Graham: Amend Constitution to overturn court's ruling

By James Rosen | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — A dejected Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday on Guantanamo Bay detainees, calling it "dangerous and irresponsible."

The South Carolina Republican, who's also a military lawyer and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, helped craft the Military Commissions Act and had confidently predicted that it would pass high court muster.

Glenn Greenwald: Conservatism vs. Authoritarianism: The British vs. The US Right

In Britain, the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is attempting to enact legislation empowering the Government to detain terrorist suspects for 42 days without bothering to charge them with any crime (as a result of post-9/11 legislation, the British Government may do so now for 28 days). Much of the opposition to this expansion of the Government’s detention power comes from the British Right, which sees it as an intolerable expansion of unchecked government power and a severe erosion of core Western liberties. Factions within the British Left are opposed to the legislation for the same reason.

The official position of the British Conservative Party is to oppose the legislation, and former Tory Prime Minister John Major — who himself was the target of a 1991 bombing-assassination plot by the IRA — wrote an Op-Ed in the Times Online emphatically opposing these increased detention powers and also opposing new DNA and other domestic surveillance programs.

AP Goes After Bloggers Under DMCA

By Liza Sabater, Culture Kitchen
Posted on June 13, 2008, Printed on June 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://culturekitchen.com//88096/

Rogers Cadenhead, founder and publisher of The Drudge Retort, has been Cease and Desisted by AP News for publishing fragments of their syndicated news articles and reports.

Yes, fragments, not the whole articles.

FEMA gives away $85 million of supplies for Katrina victims

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- FEMA gave away about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, a CNN investigation has found.

The material, from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities, sat in warehouses for two years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's giveaway to federal and state agencies this year.

Obama's Chicago Boys

Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."

Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." For Furman, however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the "efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony."

Our Gilded Age

By Doug Henwood

It has become a cliché to say that we live in a new Gilded Age. True enough, up to a point. Money, mostly new money, rules politics and culture. Corporations merge into ever larger corporations. You have to go back to before World War I to match today's levels of income and wealth inequality.

In some ways, the second Gilded Age is worse than the first. Sure, we live longer now, more of us can read and you don't have to be a white man to be able to vote. But to prove my point, consider two big parties, thrown 110 years apart.

Today's Must Read

By Andrew Tilghman - June 13, 2008, 9:35AM

If the special-rate Countrywide loan that led to Jim Johnson's resignation from Barack Obama's VP screening team was shady, then there's a few other Washington insiders who may have some explaining to do.

A new article from Portfolio rattles off a list of top Washington officials, current and former, who also received discounted loans because they were personally approved by Countywide Financial's top exec Angelo Mozilo.

TPM: McCain Signs on For More Bush Bamboozlement!

For those of you who remember President Bush's 2005 crusade to phase out Social Security by privatizing the program and converting it into a system of private investment accounts, you know that one of the biggest lines of bamboozlement was the White House's attempt to take the word for Social Security privatization -- i.e., 'privatization' -- and pretend that it was a word Democrats had come up with and one that was unfair for any members of the press to use.

This Land Is Their Land

I took a little vacation recently--nine hours in Sun Valley, Idaho, before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multistar restaurant and "opera house." What luck--the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale! Nature and commerce were conspiring to make this the perfect micro-vacation.

So Much For Free Speech

By Mary Kane 06/13/2008 12:13PM

A funny thing happened to University of Illinois law professor Robert Lawless on his way to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week. Lawless, an expert on credit and bankruptcy, was set to testify before the Committee on how the U.S. Supreme Court decisions affect people in their everyday lives. Lawless said he was looking forward to talking about how the high court's decisions in the financial services area sometimes take away state protections against deceptive lending practices. Lawless cited the way Jon Stewart once described a regulatory development - "Yes, it's boring. That's how they get away with it" - to explain how he hoped the hearing would shed light on seemingly arcane rulings that have major impacts on people's lives.

Data on Housing Relief Questioned

By David Cho and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 13, 2008; D01

Banks and mortgage firms are providing questionable information about the number of subprime mortgage borrowers they are helping and the rate at which homeowners are falling into foreclosure, according to the top regulator for the nation's largest banks.

Those details are crucial for regulators to gauge the severity of the housing crisis and evaluate the effectiveness of the steps lenders are taking to address the problems.

Paul Krugman: Bad Cow Disease

“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

That little ditty famously summarized the message of “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé of conditions in America’s meat-packing industry. Sinclair’s muckraking helped Theodore Roosevelt pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act — and for most of the next century, Americans trusted government inspectors to keep their food safe.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Pentagon as Energy Insecurity Inc.

If you thought things were bad, with a barrel of crude oil at $136 and the oil heartlands of our planet verging on chaos, don't be surprised, but you may still have something to look forward to. Alexei Miller, chairman of Russia's vast state-owned energy monopoly, Gazprom, just suggested that, within 18 months, that same barrel could be selling for a nifty $250. Put that in your tank and… well, don't drive it. It will be far too valuable.

Underweight babies hit highest rate, aided by poverty

Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana among the worst

By STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Published on: 06/12/08

The percentage of underweight babies born in the United States has increased to its highest rate in 40 years, with Georgia ranking seventh from the bottom in delivering healthy infants, according to a new report that also documents a recent rise in the number of children living in poverty.

The data on low birth weights is troubling because such babies — those born at less than 5.5 pounds — are at greater risk of dying in infancy or experiencing long-term disabilities.

Emulate Japan to cope with oil shocks

By Dilip Hiro

With the price of oil rocketing to the unprecedented level of US$130 a barrel and more, there is a talk of another oil shock. Unlike past instances, this one is unlikely to subside and may indeed keep intensifying. The only way out is for Western nations, the gluttonous users of petroleum, to cut their consumption and emulate Japan in its consistent drive for energy efficiency and alternate sources.

The present explosion in oil prices, the fourth of its kind, is different from the previous ones in 1973-74, 1980 and 1990-91. The earlier oil shocks were caused by interruption of supplies from the Middle East, respectively due to the war between the Arabs and Israel, the Iranian revolution, and Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait. Once peace returned, the new order became established or the invader was expelled, supplies returned to normal.

On the Economy Debate, The Gloves Come Off

By Robert Borosage
June 11th, 2008 - 9:17am ET

Monday in Raleigh, North Carolina, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama opened the general election fight, taking the gloves off against the "tired and misguided [economic] philosophy that has dominated Washington for too long," and offering a clear challenge to the Bush-McCain economic misrule. In Washington before the National Federation of Independent Business, McCain counterpunched, suggesting the choice was between low taxes and "the largest tax increase since World War II."

This argument will be the big kahuna in this election. Despite ritual boosterism, soothing rhetoric and quiet prayers by Wall Street pundits, the economy is foul and likely to get much worse. We've lost jobs for five months in a row. Gas, food, health care costs are soaring. For workers, the mess is worse than the stagflation of the 1970s. Then, growth was stagnant while prices and wages were spiraling up. Now we've got stagflation squared; growth and wages are stagnant and prices on basics are soaring, while the value of homes, the largest investment Americans have, is plummeting.

Glenn Greenwald: NYT circulates fear-mongering claims on FISA debate

The White House and Congress prepare to tell Americans: If you want to stay safe, you must give the president the power to spy on you without warrants, and immunize telecoms from the consequences of lawbreaking.

Glenn Greenwald

Jun. 10, 2008 | (updated below)

The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau has a long, prominent article today on the pending debate over FISA and telecom amnesty -- headlined: "Return to Old Spy Rules Is Seen as Deadline Nears" -- that features (and endorses) virtually every blatant falsehood that has distorted these spying issues from the beginning, and which is built on every shoddy journalistic practice that has made clear debate over these issues almost impossible. The article strongly suggests that a so-called "compromise" is imminent, a "compromise" which will deliver to the President virtually everything he seeks in the way of new warrantless eavesdropping powers and telecom amnesty.

One paragraph after the next in Lichtblau's article features shrill warnings, mostly from unnamed "officials," about all the scary things that will happen if Congressional Democrats do not quickly pass a new FISA bill that is similar to the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill and that is agreeable to the President. If a "compromise" isn't reached, reports the article, then we'll all have to live under the so-called "old" FISA law -- meaning the law used by the U.S. to defend itself from 1978 until August, 2007 and then again from February, 2008 until the present. Moreover, the one-year surveillance orders obtained last August under the now-expired Protect America Act are set to expire in August, 2008.

Do we really expect the Bushies to go quietly?

By Dan Froomkin

As we enter the twilight of the Bush era, with the distinct possibility of a Democrat moving into the White House next January, it’s reasonable to suppose that top administration officials are spending a lot of their energy trying to make it as difficult as possible for their successors to roll back their policies.

What are the Bushies doing to lock in their current course – even if it’s Barack Obama in the Oval Office on inauguration day? What agreements and contracts are they committing the country to? What rules, line-items, and executive orders will live on beyond their creators? What Trojan horses, landmines and Manchurian Candidates have they put in place throughout government?

Justice Department Official Awards $500,000 Grant to Golf Group

Former Staffer Tells ABC News Anti-Crime Funds Given to Programs With The "Right" Connections.

By BRIAN ROSS, ANNA SCHECTER, and MURRAY WAAS

June 9, 2008 —

A senior Justice Department official says a $500,000 federal grant to the World Golf Foundation is an appropriate use of money designed to deal with juvenile crime in America.

"We need something really attractive to engage the gangs and the street kids, golf is the hook," said J. Robert Flores, the administrator of the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

The Justice Department, in a decision by Flores, gave the money to the World Golf Foundation's First Tee program, even though Justice Department staffers had rated the program 47th on a list of 104 applicants. The allegations were first reported earlier this year by the trade journal Youth Today.

Attempted Intimidation of career Justice Department employees

So what happens when career Justice Department employees blow the whistle on their boss and talk to the media and Congress about favoritism and cronyism going on in their office? An internal Justice Department investigation commences.

Why We Need Another Recount

Now that the presidential race is finally under way, a lot of Democrats are giddy with excitement, certain that Barack Obama will demolish John McCain; and those Democrats apparently have every reason to believe that it will happen. On the other hand, there also are some others who aren't quite so sure: others who recall the outcomes of the last two presidential races, both of which resulted in surprising "wins" for yet another dubious far-rightist candidate. Those uneasy types are wondering -- and the Democrats too should be wondering -- if history might yet again repeat itself, despite the rosy way things seem to look right now.

The question is, of course, unpleasant; but it's also necessary. And we might best begin to answer it by taking a close look at Recount, which just ended its first run on HBO (although subscribers can still see it On Demand). For all its strengths, the film is deeply flawed by the same weird denial that has kept the Democrats both in the dark and out of power--and that could keep them there beyond Election Day, regardless of the will of the electorate.

Oil soars on dollar, Energy Department report

Wednesday June 11, 4:02 pm ET
By John Wilen, AP Business Writer Oil soars as high as $138 a barrel as dollar falls and Energy Department reports supply drop NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices regained their stunning upward momentum Wednesday, rising as crude's biggest drivers -- a weak dollar and supply concerns -- brought buyers back in force. At the pump, gas prices rose to a new record over $4.05 a gallon.

Oil futures that were falling a week ago on concerns about declining gasoline consumption have dramatically reversed course and appear poised to set new records above $140 a barrel. While the market remains concerned about the effect of high prices on demand, several weeks of falling oil inventories and the dollar's inability to make headway against the euro have combined to turn market sentiment decidedly bullish.

Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction

Credit Default Swaps Are a Valuable Invention, But Largely Unregulated

By Charles R. Morris 06/10/2008 | 1 Comment

Warren Buffet calls credit derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction." When his company, Berkshire-Hathaway, Inc., took over an insurance company in 2002, it took him four years to unwind its portfolio of credit derivatives -- at a cost of $400 million. Buffet didn’t entirely follow his own advice, however, because in the first quarter this year Berkshire-Hathaway took another $500 million loss on credit derivatives.

Why worry about credit derivatives? One reason is that the "notional value" of the most important credit derivatives, credit default swaps, or CDS, is now $62 trillion. That’s trillion, with a "‘T," and it is more than the whole world’s gross domestic product. Numbers that big automatically make people nervous, especially when they see the canniest investors like Buffet taking losses.

Algae oil promises truly green fuel

THIS is one biofuel that lives up to its green billing in more ways than one. It's an emerald-green crude oil, produced by photosynthesis in algae, which could fuel cars, trucks and aircraft - without consuming crops that can be used as food.

U.S. seeking 58 bases in Iraq, Shiite lawmakers say

U.S. seeking 58 bases in Iraq, Shiite lawmakers say

Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 09, 2008 08:20:15 PM

BAGHDAD -Iraqi lawmakers say the United States is demanding 58 bases as part of a proposed "status of forces" agreement that will allow U.S. troops to remain in the country indefinitely.

Leading members of the two ruling Shiite parties said in a series of interviews the Iraqi government rejected this proposal along with another U.S. demand that would have effectively handed over to the United States the power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq. Lawmakers said they fear this power would drag Iraq into a war between the United States and Iran.

President Met Disgraced Lobbyist At Least Six Times

The White House Had Previously Acknowledged Only Two Meetings

By JUSTIN ROOD

June 9, 2008 —

The White House had stronger ties to disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff than it has publicly admitted, according to a draft congressional report released Monday.

President Bush met Abramoff on at least four occasions the White House has yet to acknowledge, according to the draft report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

And White House officials appeared as comfortable going to Abramoff and his lobbyists seeking tickets to sporting and entertainment events, as they did seeking input on personnel picks for plum jobs, the report found.

BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions

By Jane Corbin
BBC News

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

Paul Krugman: It’s a Different Country

Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America. With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign — but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed.

Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. It’s possible today only because racial division, which has driven U.S. politics rightward for more than four decades, has lost much of its sting.

Credit crisis expands, hitting all kinds of consumer loans

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The credit crisis triggered by bad home loans is spreading to other areas, forcing banks to tighten credit and probably extending the credit crisis that's dragging down the economy well into next year, and perhaps beyond.

That means consumers are going to have an increasingly difficult time getting bank loans for car purchases, credit cards, home equity credit lines, student loans and even commercial real estate, experts say.

Tomgram: Greg Grandin, Is the Monroe Doctrine Really Dead?

Losing Latin America

What Will the Obama Doctrine Be Like?
By Greg Grandin

Google "neglect," "Washington," and "Latin America," and you will be led to thousands of hand-wringing calls from politicians and pundits for Washington to "pay more attention" to the region. True, Richard Nixon once said that "people don't give one shit" about the place. And his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger quipped that Latin America is a "dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica." But Kissinger also made that same joke about Chile, Argentina, and New Zealand -- and, of the three countries, only the latter didn't suffer widespread political murder as a result of his policies, a high price to pay for such a reportedly inconsequential place.

Latin America, in fact, has been indispensable in the evolution of U.S. diplomacy. The region is often referred to as America's "backyard," but a better metaphor might be Washington's "strategic reserve," the place where ascendant foreign-policy coalitions regroup and redraw the outlines of U.S. power, following moments of global crisis.

Why It’s Worse Than You Think

For months, economic Pollyannas have looked beyond the dismal headlines and promised a quick recovery in the second half. They're dead wrong.

Daniel Gross

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:25 PM ET Jun 7, 2008

The forgettable first half of 2008 is stumbling to a close. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that American employers axed 49,000 jobs in May, the fifth straight month of job losses—an event that signals a recession sure as the glittery ball dropping on Times Square augurs a New Year. The report, which inspired a 394-point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Friday, was the latest in a run of bad news. Auto sales, the largest retailing sector in the U.S., were off 10.7 percent in May from the year before. And housing? Ugh. Nationwide, according to the Case-Shiller Index, home prices in the first quarter fell 14 percent.

Yet hope springs eternal that the second half will be better than the first. Economists polled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in May believe the economy will grow at an annual rate of 1.7 percent and 1.8 percent in the third and fourth quarters, respectively. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, tells NEWSWEEK that "home sales and prices in most of the country will improve during the second half of 2008." (Yun is the Little Orphan Annie of forecasters. He's always sure the sun will come out tomorrow.) Last month, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said, "We expect to see a faster pace of economic growth before the end of the year."

Records Could Shed Light on Iraq Group

By Walter Pincus
Monday, June 9, 2008; A15

There is an important line in last week's Senate intelligence committee report on the Bush administration's prewar exaggerations of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. It says that the panel did not review "less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the Executive Branch."

More important, there was no effort to obtain White House records or interview President Bush, Vice President Cheney or other administration officials whose speeches were analyzed because, the report says, such steps were considered beyond the scope of the report.

Duffy: ‘White House Lawyers Are Concerned’ McClellan’s Book Will Reignite ‘The Valerie Plame Business’

In his explosive new memoir, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan claims that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, “and possibly Vice President Cheney” encouraged him to “repeat a lie” to the American people about the administration’s role in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity. This assertion, along with others, has led members of Congress, like House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), to again ask questions about the CIA leak scandal.

Squeezing the American Dream: Workers Face Diminishing Returns

By Nicholas von Hoffman, Truthdig
Posted on June 9, 2008, Printed on June 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/87405/

You may be surprised to learn that the pleasant person from FedEx Ground delivering your package owns the truck which he or she has parked in front of your house. FedEx Ground drivers, you will find out in Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, are not FedEx employees.

They are what are called independent contractors, although it demands no little effort to discern what about their position is independent. If they do not do what they are told, their contracts are abrogated forthwith. They are required to buy their own truck with 60 monthly installments of $781.12, which comes to $46,867.20. Plus there is a final kicker payment of $8,000, all of which adds up to a grand total of almost $55,000. On top of this, as an independent business person, the driver must bear the costs of insurance, maintenance, fuel, repairs and the fee for the FedEx uniform rental.

Blackwater's Private CIA

By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation
Posted on June 9, 2008, Printed on June 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/87200/

This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA found its name splashed across front pages throughout the world after the company's shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square. But by early 2008, Blackwater had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman's ongoing investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for "protective services" in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Digby

Eye Opener

Clinton has officially suspended her campaign and thrown her support to Obama. I'm sure we'll hear a lot of very nice encomiums over the next few days. The media never loves a Democrat more than immediately after he (or she) concedes.

C&L has the video of Clinton's speech. I thought it was very, very strong --- inspiring, conciliatory, intelligent and respectful of her supporters and her rival. John King and Chris Matthews insist she was "auditioning" for VP. (The implication being, naturally, that she doesn't mean a word of it unless she gets what she wants.) Carl Bernstein said that she made a good start but needs to do much, much more before anyone will believe her. Clearly, the media is going to have a hard time giving up their obsessions.

Bold Assertion

Douglas Holtz-Eakin said the only similarity between McCain's economic plan and Bush's is a commitment to keep taxes low.

``Sadly, it seems that is all President Bush understood in the economy,'' Holtz-Eakin said in an interview to be broadcast this weekend on Bloomberg Television's ``Conversations with Judy Woodruff.'' It is Barack Obama's budget plan, not Senator McCain's, that resembles Bush's policies, he said.

CIC Doesn't Mean What He Thinks It Means

FDL points out that McCain is dissing Bush big time when he says that nobody should romanticize war. After all, the guy who trash talked his way through 2002 through 2004 is the poster boy for childish, armchair warrior bravado. Recently he told the troops in the trenches he wishes he could be there with them, fighting for God and glory:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

Old News

In another example of angry, vitriolic, hate-filled left wing blogging, a number of us were writing and discussing, oh four years ago, about the Pentagon loons and how they were in cahoots with Iranian and Iraqi kooks in making the Greatest Strategic Blunder in Modern Memory. I believe we were mostly called traitors and deluded conspiracy theorists, although there were many colorful epithets hurled our way. Certainly the mainstream press wasn't interested. They were too busy getting fitted for their Prada safari jackets to pay attention to these stories. (Besides, it just wasn't sexy, you know? No broads, no spicy gossip.)

Who Us?

Can I tell you how incredibly annoying it is when Republicans go on TV and sanctimoniously lecture us about how the American people want all the Democrats to stop being so partisan and sit down and compromise for the good of the nation?

Downturn forces more in U.S. to rely on free food

Thu Jun 5, 2008 9:13pm EDT

By Matthew Bigg and Tim Gaynor

MONROE, Ga./DOUGLAS, Arizona (Reuters) - In the richest nation on earth, a rising number of people line up for free food because they are struggling to put meals on the table at home.

Demand at food banks in the United States is up 15 percent to 20 percent over last year and many food banks are having difficulty coping, according to America's Second Harvest, the largest U.S. food bank provider with 200 in its network.

Food bank networks procure nonperishable and fresh produce from suppliers, then stock it in warehouses before distributing it via a chain of community food banks across the country.

The man who would be king

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy

by Andrew Cockburn

Reviewed by Pepe Escobar

It was four years ago today, Field Marshal von Rumsfeld got his guns to play.

A fitting way to "celebrate" the bombastic opening of the most astonishing blunder in recent military/geopolitical history would be to read Andrew Cockburn's book. The late US president Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon, a ruthless judge of character himself, already in March 1971 ably described the future Bush administration Pentagon warlord as "a ruthless little bastard". Not only is this the title of one of Cockburn's chapters, it should be the book's epigraph.

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy is a book of no-nonsense reportage to be read in one sitting. Much of what it presents is not new. The kicker is how it connects the dots. The picture emerges of a ruthless opportunist, fueled by a toxic ego and blind ambition, a master of very nasty rudeness who perfected the killer technique of "inflicting hours of rapid and often disconnected questions on the people under him". What for? To win the game - whatever the game might be. Rumsfeld was a shock to the system - the ultimate operative, the ultimate fixer.

Ted Rall: The E-Word--The U.S. Has Rivals and Competitors, Not Enemies

PHILADELPHIA--"A Gallup poll," Libby Quaid wrote for the Associated Press on June 2^nd, "found that two-thirds of [Americans] said they believe it would be a good idea for the president to meet with the leaders of enemy countries."

Who are they referring to? An enemy is a country with whom a nation is at war. "Enemy countries"? We have enemies (hi, Osama). We have critics. We even have competitors. But the United States doesn't have enemy countries.

Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

Day of economic shocks for the US

Jobless rate, oil prices soar; Dow tumbles

By Robert Gavin, Globe Staff | June 7, 2008

An unexpected surge in the national unemployment rate set off shock waves that washed over financial, currency, and oil markets yesterday and delivered another blow to hopes that the sliding US economy would soon begin to rebound.

The Labor Department reported yesterday that the jobless rate leaped half a percentage point to 5.5 percent in May, the biggest one-month jump since 1986. Employers, meanwhile, cut payrolls for the fifth consecutive month, shedding nearly 50,000 jobs in May.

New forces fraying U.S.-Saudi oil ties

Surging prices, along with a weak dollar and an oil-thirsty Asia, have blunted America's leverage with the key oil producer and helped sour the two nations' relationship.

By Paul Richter
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 8, 2008

WASHINGTON — For decades, Saudi Arabia worked with its dominant customer, the United States, to keep world oil markets stable and advance common political goals.

But the surging price of oil, which soared more than $10 a barrel Friday to a record-high $138.54, has made it plain that those days are over. New forces, including a weak dollar and an oil-thirsty Asia, have blunted the United States' leverage and helped sour the two countries' relationship.

Screeching to a Halt

On mass transit, the nation is falling perilously behind.

Sunday, June 8, 2008; B06

WITH SAN Francisco gas stations already charging $4.50 per gallon of regular and other places not far behind, it's little wonder that the demand for mass transit is surging nationwide. Last year, the 10.3 billion trips taken on U.S. public transportation -- trains, subways, buses -- were the most in 50 years, according to the American Public Transportation Association. And ridership continued to jump in the first three months of 2008, particularly on light rail (streetcars and trolleys) and commuter rail lines.

The rush to mass transit is accentuating what has been plain for years -- that America's investment in its public transportation infrastructure is glaringly, perilously inadequate. The gasoline tax, which provides the main source of transportation and transit revenue, has not been increased since 1993. As a funding source it is being dangerously eroded by inflation and Americans' decreased driving mileage.

Frank Rich: One Historic Night, Two Americas

WHEN Barack Obama achieved his historic victory on Tuesday night, the battle was joined between two Americas. Not John Edwards’s two Americas, divided between rich and poor. Not the Americas split by race, gender, party or ideology. What looms instead is an epic showdown between two wildly different visions of the country, from the ground up.

On one side stands Mr. Obama’s resolutely cheerful embrace of the future. His vision is inseparable from his identity, both as a rookie with a slim Washington résumé and as a black American whose triumph was regarded as improbable by voters of all races only months ago. On the other is John McCain’s promise of a wise warrior’s vigilant conservation of the past. His vision, too, is inseparable from his identity — as a government lifer who has spent his entire career in service, whether in the Navy or Washington.