Divide and Conquer

We all know Nixon was nasty. A stunning new book argues that he was also the grandfather of today's politics of hate.

By Evan Thomas | Newsweek Web Exclusive
May 9, 2008 | Updated: 10:25 a.m. ET May 9, 2008

On Aug. 6, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African-Americans the right to participate in the political process. Five nights later, Watts, the mostly black neighborhood of Los Angeles, erupted into rioting. For four days, angry young men ran wild, looting and torching buildings, shouting, "Burn, baby, burn!" LBJ was stunned by the hatred of the rioters. "How is it possible after all we accomplished?" the president cried in anguish. "How could it be? Is the world topsy-turvy?" The 1960s were supposed to be a new Age of Reason — "These are the most hopeful times since Christ was born in Bethlehem," Johnson declared as he lit the White House Christmas tree after winning in a landslide election in 1964.

But Watts was just the beginning: in dozens of cities, race riots (so severe in Detroit in 1967 that the president had to send in the 82nd Airborne); LSD-dropping college students calling cops "pigs" and taking over college-administration buildings; Yippie leader Jerry Rubin telling kids they needed to be prepared to "kill your parents." By the end of the decade Johnson was in exile, and America, it seemed, had become a strange dystopia, decadent and almost prerevolutionary in its feverish discontent.

The Lucrative Art of War

Congress is finally moving to shut one of the more egregious forms of Iraq war profiteering: defense contractors using offshore shell companies to avoid paying their fair share of payroll taxes. The practice is widespread and Congressional investigators have been dispatched to one of the prime tax refuges, the Cayman Islands, to seek a firsthand estimate of how much the Treasury is being shorted.

Health Care Reform Waits

By Mike Lillis 05/09/2008 | 5 Comments

In 2004, Tommy Thompson, then-Health and Human Services secretary, approached his boss with a request. Observing that the nation's doctors and hospitals operate a tangled web of incompatible forms and technologies, Thompson asked President George W. Bush to create a universal system of electronic medical records that would follow patients around the country, eliminate redundant treatments and, according to some estimates, trim billions of dollars from the nation's annual health care tab. Thompson wanted the president to establish the system within 18 months.

"He came out for 10 years," Thompson said this week, "and as a result, we haven't been able to get there."

Paul Krugman: Thinking About November

The fight for the Democratic nomination seems to be winding down. It’s not completely over, but the odds now overwhelmingly favor Barack Obama.

Assuming that Mr. Obama is the nominee, he’ll lead a party that, judging by the usual indicators, should be poised for an easy victory — perhaps even a landslide.

Yet Democrats are worried. Are those worries justified?

Where did the Web rumors about Obama come from?

WASHINGTON — Some things about Barack Obama rub some voters the wrong way.

"We don't need a Muslim," said Jannay Smith, a retiree from Kokomo, Ind. "Who's to say if he gets in there what he'll do?"

Added Steve Shallenberger, a Kokomo electrician: "He's just calling himself a Christian because he knows that's what we in Indiana want to hear."

Then there's Sherry Richey, also from Kokomo: "He wouldn't put his hand on the Bible; he wanted the Quran. He won't put his hand over his heart during the anthem or say the Pledge of Allegiance. He's too un-American."

Gas jumps above $3.67, oil passes $126 on Venezuela concerns

By JOHN WILEN, AP Business Writer
Fri May 9, 4:20 PM ET

Oil rose above $126 a barrel for the first time Friday, bringing its advance this week to nearly $10, as investors questioned whether a possible confrontation between the U.S. and Venezuela could cut exports from the OPEC member. Gas prices, meanwhile, rose above an average $3.67 a gallon at the pump, following oil's recent path higher.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal published a report that suggested closer ties between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and rebels attempting to overthrow Colombia's government. Chavez has been linked to Colombian rebels previously, but the paper reported it had reviewed computer files indicating concrete offers by Venezuela's leader to arm guerillas. That appears to heighten the chances that the U.S. could impose sanctions on one of its biggest oil suppliers.

Today's Must Read

By Paul Kiel - May 8, 2008, 9:59AM

Three for three?

National Security Letters have been the FBI's favorite toy for the past several years, and who can blame them? With none of the hassle of a warrant and a gag order that ensures stealth, the NSL is a counterterrorism investigators best friend. The FBI issues tens of thousands of NSL requests each year (nearly 50,000 in 2006). After a major review by the Justice Department's inspector general last year found a host of abuses, FBI Director Robert Mueller promised that the FBI would clean up its act. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the number of NSLs issued has gone down -- just that agents are on alert that they can't be so sloppy.

An Appetizing, and Inedible, Option

How Certain Crops Could Serve as Biofuel, Without Driving Up Food Prices

By Suemedha Sood 05/06/2008

With the price of gas hitting new heights, President George W. Bush said last week that he wants to make even more corn into ethanol. But increased biofuel production in the United States and the European Union has been cited as responsible for the steep climb in food costs around the globe.

The recent dramatic price increase has led to food riots in Haiti, Mexico, Mauritania, Egypt and other locations. Leaders in developing countries have told the United Nations that using crops to make biofuels is starving the world's poor.

A Return to the 1970s?

How the Fed's High-Wire Bank Rescues Increase Inflation Risks

By Charles R. Morris 05/08/2008

The press release announcing the Federal Reserve Bank's latest interest rate reduction on April 30 had the ominous sentence, "uncertainty about the inflation outlook remains high." That is an unusual warning in a period of anemic growth. For anyone who can remember back 30 years, it stirs deep-seated fears.

Inflation is usually a by-product of overly ebullient markets. The absurd run-up in house prices during the first half of the 2000s is a classic example of an inflationary bubble. But there have been times when loose monetary policy overflowed into rapid price inflation even as the economy was slipping. The most notorious case is the devastating 1970s period of "stagflation,"’ when consumer prices jumped by double-digit rates amid a nasty recession.

Raided counsel's office shut down investigation into Siegelman case

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel Scott Bloch -- whose home and office were recently raided by the FBI --last year shut down a previously undisclosed investigation into the federal prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, according to an internal memo made public Wednesday.

The investigation was being conducted by a task force formed at the agency a year ago to pursue high-profile political investigations in Washington, most notably whether the White House played politics in firing U.S. attorneys. It began gathering information on the Siegelman case in September and was planning to request documents from the Justice Department in October before Special Counsel Scott Bloch ordered the case closed, according to the Jan. 18 draft memo, made public by the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group.

Outright Barbarism vs. The Civil Society

By Sara Robinson
May 6th, 2008 - 6:35pm ET

I live in a nice place.

I mean that literally. It took some getting used to. After 20 years in Silicon Valley, where people put a premium on being direct and to the point, have no time to waste on small talk or personal sharing, and will call a stupid idea stupid to your face, moving to Canada required a whole lot of gearing back on that brusque American aggressive-in-your-face thing. The humbling fact was: We had to learn to mind our manners.

Much of the adjustment work that first year involved re-learning the art of Being Nice. We had to get used to meetings that started with 10 or 15 minutes of personal chit-chat. We had to train ourselves to stop interrupting people, and to be more careful to say "please" and "thank you." We had to discover (sometimes, the hard way) that losing your temper with Canadians means that you will invariably lose the conflict. The more terse and irritated you get, the more determinedly calm and polite Canadians become, until you're standing there looking like a raving idiot and they're still firmly in control (though they're very sorry you're having such a bad day).

Ponds found to take up carbon like world's oceans

AMES, Iowa -- Research led by Iowa State University limnologist, or lake scientist, John Downing finds that ponds around the globe could absorb as much carbon as the world's oceans.

Professor Downing found that constructed ponds and lakes on farmland in the United States bury carbon at a much higher rate than expected; as much as 20-50 times the rate at which trees trap carbon. In addition, ponds were found to take up carbon at a higher rate than larger lakes.

Air Pollution Impedes Bees' Ability to Find Flowers

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 5, 2008; A03

Air pollution interferes with the ability of bees and other insects to follow the scent of flowers to their source, undermining the essential process of pollination, a study by three University of Virginia researchers suggests.

Their findings may help unlock part of the mystery surrounding the current pollination crisis that is affecting a wide variety of crops. Scientists are seeking to determine why honeybees and bumblebees are dying off in the United States and in other countries, and the new study indicates that emissions from power plants and automobiles may play a part in the insects' demise.

Empty Nest Egg

By JEFF MADRICK

WHILE AMERICA AGED
How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis.
By Roger Lowenstein.
274 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95.

The future of Americans’ pensions has not become a serious campaign issue so far this election season. It’s hard to get retirement issues to the front of the line when the nation faces soaring health care costs, global warming, $100-a-barrel oil, a likely recession and collapsing housing prices. There is also the little matter of the worst credit crisis since the 1930s.

That is too bad, because, as Roger Lowenstein nicely illustrates in “While America Aged,” the country “is sitting on a retirement time bomb.” He is not talking about Social Security, which, he writes, is among the more manageable of future concerns. He is addressing the large-scale failure of America’s once-enviable private pension system.

Bernanke gives green light to Frank foreclosure bill

By Greg Robb, MarketWatch

Last update: 10:06 p.m. EDT May 5, 2008

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave the green light Monday to congressional efforts to prevent foreclosures of homeowners caught in the recent sharp nationwide decline in home prices.

"Finding ways to avoid preventable foreclosures is a legitimate and important concern of public policy," Bernanke said in a speech at the Columbia School of Business in New York.

Legislation to aid strapped homeowners is making its way through the House of Representatives.

The bill has been pushed by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass

States Look to Rein In Private Medicare Plans

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — State officials say they will soon ask Congress for more power to regulate the marketing of private Medicare insurance plans to older Americans because they are still receiving complaints of high-pressure sales tactics that have led some beneficiaries to sign up for unsuitable policies.

The proposal would be a profound change, but state officials say it is needed to protect consumers and reduce confusion.

Of the 44 million Medicare beneficiaries, 25 million are now enrolled in some type of private plan — either a Medicare Advantage plan, which provides a wide range of health services, or a free-standing prescription drug plan, which covers just medicines.

A Nuclear Energy Renaissance Wouldn't Solve Our Problems, But It Would Rip Us Off

By Christian Parenti, The Nation
Posted on May 6, 2008, Printed on May 6, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/84042/

If you listen to the rhetoric, nuclear power is back. Smashing atoms will replace burning carbon-based coal, gas and oil. In the face of a disaster movie-like future of runaway climate change -- bringing drought, floods, famine and social breakdown -- carbon-free nukes are cast as the deus ex machina to save us at the last minute.

Even a few greens support nuclear power -- most famously James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory. In the popular press, discussion of nuclear energy is dominated by its boosters, thanks in part to sophisticated industry PR.

Tomgram: Endless War

The Last War and the Next One

Descending into Madness in Iraq -- and Beyond
By Tom Engelhardt

The last war won't end, but in the Pentagon they're already arguing about the next one.

Let's start with that "last war" and see if we can get things straight. Just over five years ago, American troops entered Baghdad in battle mode, felling the Sunni-dominated government of dictator Saddam Hussein and declaring Iraq "liberated." In the wake of the city's fall, after widespread looting, the new American administrators dismantled the remains of Saddam's government in its hollowed out, trashed ministries; disassembled the Sunni-dominated Baathist Party which had ruled Iraq since the 1960s, sending its members home with news that there was no coming back; dismantled Saddam's 400,000 man army; and began to denationalize the economy. Soon, an insurgency of outraged Sunnis was raging against the American occupation.

The Violent Language of Right-Wing Pundits Poisons Our Democracy

By Jeffrey Feldman, Ig Publishing
Posted on May 6, 2008, Printed on May 6, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/84490/

The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Feldmann's new book Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy (Ig Publishing, 2008).

The emergence of a cohort of right-wing pundits who use violent logic, language and arguments in national political debate did not gradually take shape over a long stretch of time, but rose up at a starling speed in the lead-up to the national elections of 2004 and 2006. As the horrific extent of the Iraqi military occupation waxed and George W. Bush's popularity waned, a hitherto sarcastic right-wing punditry seemed all at once to step into a new rhetorical frame. Suddenly, with Bush's re-election in doubt, casualties spiraling out of control, and revelations of U.S. military human rights abuses popping up all over, right-wing pundits shifted their tone from critique to conspiracy. The shift is summed up best by the opening line in Dinesh D'Souza's book The Enemy at Home: "The cultural left in this country is responsible for causing 9/11."

Paul Krugman: Success Breeds Failure

Cross your fingers, knock on wood: it’s possible, though by no means certain, that the worst of the financial crisis is over. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that as markets stabilize, chances for fundamental financial reform may be slipping away. As a result, the next crisis will probably be worse than this one.

Floyd Brown and David Bossie: Back in the Swift Boat captain's chairs

Two longtime practitioners of negative campaigning are mainstreaming attacks on Clinton and Obama

Floyd Brown and David Bossie have spent a good part of their political careers making life miserable for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Unlike Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire financier who was unremitting in his efforts to take the Clintons down during the latter part of the twentieth century and whose newspaper endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton prior to the Pennsylvania primary, neither Brown nor Bossie have had a pro-Hillary conversion.

These days, however, Brown's new organization, The National Campaign Fund -- which launched a new website "ExposeObama.com" -- and Bossie's Citizens United have added Sen. Barack Obama to the mix.

An Atheist Goes Undercover to Join the Flock of Mad Pastor John Hagee

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on May 5, 2008, Printed on May 5, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/84043/

The following is an excerpt from Matt Taibbi's new book, The Great Derangement" (Spiegel and Grau, 2008).

I pulled into the church parking lot a little after 6:00 p.m., at more or less the last possible minute. The previous half hour or so I'd spent dawdling in my car outside a Goodwill department store off Route 410 in San Antonio, clinging to some inane sports talk show piping over my car radio -- anything to hold off my plunge into Religion.

There was an old-fashioned white school bus in front of the church entrance, with a puddle of heavyset people milling around its swinging door. Some of these were carrying blankets and sleeping bags. My heart, already pounding, skipped a few extra beats. The church circulars had said nothing about bringing bedding. Why did I need bedding? What else had I missed?

Mildred Loving, matriarch of interracial marriage, dies

By DIONNE WALKER, Associated Press Writer
Mon May 5, 4:17 PM ET

Mildred Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.

An Email From The ACLU

Date:Mon 5 May 12:09:06 EDT 2008
From:"Caroline Fredrickson, ACLU"
Subject:Stop Secret Spying Deal

*************************************************
From the Desk of Caroline Fredrickson, ACLU
Demand that the House Stand Firm on FISA!
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=n6SQnGFZy8RVgRBifx9Xdw..
*************************************************

Dear ACLU Supporter,

Late Friday night, the ACLU caught wind of a dangerous backroom deal
brewing. The "deal" would rush a House vote that would
push through a dangerous sellout on government spying powers, possibly
in the next few days.

We need you to immediately contact your member of Congress. Let your
representative know you're watching and expect him or her to
stand firm. That means no immunity for lawbreaking phone and internet
companies, and no spying on Americans without a warrant.

Let your member of Congress know you're watching! Go to:
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=Ruly8f4pMF3Qvc1r3a79Aw..

Back in February, the House stood up to President Bush's
fear-mongering tactics by letting the so-called "Protect America
Act" expire. This ill-named bill eviscerated the protections of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and violated the
constitutional rights of Americans.

This breakthrough victory for civil liberties came only because you
and other ACLU activists refused to yield. Because of your emails and
phone calls, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer rallied defenders of
freedom to hold their ground.

But now, word comes that House leadership may be working hand-in-hand
with Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, who has spearheaded efforts to give immunity
to law-breaking phone companies that provided mountains of customer
data to the government without warrants.

As discussions continue, it's critical that House leadership
avoid buckling to pressure from the White House or Senator Rockefeller
at all costs. House leadership -- and every representative -- need to
draw a line in the sand by rejecting any compromise that would undo
the achievement we fought so hard for in February.

Make no mistake: any "compromise" that is acceptable to Senator
Rockefeller and the President will undoubtedly let lawbreakers off the
hook and seriously put at risk -- or even end -- lawsuits that
may be the only way to get to the bottom of crimes that were committed
by phone companies and Bush administration officials.

Demand that the House Stand Firm on FISA at:
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=i3kKMHG5j2Jvm6u8cWU20w..

Let's make it clear. We won't tolerate:
*  Backroom deals on telecom immunity. Lawsuits may be our last
chance to expose the truth about illegal spying activities by
telecom companies and the Bush administration.

*  Backroom deals that let election year fear-mongering steal our
freedom and undermine the rule of law.

*  Backroom deals that give Bush new powers to spy on Americans
without a warrant.

With your help, we have worked relentlessly to protect freedom in the
long-running FISA debate. Now, we need to make sure all that work
isn't undone by backroom deals.

Please, urge your representative to stand firm:
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=6_6hBLTY3r3GY873F_kc9w..

Let's make sure every member of Congress knows how proud we are
that the House has stood its ground and how outraged we will be if our
representatives and House leadership reverse themselves now.

Please act quickly,

Caroline Fredrickson, Director
ACLU Washington Legislative Office

P.S. Once you've emailed your representative, don't forget
to follow up with a phone call by going to:
http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=ZGXoOEEWAgsKmMFqEB1pVg..

© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor New York, NY 10004

FISA Fight: Where Exactly is Hoyer?

by mcjoan

Thu May 01, 2008 at 02:20:17 PM PDT

The Hill today says "Blue Dogs on Hoyer’s FISA leash":

"Our hope is to pass the bipartisan Senate-passed FISA bill," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Steel said that would happen if Republicans collected 218 signatures on the petition or came close enough to put pressure on Democratic leaders to act.

Republicans will focus their efforts on Blue Dogs, especially the 21 conservatives who signed a January letter to Pelosi announcing their support for the Senate intelligence bill.

Suits question how Kan. prosecutor handled abortion records

By JOHN HANNA
Associated Press Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- An investigator said he kept edited records from abortion clinics in a Rubbermaid container in his dining room for several weeks. Others, according to testimony, stored them briefly in cars and homes and copied them at a downtown Kinko's.

How prosecutor Phill Kline and his employees handled patient records is a major issue in a legal dispute before the Kansas Supreme Court. A Planned Parenthood clinic is trying to force Kline to return patient files that could be a key part of his criminal case against the clinic.

Glenn Greenwald: Fred Hiatt on the noble glories of occupation

Long-time war cheerleader Fred Hiatt of The Washignton Post has a truly incoherent Editorial this morning in which he cites the problems he says are created by air strikes of the type the U.S. just carried out against an alleged Al Qaeda leader in Somalia in order to argue that it's better, instead, to invade and occupy countries such as Iraq. Here are the problems that he says arise when we merely bomb -- rather than bomb, invade and occupy -- other countries:

But Thursday's U.S. operation had a distinct downside: At least two dozen other people were killed in the attack, some of them apparently civilians. Al-Shabab responded defiantly, and Somalia-watchers said new leaders for the militia and al-Qaeda will quickly come forward, while fresh recruits may be gained through a backlash against the American intervention. . . .

Jeff Madrick on ‘High Wire,’ Peter Gosselin’s Look at the Economic Meltdown

By Jeff Madrick

It would be a pity if Peter Gosselin’s new book, “High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families,” gets lost in the current turmoil over subprime mortgages and deepening recession. He has done the most convincing job I’ve seen in capturing the failures of America to deal with a changing, complex and far less generous economy than it has known in the past. That economy, despite cyclically painful periods, was so generous compared to the rest of the world over its 200-year history in terms of the rate at which it expanded the typical American’s standard of living that the country’s national character was formed by it. The resulting tendency in America, though thankfully violated from time to time, is decidedly toward a laissez faire philosophy of government.

Distinguishing 'National Interest' from Manicheanism

By Peter Scoblic - May 2, 2008, 1:48PM

I have a number of thoughts about Jeff's and Jacob's points about Reagan, but I first want to respond to Ken because it seems to me that he's glossed over a tremendous number of important distinctions in U.S. foreign policy--indeed, perhaps over the very idea that there are distinctions in U.S. foreign policy.

Ken writes that "conservatism as defined by Peter fits pretty squarely into the broad tradition of American foreign policy as practiced by all ideological camps: namely promoting American economic, military and political power overseas under the guise of do-gooding."

'Beware the Terrible Simplifiers'

By Bill Moyers
May 3, 2008

Editor’s Note: The furor over Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s outbursts has altered Campaign 2008, inflicting grave damage on Barack Obama’s candidacy. But is this media obsession fair when compared with far less attention given to other political pastors, like John Hagee, a John McCain backer, who called Hurricane Katrina God’s punishment of New Orleans?

In this guest essay, Bill Moyers – who interviewed Wright on PBS – tries to answer that question:

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam: “Who’s telling the truth over there?”

“Everyone,” he said. “Everyone sees what’s happening through the lens of their own experience.”

That’s how people see Jeremiah Wright.

In my conversation with him and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage.

More than 2,000 people have written me about him, and their opinions vary widely. Some sting: “Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American-hating radical,” one of my viewers wrote. Another called him a “nut case.”

Frank Rich: The All-White Elephant in the Room

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

What you’ll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.