Monday, May 19, 2008
Agent Orange: Australia: Veterans here fought for years to have their illnesses recognized as a result of the defoliant; Vietnamese have been fighting in U.S. courts for justice, children/ grandchildren of those afflicted continue to manifest symptoms. And, in Australia:
Claims by a leading researcher that cancer deaths in a small town in Queensland, Australia, are 10 times higher than the state average owing to the secret testing of Agent Orange there more than 40 years ago are to be investigated by the authorities.
Australian military scientists sprayed the toxic herbicide on rainforest near Innisfail during defoliant testing in the early years of the Vietnam war, it is alleged. The jungle began dying and has never recovered, according to local people.
The site is near a river which supplies water for the town in the far north of the country and researchers believe the spraying may be responsible for cancer rates in the area being 10 times the state average and four times the national average.
The Innisfail claims were made by the researcher Jean Williams, who has been awarded the Order of Australia medal for her work on the effects of chemicals on Vietnam war veterans. She said she found reports of the secret tests in Australian War Memorial museum archives. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/19/australia
Somalia: Fear that food crisis and warfare make for a ‘perfect storm’
The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali’s hut.
She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore.
At the same time, a drought has decimated her family’s herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin.
The result is that Ms. Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her 1-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn’t even respond to a pinch.
Somalia — and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter — was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine.
But now with food costs spiraling out of reach and the livestock that people live off of dropping dead in the sand, villagers across this sun-blasted landscape say hundreds of people are dying of hunger and thirst.
This is what happens, economists say, when the global food crisis meets local chaos. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/world/africa/17somalia.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Paulson predicts economic rebound… in the second half of 2008. Those who want to defer to his confidence should note that he thinks the bogus ‘economic stimulus’- those dumb rebates- will be a key to the turnaround.
Despite continuing challenges in the housing market, the overall picture of U.S. financial markets has steadily improved over the past couple of months, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday.
Mr. Paulson, in a rather upbeat speech that seemed to suggest the worst of the credit crisis is over, said market liquidity and investor confidence are improving in several sectors, such as corporate bonds, leverage loans and high-yield debt.
At the same time, capital and credit markets are stabilizing, leaving markets "considerably calmer now" ... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121095444493998929.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news
Iran: Slipping away from Target Status?: The Administration keeps trying, but the evidence too rarely checks out. Eric Alterman, George Zornick
A lonely news report emerged last week on the “Babylon & Beyond” blog of the Los Angeles Times about the Bush administration and Pentagon’s continued attempts to build a case for war against Iran. Tina Susman reported on a news briefing by Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner in Iraq about the discovery of what was said to be a huge a cache of weapons seized by U.S. forces. In what Susman described as a “striking change,” Bergner did not point the finger at Iran. In fact, that nation’s name never even came up.
This significant omission comes on the heels of another barely noticed event, also reported by Susman: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran.” Few news outlets reported the press conference’s cancellation, which was going to be conducted by both the Pentagon and the White House. (Though Newsweek helpfully attributed the cancellation only to “fighting in southern Iraq.”)
The administration has been beating the drums on alleged Iranian malevolence in Iraq with increasing intensity, going so far as to move an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf last month to serve as a “reminder” of the Iranian threat, in the words of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And many in the mainstream media have repeated these claims with frequency and without much challenge.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/fire_next_time.html/print.html
Voter Fraud: The fraudulent campaign continues, a key to conservative voter suppression efforts, including the Voter ID.
More than two years ago, Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott pledged to root out what he called an epidemic of voter fraud in Texas.
He established a special unit in his office, tapped a $1.4 million federal crime-fighting grant and dispatched investigators.
Since then, Mr. Abbott has prosecuted 26 cases – all against Democrats, and almost all involving blacks or Hispanics, a review by The Dallas Morning News shows.
The cases usually have resulted in small fines and little or no jail time, and for all the extra attention, Mr. Abbott has not unraveled any large-scale schemes with the potential to swing elections.
Democrats accuse Mr. Abbott of a partisan operation to discourage voters, especially minorities.
They contrast the prosecutions with complaints that more than 100 ballots were mishandled in a 2005 Highland Park election, a case in which Mr. Abbott took no action. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/051808dnpolvotefraud.3c75dcb.html
Debt: The gist: We’re not given the real figures, and it’s getting worse.
The federal government's long-term financial obligations grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits as more baby boomers reach retirement.
That's double the red ink of a year earlier.
Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That's nearly $500,000 per household.
When obligations of state and local governments are added, the total rises to $61.7 trillion, or $531,472 per household. That is more than four times what Americans owe in personal debt such as mortgages.
The $2.5 trillion in federal liabilities dwarfs the $162 billion the government officially announced as last year's deficit, down from $248 billion a year earlier.
"We're running deficits in the trillions of dollars, not the hundreds of billions of dollars we're being told," says Sheila Weinberg, chief executive of the Institute for Truth in Accounting of Chicago.
The reason for the discrepancy: Accounting standards require corporations and state governments to count new financial obligations, even if the payments will be made later. The federal government doesn't follow that rule. Instead of counting lifetime benefits for programs such as Social Security, the government counts the cost of benefits for the current year. http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080519/1a_lede19.art.htm
CAMPAIGN: The Democrats are now making nice, beginning talks on integrating their respective campaigns; even Bill has emphasized Unity. Top fundraisers for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have begun private talks aimed at merging the two candidates' teams, not waiting for the Democratic nominating process to end before they start preparations for a hard-fought fall campaign.
Despite Obama's apparently insurmountable lead in delegates needed to claim the nomination, aides to both candidates are resigned to the idea that the Democratic contest will continue at least through June 3, when Montana and South Dakota will cast the final votes of the primary season.
But in small gatherings around Washington and in planning sessions for party unity events in New York and Boston in coming weeks, fundraisers and surrogates from both camps are discussing how they can put aside the vitriol of the past 18 months and move forward to ensure that the eventual nominee has the resources to defeat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in November. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/17/AR2008051702425_pf.html
On a ‘feeling level,’ Hillary isn’t quite there-
"I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that anyone who supported me -- the 17 million people who have voted for me -- understand what a grave error it would be not to vote for Sen. McCain . . . uh, Sen. Obama, and against Sen. McCain," http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/14/clinton/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
CNN later cleaned up the quote.
And, she continues to push that she’s leading the popular vote, a royally misleading characterization:
“My opponent said the other day he wasn’t coming back, so I’ve got the whole state to myself,” Mrs. Clinton said on Sunday afternoon at an outdoor rally in Bowling Green. “What a treat!”
She has continued to make the case that she is a better candidate than Mr. Obama, delivering a stump speech in Bowling Green that highlighted many familiar points: that she will be ready on Day 1, will be a more capable commander in chief, and is more experienced in foreign policy matters.
“I’m going to get to work as soon as I’m inaugurated to make sure that we do build a strong and prosperous middle class,” she told a crowd at the Maker’s Mark distillery in Loretto, Ky.
And she has argued to audiences here that she is leading in the popular vote, based on a count that includes the elections in Florida and Michigan, whose votes were moved up in violation of Democratic Party rules. (Mr. Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan; neither candidate campaigned in Florida.) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us/politics/19campaign.html
Annoying, but it’s over… Obama will all but proclaim victory Tuesday night. Interest in Obama only grows; he drew 75,000 in Portland on Sunday.
With the race over, it's timely to look at the successful, tight organization that Obama has built. He’s looking to run a centralized, accountable, transparent, non-mean-spirited campaign, pressuring McCain to do the same.
These three reports generally describe how well organized the campaign is and specifically how Obama’s not only a unique money machine, but that his methodology leaves him not beholden to the usual moneyed interests.
The story of Obama’s success is very much a story about money. It provided his initial credibility. It paid for his impressive campaign operation. It allowed him first to compete with, and then to overwhelm, the most powerful Democratic family in a generation—one that understood the power of money in politics and commanded a network of wealthy donors that has financed the Democratic Party for years.
What’s intriguing to Democrats and worrisome to Republicans is how someone lacking these deep connections to traditional sources of wealth could raise so much money so quickly. How did he do it? The answer is that he built a fund-raising machine quite unlike anything seen before in national politics. Obama’s machine attracts large and small donors alike, those who want to give money and those who want to raise it, veteran activists and first-time contributors, and—especially—anyone who is wired to anything: computer, cell phone, PDA.
Here’s another thing: he is doing it almost effortlessly. That is to say, in an era when the imperative for campaign dollars demands more and more of a politician’s time and lurks behind so many recent scandals (including the auctioning-off of the Lincoln Bedroom), Obama has raised more money than anybody else without plumbing ethical gray areas or even spending much of his own time soliciting donations. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/obama-finance
Sen. Barack Obama's top fundraisers have asked his campaign donors to refrain from contributing to liberal independent political organizations in hopes of controlling the tone and message of the general-election campaign.
At a meeting in Indianapolis on May 2, members of the Democratic front-runner's finance committee made it clear Obama (Ill.) is worried that overtly negative advertising from outside organizations could undermine his themes of unity and hope.
"If people want to support our campaign, they should do it through our campaign," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.
The meeting was only the most overt effort by Obama or Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, to freeze out "527" groups -- named after a provision in the tax code -- which are not allowed to openly support a candidate but have helped define recent elections through negative advertising.
The McCain campaign has been less organized than Obama's in its efforts to counter the groups, but the senator from Arizona has made clear his antipathy toward them -- without much effect.
"We will attack Obama viciously on all fair issues, whether they are national security, whether they are taxes or the economy," promised Chris LaCivita, one of the Republican strategists behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry in 2004. LaCivita added: "At the end of the day, every individual has a right to participate in the political process whether John McCain likes it or not. It's their constitutional right."
But so far, such groups have been remarkably silent, in part because of the signals Obama and McCain have sent to donors to steer clear.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051302868.html?hpid=topnews
A few weeks ago, Media Matters' David Brock announced to great fanfare that he was taking over Progressive Media USA, a third-party group that would, he vowed, raise $40 million for ads to soften up John McCain in advance of the general election.
Now the group is quietly shuttering those efforts with barely a whimper.
Barack Obama's fundraising team has been quietly putting out word to major donors that they didn't want any money to go to such third-party groups. Instead, they wanted the cash to go to the Obama campaign, so Obama advisers could be in sole control of the campaign's message.
It worked. Brock has quietly leaked a statement to The Washington Post saying that his group is, for all practical purposes, defunct.
"Progressive Media will not be running an independent ad campaign this year," Brock's statement to WaPo said, adding that "donors and potential donors are getting clear signals from the Obama camp through the news media and we recognize that reality."
One interesting footnote: With the likelihood of Obama donors helping them pretty much non-existent, Brock and company reportedly realized that Clinton donors, too, would be unlikely to help fund an effort to get Obama elected.
Two things about this. First, the speed with which Obama closed this thing down is yet another sign of how rapidly Obama is taking control of the party in advance of his all-but-certain nomination. And second, it looks as if this election is going to be impacted far less than anyone expected by groups like this, at least on the Dem side.
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/david_brocks_toughtalking_thir.php
McCain is shedding aides who, it turns out, were lobbyists. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/18/AR2008051802212.html?hpid=topnews
McCain is stuck w/ Bush and struggling to reconcile past positions with his current charges that Obama demonstrates weakness by urging talks with Iran. Examples abound of McCain advocating such in recent years, including his supporting talks with Syria, another “state sponsor of terrorism.”
After the invasion of Iraq there was much talk among conservatives about invading Syria. Then Secretary of State Colin Powell was heavily criticized for taking a trip to Syria to talk to its leadership. Newt Gingrich said, “The concept of the American secretary of state going to Damascus to meet with a terrorist-supporting, secret-police-wielding dictator is ludicrous.”
What did John McCain have to say about the trip? Despite the fact that John McCain believed that Syria was a “state sponsor of terror,” was “harboring terrorists,” and were sending “Syrians in to fight Americans,” he thought it was worth talking to them, saying that Powell’s trip was “appropriate.” […] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-bergmann/mccain-was-in-favor-of-ta_b_102099.html
-R
