Follow this link to the Salon article with the above title.
If you read between the lines, you could conclude that the U.S. Constitutional protections of our civil liberties have been mute since the early 1980s. Furthermore, you might conclude that leaders of both political parties have been so involved that they would be loathe to investigate. They wouldn’t want an investigation because they know that they would all be implicated in abuses.
Follow this link to view the video of McCain/Bush explaining that it is all in your head.
Don’t worry if you cannot pay for your sub-prime mortgage. It’s all in your head. You are not actually homeless. Oh, and those hundreds of billions of dollars of write downs the banks will take – all in their heads. You’re not really spending $50 to fill your gas tank. It’s all in your head.
Follow this link to the above titled article by Lawrence Summers. This article was suggested by RichardH.
I think that the current mortgage crisis is what happens when the federal government decides not to have an explicit housing policy. You notice in the news that whenever there are discussions about the mortgage/housing crisis, the government is represented by the FED and the Treasury. No mention is ever made of the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Do we still have such a cabinet position? What has this person been up to for the last 7+ years?
Follow this link to the video of Barack Obama’s July 15, 2008 speech on his global strategy.
If only we could be sure that this is the Obama who would be President instead of the inept FISA bill handling Obama, then we could all feel a lot better.
Follow this link to the OpEd Piece in the New York Times by Barack Obama about withdrawing our troops from Iraq.
A paragraph toward the end of the piece caught my attention:
As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there.
Has he noticed how this is turning into the quagmire that finally defeated the Soviet Union? We can try more troops, but be prepared with Plan B.
The constant primary campaign rhetoric that Iraq was the wrong war and Afghanistan was the right war might get us trapped into a hopeless situation. I hope Obama is a lot smarter than he appeared to be when he helped the Democratic Party to bungle the handling of the recent FISA bill.
I just learned about the theory of Intelligent Falling as an explanation for gravity. I can see that my education at MIT was sorely lacking for not covering this explanation along with Newton’s other theory of gravity and Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Follow this link for Wikipedia’s exposition of the theory of Intelligent Falling.
Keith Olbermann had a special comment on how Obama should handle the vote on the FISA bill.
Follow this link to see the special comment. The comment was made at the beginning of the July 4 recess and before the Senate actually got to vote on the bill.
Olbermann missed the boat in several ways. I’ll point out just two items.
The best political idea was to force the Republicans to vote against the FISA bill that was missing telco immunity.
Olbermann and John Dean think that the fact that there is no immunity from criminal prosecution makes the civil immunity almost worthless. He thinks this is a big mistake that the Republicans made in writing the immunity clauses.
He needs to think about how the criminal prosecution involving the telcos will proceed. Some one person, either low down in the hierarchy or high up, could be charged with a crime. The telco for which that person works will cut this person loose as far as providing any legal or financial support to fight the charges. The telcos will deny all responsibility for what the individual did. Other than losing an employee to jail time, the telcos will suffer no loss from what they may have done.
As usual, the wrong person will suffer for what has been done. Apparently the Republicans are cleverer than Olbermann and Dean give them credit for.
Follow this link to hear a discussion with Jameel Jaffer, the Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, regarding the two legal proceedings commenced a few days ago by the ACLU challenging the constitutionality of the new FISA law. The discussion is roughly 20-minutes long.
Jaffer mentions who might be injured by the expanded powers now given to the government.
Let me be more explicit. Remember how Valerie Plame’s CIA identity was exposed to get back at a critic of the administration? Suppose that Bush is irked at Amnesty International for exposing his own war crimes. Suppose Amnesty International has a covert operative exposing torture in some foreign country. Suppose that as a result of the massive vacuuming of foreign phone calls that the Bush administration learns the identity of this covert operative. Suppose that Bush leaks the name of the covert operative to the foreign government for arrest or possible assassination.
Suppose that an oil company plans to compete for a contract in a middle eastern country. Suppose that the company is competing against Haliburton. Suppose the administration picks up the details of the competitor’s bid from a general wire tap and leaks the bid details to Haliburton.
Suppose your daughter works in international accounting for a multi-national corporation. Suppose she makes lots of international phone calls as part of her job. Do you want her on the government’s list of people who make suspicious foreign phone calls?
Suppose you end up on the do not fly list because of foreign phone calls you made. You cannot even find out how you got on the list let alone which foreign phone call was misinterpreted.
Some times people have legal activity that they want to hide. Not all government employees are completely trustworthy.
Note: See July 12 update at the bottom.
As a former strong supporter of Barack Obama, I am looking for a way to rectify his betrayal of this country on his vote for the FISA bill. For a Professor of US Constitutional law to vote the way that he did is unpardonable.
If this capitulation to the assault on the rule of law is an example of how Obama negotiates with adversaries, then I am extremely worried. If he can not hold his original position on the FISA bill when it was the correct policy, it was a winning electoral strategy, and the Democrats had the numbers to enforce it, what will he do if he finds himself in a weaker position on an issue?
The only thing that I can think of that can be done now is to urge the Democratic Nominating Convention to give the nomination to Hillary Clinton. McCain is not the only alternative to Obama.
Thank goodness this weakness of Obama came to light before we took the irretrievable step of actually nominating him as the Democratic candidate for President.
By the way, if Hillary is too much to contemplate, then how about Al Gore?
According to Barack Obama, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
If we can no longer believe in Obama’s ability to bring change, we can still believe in our own. Let’s start a campaign to give the nomination to another candidate.
Follow this link to see the ad that this group ran. Follow this link to the Denver Group’s web site.
Follow this link to the web site for T. Boone Pickens‘ Energy Plan.
Could it be this easy?