“But yeah, look, I'm sure people view me as a warmonger and I view myself as peacemaker." - Bush

Cheney Impeachment: Call for Hearings Rep. Robert Wexler’s (D-Fl) speech. He warns against running out the clock, hiding behind, ‘it’s too late.’

History demands that we take action - because the case against Vice President Cheney is far stronger than the illegalities surrounding Watergate and the charges brought against President Nixon.

When compared to the partisan and petty allegations made against President Clinton by Ken Starr and the GOP Congress, the true gravity of the case against the Vice President appears in its devastating clarity.

In fact, in the history of our nation we have never encountered a moment where the actions of a President or Vice President have more strongly demanded the use of the power of impeachment.

I have heard the arguments – that it is too late – that we have run out of time - and that we don't have the votes. While today there may not be enough votes in to impeach, it's premature to think that such support would not exist - AFTER hearings.

Let us remember that it wasn't until AFTER hearings began that the Watergate tapes emerged. Arguing that it is too late to hold hearings sets a dangerous precedent, as it signals to future administrations that in their waning months in office they're immune from constitutional accountability.

This House must have the conviction to face these troubling allegations. Holding hearings would put the evidence on the table - and the evidence alone must determine the outcome. http://wexler.house.gov/impeachmentspeech.shtml

Join the Call for Hearings: Go to www.wexlerwantshearings.com It takes only a minute.

The Stimulus Package: Hard to be confident that the Democratic-led Congress will come up with a helpful series of proposals. Between all the constituencies involved and their demonstrated lack of backbone…

A rush by President Bush and Democratic leaders to assemble an economic stimulus package to stave off a recession is being complicated by a potentially debilitating brew of presidential politics, ideological differences and special interest lobbying.

Already, a bidding war among the top three Democratic candidates is complicating congressional efforts to produce a package that would not worsen the budget deficit. Republican contenders and GOP leaders are warning the White House not to compromise too much with Democrats on an economic stimulus they are not even sure is warranted.

Meanwhile, lobbying groups for industries as varied as high technology and hotels are clogging the reception rooms and e-mail inboxes of senior lawmakers, pressuring them to include the groups' favorite benefits in a stimulus package. Small businesses are seeking to write off new equipment faster. Large businesses are appealing for lower tax rates. And home builders are pleading to offset their taxable income in years past with the losses they are suffering today.

"This package is not going to be all things to all people," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday, firing a warning shot to Republicans and Democrats alike while promising a proposal within two weeks. "It is not going to be a panacea." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011604244_pf.html

The tough news continues:

A stream of unwelcome economic data has added to politicians' sense of urgency. The Labor Department announced Wednesday that consumer prices rose 4.1% last year -- the fastest in 17 years -- led by soaring gasoline costs and higher prices at the supermarket. Average wages, meantime, recorded a slight drop when adjusted for inflation. Earlier this month, the department reported unemployment had hit 5%, the highest rate in two years. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-stimulus17jan17,1,4923615.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

And:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities currently is monitoring state fiscal reports and is in touch with state officials and/or relevant state nonprofit organizations in the 50 states and DC. The fiscal situation appears to be as follows.

• Over half of the states are anticipating budget problems.

• The 14 states in which revenues are expected to fall short of the amount needed to support current services in fiscal year 2009 are Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia. The budget gaps total $28.9 to $30.9 billion, averaging 8.5 - 9.1 percent of these states’ general fund budgets. http://www.cbpp.org/1-15-08sfp.htm

Bush: The Middle East View:

Scott MacLeod in Time:

Seldom has an American President's visit left the region so underwhelmed, confirming Bush's huge unpopularity on the street and his sagging credibility among Arab leaders he counts as allies. Part of the problem was the Administration's increasingly mixed message, amplified by the intense media coverage of his trip. For example, in Dubai he gave what the White House billed as a landmark speech calling for 'democratic freedom in the Middle East.' But during his last stop in Sharm el-Sheikh Wednesday, he lauded President Hosni Mubarak as an experienced, valued strategic partner for regional peace and security and made no mention of Cairo's ongoing crackdown on opponents and critics -- and the continuing imprisonment of Mubarak's main opponent in the 2005 presidential election. . . .

Commenting on the two main purposes of the tour, even the most liberal Arab press questioned the sincerity of Bush's efforts to establish a Palestinian state and criticized his campaign to pressure Iran over its nuclear program. On occasion, senior Arab officials contradicted or disputed Bush's pronouncements even before he left their countries. . . .

Bush's efforts to rally an Arab coalition to isolate Iran in the Gulf seemed to fall flat. Only days after he visited Kuwait, liberated in 1991 by a coalition led by the President's father, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Mohammed Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah was standing beside Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran, declaring: 'My country knows who is our friend and who is our enemy, and Iran is our friend.' . . .

'We ought to be celebrating President George Bush's declaration that a Palestinian state is 'long overdue,'' said the Arab News in Jidda. 'It is impossible to feel any excitement about Bush's words, because no Palestinian, no Arab believes he will, or can, deliver. We have the Bush record with its damning testimony of failure and disaster. That is the reason for the skepticism and the cynicism.' http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1704296,00.html

Hannah Allam for McClatchy Newspapers:

President Bush wraps up a weeklong tour of the Middle East Wednesday, leaving many Mideast political observers mystified as to the purpose of the visit and doubtful that the president made inroads on his twin campaigns for Arab-Israeli peace and isolation for Iran.

Bush is heading back to Washington mostly empty-handed, said several analysts and politicians throughout the region. Arab critics deemed Bush's peace efforts unrealistic, his anti-Iran tirades dangerous, his praise of authoritarian governments disappointing and his defense of civil liberties ironic.

"There is no credibility to his words after what the region saw during his presidency,” said Mohamed Fayek, the Cairo, Egypt-based director of the nonprofit Arab Organization for Human Rights. He cited the war in Iraq, the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal. “American policy threw the region off-balance and destabilized it. The visit caused deep disappointment. I don't see any results." http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/24819.html

Re-visiting / Summarizing that Iran Incident:

Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the Jan. 6 U.S.-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran's military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.

The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defence for public affairs in charge of media operations Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the Navy itself.

Then the Navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that U.S. warships would "explode" in "a few seconds". Although it was ostensibly a Navy production, IPS has learned that the ultimate decision on its content was made by top officials of the Defence Department.

The encounter between five small and apparently unarmed speedboats, each carrying a crew of two to four men, and the three U.S. warships occurred very early on Saturday Jan. 6, Washington time. But no information was released to the public about the incident for more than 24 hours, indicating that it was not viewed initially as being very urgent.

The reason for that absence of public information on the incident for more than a full day is that it was not that different from many others in the Gulf over more than a decade. A Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified told IPS that he had spoken with officers who had experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are "just not a major threat to the U.S. Navy by any stretch of the imagination". http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40801

Pakistan: Militants Uncontrollable; leads to Blowback?

Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.

As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.

The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.

The unusual disclosures regarding Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — emerged in interviews last month with former senior Pakistani intelligence officials. The disclosures confirm some of the worst fears, and suspicions, of American and Western military officials and diplomats. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/world/asia/15isi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

Iraq: Another Surge: Poppys

Well! Here is some good news for the "free markets solve everything!" crowd!

Iraqi farmers, desperate to make ends meet while simultaneously facing escalating fuel and fertilizer costs, as well as cheap imported fruits and vegetables, have taken to growing opium poppies. Poppy cultivation is spreading rapidly all across Iraq, but is especially prevalent in Diyala province, where local police and security forces are so preoccupied with the ethnic conflicts among the residents of the region, as well as a tenacious insurgency that brings the war and it's associated chaos home - suffice it to say that the drug trade is low on their list of priorities…

The shift to opium cultivation by Iraqis is a very recent development. The first fields, underwritten by Afghani smugglers who supplied the lucrative markets in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, were discovered less than a year ago near Diwaniya in the south, but the practice has now spread to the lush orchards of Diyala, north of Baghdad. A local agricultural engineer identified as M S al-Azawi said that the local farmers received no government support, and turned to opium production as an effort to offset high production costs and low sale prices. http://proctoringcongress.blogspot.com/2008/01/opium-poppies-cropping-up-across-iraq.html

Voter ID: Major ramifications if the Supreme Court OK’s the Indiana Law. Adam Cohen:

The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a hugely important case about voter ID laws. Asking for identification at the polls may sound reasonable, but an Indiana law disenfranchises large numbers of people without driver’s licenses, especially poor and minority voters. If the court upholds the law, as appears likely, it will be a sad new chapter in its abandonment of voters, a group whose rights it once defended vigorously.
As long as there have been elections, there have been attempts to keep eligible people from voting. States and localities adopted poll taxes, literacy tests, “white primaries,” “malapportionment” — drawing district lines to give a small number of rural voters the same representation as a large number of urban voters — and restrictions on student voting. In recent decades, the Supreme Court has rejected all of them.

The court understood that the Constitution guaranteed a robust form of democracy and saw its clear value for the nation. During the tumultuous late-1960s, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that most of the country’s problems could be solved through the political process if everyone “has the opportunity to participate on equal terms with everyone else and can share in electing representatives who will be representative of the entire community and not of some special interest.”

In recent years, however, with a conservative majority in place, the court has become increasingly hostile to voters. During the oral arguments in the Bush v. Gore case in 2000, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor showed disdain for voters who had trouble with Florida’s disastrous punch-card ballots. After insisting that the directions “couldn’t be clearer,” she suggested that the court ignore the ballots of voters who had failed to master the intricacies. That is precisely what it did, by a 5-4 vote. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/opinion/15tue4.html?sq=Voter%20ID&scp=4&pagewanted=print

U.S. as ‘Developing’ Country: UN Condemns Katrina Aftermath

A United Nations official who has toured parts of Louisiana and Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina says the thousands of victims of the storm resemble poor people displaced by natural disasters in other parts of the world.

''Whether you're displaced in a rich country or a poor country, what remains the same is you need to get the help, the assistance of the authorities, of the communities, to be able to restart a normal life, and the people I have met are not there yet,'' said Walter Kalin, the UN secretary general's representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons.

Kalin spoke Wednesday, a day when he also saw hard-hit areas of the two states. He met Tuesday with evacuees in Houston.

The United Nations' human rights committee has been critical of the Bush administration's efforts to help people displaced by Katrina, particularly those without the financial means to rebuild. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Katrina-United-Nations.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Campaign: A Study confirmed what anyone who is observant; that Edwards has been dismissed by the major media. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/01/study_john_edwa.php http://www.journalism.org/node/9266 The Edwards campaign issued their own statements and video. From CNN:

John Edwards' campaign is launching a full-on assault on the media for what they claim is inadequate and unfair press coverage of the former North Carolina senator's presidential bid.

"For the better part of a year the media has focused on two celebrity candidates,” Edwards Communications Director Chris Kofinis said Thursday. “And they continue to act as if there were only two candidates in the race, even after John Edwards beat Senator Clinton in Iowa and poll after poll show competitive races in Nevada, South Carolina and other key states."

On Thursday, the campaign went live with a Web site that sites several recent news headlines that only include Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It also includes recent statistics from the Project for Excellence in Journalism that indicate that from January 6-11, Edwards received just a fraction of the news coverage allotted to his two rivals.

The campaign has even produced a Web video, "What about John Edwards?", that scrolls through several clips of media pundits discussing only Clinton and Obama, and ends with the results of a focus group that suggested Edwards won the most recent debate in Las Vegas. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/17/edwards-camp-takes-aim-at-media/

Obama is clearly an ‘out of the box’ politician. His latest is a head-turner. Lauding Reagan as someone who changed the country, unlike Clinton, sounds impolitic, but is accurate. However Obama then says that Reagan provided “clarity, optimism, dynamism” that the country wanted.

Ouch. Many of us would say that Reagan took us backwards: he busted unions, hurt the middle class, enriched the wealthy, etc. But, again, Obama is most unusual.

Bill Clinton continues his unusual role- playing hit man for a candidate for president, losing his temper, sometimes playing loose w/ facts.

-R

How long will the U.S. be in Iraq…according to Bush, responding to NBC’s David Gregory

Gregory: "John McCain has been saying on the campaign trail that the American people would accept U.S. troops remaining in Iraq for 100 years. Do you agree with that?"

Bush: "I -- I don't know if 100 years is the right number. That's a long time."

Gregory: "Sort of long-term presence?"

Bush: "It could very well be. But it's going to be on the invitation of the Iraqi government. A long-term presence -- and again, I'm not exactly sure how you would define long-term, but it's --"

Gregory: "Ten years?"

Bush: "Yeah, it could easily be that, absolutely." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/22607102#22607102

Iraqis: We could handle things in 4 years…or 10

The Iraqi defense minister said Monday that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq's borders from external threat until at least 2018. . . .

President Bush has never given a date for a military withdrawal from Iraq but has repeatedly said that American forces would stand down as Iraqi forces stand up. Given [minister Abdul] Qadir's assessment of Iraq's military capabilities on Monday, such a withdrawal appeared to be quite distant, and further away than any American officials have previously stated in public. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/world/middleeast/15military.html?_r=1&ex=1358053200&en=0cd0c8ad0eee50d3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Bush and Democracy: We know that the Bush Administration doesn’t really care about democracy, but since they keep claiming they do- despite the support of dictators such as Musharraf -and since Bush just gave another speech about democracy, it’s fitting to note Michael Hirsh’s column in Newsweek:

A day after George W. Bush gave his big democracy speech and declared the opening of “a great new era … founded on the equality of all people” — a line he delivered at the astonishingly opulent Emirates Palace hotel, where most of the $2,450-a-night suites are reserved for visiting royals — the president flew to Saudi Arabia on Monday. There he planned to spend a day with King Abdullah at his ranch, where the monarch keeps 150 Arabian stallions for his pleasure, and thousands of goats and sheep “bred to feed the guests at the King’s royal banquets,” as the White House put it in the “press kit” it handed out to reporters on the eve of the president’s eight-day Mideast tour. Bush was also expected to take time out to meet with a group of “Saudi entrepreneurs.”

What could not be found on Bush’s schedule was one Saudi dissident or political activist, much less a democrat. http://www.newsweek.com/id/94447

Bush and Disowning the Iran NIE The White House has not endorsed their work and now virtually disowned it in conversations with Israeli PM Olmert.

Fred Kaplan thinks this undermines U.S. credibility…still further:

This remark has three baleful consequences. First, it can't help but demoralize the intelligence community. NIEs are meant, ultimately, for only one reader, the president; and here's the president telling another world leader that he doesn't believe it because, well, he doesn't agree with it.

Second, it reinforces the widespread view that the president views intelligence strictly as a political tool: When it backs up his policies, it's as good as gold; when it doesn't, it's "just guessing." This result is that all intelligence is degraded and devalued, at home and abroad. Let's say that six months from now Bush publicizes an NIE concluding that Iran has resumed its nuclear-weapons program or that, say, North Korea is reprocessing more plutonium. Given that he pooh-poohed an NIE that rubbed against his own views, why should anyone take him seriously for embracing an NIE that confirms them?

Third, by telling Olmert that it's all right to ignore the NIE, Bush is in effect telling him that Israel should go ahead and behave as if its findings had never been published. Hirsh reports that, when Olmert was asked whether he felt reassured by Bush's words, he replied, "I am very happy." http://www.slate.com/id/2182071/fr/rss/

What's Happening, Afghanistan: The Mini-Surge: Some feuding with Allies as to who’s doing their share…as the Administration dispatches 3200 Marines.

The U.S. plan to send an additional 3,200 Marines to troubled southern Afghanistan this spring reflects the Pentagon's belief that if it can't bully its recalcitrant NATO allies into sending more troops to the Afghan front, perhaps it can shame them into doing so, U.S. officials said.

But the immediate reaction to the proposed deployment from NATO partners fighting alongside U.S. forces was that it was about time the United States stepped up its own effort.

After more than six years of coalition warfare in Afghanistan, NATO is a bundle of frayed nerves and tension over nearly every aspect of the conflict, including troop levels and missions, reconstruction, anti-narcotics efforts, and even counterinsurgency strategy. Stress has grown along with casualties, domestic pressures and a sense that the war is not improving, according to a wide range of senior U.S. and NATO-member officials who agreed to discuss sensitive alliance issues on the condition of anonymity.

While Washington has long called for allies to send more forces, NATO countries involved in some of the fiercest fighting have complained that they are suffering the heaviest losses. The United States supplies about half of the 54,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, they say, but the British, Canadians and Dutch are engaged in regular combat in the volatile south.

"We have one-tenth of the troops and we do more fighting than you do," a Canadian official said of his country's 2,500 troops in Kandahar province. "So do the Dutch." The Canadian death rate, proportional to the overall size of its force, is higher than that of U.S. troops in Afghanistan or Iraq, a Canadian government analysis concluded last year. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402722_pf.html

Economy: Not 1929, but…

Richard Berner, chief US economist at Morgan Stanley, said: “The consumer is retreating. It is too soon to say cracking, but the consumer is clearly turning cautious at the very least.”

Mr Berner said the consumer had been hit by a “perfect storm” of falling house prices, slowing jobs growth, high gasoline prices, mortgage resets and tighter lending standards.

However, economists noted that some of the expected December spending had probably taken place in November – a strong month – due in part to the timing of holidays. Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JP Morgan, said the data were “telling things are softening, it’s not telling you things have collapsed”. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/90eb7a60-c37a-11dc-b083-0000779fd2ac.html

Chinese Losing Interest in Propping up the U.S.? James Fallows does not predict upcoming precipitous action, but worries re what Lawrence Summers terms, “the balance of financial terror.”

The Chinese public is beginning to be aware that its government is sitting on a lot of money—money not being spent to help China directly, money not doing so well in Blackstone-style foreign investments, money invested in the ever-falling U.S. dollar. Chinese bloggers and press commentators have begun making a connection between the billions of dollars the country is sending away and the domestic needs the country has not addressed. There is more and more pressure to show that the return on foreign investments is worth China’s sacrifice—and more and more potential backlash against bets that don’t pay off. (While the Chinese government need not stand for popular election, it generally tries to reduce sources of popular discontent when it can.) The public is beginning to behave like the demanding client of an investment adviser: it wants better returns, with fewer risks.

…Whatever the provocation, China would consider its levers and weapons and find one stronger than all the rest—one no other country in the world can wield. Without China’s billion dollars a day, the United States could not keep its economy stable or spare the dollar from collapse.

Would the Chinese use that weapon? The reasonable answer is no, because they would wound themselves grievously, too. Their years of national savings are held in the same dollars that would be ruined; in a panic, they’d get only a small share out before the value fell. Besides, their factories depend on customers with dollars to spend.

But that “reassuring” answer is actually frightening. Lawrence Summers calls today’s arrangement “the balance of financial terror,” and says that it is flawed in the same way that the “mutually assured destruction” of the Cold War era was. That doctrine held that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would dare use its nuclear weapons against the other, since it would be destroyed in return. With allowances for hyperbole, something similar applies to the dollar standoff. China can’t afford to stop feeding dollars to Americans, because China’s own dollar holdings would be devastated if it did. As long as that logic holds, the system works. As soon as it doesn’t, we have a big problem.

What might poke a giant hole in that logic? Not necessarily a titanic struggle over the future of Taiwan. A simple mistake, for one thing. Another speech by Cheng Siwei—perhaps in response to a provocation by Lou Dobbs. A rumor that the oil economies are moving out of dollars for good, setting their prices in euros. Leaked suggestions that the Chinese government is hoping to buy Intel, leading to angry denunciations on the Capitol floor, leading to news that the Chinese will sit out the next Treasury auction. As many world tragedies have been caused by miscalculation as by malice. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/fallows-chinese-dollars/4

Innovation, Seduction: Chinese Cars headed for U.S.

Amid all the futuristic vehicles, "green cars" and much-hyped "crossovers" being unveiled this week at the Detroit auto show, one of the biggest game changers coming to the American automotive market may be a simple price sticker.

How's this for innovation: $14,000 for a fully loaded, mid-size sport utility vehicle with a leather interior.

The catch: It's made in China.

Four Chinese automakers and an American importer of Chinese cars showed off their wares here Monday, with one promising to bring vehicles -- including the SUV -- to the U.S. as soon as the end of the year. It was a torrent of activity from an industry that made its debut at the Michigan big boys' party only two years ago.

Their plans to sell cars in the world's largest auto market are nothing if not ambitious, considering the mountain of regulatory and marketing challenges, not to mention a recent history of postponed and canceled attempts to come stateside. And then there's the skepticism of U.S. consumers, who have endured recalls of pet food containing Chinese-made ingredients, hazardous toys and other tainted products. http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-chinacar15jan15,0,6664346.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business

Campaign:

Ugliness: Commentary as to Richard Cohen’s article in the WaPost, that Obama is, essentially, bad for Jews since His church and its minister produced Trumpet Newsmagazine which richly praised Louis Farrakhan.

In Richard Cohen’s op-ed for the Post today, he plays a very nasty game of guilt by association. Because Barack Obama belongs to the ostensibly controversial Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago, and because the minister there, Reverand Jeremiah Wright, in the pages of an in-house magazine he publishes, “heaped praise on” Louis Farakkhan, calling him a man who “truly epitomized greatness,” Obama must disavow, um, wait, who exactly? Minister Farrakhan? Reverend Wright? It’s not entirely clear from Cohen’s article.

What is clear, though, is that the there’s an effort underway to paint Barack Obama as bad for the Jews. If you’re Jewish, and perhaps even if you’re not, you’ve likely received a piece of hateful spam informing you that Obama is Muslim, or half Muslim, or 3/5 Muslim — just for counting purposes, of course — or some other ill-founded crap. You know that he was also educated at a madrassa, don’t you? Well, don’t you? He’s radical. And a terrorist. http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/richard-cohen-bad-for-the-jews/

Obama’s statement: “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”

Clintons’ Goal: Tear Down Obama to their level: Thomas Edsall:

The dramatic escalation of hostilities Sunday in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination suggests that Senator Hillary Clinton and her strategists are convinced they can win a war of invective and that in such a conflict they will prevail because her liabilities are already well known, while rival Barack Obama's are not yet public and have not been subjected to close examination.

The Democratic contest entered a dangerous new stage as Clinton initiated an all-out assault Sunday, directly accusing Barack Obama of failing to be consistent in his opposition to the Iraq war. Clinton also stood by at a South Carolina rally as one of her prominent campaign surrogates, Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson, raised the issue of Obama's past cocaine use and suggested that the Illinois Senator's views on race are as naïve as Sidney Poitier's in the 1967 movie "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner."

…In contrast to Obama, Clinton has been the subject of countless adverse news stories, magazine articles and books. The ABC/Post poll found that her negative or unfavorable ratings, at 40 percent, were substantially higher than Obama's, 30 percent. Clinton aides are convinced that there is little new to be raised about Clinton, while Obama's complex past remains, journalistically, virgin territory. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/dem_race_becomes_war_of_invect.html

Michigan/Nevada: Romney- “He’s Alive, he’s alive!” Giuliani defeated Uncommitted, 3% to 2%.

Excluded Kucinich speaks up: Subject: Nuclear Waste

At 5:25 p.m., shortly after the Nevada Supreme Court refused to give Dennis Kucinich a seat at the debate, a small band of his supporters marched to a far corner of a parking lot outside the Cashman Center, where supporters of the three major candidates.

Spectators soon realized that Kucinich was among them. He said:

“The fact of the matter is, NBC is owned by General Electric. General Electric makes power plants. General Electric wants to make sure there is a place to dump the waste.”

He was talking about nuclear waste and the now shuttered Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump site northwest of Las Vegas. Kucinich has joined the state of Nevada in opposing the dump. Thus, he said, GE is trying to keep him off the air.

“Now the media has become an issue in this campaign by trying to determine who should be in this debate,” he said.

The Cleveland congressman said he will fight for changes to Federal Communications Commission law to ensure that future candidates can participate in debates. http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/early-line/2008/jan/15/kucinich-decries-ge-media-conspiracy/

-R

“We don’t want to inject race or gender into this campaign.” – Hillary Clinton on Meet the Press

Economy: The politicians and major media are discovering it, but as Sunday’s NY Times noted, many economists fear it’s too late to head off what’s coming. The conventional politicians and economists keep thinking ‘in the box,’ as they offer non-solutions that essentially just add more debt.

Late last week the papers noted signs that the nation's economic woes are getting worse- Bank of America's announcement that it is buying Countrywide Financial Corporation, a weakened mortgage firm, amidst a deepening of the subprime mortgage crisis, now creeping into credit cards.

As leaders in Washington turn their attention to efforts to avert a looming downturn, many economists suggest that it may already be too late to change the course of the economy over the first half of the year, if not longer.

With a wave of negative signs gathering force, economists, policy makers and investors are debating just how much the economy could be damaged in 2008. Huge and complex, the American economy has in recent years been aided by a global web of finance so elaborate that no one seems capable of fully comprehending it. That makes it all but impossible to predict how much the economy can be expected to fall before it stabilizes. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/business/13econ.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Gold: Return to Glory, i.e. $900/oz

There was a time when gold was money. In today’s uncertain world, the yellow metal is back in fashion. Bullion prices rose to a record nominal high after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan added to nervousness about the world economy. Part of gold’s allure is its traditional status as a safe haven. It is seen as a store of value when everything else seems risky. But the bigger drivers behind the rising spot price are a depreciating dollar and the prospect of negative US real interest rates.

A better way to think of gold may be as central bankers used to before America dropped the gold standard: not as a commodity, but as another currency. As long as the dollar stays weak, gold’s bull run will last. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/301c112e-bd51-11dc-b7e6-0000779fd2ac.html

What’s Happening, Iran: Incident a Non-Event Bush continues to talk tough re Iran, while this latest incident, has ‘understandably’ disappeared out of our papers.

A heckling radio ham known as the Filipino Monkey, who has spent years pestering ships in the Persian Gulf, is being blamed today for sparking a major diplomatic row after American warships almost attacked Iranian patrol boats.

The US navy came within seconds of firing at the Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz on January 6 after hearing threats that the boats were attacking and were about to explode.

Senior navy officials have admitted that the source of the threats, picked up in international waters, was a mystery.

A heckling radio ham known as the Filipino Monkey, who has spent years pestering ships in the Persian Gulf, is being blamed today for sparking a major diplomatic row after American warships almost attacked Iranian patrol boats.

The US navy came within seconds of firing at the Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz on January 6 after hearing threats that the boats were attacking and were about to explode.

Senior navy officials have admitted that the source of the threats, picked up in international waters, was a mystery. http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2240533,00.html

What’s Happening, Iraq:

That Embassy: Poor Planning, Corruption $736 million, almost the size of The Vatican, endless delays. Finally, a criminal investigation, though conducted by the Justice Department

The firefighting system in the massive $736 million embassy complex in Baghdad has potential safety problems that top U.S. officials dismissed in their rush to declare construction largely completed by the end of last year, according to internal State Department documents, e-mails and interviews.

Some officials assert that in the push to complete the long-delayed project, potentially life-threatening problems have been left untouched. "This is serious enough to get someone killed," said a State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation. "The fire systems are the tip of the iceberg. That is the most visible. But no one has ever inspected the electrical system, the power plant" and other parts of the embassy complex, which will house more than 1,000 people and is vulnerable to mortar attacks.

Other sources involved in the project, also requesting anonymity, insist that disputes involve technical paperwork issues, largely because the contractor had never built an embassy and did not realize that under State Department rules it needed approval for substituting certain materials. Now, much of that work needs to be reexamined and checked, they said, substantially delaying the project's completion.

The finger-pointing over fire safety is a microcosm of the suspicion that hangs over the troubled project, which is built on acreage almost four times the size of the Pentagon. Originally expected to be completed by July 1, 2007, at a cost of $592 million, the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world has been plagued by poor planning, shoddy workmanship and design changes that have added to the cost. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of the contract and related subcontracts, sources said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/11/AR2008011103772_pf.html

De-baathification: The Iraqi bill which accomplishes such- forgiving, employing former workers in Saddam’s government- is billed as a “significant step toward sectarian resolution” even if other ‘benchmark laws’ haven’t made progress. Other Iraqis minimize it- "The most important thing about this new law is that it is an Iraqi law."

Juan Cole suspects this is simply not such good news.

So the big political news today is that the Iraqi parliament on Saturday finally passed a revision of the "De-baathification" law issued by US viceroy Paul "Jerry" Bremer in May of 2003. That law got tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs fired from their government jobs and excluded from public life and helped kick off the Sunni-Shiite civil war we having been living through for the past few years.

The passage of the new law will be hailed by the War party as a major achievement. But as usual they will misread what really happened.

If the new law was good for ex-Baathists, then the ex-Baathists in parliament will have voted for it and praised it, right? And likely the Sadrists (hard line anti-Baath Shiites) and Kurds would be a little upset.

Instead, parliament's version of this law was spearheaded by Sadrists, and the ex-Baathists in parliament criticized it.

Somehow that little drawback suggests to me that the law is not actually, as written, likely to be good for sectarian reconciliation.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat writes in Arabic that the parliamentarians who criticized the law were drawn from the National Dialogue Council led by ex-Baathist Salih Mutlak, from the Iraqi National List of Iyad Allawi (an ex-Baathist), and from two of the three parties that make up the Sunni Arab National Accord Front.

So the parties in parliament that have the strong Baathist legacy did not like the law one little bit. But they are the ones that it was intended to mollify!

…The headlines are all saying that the law permits Baathists back into public life. It seems actually to demand that they be fired or retired on a pension, and any who are employed are excluded from sensitive ministries. www.juancole.com

Campaign:

Disenfranchisement in Nevada: The Clinton-allied teachers' union filed a lawsuit against voting in the coming Democratic caucus in nine Vegas Strip hotels. Hillary C denied any connection to the union.

The teachers union has drawn knives on the Culinary Workers, deepening the potential political rifts over Nevada’s Jan. 19 Democratic caucus.

A lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court seeks to stop the Democratic Party from holding caucus meetings at nine Strip hotels, which would diminish the influence of casino workers and hamper Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign.

The complaint, with the state teachers union and some party activists as plaintiffs, came as Obama accepted the endorsement of the Culinary Union. The timing seemed designed to cloud the good buzz from his campaign, which could only help Sen. Hillary Clinton’s efforts in the state.

The lawsuit claims that those voting in at-large precincts being held on the Strip would have too much weight compared with those voting at their polling places, violating the equal protection law of the U.S. Constitution. It also claims the at-large precincts violate state statute in the way they were drawn.

State Democratic Party officials disputed the lawsuit’s contentions. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/12/voting-stripa-no-no-suit-says/

In what has become a proxy battle between the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the large hotel workers union in Nevada on Saturday attacked a lawsuit by another major union that would make it more difficult for hotel workers to vote in this state’s hotly contested Democratic caucuses.

Filed Friday in Federal District Court here, the lawsuit comes just days after the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada endorsed Mr. Obama, a blow to Mrs. Clinton.

In the lawsuit, the 20,000-member Nevada State Education Association and six residents of the Las Vegas area argue that the Nevada Democratic Party’s decision to create at-large precincts inside nine Las Vegas resorts on the day of the caucus, next Saturday, violates state election law and creates a system in which voters at the at-large precincts can elect more delegates than voters at other precincts. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/politics/13vegas.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=politics&pagewanted=print

Race- Inject by Surrogates: BET Owner and Clinton Supporter Robert Johnson leaves out “cocaine” but his meaning is clear. One of many such comments. On Meet the Press, Clinton again insisted if anyone has injected race, it’s the Obama campaign.

"I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing but he said it in his book." http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/01/clinton-surroga.html

Guantanamo, has begun its 7^th year of operation. Worldwide protests marked the anniversary this weekend.

Demonstrators have been protesting against the sixth anniversary of the opening of the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. In Australia, they dressed like prisoners in orange jumpsuits, to press home their message outside the US embassy in Sydney.

In the Philippines, activists took a mock jail cell to the US embassy in Manila, and carried placards calling for an end to the detentions at Guantanamo Bay. The protests are part of a worldwide campaign organised by the pressure group Amnesty International, six years after the first transfer of prisoners to the detention centre in Cuba.

They want the American government to close the facility down, once and for all. The demonstrators have called Guantanamo Bay 'an insult to people who believe and respect human rights.' http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=464175&lng=1

-R