Enough of the *ucking nonsense of positioning, guitar playing, breakfasts at diners. WHO IS GOING TO END THIS HORRIBLY WASTEFUL WAR? DAY ONE?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

“Only the dead have seen the end of war."
Plato*

“Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G'Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July.

Andy was a wonderful person: decent, honorable, generous, principled, courageous, sweet, and very funny. The world has a horrible hole in it that nothing can fill. I'm glad Andy -- generous as always -- wrote something for me to publish now, since I have no words at all. Beyond: Andy, I will miss you.

My thoughts are with his wife, his parents, and his brother and sister.

What follows is Andy's post: a bit here; the rest below the fold.
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wi...

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Plastic Ono Plame

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu ...

Come Together

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu ...

Run Of The Mill

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu ...

Steel & Glass

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu ...

A Spaniard In The Works

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu ...

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu ...

“The article, titled The American Right Under the Weather, is but one piece in the new overall issue covering the leftward shift of American politics in recent months. As anyone who has read the magazine knows, the editorial staff of The Economist is certainly no friend to Democrats, favoring a decidedly corporatist agenda valuing "free trade over "fair trade" and a foreign policy usually at odds with progressive values. As a result, however, they find themselves increasingly at odds with the social conservatives who have all but taken over the Republican party's activist base: in fact, they say so directly in the cover article:” cont…

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

My point with all these progressives rising posts is that we needn't despair. In the face of evidence that would seemingly tell us we are on the losing end of what is happening in this country, we are not. The hope and changes are there, it just hasn't coalesced into a big enough picture for everyone to see in its entirety.

“To be clear, there's reason for optimism, as this is a temporary situation and we've made enormous progress since 2002. There are more self-identified liberals today than there have been since 1972, independents are swinging far to the left, and the base Democratic vote is making the difference in elections. The Democratic Party of 2007 is much more progressive than that of 2002, and at the rate we're gaining reliable liberal votes (10/year), there will be an unbreakable progressive House majority by 2012. The overall intellectual environment, the shattering of the right-wing careerist foreign policy community, the increasing efficiency of liberal advocacy groups, the increased participation of progressive economy sectors in the political sector, and the liberalization of the White House and Senate, can also have significant effects. Our politicians are obviously behind the curve, with Clinton quasi-supporting the surge and Obama in his most recent Iowa ad doesn't call himself a Democrat. But this is temporary.

I don't have a good strategy on how to 'fix' the Senate, but to get to a progressive working majority in the House, we need to pick up 41 more reliable votes, either by beating Republicans or by converting or beating Blue Dog Democrats. If we can get to an uncompromising progressive majority in the House, then the Senate will be dragged along through conference committees and a Democratic White House. In the Senate, we'll need 16 for a clear progressive majority, but because of institutional dynamics we'll probably need less to have a working majority.

There are several paths to making this happen in the House.

Pick Up Safe Seats Progressives: cont…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-stoller...


Liberalism Rising, and Obama Republicans
by: Matt Stoller
Thu Aug 09, 2007 at 11:11:18 AM EDT

“To follow up on my post from last night, liberalism is getting stronger among base voters as well as politicians.

It's more antiwar than at any time since 1972. Support is growing for such traditionally liberal values as using the federal government to help the poor. And 40 percent of Democrats now call themselves liberal, the highest in more than three decades and twice the low-water mark recorded as the conservative Reagan revolution swept the country in the early 1980s...

The Democrats' shift to the left carries some risk, but probably much less than it would have in years past. That's because independent voters - the ones who swing back and forth and thus decide elections - also have turned against the war and in favor of many more liberal approaches to government...

Fewer than half of Democrats now agree with the adage that military strength is the best way to secure peace, a drop of 16 percentage points in the last decade, according to a series of polls by the Pew Research Center.

Independents also lost faith in the value of military strength over the same period, though their support dropped by only half as much as Democrats' did. Republicans' trust in military strength increased by 7 percentage points.: cont…

http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6...

“Blessed Unrest” is not a glass-half-full book. But Hawken does imply that the movement — which he estimates at perhaps two million organizations strong — is a sign of life stirring in the beaten-up bowels of the planet, part of the earth’s own immunological response, as executed collectively (maybe even semiconsciously) by “social antibodies.” Hawken, studiously avoiding the language of religion, ends up groping for a faith-free yet faith-based terminology to describe what connects people who put aside their own immediate material needs, if just for a second. “Sustainability, ensuring the future of life on earth, is an infinite game, the endless expression of generosity on behalf of all,” he says. Hawken, it seems, is hoping for a miracle, which by definition is possible only because it’s impossible. At the very least, knowing that other people are thinking along those lines makes such a thing seem a little more likely.”

Grass Roots Rising: Paul Hawken’s “Blessed Unrest”
by Robert Sullivan

“Blessed Unrest” is about a movement that no one has noticed, not even the people involved. “The movement,” as Paul Hawken calls it, is made up of an unknowable number of citizens and mostly ragtag organizations that come and go. But when you do see it, you understand it to include NGOs, nonprofit agencies and a seemingly disparate range of people who might describe themselves as environmental activists, as well as people who might not describe themselves as anything at all but are protesting labor injustices, monitoring estuaries, supporting local farming or defending native people from being robbed of the last forests. There are a few billionaires, working hard to give their wealth away, and there are even some Christian evangelicals, who have decided the earth is not theirs to trash, but the movement is mostly about shared beliefs, even if those beliefs are unproclaimed. “Life is the most fundamental human right,” Hawken writes, “and all of the movements within the movement are dedicated to creating the conditions for life, conditions that include livelihood, food, security, peace, a stable environment and freedom from external tyranny.”blessedunrest 1

Still confused? Skip to the 100-plus-page appendix, a list of movement-oriented concerns from child labor to “green banking” to climate change, reflecting years of post-lecture business-card collecting on the author’s part. Hawken, the ecologically conscious founder of the gardening chain Smith & Hawken as well as a number of other enterprises involving things like sustainable agriculture and energy-saving technologies, makes the movement’s disparateness seem not so disparate — in its critique of markets, for example. “If there is a pervasive criticism of global capitalism that is shared by all actors in the movement, it is this observation: goods seem to have become more important, and are treated better, than people. What would a world look like if that emphasis were reversed?” The movement, most importantly, is very lowercase, its sensitivity being its great strength and, naturally, its tactical weakness. Do-gooding will always have a perception problem. Mountaintop-removal mining rarely risks seeming behind the times, even though it is; Amazonian tribesmen’s marching on a World Trade Organization meeting seems futile and quixotic, even though it’s not.

The rationale for the movement is sprinkled through the book like smelling salts. By the middle of the century, Hawken writes, resources per person on the globe will drop by half. Pesticide residues are prevalent in soft drinks in India. The World Bank helps pay for an oil pipeline through the Mindo Nabillo Cloudforest in Ecuador. Species extinction and poverty abound while profits soar. “The world’s top 200 companies have twice the assets of 80 percent of the world’s people, and that asset base is growing 50 times faster than the income of the world’s majority,” Hawken notes. According to Hawken, the movement’s modus operandi is to work at the edges, on lower levels. The movement is an alternative to the old choice of Communism or capitalism, and the current one of freedom versus terror. “Instead of isms it offers processes, concerns and compassion,” he writes. “The movement demonstrates a pliable, resonant and generous side of humanity. It does not aim for the utopian … but is eminently pragmatic.”

When you read about the movement, Hawken says, its members are usually described as anarchists or at least nut jobs - as was evident during the anti-W.T.O. demonstrations in Seattle in 1999, when a bumbling police force turned a protest into a riot, and the TV news crews focused on the relatively few ski-masked window breakers rather than the scores of scientists, conservationists and community service workers who were demonstrating. Hawken sees the roots of the movement in the dawn of abolitionism in 19th-century America and in Gandhi’s Thoreau-inspired civil disobedience — even though the abolitionists and Gandhi would probably say there had been a movement, also with a public relations problem, long before they showed up. The high point of the book is Hawken’s excellent critique of the chemical industry’s attack on Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” in 1962, which shows that the corporate P.R. response to ecological criticism has not changed much. Carson (who kept private the cancer that was killing her) was billed as a hysterical “spinster” and a “fanatical defender of the cult of the balance of nature.” One doctor, dismissing Carson’s indictment of DDT and other chemicals, wrote that ” ‘Silent Spring,’ which I read word for word with some trauma, kept reminding me of trying to win an argument with a woman. It can’t be done.”…cont

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/0...

Ever since I read the Media Matter story from several months ago I have been watching for signs that the story is true. They’re there, though underreported. The evidence is scant at this point because this country has been so been beaten over the head that we are a conservative country or at the very least, center minded. I say not true, there is a shift occurring under the radar that is going to rise up and smack both conservatives and our politicians in the face. This country is becoming more socially minded, less inclined towards war. They’re fed up with lies and corruption and if any of them would pay attention they would realize that the polls indicated that corruption was a big reason the dems took a majority in 2006. It can’t be stopped now, it’s gathering momentum. If you look you’ll see it’s not just in this country but Globally, Take a look at South America. Really all we have to do at this point is keep on keeping on and bide out time. For despite appearances to the contrary, it’s on our side.


Myth: America is Conservative

New Report Documents Progressive American Majority

Independent Public Polls Debunk Conventional Wisdom
That Americans Agree With Conservative Agenda

“Washington, D.C. - Today, Media Matters for America and Campaign for America's Future released a special report, "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth," documenting how the conventional wisdom that Americans are overwhelmingly conservative is fundamentally false. Through decades of public opinion data from nonpartisan sources, the report shows the majority of Americans hold progressive positions on a broad range of issues.

"This report shows that on issue after issue, most Americans agree with progressives and have for decades, despite what we hear from the media." said David Brock, President and CEO of Media Matters. "The conventional wisdom advanced by the media -- that the United States is becoming more and more conservative -- has been debunked repeatedly by independent public polling, but that hasn't stopped them from perpetuating this clearly flawed perception."

Media Matters and Campaign for America's Future conducted this study by examining the past 20 years of independent, nonpartisan polling data from sources such as the American National Election Studies (NES), the General Social Survey (GSS), and Gallup polls. By compiling all of this data, we have examined not only the top-level conclusions, but the underlying questions asked in each survey.” Cont…

http://mediamatters.org/items/200706130002


“CHICAGO — The Democratic Party is growing more liberal for the first time in a generation.,,cont


There is greater liberalism today, both on economic issues and in opposition to the war," said Robert Borosage, co-director of the :Campaign for America's Future, a liberal group that saw attendance at its June "Take Back America" meeting swell to several thousand from just a few dozen six years ago. "The conservative era is ending."

The Democrats' shift to the left carries some risk, but probably much less than it would have in years past. That's because independent voters — the ones who swing back and forth and thus decide elections — also have turned against the war and in favor of many more liberal approaches to government.

"There is greater support for the social safety net, more concern for inequality of income," said Andy Kohut, the president of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. "More people are falling into the liberal category based on their values." Cont…

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/...


New Hampshire Becoming More Liberal
Democratic Control Manifested in New Laws


“According to a Boston Globe article, posted on boston.com, New Hampshire, known for decades as a haven of conservatism, is now exhibiting the signs of a move to liberalism. Democrats now control both houses of the state legislature and among the results have been the legalization of same-sex civil unions, a law that bans smoking in bars and restaurants, a state budget that reflects a 17% increase in state spending, and a near miss on a mandatory seat belt law. New Hampshire, according to the Globe, is the only state in the nation that does not require the use of seat belts.” Cont…


“The Globe reports that politicians are divided on the future of the liberal Legislature and the shift from right to left of the state. Some New Hampshire Republicans contend that the control of the Legislature by the Democrats was an aberration caused by a combination of factors: an anti-tax Democratic governor, no strong Republican challenger, anti-Bush sentiments, and the Iraq war. Republicans feel that the situation will be corrected as voters rebel against the actions of the Democratic majority.

Others, however, point to the fact that many of the new laws were bipartisan productions.

Andrew Smith, according to the Globe, says that the fall of the Republican Party to the Democrats, was not a surprise. He said that it had been on the verge of collapsing for many years, and finally did so in 2003, the year of the Democratic takeover. The Globe quotes him as saying, "The fact that it finally fell down didn't come as a surprise to people who had been watching it closely."

ttp://www.associatedcontent.com/article/299775/n...


* Kudos to the Duer who came up with that term, I saw it in passing and think the shoe fits.

As I watched KO last night I saw that smirking cretin, Jennings, tell a congressional committee that he couldn’t tell them what job he performed at the white house. That he was following the mandate in a letter from the president that claimed executive privilege. Can’t tell a committee of congress what his job is? Can’t tell us, the American, what job we are paying him to perform? He certainly isn’t a noc, so why the secret?

Privileged information is it? To do what, by which authority? The royal prerogative, a dictator’s vainglorious presumption? Did even one Senator fantasize about jumping his desk and reaching out and choking the truth out of that smug little twit? No, bet not. That would be too reminiscent of torture and Abu Grahib. Just another little ditty on the list of crimes that have been ignored.

Spectre (misspell deliberate), that illusion of a senator, described Gonzales as wily. In my lexicon he would be called a liar. A criminal liar who is contemptuous of Congress, the Constitution but mostly, of we the people.

My sneaking suspicion, creeping up on me over days and weeks is that he isn’t the only one contemptuous of us. His boss is, we all know it, and so it would seem, are the other two branches of our government. Why else would the courts rule against the humanity of the people in favor of the ponzi schemes that call themselves insurance companies and tell the people who suffered through Katrina that those payments made to insurance companies were actually another form of graft and the only restitution that is going to be made is to the state of La., in the form of newly accessed property taxes, on property the state has declared has been undervalued for years and now they, the citizens, who have been ravaged by a monster storm, are going to have to pay up, big time.

Then there is Congress, all huff and puff, blowing nobody’s house of cards down. Uncle Ted, one of the biggest crooks in the Senate, is having a spot of trouble but none of them will say a word against him because, if he, slippery seal that he is, escapes indictment and charges, he will exact revenge and they’re scared of him, as they seem to be of most things. The only person getting what they want out of this Congress is George W. Bush.

How dare they sit there while they were dissed, disrespected and spit upon and not do anything? Oh yes, just like Gonzo, Jennings and his boss are too wily for them. I wonder…will that general the marshals are chasing or Rove, Meirs and Bolten answer the subpoenas they’ve been served with and appear? If they do deign to show up will smug little smiles contort their lips? Will there be even one contempt citation if they don’t? Not one liar has received one yet. Perjury charges? Not likely if the past be prologue, and we all know, impeachment is off the table. Apparently that covers all impeachments as I don’t see that anything will happen to the resident, his vice or the little man on the side that perverts our laws. It is vacation time after all.

What is a citizen to do to regain rights, lawfulness, treasury that has been stolen or given to cronies in stacks of bills belonging to us, a sound infrastructure, a restored Constitution, truth? How are we going to get rid of these miscreants who are taking everything from us. Our country has become structurally deficient and what I can’t see, tell, guess…is how we are going to build a bridge to our and everyone else’s future. One that won’t collapse on us.

I wish I knew.

In the past six years General Wayne Downing has been on numerous news shows, both network and cable, opining on the war. Inevitably, he has stood with the president. And to this position he seemed to bring the credibility of a military man who knew what he was talking about. What was never said, and is never a disclaimer, is that Downing is a neo-con, on parity with the likes of Frank Gaffney, also a spinmeister for the administration. Why, in all the interviews he’s done has this never been pointed out, him called on it? It is inherently dishonest, though not unexpected from a neo, for him to posture giving an unbiased military view, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Below are links which identify his true position for anyone interested.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/credib/20...

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lobe122303.html

http://ostroyreport.blogspot.com/2005/08/f...

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Sept2004/cannon09...

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/...

http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol11/0406_lan...

*shadow government*

Where did they spring from
What place would allow them to be brought forth
And nourish them with mother's milk
Allow them to grow and gather strength
So that they could steal the blood
From another mother's son

Won't anyone remove these vipers from their nest?

*shadow government*

We’ve been waiting years now, for justice. And it’s been an arduous journey fraught with fear that it might not be delivered at all. But we’re close now, to the beginning. Will it be tomorrow or we will have to wait another 48 hours, perhaps another week or two? We’re willing to wait, for we’ve been told over and over that “ The Wheels Of Justice Grind Slow, But They Grind Exceeding Fine”. That’s fine with us because the last thing we want is a botched job. But that doesn’t make it any easier to wait, even though we know that something else, besides our teeth, is grinding.

So this thread is for those who wait, make of it what you will. Rant away at whomever, be it *ush, Cheney, Rove, Libby or whoever causes you the most muscle strain. Let your fingers do the screaming or laughing because it’s so close, the end of the beginning is in sight. Have a joke? News the rest of us haven’t heard, a story that will pass the time……

Hope’s knight, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is doing his job. We’ll be here waiting when he’s finished.

*shadow government*

CASE #: 1:06-mc-00123-RBW: NBC NEWS & AFFILIATES

CASE #: 1:06-mc-00124-RBW: MATTHEW COOPER

CASE #: 1:06-mc-00125-RBW: JUDITH A. MILLER

CASE #: 1:06-mc-00126-RBW: ANDREA MITCHELL

CASE #: 1:06-mc-00127-RBW: TIM RUSSERT

CASE #: 1:06-mc-00128-RBW: TIME, INCORPORATED

CASE #: 1:06-mc-00129-RBW: NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY

& Regarding The Judge’s Ruling: Memorandum Opinion on April 5, 2006 (PDF via Tom Maguire)

“Jeralyn hits on a point that Team Libby wins on: they are authorized to submit a brief to the Judge outlining their thoery of the case for the defense, which essentially gives the Judge a road map to what Libby’s strategy will be at trial. This will allow the Judge to keep this in mind when reviewing ex parte submissions from Fitz as to whether or not an order of disclosure would be material to Libby’s defense and whether it would be appropriate.

I think this is both a blessing and a curse, in a lot of respects. I’m assuming that the Judge will allow for an amended filing, should additional evidence or theories arise as Team Libby goes through the discovery given to them by the government. But in filing a brief like this, as a defendant you necessarily limit yourself to what your lawyers are looking at for your particular case. When you leave something like this to a judge’s discretion, especially one who is well-versed in trial proceedings and has been on the bench for a while, sometimes their understanding can be broader than an attorney who has tunnel vision with their own set of facts. Libby’s attorneys are highly qualified and very experienced, so it is unlikely they will fall into the tunnel vision mindset, but even the best of attorneys can get a bit myopic when they are living and breathing a case day in and day out with motion production and can miss something.

It will depend on how heavily the Judge relies solely on Team Libby’s representations and how carefully those representations are crafted as to how this can favor or limit Libby down the road. (And this is not something new — this sort of thing has occurred before in high level security clearance cases. See US v. Poindexter, 732 F. Supp. 142 (DDC 1990) as one example — sorry couldn’t find a link on this case, if anyone can locate a good one, I’ll link it up.)

That said, the rest of the opinion is pretty much a win for Fitz’s team — which, given the CIPA regs and the allowance for ex parte submissions even in Rule 16, wasn’t exactly a shocker. This was always going to be a tough argument for Libby to come anywhere close to winning, let alone getting anywhere with it at all. And basically, he doesn’t.” cont…

http://www.firedoglake.com /

Were they more afraid of losing power or what the criminal consequences would be if they were found out?

“But what does the iceberg look like? Is it merely part of a post-invasion political cover-up run by the Cabal out of Rove's and Libby's Offices or is it more?

I believe that this "grand narrative" is part of a larger whole, and in order to get a sense of what it looks like, you have to change frames. You have to re-frame the entire war, from run-up to the unfolding run down and view ALL of it, not from a military/foreign policy frame but as a domestic political operation. Tactical, strategic, diplomatic decisions were determined not by their own exigencies but by Bush political requirements.

The War was conceived and is being executed as political not a military operation. It is not nor has it ever been run by generals and diplomats but ultimately and in every material respect as as a domestic political affair by Karl Rove, Scooter Libby on behalf of Bush/Cheney out of the WH.

Pat Roberts's role has been that of Master Sgt in charge of cover up. Think not of Operation Iraqi Freedom but of Operation Rolling Bullsh*t. Then you'll understand the War on Iraq in general and in any of its particulars.”

http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/28652


<<<snip>>>
“That leads to the second, equally important point. Waas also reports that Rove thought as early as the summer of 2003 that the document was radioactive enough to potentially destroy Bush's re-election chances. Waas adds that Bush advisers thought that if doubts about the tubes came out, it would be much harder to shield Bush from criticism for them than it was for the uranium tale -- because there apparently existed hard evidence that the president had been told of those doubts.

Now fast forward to early 2004. That’s when Libby testified before the Plame grand jury. Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment alleges that Libby lied about how and when he learned Plame’s identity and disclosed information about her to reporters. Rove, too, misled the grand jury by failing to mention a conversation with a reporter about Plame. (Rove subsequently disclosed it, but only after a discovered e-mail jogged his memory. Libby has pled innocent, and Rove wasn’t indicted, though he reportedly remains under investigation).

That’s where matters stand now. Now let’s try to fit these pieces together.

The thing about the Plame investigation that never quite seemed to make sense was this: Why would Libby or Rove deliberately mislead the grand jury, risking perjury charges when it wasn’t clear the leak was a crime?

Thanks to Waas, for the first time, we may now know for a fact that Rove and other Bush advisers viewed the truth about the run-up to war as something that could destroy his re-election prospects. It is entirely plausible that Bush advisers calculated that if it came out that they’d outed Plame, Congress would have been forced by the resulting firestorm to run a far more aggressive investigation of Bush’s pre-war deceptions – and possibly uncover the smoking gun Waas reports on, among other things. Remember, Libby and Rove testified in early 2004, during the heat of a presidential campaign which Rove himself had apparently concluded was at risk if existing hard evidence of Bush’s deceptions surfaced.”cont…

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sectio...

Here's A few more for you:

Plastic Ono Plame

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

Come Together

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

Run Of The Mill

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

Steel & Glass

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

A Spaniard In The Works

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...