America Ball Land: 07/14/09

Who are we? by The America Conservative.
Amendments to our Constitution by The American Conservative

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Howard Dean: "to change [health care] to a totally public plan is crazy"

at 5:34 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Former Democratic Vermont governor and practicing physician and presidential candidate Howard Dean tells The New York Times Magazine that going to a single-payer, government-run health care system "is crazy":

You've got to start from where you are, not from where you wish you were. The Europeans have much more comprehensive and cheaper health care plans than we have, but they got there because their health care systems were essentially destroyed during World War II. We grew our private health care system around World War II—the only way that American employers could give their employees a raise was to enhance health-insurance benefits—so to change it to a totally public plan is crazy.

Dean remains convinced that the so-called public option is the cornerstone of any reform worthy of the term. Whether he believes that the public option will lead inexorably to a single-payer plan is not clear. More here.

It's not fully clear to me what Dean means by "much more comprehensive" plans in Europe, given the vast array of subsidized and free services available in these United States. There's no question that European countries pay less overall for health care, but that's mostly because of rationing of one form or another. Indeed, it's not self-evident why spending more for health care is a bad thing, any more than higher spending on restaurant meals or cars is a bad thing, in and of itself.

I think it's great that Dean points to the post-World War II wage-and-price controls as the origin of our current stupid and inefficient employer-based health-care system. What I'm curious about is precisely which existing, large-scale government system would he point to as a model for the public option: Medicare? Medicaid? the Veterans Administration? The simple fact is that every large-scale public system in the U.S. is riddled with waste, fraud, abuse, and more. Why should anyone believe that the next reform would somehow solve any or even address any of those problems?

Here's a Reason.tv video that explains how to cover half of the uninsured in America. Go here for embed code, downloadable versions, and more.

Safari 4 New Version

at 4:56 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

There’s a new release of Safari 4 (4.0.2) featuring improved stability in the “Nitro” Javascript engine and “the latest compatibility and security fixes” according to Apple: Apple - Downloads - Application Updates - Safari.

I have been noticing some Javascript problems with the release version of Safari 4 - sometimes the Javascript engine just seems to shut down and give up, and you have to quit and relaunch Safari to bring it back to life. Hopefully, the new version will address this.

Now if only they would bring back that progress bar in the address line. It was a very handy way to see page loading progress, and I still keep looking up there expecting to see the blue progress bar filling in...

Read More...

[Source: Little Green Footballs]

Bill O'Reilly Interviews Karl Rove About Sarah Palin's Resignation

at 4:24 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Obamacare Preview: Crowder Goes To Canada

at 3:51 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Watch this.

Dude.

Huge “Well Done” to Steven Crowder. In fact, there’s little to add. Make sure to post your comments here and at YouTube, and vote it up. Conservatives, we need to start being heard on health care, before we all end up in terminal waiting rooms.

Rasmussen - Obama Popularity DIVES, Govt. Doing Too Much, Consumer Confidence DOWN

at 3:20 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Ahem !!, Excuse me Mr. President are you listening?

Obviously he isn't. The latest set of Rasmussen Polls report that the public is losing confidence in President Obama, they think that the government is doing too much, and their confidence in the economy is falling quickly.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows only 30% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of �8. This is a drop of 16 points in the past month. (see trends). Overall, 51% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far. Forty-eight percent (48%) now disapprove.

Obama was elected based on economic issues, but now, more Americans feel that he is doing a poor job on the economy than approve of his performance (43% to 39%) . Those are by far his lowest ratings yet on the economy
. Thirty-four percent (34%) of voters nationwide say the U.S. is heading in the right direction, the lowest level of optimism since mid-March.

The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, dropped to its lowest level since March 23 on Thursday. At 65.0, the index is down two points from yesterday, down eight points over the past week and down twelve points over the past month. Consumer confidence is up only five points from the first reading of this year.

Nationally, 16% of consumers say the state of their personal finances are getting better. Fifty-three percent (53%) of adults say their finances are getting worse. Government workers (24%) hold the highest level of optimism on the current state of their personal finances. Entrepreneurs (21%) fall closely behind, followed by private company workers (17%) and retirees (8%).

The Rasmussen Investor Index, which measures the economic confidence of investors on a daily basis, also fell to its lowest level in four months. At 69.5, investor confidence is down fifteen points over the past week and sixteen points over the past month.

Perhaps it is the pace of the Presidential Programs, Forty-four percent (44%) of American adults say, generally speaking, the government tries to do too much, only 31% believes that it doesn�t try to do enough.

Maybe its time that the government start representing the people. We obviously don't like way things are going, and the direction President Obama is trying to force us to go.

Read More...

[Source: YID With LID]

Totten to Spencer: We Are Not at War with Nouri Al-Maliki

at 2:38 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Michael J. Totten calls out Robert Spencer for a particularly uninformed comment about Iraq: We Are Not at War with Nouri al-Maliki.

Robert Spencer, founder and lead writer for Jihad Watch, has a bit of trouble telling the difference between friend and foe in Iraq and still thinks, despite everything, that the United States is losing the war.

Instead of referring to me by name, he sarcastically dismisses me as a “learned analyst,” as he does with President Barack Obama and his advisors, while scoffing at a long dispatch I published last week. “No insurgent or terrorist group can declare victory or claim Americans are evacuating Iraq’s cities because they were beaten,” I wrote. Spencer acknowledges that Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki isn’t the leader of an insurgent or terrorist group. But he maintains that my statement is “breathtaking in its disconnect from reality” because Maliki declared the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq’s cities “a great victory.”

We are not, and never have been, at war with Prime Minister Maliki. Everyone with even a pedestrian familiarity with events in Iraq during the last couple of years knows that American soldiers and Marines have fought alongside Maliki’s Iraqi soldiers and police against common enemies – Al Qaeda in Iraq and the various offshoots and branches of Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

Not even in an alternate universe have Maliki’s men fought Americans and forced them to withdraw. They fought, bled, and died alongside Americans. The United States military recently withdrew from most of Iraq’s urban areas as stipulated by the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration, but they’re still training and working closely with Iraqi security forces.

Maliki’s “great victory” statement was an attempt to suck up to the anti-Americans in his electoral constituency who are unhappy with his close relationship with the United States. Iraq’s most sectarian Sunni Arabs regularly accuse Maliki of being an Iranian puppet prime minister when they aren’t contradicting themselves by joining radical Shias and saying he’s an American puppet prime minister. Maliki is closer to Iran than Americans and Iraq’s Sunnis would like, but he’s much closer to the United States where it counts most. He has never sent his men into battle against Americans. But he did order his soldiers into battle alongside Americans last year against Iranian-backed Shia militias in Sadr City and Basra. He also put the Sons of Iraq – whom he used to decry as an anti-Shia Sunni militia – on his government’s payroll.

I don’t know if throwing a rhetorical bone to Iraq’s most strident anti-Americans to shore up his nationalist bona fides is a good idea or if it isn’t. Either way, it’s not hard to see that’s what he’s doing. And it’s frankly ridiculous for Spencer to write as though I have no idea what’s going on in Iraq when he thinks a political speech for domestic consumption overrides the fact that for years Maliki has been at war not against us but with us against our mutual enemies.

Does Spencer believe that, all of a sudden and for no apparent reason, Maliki sympathizes with the terrorists and insurgents he recently crushed?

Read More...

[Source: Little Green Footballs]

Pic of the Day (Mid-1930s' Edition): Economic Suicide Girls Get Tattooed For the NRA!

at 1:57 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Here's an image from a fascinating new piece in The Milken Institute Review. It is, in its way, totally fricking creepy, even if those are temporary tattoos (and they were, I'm sure). I shudder to think what their stomachs say. For those with full-onset adult eyesight, by the way, the bit under the eagle reads, "We do our part."

Written by economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian, it explains "Where the New Deal Went Badly Wrong," a topic of no small relevance for those of us lucky enough to be alive and well in the early 21st century. Their basic thesis?

We have calculated that, on the basis of productivity growth alone, employment and investment should have been back to their normal levels by 1936.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas and the economist Leonard Rapping calculated decades ago that the Federal Reserve's efforts to expand the money supply should have brought the economy back on track by 1935.
So what went so badly wrong? Our research suggests that a slew of policies, specifically those that suppressed market competition, are central to understanding why the economy remained so weak for so long.

Cole and Ohanian, who have been studying and publishing on this topic for years, say that the anti-competitive elements of the New Deal's many programs didn't just represent a "sea change" in economic thinking but smothered the economy so much that a return to "full capacity" didn't happen until 1943, long after it would have absent such a broad restructuring of the economy. They argue that FDR's advisers were overly impressed with the results of short-term total economic planning during World War I, in which the government effectively controlled all aspects of industrial production.

The full article is well worth reading and is available online here.

Note also that the authors contend that massive deficit spending on World War II was responsible for ending the Depression. This is a hotly contested thesis, with economists such as Harvard's Robert Barro arguing that the "multiplier effect" of such spending is actually less than 1. That is, for every dollar the government spent on World War II, the economy grew by less than a dollar:

I have estimated that World War II raised U.S. defense expenditures by $540 billion (1996 dollars) per year at the peak in 1943-44, amounting to 44% of real GDP. I also estimated that the war raised real GDP by $430 billion per year in 1943-44. Thus, the multiplier was 0.8 (430/540). The other way to put this is that the war lowered components of GDP aside from military purchases. The main declines were in private investment, nonmilitary parts of government purchases, and net exports—personal consumer expenditure changed little. Wartime production siphoned off resources from other economic uses—there was a dampener, rather than a multiplier.

That 0.8 multiplier returns in Barro's calculations of military spending during World War I, Korea, and Vietnam as well. Barro's full argument here.

Ohanian was one of the experts in Reason.tv's video "Obama's New New Deal: As bad as the old New Deal?" Watch below and go here for more links, downloadable versions, embed code, and related articles.

Headline explained here.

Aux Armes, Citoyens!

at 1:21 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Maybe some societies should take their own national anthems to heart.

E.g., excerpt:

Aux armes, citoyens!

Formez vos battalions!

(Citizens, to arms!

Form your battalions!)

Happy Bastille Day from…. Bucharest.

Bastille Day open thread….

New at Reason: Radley Balko on SWAT Gone Wild in Maryland

at 12:38 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Late last month, Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo took the unusual step of filing a civil rights lawsuit against the police department of his own county. The suit stems from a 2008 SWAT team raid on Calvo's house that resulted in the shooting deaths of his two black Labrador retrievers. As Senior Editor Radley Balko writes, in pushing back against the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Prince George's County police department, Mayor Calvo is helping expose a more widespread pattern of law enforcement carelessness and callousness throughout the state of Maryland.

Read all about it here.

Still fighting the cold war | Olivia Hampton

at 12:04 PM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

The US military is shifting its focus toward unconventional warfare � but its politicians remain stuck in the past

When US defence secretary Robert Gates unveiled a half-trillion-dollar military budget blueprint in April, he also signalled a dramatic shift in how the US will fight its wars in the future. It is a move away from weapons for conventional conflicts, focusing instead on weapons needed for the unconventional warfare the US is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But is the US military ready to shed the cold war mindset that has defined its training and foreign operations for decades? Significant change is unlikely to come soon.

The Iraq invasion and its aftermath underscored the struggles the US military faces in adapting to fight guerillas and militant groups who target civilians and governments through force and information warfare.

Victory in Iraq became elusive because the US military leadership failed to define the mission as a counterinsurgency. Six years later, the US is still far from perfecting its ability to defeat a powerful insurgency. The challenges are also evident in Afghanistan, where the war is now headed toward its eighth year. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden � the al-Qaida leader US forces went in to catch � continues to elude the most powerful military in the world.

The Sons of Iraq, credited with a major part of the success seen in the aftermath of the US troop surge in 2007 and 2008, were paid off. The movement grew out of Sunni tribes in Anbar province who had fought US forces and rebelled against al-Qaida militants. The surge's "clear, hold, build" strategy would have fallen flat on its face without these men � from finding common ground with the Americans and forming US-led neighbourhood militia groups.

The 2010 Pentagon budget acknowledges some of these challenges, calling for more spending on Afghanistan than Iraq for the first time since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and outlining some 50 programme changes to play up unconventional warfare capabilities. The overhaul reflects President Barack Obama's changing focus to the interlinked quandary in Afghanistan and Pakistan as he withdraws the 130,000 US troops from Iraq.

More broadly, the budget points to a new focus on hybrid wars: those that lie between conventional warfare and a full-blown insurgency, as in Iraq or Afghanistan, that renders much of the military's traditional heavy weaponry useless.

Gates has all but ended the army's $200bn attempt to build a fleet of nimble, electric-powered vehicles over concerns that the vehicle's design put it at greater risk from roadside bombs, the militants' weapon of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he has increased spending � in the billions of dollars range � for more armoured vehicles, spy planes and monitoring and jamming technology. The plan also unveils sweeping changes in the military's bloated procurement process, one decried by Gates and other lawmakers as having benefited a select group of major contractors for too long after 9/11. Instead, the plan sees civil servants replacing many private contractors.

The $534bn budget also axes controversial plans to build a new, high-tech presidential helicopter and the C-17 military transport plane, and only pays for four more of the very pricey F-22 stealth fighter jets, prompting outcry from both Republican and Democratic legislators whose states stand to lose many jobs in the midst of a recession.

Ignoring a veto threat from the White House, the House of Representatives passed its own version of the bill late last month that adds $369m for more F-22s and to develop a backup engine for the F-35 joint strike fighter, promising a bloody stand-off with the Obama administration ahead of final passage in Congress, which could come later this summer.

Among the staunchest critics of Gates's plans are those who attacked them as putting America at risk by hampering its preparedness to fight conventional threats, such as those emanating from China or North Korea. Yet for all Gates's tough talk, the budget blueprint still bears a hefty $534bn price tag, a figure that rises to nearly $664bn after including the costs of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and calls for building three more DDG-1000 Navy destroyers, which can operate in shallow water but whose need has been questioned. And that's not counting the funds added on by individual legislators.

Half of the budget proposal, Gates says, is allocated to fighting conventional wars, in contrast to just 10% spending for unconventional warfare, while the remaining 40% would go toward weapons that can be used in both types of conflict.

Despite Gates's spin, the thrust of his proposals has not gone unnoticed. As the sole Republican holdover from the Bush administration, Gates is facing criticism from within his own party for vowing to axe programmes close to some congressmen's hearts.

But as lawmakers took out their pitchforks, Gates responded in kind. When Republican representative Trent Franks of Texas questioned the termination of two missile defence programmes and a funding cut of $1.2bn for the missile defence agency, he received an abrupt tongue-lashing from Gates: "I would just say that the security of the American people and the efficacy of missile defence are not enhanced by continuing to put money into programmes that are fatally flawed, or research programmes that are essentially sinkholes for taxpayer dollars."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on the Employee Free Choice Act and the Advancing Union Juggernaut

at 11:19 AM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

With the installation of Al Franken in the Senate and yet another change of heart by Arlen "Flip-Flop" Specter, Democrats might well have a fillibuster-proof majority to ramrod the top item on Big Labor's wish list: The Employee Free Choice Act. So far much of the attention has gone to the bill's card check provision that would allow Big Labor to herd workers into a union without bothering with such democratic niceties as elections and secret ballots. But card check has an evil twin: The binding arbitration provision that has brought ruin to nearly every city where it has been tried, including Detroit, where Reason Foundation Senior Analyst Shikha Dalmia lives.

As Dalmia writes in The Wall Street Journal:

Under normal circumstances, when employers and workers negotiate an initial contract they are required by law to bargain in good faith until they come to an agreement. If they reach an impasse, workers can call a strike. But because a strike is costly for both sides there is a strong incentive for them to concede as much as possible to reach a compromise. However, since emergency personnel—firefighters, police and the like—are barred from going on strike in many states, about 20 states have embraced some form of compulsory bargaining. If the two sides can't agree on a contract within a prescribed time, either one can invite a three-member panel jointly selected by the union, city, and the state government to intervene and impose a settlement. This process is supposed to install a contract expeditiously.

But what does binding arbitration really do? Read all about it here.

ACORN "Front Group" Playing OBAMACARE Games In South Carolina?

at 10:39 AM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

ACORN is more than the Criminal Enterprise trying to water down the effect of your vote by adding thousands of unqualified people to the voting rolls.

It is also a political organization, pushing its agenda where it sees there is a potential for making money.

Before �subprime� became a crisis, ACORN was active in the mortgage market, fighting in support of the policies that helped lay the groundwork for the banking collapse of 2008. ACORN lobbied legislators and banks to ensure that any person, regardless of credit history, income, or assets, would qualify for a mortgage. They mastered the art of pressuring banks � often through radical and controversial methods � to provide subprime loans to all comers.

Next up is pushing the President's healthcare agenda. Through its tangled web of "partner organizations" ACORN has created an organization which promised jobs, but is nothing but a front group for getting the word out about Obamacare:

ACORN Shenanigans in South Carolina

When is a company not a company? When it is a false front for ACORN.

by Warner Todd Huston

Recently, the Smosska Corporation swooped into Florence, South Carolina promising to instantly create some 400 new jobs with an assurance of 3,000 before next year is out. For an area that needs jobs this seemed like welcome news.

Last week a job fair was held in Florence by the new company at which free health care was offered those that would be hired. At that time an aptitude test was taken by applicants if, that is, they had the $40 fee to pay to take the thing. The company claimed this �fee� would be used to pay for drug tests if they were hired. This fee, however, made some people curious.

The fee and several other curious characteristics of this company caused suspicions to be raised about its legitimacy. It turns out, there is not yet an actual building in which this Smosska Corporation is housed, there don�t seem to be too many current employees, and there doesn�t seem to have been any actual products created by Smosska in the past � though the corporation is supposed to have been formed in 2001. Even the original email address given out was a Yahoo account, not an official corporate web host address.

So, how does a company that doesn�t seem to have any employees, no place of business, and no actual product for sale find the ability to promise that it can create 3,000 employees practically overnight? It appears as if the answer to that is when ACORN is backing you amazing financial arrangements can be made.

The links between Smosska and the troubled community group weren�t openly admitted, to be sure. The Florence Better Business Bureau looked into the company after questions were raised about its odd characteristics. The BBB found that Smosska is being backed by a group called Organizers for America, which itself is a subsidiary of the National Organizers Alliance, which itself is affiliated with ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the nationally troubled group associated with massive voter fraud, financial irregularities. Of course, all were heavy Obama campaign backers.

So, what does Smosska do? Its website claims that the company makes electronically readable ID cards with a patient�s medical history imprinted upon them. But there is no indication that a single card has ever been made since the company was incorporated in 2001.

Company president Michelle Adams told reporters that her company works in �eight different states across the area serving clients including hospitals, doctors and pharmacies.� But a look at the Smosska website lists no business contacts, no clients, no success stories, no testimonials. In fact, no history of any kind is mentioned there. It seems a bit odd for a corporation not to even list a single satisfied client.

A Google search of the company�s name reveals a lot of entries claiming that Smosska is some sort of insurance company or has insurance connections in the medical field, but there is no mention of these cards. A �Health Care Organizing Kickoff� announcement on my.barackobama.com can also be found mentioning that company will hire 3,000 new workers by 2010. (Screen capture of Obama website in case it goes down the memory hole because Barack Obama is good for making things disappear from the net.)

I don�t know about you but, a � Health Care Organizing Kickoff � doesn�t sound like the inauguration of a new company that intends to manufacture medical ID cards, does it? It sounds more like a community activist event aimed at �organizing� people to get the word out about Obama�s healthcare policies, doesn�t it?

In any case, with the shady or nearly non-existent business history, the many unannounced connections to ACORN, to Obama and various other community organizer groups, and the lack of a manufacturing plant, it is more likely that this company is just another shell corporation for ACORN or ACORN-like activities to hide behind.

So why all the mystery, why the refusal to really inform the Florence community as to what this corporation really intends to do? With the illegal activities connected to so many of these community organizing groups, it�s not a shock that such ties would be hidden from view.

Florence better be very careful about this one. Let�s hope the Better Business Bureau doesn�t just drop its investigation and Florencers can become fully informed about what this Smosska Corporation is really up to.

Read More...

[Source: YID With LID]

Lonely, Miserable Plagiarist Maureen Dowd Slams Sarah Palin Again

at 10:09 AM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

The venomous, foul-mouth, childless, husbandless, plagiarist that is Maureen Dowd just can't let go of her hatred towards a conservative, successful woman with a family who represents everything she's personally against:

She says maybe I didn�t want to go back to the nitty-gritty of Alaska politics after the bright lights of the national campaign.
�The nitty-gritty, like, you mean, the fish slime and the dirt under the fingernails and stuff that�s me?� I said. Awesome response, huh?!!
It�s the same old double standard. I am not one of those who would whine and cuss. It�s just not how I�m wired!!! But the minute I start to whine and cuss, the mainstream media totally misunderstands my verbiage and the combination of things that brought me to this place of knowing. And I know that I know that I know those crappy bloggers will put out more confliction stories.
I keep explaining what impacted me, but everyone seems more confused and ironic than ever. What is it about average, hard-working Americans like me that Americans can�t understand?

To think, Dowd's mom has a lot in common with Gov. Palin--they both didn't abort their autistic children.

Read More...

[Source: Politik Ditto]

Dick Cheney's fantasy war | John McQuaid

at 9:36 AM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

New revelations about the Bush administration's secret post-9/11 anti-terror operations demand a full investigation

When the 2007 film The Bourne Ultimatum debuted, in the twilight of the Bush administration, critics viewed its plot as a metaphor for post-9/11 America's excesses. The movie features a CIA deputy director who oversees the agency's post-9/11 "black ops", casually ordering the killing of a reporter for the Guardian who published details of CIA activities, and lectures a subordinate on the agency's extraordinary new authority:

Full envelope intrusion, rendition, experimental interrogation � it is all run out of this office. We are the sharp end of the stick now... No more red tape. No more getting the bad guys caught on our sights, then watching them escape while we wait for somebody in Washington to issue the order.

It turns out the movie wasn't quite so purely metaphorical. Over the past week there's been a steady drip of disquieting revelations on America's post-9/11 intelligence programmes, and the reality is starting to look something like the Bourne Ultimatum's sharp end of the stick. The most surprising new information came on Sunday, when the Wall Street Journal reported:

Amid the high alert following the September 11 terrorist attacks, a small CIA unit examined the potential for targeted assassinations of al-Qaida operatives, according to the three former officials. The Ford administration had banned assassinations in the response to investigations into intelligence abuses in the 1970s. Some officials who advocated the approach were seeking to build teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks, said another former intelligence official.
"It was straight out of the movies," one of the former intelligence officials said. "It was like: Let's kill them all."

This particular idea was never implemented, but the Wall Street Journal reported that the agency continued to look at ways it might assassinate suspected terrorists until last month, when CIA director Leon Panetta cancelled the effort, which had been concealed from Congress � reportedly, though not surprisingly, at the behest of Dick Cheney.

Last week a report by inspectors general at five federal agencies offered more insights into the efforts of the National Security Agency and CIA on warrantless eavesdropping. It turns out there not just one, but an entire suite of secret efforts that the report helpfully labelled "the President's Surveillance Programme" (PSP). On top of this came the news that attorney general Eric Holder wants an investigation into the Bush administration's use of waterboarding and other torture techniques.

Each new report makes it clearer that Cheney's stated determination to "take the gloves off" resulted in the creation of a shadowy bureaucratic archipelago of highly secret anti-terror programmes accountable to virtually no one (except, theoretically anyway, Cheney himself). Like Hollywood's macho preening, it was a world in which anything might be possible in the service of catching, extracting information from and killing terrorists. If it wasn't legal, ways were found to make it nominally so (or, as in the case of warrantless surveillance, Congress simply changed the law).

Defenders of this approach say almost anything would be justified to protect America from another 9/11, while Bush and Cheney have made extravagant claims about the American lives it saved. But there's little public evidence showing these new programmes actually foiled terrorists. We don't know if waterboarding or other "enhanced interrogation techniques" culled any information that couldn't have been obtained by other means. The justice department's inspector general wrote that "most [PSP] leads were determined not to have any connection to terrorism".

Setting aside the legal-moral issues for the moment, the big problem with highly secret envelope-pushing anti-terror programmes is that for all their movie-thriller mystique, they're still government programmes. They're bureaucratic. They don't function well. They make blunders. Without oversight, the people running those programmes had every incentive to paper over their mistakes and continue making them.

America needs to do two things at this juncture: come to terms with what was done in the name of national security post-9/11, and use that knowledge to deploy an effective anti-terror strategy going forward (preferably one that doesn't rely so heavily on the ideas of screenwriters and Tom Clancy novels).

Neither is possible without a thorough investigation of Cheney's black ops. We still know very little about what these programmes actually did. The lines of responsibility � who authorised what when, who can be held ultimately responsible � remain mostly unknown. And the CIA has damaged its already-tattered credibility by keeping more secrets from congressional leaders and intelligence committees (lending some added credibility to Nancy Pelosi's claims that the agency misled her on waterboarding).

Barack Obama has opposed such an investigation, fearing it would ignite a partisan conflagration that could stall his ambitious agenda. But events have overtaken him. Holder seems determined to assign a prosecutor to look into torture. Members of Congress, outraged over being kept in the dark, are pushing for an investigation into the CIA's secret programmes. So we will learn more.

The main problem with multiple investigations, though, is that they inevitably produce a fragmentary, at times contradictory picture of what went wrong. Only a very ambitious effort � like the much-praised 9/11 commission � can really examine the links between widely disparate activities across the government: CIA interrogations, NSA signals intelligence, the briefs of lawyers in the White House and justice departments and, of course, the mostly-unseen hand of Cheney's office.

It appears only far more shocking revelations could move Obama to sign off on that. But after the past weekend's info-dump, you never know.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

American Library Association Panelists Refuse to Appear with Robert Spencer

at 8:59 AM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

An American Library Association panel discussion on Islam has been canceled, after three of the four panelists refused to participate with anti-Islam blogger Robert Spencer.

On July 7th, a group of nine members sent the ALA an open letter regarding Robert Spencer’s participation. This led to the withdrawal of Dr. Marcia Hermansen, a professor of Islamic Studies at Loyola University, neuropsychologist Dr. Alia Ammar, and Dr. Esmail Koushanpour of Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago.

Spencer, meanwhile, blames me for it, in a bizarre 2300-word rant that’s nearly incoherent with rage and venom.

Here’s the latest statement from the organization behind the Islam panel.

Read More...

[Source: Little Green Footballs]

Little Green Footballs Becomes a Terrorist Tool

at 8:27 AM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

Just to give full disclosure, many of you may remember that I was recently banned from Little Green Footballs for refusing to give up my friendship with Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) and Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch).

Today Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs struck a new low. No he didn't ban his mother (although she did once see Robert Spencer on Fox News so she better watch out). Charles became the tool of CAIR the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

You see, Robert Spencer is an expert on Jihad and Islam.He is the author of eight books on Islam and jihad, including the New York Times bestsellers The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.

CAIR considers anyone who criticizes anyone who criticizes Islamist terror an Islamophobe. As you might imagine Robert Spencer is a prime target. When Spencer was invited to speak on a panel for the American Library Association (ALA) they sent out a press release requesting the ALA remove Robert from the Program. Who do they use to try to prove their argument? Little Green Footballs:

The blog "Little Green Footballs" (LGF) notes that Spencer was listed as a speaker at a European conference in May "organized by a group called 'Pro Koln' -- a successor to the notorious fascist group 'Deutsche Liga fur Volk und Heimat' (the 'German League for People and Homeland')."

LGF goes on to note that the Pro Koln group "is under observation by the German inland secret service... One of the main organizers of 'Pro Koln' is Manfred Rouhs. Here are two photos of Rous with hardcore neo-Nazi activist Axel Reitz, who the local media call 'the Hitler of Cologne.'"

The LGF blog, also known for its Islamophobic viewpoint, wrote of Spencer's site: "His website has descended into a true hate site at this point, dominated by extreme, bigoted commenters who regularly advocate genocide and mass murder of Muslims."

Great Argument CAIR, If a Bigot like LGF hates Spencer, he must be really bad. Problem is Spencer isn't really bad. He is a man who has studied Islam for years. As a regular reader of his his site I know that he is desperately trying to save lives, protect against child abuse, honor killings and abuse of women in Islam, among other issues.

Now here is a bit more about the group which is not quoting LGF around, CAIR. The FBI has proven CAIR to be involve with the terrorist group Hamas. In fact last year when the world guilty was read a total of 108 times in a Dallas court room as a jury convicted the Holy Land foundation and each of the defendants of raising money to fund Hamas terrorism, they were also implicating CAIR .The supposed Human rights organization was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Indeed one key piece of evidence was the Wiretap evidence that put CAIR's former executive director, Nihad Awad, at a Philadelphia meeting of Hamas leaders. Participants hatched a plot to deceive Americans and disguise payments to Hamas as it launched a campaign of terror attacks. CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad also joined Hamas big shots at the meeting.

Congratulations Charles Johnson, you are now officially a tool, a Terrorist Tool. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Robert Spencer has written his own response to CAIR which appears on Jihad Watch, which you can read here

Read More...

[Source: YID With LID]

Our Friends the Saudis

at 7:50 AM Posted by The NWO - A Manifesto

In one of the world’s richest theocratic countries, an outbreak of pesky spirits leads to legal action.

A family in Saudi Arabia is taking a “genie” to court, accusing it of theft and harassment, reports say.

They accuse the spirit of threatening them, throwing stones and stealing mobile phones, Al Watan newspaper said. The family have lived in the same house near the city of Medina for 15 years but say they only recently became aware of the spirit. They have now moved out.

A local court is investigating. In Islamic theology, genies are spirits that can harass or possess humans.

“We began to hear strange sounds,” the head of the family, who come from Mahd Al Dahab, told the Saudi daily. He did not want to be named. “At first we did not take it seriously, but then stranger things started to happen and the children got particularly scared when the genie started throwing stones.”

He added: “A woman spoke to me first, and then a man. They said we should get out of the house.”

A local court says it is trying to verify the truthfulness of the claims “despite the difficulty” of doing so.

Because we all know how difficult it can be to prosecute a genie.