing-nuts on the Right and the Democrats are not. Still, because the Democrats, still seen by many as flaming Liberals, are actually liberal, moderate and conservative. For the most ideological party, it is true, that they have no incentive to do what's best for the people. Rather, they believe that it is in the best interest of everyone that they win, as they cannot possibly see any good in any ideas other than their own. That is the very definition of rigid ideology. Therefore, there is no need for reconciliation. Actually, they see any move toward compromise as against their own need to win power in order to codify their own beliefs. Who has not heard Republicans vilify Democrats because they cannot seem to get their own house in order?)

And in politics, crap runs uphill. Notes the Politico: "The Senate, which despite its public reputation as the reasonable, statesmanlike chamber, has been indisputably more partisan the past decade, in part because so many House members are graduating to the upper chamber and bringing their tactics with them."


Of not inconsiderable influence is the "new media culture" as well, a remorseless jackhammering of sensationalism and superficiality "that guarantees plenty of cable TV time and fundraising success for the most flamboyantly confrontational figures" -- just witness the sudden death and miraculous resurrection of Rep. Joe Wilson -- "and the partisan fire burns wildly."


An exiguous list, for sure -- hey, this is the Internet, where readers' attention span is as scanty as any list must be; if you've made it this far, my heartiest congratulations, you're one of the plucky few -- but rounding it out nicely the other night was a conversation, on "The PBS Newshour," between NY Times' columnist Ross Douthat and political historian Richard Norton Smith.

Actually it was more of a riveting mini-debate of a gargantuan issue -- a squaring off of the "extreme partisanship is only natural" side (Douthat) against the "extreme partisanship is unforgivable" argument (obviously, Smith's).

Thrusted Douthat: "What we're seeing, in a way, is the working out of something that's been happening for 50 years in the United States, which is that the parties are sorted by ideology in a way that they hadn't in the '40s, '50s and '60s.... [N]ow you have a much more -- you could say a much more rational system, where you have a liberal party and a conservative party. But what that means is that you're going to have ... real divergence, real heated debate, and real inter-party tension.... [Y]ou'd expect that a large Democratic Party and a shrunken Republican Party to have a very hard time finding common ground."

Parried Smith: "[I]t may be rational in theory to have a neat liberal party and a conservative party. But we see an awful lot of irrationality arising out of that equation this summer.... [N]ot only the political culture has been coarsened, the country has been coarsened over the last 40 years. Forty years ago ... they may have been liberals or conservatives. And they fought like cats and dogs until 6 o'clock. But at the end of the day, there were political incentives for them to seek out common ground. Consensus was not a dirty word. Differences were seen as something to be narrowed, rather than exploited."

Plus, added Smith, rather delightfully, "We [now] have cable networks that should be registered with the Federal Election Commission," and, more ominously, we "have all of these outside forces, including lobbyists, whose business ... it is to pour kerosene upon those differences rather than try to put out the fire."

I once subscribed wholeheartedly to Douthat's argument. A cleanly delineated liberal vs. conservative system is indeed a rational, perhaps even desirable, one. But ours, as Smith poignantly observed, has evolved as a harshly divided one without the rationality.


What we have, instead, is a vastly unrepresentative Congress -- the sorry result of rather acrobatic redistricting and hardcore-base groveling -- encouraged 24/7 by "outrage"-obsessed media -- ratings, ratings, ratings -- and fueled by the worst sort of capitalist concentrations of grotesque wealth -- corporate plutocrats -- and those who represent it -- lobbyists.

AMEN!

It only gets worse. And there seems to be no way out. Incumbents and their mothering parties positively adore the tidy ideological diaper-pinning of electoral safety; the media, from talk radio to Fox to MSNBC, aren't about to let loose of a profitable ratings game ruled by conflict; and the growing malignity of big money in politics is of course self-sustaining -- its recipients aren't about to cut their own throats with the sharp remedial blade of public finance.

What we're left with -- maybe, stuck with -- is a bracing, Congressional dysfunctionality, a gross corruption of representative democracy that indeed benefits the very few, but screws the hell out of most. Just take a gander someday at this nation's gaping income inequality -- to date, a statistical trajectory of steep ascent with only fleeting disruptions; I'd also advise having a stiff one, first, but after reading this, you may want to do that anyway.

Ironic, is it not, that our systemic political disease is now being tested by the matter of health care.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

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